BA English and Drama

DRA1016: Performance Analysis

This module will introduce you to the analysis of live and recorded performance, an essential skill in theatre studies. Each week we will be investigating a key analytical question that can be asked of theatre and performance (eg. 'how does theatre create meaning?', 'how does an audience experience a performance?', 'for whose benefit is theatre made?'). And we will introduce the theoretical approaches and methods that allow you to develop answers to these questions, from semiotics to feminism, postcolonialism to queer theory, covering some of the key debates in theatre studies.

By the end of this module, you will be able to critically analyse a variety of theatrical and performance practices, and their relationship to different cultural, economic, social and political contexts, using a range of analytical tools.

This module aims to:

• Introduce you to key methods of theatre studies
• Explore ways of analysing performance
• Examine the nature and place of performance within culture
• Introduce you to key theoretical and analytical approaches to theatre studies

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DRA1018: The Creative Actor

This module is centred on the importance of play(fulness) and collaborative practice for creators of performance. The word 'play', in the context of drama, often refers to a script or a production, but play has broader significations. We will examine play in an expansive sense in this module, investigating topics such as games, sensory exercises, improvisation, theatre games, sound and/or movement compositions, visual scripts, image-based pieces, and interactive and 'invisible' performances. You will learn how to facilitate complex working dynamics and create structured play for performance. This module will enable you to harness your creativity and that of others to devise theatre using different sources of inspiration and to become an imaginative and critically reflective theatre artist.

This option module will:

• Introduce you to the importance of play(fulness) and collaborative processes in the development of plays (or structured play) for performance, exploring trial and error methodologies to better innovate the possibilities of performance
• Explore the uses, ideas, theoretical material, and training strategies that relate to these activities
• Consider how to hold audience and/or participants through practice, exploring dynamic and healthy facilitation methods that will support your explorations beyond acting.

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EAS1035: Beginnings: English Literature before 1800

This module selects texts that represent some of the richest sources and most complex moments of English cultural history before 1800. These texts, and the cultural elements they combine, went on to have afterlives of great significance for English language, literature and other media. In other senses, they offered legacies that were not taken up, and what has been lost in cultural transformations will also be considered.

The module aims to

• introduce you to these major literary texts. In doing so, we aim to cultivate modes of reading and critical analysis broadly informed by an attention to history and context. Such analysis will include ideas of subjectivity, identity, conflict, community, myth, the transmission of stories, storytelling, translation, transformation, and influence. This module will emphasise essay-writing skills that are fundamental to research and communication in English literature.

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EAS1041: Rethinking Shakespeare

This module explores Shakespeare's plays from a wide range of perspectives. You will study in depth some of the plays and examine the contexts of their production and reception; the plays' print history; early modern performance practices, and how other writers and film directors have adapted Shakespeare's plays. Through engaging with the sources and precursors to Shakespeare's plays, the intricacies of textual production and editorial history, as well as how these plays have been reimagined by other writers, you will be asked to rethink notions of textual stability in relation to the 'Shakespearean text' and encounter the nuances and richness available within Shakespeare Scholarship.

The module aims to explore the processes by which Shakespeare's plays came into existence, how they achieved their unique status in English literature and culture, and how Shakespeare's dominance has been and continues to be challenged. The module illuminates the role (and texts) of other writers involved in the legacy of Shakespeare's plays, from the Restoration to the twenty-first century, and encourages you to examine these often neglected influences within modern understandings of Shakespeare. Throughout, the module pays close attention to the particular possibilities of theatre as a mode of cultural production.

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EAS1016: Digital Cultures: Narrative, Creativity, Industry

Digital technology has transformed almost every area of human life over the last sixty-five years, and the written word remains at the core of this ongoing transformation. This module will introduce you to some of these developments across literary cultures, and you will gain an understanding of how phenomena such as interactive storytelling, artificial intelligence and the Internet have come to influence literature's subject matter as well as its modes of publishing and production. Alongside critical readings and discussions, you will conduct practice-based research by learning to use some of the technologies and software that define modern literary cultures..

This module aims:

• To consider how digital technology makes itself apparent in modern literary, visual and creative cultures.
• To introduce you to a diverse range of authors, poets, artists, technologists, theorists and critics both commenting upon and using digital technologies to explore new possibilities in literature.
• To explore the historical relationship between literary cultures, visual cultures and emerging technologies, grounding students' understanding of current debates in this field.
• To enable you to create a diverse portfolio of creative and critical responses to the topics explored in class, including both traditional written outputs and digital prototypes.

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EAS1037: The Novel

This module will introduce you to an exciting range of novels representative of diverse narrative styles drawn from different historical periods and national contexts. The module covers the development of this important genre from the birth of the novel in eighteenth-century England through the nineteenth-century and modernist periods into the present day. It provides an invaluable foundation for future study in a number of literary fields.

• To introduce students to an exciting range of novels representative of diverse narrative styles drawn from different historical periods and national contexts. The module covers the development of this important genre from the birth of the novel in eighteenth-century England through the nineteenth-century and modernist periods into the present day.
• To address the emergence and reception of the novel in relation to its historical and literary contexts and to its adoption, and adaptation, of particular voices and forms. Close readings of chosen novels will be supplemented by theoretical and critical analysis. Stylistic changes - such as the move from nineteenth-century realist fiction to modernist experimentation - will be explored alongside specific texts which illuminate the impact of cultural change on fictional form.
• In looking at a variety of examples of prose fiction, to examine the pleasures of the novel, as well as the historical conditions and textual strategies which underpin those pleasures.

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EAS1038: The Poem

Despite its strong oral traditions and origins, poetry is the origin of all written literature. It is the base on which all that literature - drama, novels, non-fiction prose - is built. Many of its formal elements are used in common and rhetorical speech. This module is designed to introduce you to the mechanical aspects of poetry and to its history; in addition, it offers you insight into the history and influence of important poetic eras, as well as into how understanding of it may be enriched by literary theory. By the end of the module, you will have a firm grounding in the poem as a form and as a literary force.

The aim of the course is to cultivate skills of formal analysis which can be used in combination with other interpretive and creative techniques later in the degree. There will thus be a close focus in seminars on details of language in particular examples of poetry.

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EAS1040: Academic English

Academic English introduces you to the techniques needed to write successful, university-level analytical essays on literary texts and topics. Using model essays and articles, seminar discussions, your own essay writing, and guided readings, you will learn how to write well structured, clearly argued persuasive analytical essays, with a focus on some of the fundamentals of writing: arguments/thesis statements, paragraphing, clarity of expression, essay formatting and accurate referencing. You will also learn how to locate, evaluate, and use secondary (critical) sources that support your essay's argument, as well as how to cite those sources correctly. There will also be attention to ways of analysing literature effectively.

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EAS1044: Imagine This: Prompts for Creative Writing

This module will ask you for a creative writing response to whatever 'prompt' is suggested - whether it's a newspaper headline, the Ted Hughes archive in The Old Library, or a geographical feature. It will invigorate your entrepreneurial spirit, and will include expressions written in both poetry, prose and dramatic forms. Working across a wide range of writing styles and genres, you will make literature that works for the ear and the body and the page. The assessment will be entirely creative, and in that sense the module complements the other term-2 compulsory module on the Combined Honours English and Creative Writing degree programme, 'Critical Reflections', for which the assessment will be wholly critical/academic.

This module has a clear set of learning strategies, offering you a series of stepping stones that navigate the creative process in different forms. You will develop learning strategies that will encourage self-starting intelligence and invention, an entrepreneurial spirit. It will explore the notion of the 'good idea' and its relationship with form - whether poetry, prose, or dramatic expression, as well as strategies for successful drafting/rewriting. The overall intention of the module is for you to develop an individual creative process that might be carried forward into a writing life.

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CDF2002: Writing for Stage, Screen and Across Media

How does writing move across media? How do the stories we tell change as we tell them differently? This module will ask how new approaches to performance writing are emerging. It will ask how we might use words effectively in conjunction with other aspects of performance, and in creative response to new genres.

The module is designed to develop your individual writing for performance, and understanding of the demands of various media including, but not limited to, stage, screen and audio.

Through the term, we will develop your material across a range of media, experiencing its transformation and reinvention with each new genre. We will consider the different opportunities each genre offers the writer, and how you might push those approaches in your own unique ways. The module will introduce you to some of the underpinning principles of different kinds of writing, and different professional development processes.

You will develop your dramaturgical skills in feeding back on each others’ writing, as well as responding to work by professional writers across genres. You will write a review of a professional work of your choice, to be submitted in week seven and a longer script in a performance genre of your choosing, at the end of the term.

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DRA2044: Acting Shakespeare

Using Acting Shakespeare as our inspiration, the module introduces best performance practice and actor training from English-speaking traditions, to practically explore the nuts and bolts, techniques and tactics of performing Shakespeare. The module also around the world to be inspired by performances of Shakespeare in other languages, genres and cultures. Prior knowledge of or experience with Shakespeare is NOT a requirement. You work together as a large group, in small groups and in pairs in a supportive learning environment. Along with your practice journey of process into performance, a written portfolio (critical and reflective) will draw together research, embodied practice and acting process.

The aim of the module is to help you find and/or develop your acting skills and grow your understanding of Shakespeare and twenty-first century global performance through the inter-related process of:

• Actor training - developing proficiency in performing text, psychophysical awareness and expression
• Collaboration - developing capability in imaginative and culturally sensitive creation while developing group time management and problem-solving skills.
• Creativity - using a variety of stimuli as starting points for imaginative exploration, selection, adaptation and refinement of textual sources
• Critical context - Extending your understanding of the theories and practices of performances. Critical study and appreciation of global Shakespeare, with reference to your own work and exemplars of professional theatre

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DRA2107: Popular Performance Practices

In this module, you will be introduced to the practice and theories of popular entertainment forms and their relationship to contemporary understandings of intangible cultural heritage. You will learn the history and context from which these forms emerged in the 18th & 19th centuries, and how to apply them to performance. Using theories such as carnivalesque, ethnography and commodification of space and point of view, you will also learn how these forms have become embedded in contemporary practices of live and mediated entertainment - e.g., festival culture, street theatre, commemorative events, television and augmented/virtual reality. Learning and teaching methods include workshops, rehearsals, seminars, and practical presentations.

The aim of this module is to provide you with an understanding of several tools and methods for approaching popular performance. It will provide you with a grounding in the history, practice and theory underpinning outdoor, vernacular, popular performance forms. The module will investigate how a contemporary understanding of how intangible cultural heritage is not a fixed point but a living form is applied in the revitalisation of popular performance practices today.

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DRA2112: Applied Drama: Touring, Directing and Facilitating

In this module, you will learn how to create and tour small-scale theatre performance, as well as develop skills in theatre-making, acting, directing, workshop delivery and facilitation. You will act, devise, and tour a theatre performance into a real-world setting such as a school, library, community centre, or small-scale theatre site. You will explore how you employ theatre craft to create work for a specific audience. In doing so, you will have opportunities to learn skills of direction and facilitation, and where appropriate, gain skills in leading workshops or designing programmes of participation. You will be introduced to the above in studio sessions taught by the module tutor and via active experiential learning opportunities. You will also research and present on an example of Applied Theatre practice within the work of a contemporary theatre company.

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DRA2119: Approaches to Acting and Contemporary Performance Making

What techniques and skills do performers need? What forms do contemporary theatre and performance take? This module will introduce you to a range of emerging theatre and performance practices and provide you with actor and performance training to support both interpreting scripts and making original performance from other sources.

The module is designed to broaden your knowledge of contemporary theatre and performance practice – its forms, themes, questions – and to equip you to make innovative and thoughtful new performance.

You will develop performance material in response to a range of stimuli from contemporary theatre and performance, noticing the affordances of different forms and the ways in which they differently foreground core theatrical materials such as space, voice, text, time, character, image and story. We will consider the different opportunities each form offers the performer, and how you might explore and inhabit those opportunities in your own unique ways. In parallel, the module will invite you to undertake performer training, including actor training for text interpretation and ensemble co-creation techniques, and to practice putting these techniques to work. In tandem, there will be opportunities to engage with cutting-edge theatre technology in lighting, sound and design.

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DRA2115: Audiences, Participation, Immersion

This module explores the different ways that live performances have set out to capture audiences’ attention, through immersive and participatory events within or beyond theatrical spaces, or by casting audiences as participants and performers themselves in cultural or everyday spaces. You will explore the diverse ways in which audiences have been involved as participants, non-specialist makers and collaborators in different kinds of live performance events from history and the present day. You will develop a rich understanding of the different theoretical approaches to audiences, as well as evaluating and making creative responses to innovative performance practices, companies and events.

You will read about different practices and analyse the theoretical frameworks, ideologies, and philosophies that underpin these practices. You will have the opportunity to undertake small-group creative experiment, analysis and presentation on these differing performance modes, and to pursue independent research into an area of your interest. You will gather these different ways of working throughout the term into an analytical and creative portfolio.

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DRA2116: Activism and Performance

This module examines the relationships between art, activism, and performance. You will explore how activism is performed and how performance can be used as a powerful tool for protest and community organisation. Activism has a rich cultural history, and continually evolves in response to social, economic, and technological change. A resurgence of people-led movements across the globe in recent years has compelled theorists to investigate the performative dynamics of social struggle. By responding to current events, contemporary scholarship, and historical intersections of art and activism, the module invites you to become part of this investigation, analysing ‘acts’ of activism as highly organised events with their own theatrical agendas and parameters.

Note on learning methods: Critical readings are complemented each week with audio-visual material to enrich your learning. The module centres student voice and develops your confidence to speak about issues you care about in a trusting environment, which we establish together, collectively.

The module aims to:

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DRA2117: Musicals: Critical Perspectives in Contemporary Contexts

In Anaïs Mitchell’s stage musical Hadestown, Orpheus endeavours to compose ‘a song to fix what’s wrong, take what’s broken, make it whole.’ This module explores how musicals – on stage and screen – attempt to reveal, reshape, or repair aspects of social reality and lived experience. Through close analysis of songs alongside cultural contextual study, you will learn to examine and articulate how this interdisciplinary art form combines music, lyrics, storytelling, choreography, performance, and scenic design to generate meaning and emotional impact for audiences. You will draw on critical perspectives that are attuned to global challenges. These approaches will enable you to consider how musicals can engage with social, political, and cultural issues, and how they can imagine new possibilities for contemporary society.

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DRA2118: Creative Producing: People, Culture and Collaboration

This module introduces producing as a relational, values-led practice that centres the work of creative labour and collaboration, asking what it means to produce work with people rather than simply for them. It explores how producers work with artists, organisations, communities, and audiences across diverse cultural and commercial contexts, examining issues of care, leadership, access, inclusion and sustainability. Alongside this, you will develop an understanding of the core roles and responsibilities of a producer and build a practical toolkit of producing tools for real-world practice such as project development, budgeting, fundraising, scheduling, stakeholder communication and risk management.

Through case studies, discussion, practical tasks, and reflection, you will engage with producing scenarios across theatre, live performance, festivals, participatory practice and the wider creative industries. By the end of the module, you will have developed an understanding of producing as an ethical and collaborative practice, supported by a working toolkit for navigating contemporary creative landscapes.

Module aims:

By the end of the module, you will:

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DRA2120: Voices Across Stage and Screen

Which vocal techniques are used across live and on-screen performance?

What is their significance for character development, dramaturgy and audience engagement?

What do voices reveal about individual and collective identity?

How can we examine vocal practice through urgent contemporary perspectives and debates?

In this seminar module, you will explore voice in theatrical performance, film and television—as well as in hybrid practices such as intermedial performance, sound art or musical theatre adaptations between stage and screen. From speaking and singing to voice-over, playback and soundtrack, you will investigate the multiple ways in which voices appear across media and platforms.

You will consider how technical aspects of voicing affect and are affected by the sociocultural and historical contexts of voice, sound and music. You will interrogate how voice participates in shaping our sense of self and our understanding of others, and how voices intersect with socio-political discourses on gender, race, ethnicity and disability.

The module aims to:

· introduce you to key definitions and conceptualisations of voice;

· help you explore the role of voice in a wide array of contemporary stage and screen media;

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DRA2121: ​​Performance in the Age of Screens: Intermedial Theatre​

From film projections on stage to the use of performance- (motion-) capture technologies; from experimentations with sound to the influence of video games on immersive theatre; from NT Live streaming to Zoom shows – this module explores the close and dynamic relationship between live performance and other media.

We will examine how theatre and performance engage with film, sound, digital technologies, video games, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI). You will investigate how different media combine with live performance, and how these combinations reshape ideas of presence, spectatorship and storytelling.

Through the study of a wide range of historical and contemporary examples, you will be introduced to key theoretical frameworks including media theory, intermediality, interactivity, immersion and liveness. You will also consider the changing role of the performer in our digital culture and ask critical questions about the future of live theatre in the age of AI.

Alongside seminars focused on analysis and theory, you will have the opportunity to engage in a couple of practical workshops, which will provide hands-on opportunities to experiment with intermedial approaches to performance-making to help us deepen our critical discussions.

The module aims to:

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EAS2026: Desire and Power: English Literature 1570-1640

This module introduces you to a wide range of literature written during a crucial turning point in the English Renaissance, when society was undergoing enormous change and upheaval at every level. It covers the work of dramatists, such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Webster; poets, including Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Wroth, Spenser, Sidney, and Donne; and inventive prose writers like Thomas Nashe and John Stow. It deals with constructions of race, sexuality, and disability; explores issues of cultural contact and migration; examines the role of literature in upholding and subverting authority; and investigates the representation and meanings of violence.

The module aims to familiarise you with the breadth and depth of the literature of the English Renaissance, its fascinating contexts, complexities, and contradictions. You will engage with the ways in which Renaissance writers address eroti-cism, religion, race, class, authorship, social change, and anxiety about the power of the monarchy. You will learn about theoretical and critical landmarks in Renaissance Studies, as well as recent, cutting-edge critical perspectives on the Re-naissance, its cultural discourses and current resonances.

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EAS2036: Theatrical Cultures in Early Modern England

Theatrical Cultures in Early Modern England focuses on the 'golden age' of English drama from the Elizabethan period through to the Civil War which produced the works of Shakespeare and other playwrights who continue to influence our understanding of this period and its drama today. Each week, you will explore a new performance environment, so that over the course of the term you will acquire a nuanced understanding of the performance culture that shaped the work of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Cary and their fellow playwrights.

Through the prism of theatre history, the module explores how gender, sexual, national and racial identities were constructed not just through the written texts but also through theatrical conventions and technologies such as cross-dressing, blackface performance and the use of stage space, lighting and costuming. The study of both texts and their performance contexts will shed light on how popular and elite culture responded to immigration and the beginnings of colonial expansion and the slave trade.

The module's texts furthermore illuminate how increasing opportunities for women's participation in theatrical culture, foreign policy under Elizabeth I and James I and the growth of a mercantile middle class are related to the development of English drama.

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EAS2071: Chaucer and His Contemporaries

This module introduces you to late medieval English literature. You will have the chance to explore some exceptionally inclusive poetic imaginations and a world of devotion, brutality, exclusion, chivalry, urbanity, misogyny, piety, courtly sophistication, sharp minds and some very bodily bodies.

We will look at religious and secular, and courtly and popular traditions, and themes such as 'courtly love', that adores women and puts them on a pedestal, arguably the better to ignore them; the constructions of femininity and masculinity in a Christian chivalric culture; the ways in which a tension-riven society went about presenting a harmonious vision of itself; and a Christianity that approached its God with a mixture of familiarity and awe. The module is split more or less equally between the works of Chaucer and the anonymous literature of the late Middle Ages.

The module aims to provide an introduction to the literature of the late Middle Ages in England.

The syllabus is split more or less equally between the works of Chaucer and the anonymous literature of the late Middle Ages. You will also consider the particular nuances of Middle English as a vehicle for literary expression and explore late-medieval culture.

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EAS2080: Renaissance and Revolution

This module introduces English literature written during the most violent and turbulent period of English history: the seventeenth century. The module traces literature from Shakespeare to Milton, exploring literary culture at the courts of the Stuart kings James I, Charles I, and Charles II, as well as literary reactions to the civil war, the execution of the king, and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. It includes drama, poetry, and prose, and studies major male and female writers within their wider literary and historical landscape.

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EAS2102: Satire and the City: English Literature 1660-1750

The period 1660 to 1750 was politically and culturally tumultuous. The Stuart dynasty was restored to the throne, and then deposed again. London expanded massively, becoming the largest city in Europe and a centre for financial and criminal activity. The theatres - closed during the civil war and interregnum - reopened, and actresses appeared on the English stage for the first time. The spread of literacy and growth of the press led to the emergence of many new literary genres - above all the periodical and the novel - and of the first professional authors, many of whom were women. Satire and polemical writing flourished in the period, as writers reacted against (or celebrated) these seismic shifts. This module offers an in-depth look at the writing of this period.

The long eighteenth century is a key period in British history and literature, when many of the cultural productions that inform our contemporary modernity - the novel, the periodical, the marketplace for a new, expanded print culture - emerged and started to take shape. You will read a broad range of texts, drawn equally from the poetry, prose and drama of the period, and learn to identify how these relate to the revolutionary times in which they were written.

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EAS2029: Revolutions and Evolutions 19C Writings

Revolutions and Evolutions explores a wide range of literature written during the Victorian period. You will study literary texts by writers such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Thomas Hardy in relation to central historical, social, and cultural developments in the nineteenth century. The texts on this module are thematically arranged in order to illuminate a number of the important and exciting conceptual developments of the nineteenth century including industrialisation and progress; class consciousness and democracy; globalisation and colonialism; developing notions of the self and subjectivity; and conceptions of nature , ecology and evolution.

As well as studying a selection of major Victorian texts in depth, to consider these texts in their historical, social, and cultural contexts. The use of a course reader will introduce you to a range of texts beyond the core reading that will give you a broad understanding of the major themes that influence the literary production of the period. Such themes include imperialism, industrialisation and urbanisation; gender and identity, religion, secularism and the rise of science; liberalism; the emergence of the mass market; and the development of new literary forms such as the short story

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EAS2103: Modernism and Modernity: Literature 1900-1960

Modernism and Modernity explores a wide range of British, American and Irish authors from the first half of the twentieth century (1900-1960). In different ways, these authors sought to challenge established ways of using language and reinvent literature itself. You will study the texts in relation to their political, aesthetic and critical contexts. Particular attention is paid to innovation and experimentation, to the emergence and development of literary and cultural movements and to literatures' perceived responsibility in a time of change. You will learn skills in contextual and historical analysis, and independent research.

• As well as studying literary texts in depth, this module aims to strengthen your skills in contextual and historical analysis and research. Lectures and seminars will introduce key concepts and provide advice on further independent research. Study group meetings and prepared seminar presentations will give you the opportunity to develop your own approaches to the syllabus texts and other materials.

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EAS2106: Romanticism

The Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries transformed European culture, and had profound implications for a modern understanding of the self, nature, feeling, gender, imagination, the sublime, freedom and the role of the artist as an interpreter of all these. This module introduces some of the key canonical texts of British Romanticism produced during the years 1780-1830, in order to understand the phenomenon of Romanticism, its relation to historical, political, and aesthetic developments, and its legacy in today's world. The module is essential study for an understanding of literary history as a whole, and prepares you for more in-depth study of Romantic topics in Year 3 and beyond.

In addition to the primary literature, we will pay close attention to the central concepts and concerns of the era; the visual arts; Romantic experimentation with poetic forms; and the intertextual literary circles that formed between key Romantic figures. The early weeks of the module will introduce key Romantic concerns. At the centre of the module will be an exploration of writings by leading authors of the period, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Charlotte Smith.

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EAS2116: Empire of Liberty: American Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century

This module explores key literary texts of the United States during the long nineteenth century. You will study a broad range of major contributions - including poetry, the novel, the short story, slave narratives, and autobiography - as well as the intersections of literature with broader contextual issues, such as literary nationalism, the literature of enslavement and the American Civil War, and the Gilded Age.

You will learn how the turbulent social and political development of the US during this time is reflected through literature, considering contexts such as the constitution of the democratic state, the fraught history of ethnic and race relations, the changing gender politics of US society, and how transnational models of culture have affected our understanding of the US literary canon.

Module aims:

• To consider major artistic forms and styles such as the American gothic, poetry, the tale and the short story, the autobiography, the slave narrative, and the American novel

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EAF2520: Adaptations: Text, Image, Culture

The process of adapting material between media, including literary forms, such as scripts, short stories, novels and plays and visual forms, including film, television, graphic novels, webtoons, and games is one of the oldest, most dominant and most ubiquitous strategies in the creative industries. By analysing a wide range of adaptations in different forms you will be able to understand the rich and complex relationships between textual and visual media at distinct historical moments and in specific cultural contexts. This module introduces key issues in transmedia studies and offers you the opportunity to understand adaptation as a creative process and adaptations as cultural products.

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EAS2031: Creative Writing: Building a Story

The module develops a toolbox of writing techniques and approaches for contemporary short fiction. It will prepare you for the contemporary writing world by focusing on the kinds of writing that are being published at the present time, while examining the production of literary texts within their traditions and lineages. Through practical exercises and seminar discussions, you will explore a variety of techniques, styles and content and build towards a portfolio of short stories and an accompanying critical essay that will show how you have reflected on and implemented the concepts and techniques taught on the course.

The course comprises a fortnightly lecture on key aspects of short story writing, as well as technical material on the set texts; a weekly 2-hour seminar that helps you develop the techniques introduced in the lectures, and fortnightly 'Workshops' to further develop and give and receive critical feedback on creative work and critical reading in progress. These approaches are designed to enhance the understanding of the practice, as well as the historical, social and critical contexts that produce short story writing and writers.

Only B.A. English and Creative Writing students and Creative Writing majors on the Liberal Arts programme are permitted to take BOTH EAS2031 AND EAS2032: Making a Poem.

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EAS2032: Creative Writing: Making a Poem

The module develops a toolbox of writing techniques and approaches for writing contemporary poetry. It will prepare you for the contemporary poetry world by focusing on the kinds of 'page poetry' that are being written and published at the present time, while examining the production of literary texts within their traditions and lineages. Through practical exercises and seminar discussions, you will explore a variety of textual form and content.

The course comprises lectures on key aspects of poetry writing technique, as well as material on the set texts; seminars that help you develop the techniques introduced in the lectures, and workshops to receive and give detailed criticism and feedback on works in progress. These approaches are designed to enhance the understanding of the practice, as well as the historical, social and critical contexts that produce poetry and poets.

Only students enrolled on the B.A. English and Creative Writing programme and who are Creative Writing majors on the Liberal Arts programme may take BOTH this module and EAS2031: Building a Story.

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EAS2033: British Cultures: The Exeter Seminar

This module is especially designed for inbound study abroad students and will enhance your experience of visiting Britain by providing you with a critical introduction to British Culture from the medieval period through to the present day. The module covers a variety of cultural forms (including literature and film) and genres (including drama, fiction and poetry) and encourages you to reflect on the processes by which - sometimes competing - ideas about national identity have been created, disseminated and interpreted in Britain. Teaching is by regular seminars and assessment is by a reflective learning log, a presentation, and an independent study.

This module aims to provide inbound study abroad students with a distinctive critical introduction to British Cultures, including national legends, icons, beliefs and values. It will provide you with the opportunity to study some familiar texts in depth and will introduce you to some that you might not yet have encountered. The aim is to equip you with skills that will enable you to interpret examples of British Culture in relation to their contexts. The module is taught by a convenor with frequent guest contributions from specialists in the department who have research interests in this area.

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EAS2037: Comics Studies: Histories, Methodologies, Genres

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EAS2089: Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future

Creative Industries: Their Past, Our Future tracks the profound changes that the creative industries have gone through during the 20th and early 21st centuries. The module, which focuses on the publishing industry, museums, film and theatre, looks at how each of these industries has become increasingly focused on 'users', tracking how the industries have worked with emergent technologies, including social media and AI, to shape new forms of engagement; how they have widened participation and redefined access; reinvented values (aesthetic, economic, social); and dealt with generational and social divides.

You will learn about how the creative industries operate as organisations; how they design their relationships to readerships, visitors and audiences; how they use a range of technologies to reach out to different communities; how they produce novel forms of aesthetic, social, and economic value; and how they usually operate through shrinking budgets.

The module requires no prior knowledge or skills and is open to anyone with an interest in the current and future developments of the creative industries.

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EAS2090: Humanities after the Human: Further Adventures in Critical Theory

Humanities After the Human considers how critical theory - a constellation of writing that includes philosophy, sociology, political manifesto, and cultural commentary - has decentred the (white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender, male) human subject as the privileged site of meaning, knowledge, and creativity. In so doing, this course tries to imagine those yet-to-be-enumerated possibilities of being and relating to others and the world around us that models of subjectivity in late consumer capitalism tend to foreclose. You will build on concepts introduced in Approaches to Criticism and reflect on the challenges that critical theory poses for the study of literature, the limits of the self, possibilities of kinship, and the organisation of social life. It is advantageous for you to be familiar with the material in Approaches , although it is not a prerequisite.

On this module we will interrogate the assumptions bound up with white Euro-American neoliberal subjectivity, such as interiority, individualism, private property, and naturalised partitions. How have critics deterritorialised the received coordinates of self and world, public and private, mind and body, man and woman, human and non-human? What happens when familiar myths of being are left behind in favour of new utopian communalities, queer and trans futures, and rhizomatic connections? And what does this mean for how we read literature and other cultural texts?

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EAS2113: Culture, Crisis and Ecology in a Postcolonial World

This module offers an introduction to World Literatures and film focused on Africa, the Caribbean, Middle East and South Asia, assessing how texts inscribe the social, historical and environmental impact of colonialism and new and adapted forms of imperialism. Focussing on issues such as development and disaster, conservation and animal rights, resource exploitation, and the effects of neoliberalism and global tourism, the module will introduce you to a range of texts - essays, films, novels, poems, and short stories - to investigate the cultural representation of the consequences of global crisis. While considering stylistic and thematic features, the module will map the convergences and divergences of postcolonial and environmental perspectives. This focus enables you to explore the deep connections between imperial power relations and contemporary issues of globalization.

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HAS3999: Study Abroad

The Study Abroad programme enables you to undertake a year-long study placement at a partner university outside of the UK, as part of your degree programme.

This module serves as the administrative mechanism for recording the Study Abroad assessment results of students within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS). Students participating in the Study Abroad programme and based in a HASS department (except for the Law School, the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Modern Languages, and the School of Education) will be registered on this module during their Study Abroad placement year.

The Study Abroad programme widens the range of modules available to you during Stage 3 of your degree programme; enables you to broaden your academic horizons by studying in a different learning culture and (where relevant and appropriate) in languages other than English; and aims to promote resilience, independence, cultural awareness, and communication skills.

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HAS3998: Employment Experience

This module allows you to undertake and to learn from an extended work placement during the third year of a four year “with Employment Experience” programme. You will use one or more work placements to gain skills that equip you to work in the employment market and to improve your knowledge of the work environment. You are encouraged to think about the intercultural competence and the employability skills that you acquire during your year.

To progress to this module, you will have secured a suitable placement for a minimum of 26 weeks.

Having developed the skills necessary to find relevant roles and apply for roles in the graduate labour market, this is an invaluable opportunity to develop work-related skills and experience that will further enhance your success in the graduate labour market and support your future career choices.

During your placement year you will be supported by the Module Convenor and Placement Team.

The module assessment structure provides opportunity and support for you to evaluate your skills and achievements using personal development techniques.  You will also write an Employer Report to showpiece the culmination of your academic and business skills.

This module aims to:

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CDF3000: Dissertation

This module gives you the opportunity to undertake an

in-depth research project, either in the form of a traditional written

dissertation or by bridging academic scholarship and practical application. You

will develop critical thinking and independent research skills, and will have

the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge in real-world contexts should

you wish. You can choose between an 8,000-word scholarly dissertation or a

career-oriented portfolio, allowing you to tailor the project to your interests

and future goals. The module offers preparatory workshops, group supervision,

individual supervision and, where appropriate, reflective practice activities,

helping you explore topics of professional or academic interest. The module is

designed to enable you to enhance both your intellectual rigour and career

readiness and can be tailored to your individual skill sets and strengths.

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EAS3003: Dissertation

The dissertation is an independent research project, which enables you to operate autonomously and responsibly, and take a positive and active role in your learning. You will plan and produce a sustained piece of critical work that highlights the skills you have learnt over the course of your degree programme, incorporating a range of research methods and methodologies.

You will receive guidance from a supervisor and receive support through a series of workshops and lectures. The dissertation module teaches you time management skills and gives you the flexibility to devise and follow your own research questions, extending your knowledge in a specialism which you have particularly enjoyed.

• To enable you to operate independently and responsibly, and take a positive and active role in your learning, in the service of the production of a sustained piece of critical work. It allows you to devise your own research questions and to pursue these lines of inquiry. You will work under the guidance of an academic supervisor, with extra support provided by occasional workshops and lectures to develop key skills for researching a chosen subject and preparing a finished manuscript.

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EAS3122: Creative Writing Dissertation

This module gives the opportunity to pursue a sustained piece of original writing of your choosing. You will have the chance to develop both your imaginative and critical abilities through the completion of a portfolio of creative work and reflective commentary. Possible project forms include an extract from a novel, a sequence of short stories, a collection of poetry, a combination of poetry and prose or a screenplay.

You will choose your project in consultation with academic staff and then write the dissertation, along with a related self-reflexive essay, under appropriate academic supervision.

The dissertation provides the opportunity to gain skills in active learning, research and writing.

• This module aims to provide the opportunity, at the end of your BA programme, to pursue a sustained piece of creative writing. A project is chosen by you, in consultation with an academic member of staff, and thereafter you write the dissertation, along with a related self-reflexive essay, under appropriate academic supervision. The module therefore develops qualities of independence, active learning, research and writing.

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EAS3510: Dissertation by Collaborative Project

This module gives you the opportunity to share your university English learning with a non-academic audience by creating a project in collaboration with an external partner. Sample external partners include but are not limited to: the creative industries (e.g. a publisher); heritage organisations (e.g. a museum); a school; a library; an archive; a charity. The format of the project output is flexible: for example, it could be a website, series of blog posts, set of podcasts or video essays, set of lesson plans, online exhibition, edition, translation with introduction, edited collection of poetry, interactive guided walk. It will be based on scholarly research and it will communicate a topic that falls generally into the remit of English and Creative Writing. If you want to hone your employability skills and create a piece of work that will be read and used by a specific non-academic audience, this module is for you.

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DRA3061: Practical Essay

This module allows you to develop and deliver a performance project with a small group of peers. You will spend your time practically exploring self-designed questions, building on material you might have encountered on any part of your degree. You will work in small groups with shared interests and be supervised by a staff member. Each group will identify core underlying questions and create a piece of practice for a suitable performance context. These performances may take place on or off campus and may be live and/or digitally mediated. This module offers you a chance to demonstrate your aptitude as critically reflexive, creatively adept theatre practitioners.

This module aims to allow you to:

• Draw together the experience of theatre-making gained through your degree.
• Work in a group (usually of 5-7) in the complex logistics of mounting a culminating presentation, that is likely to take the form of a performance.
• Guide an individual and collaborative process of creative work, and to contribute to the creative work of your peers.

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DRA3106: Acting for Screen

In this module, you will consider various tools and methods for approaching acting on screen. Through the practical trial and error of working with cameras - as actors, operators and editors - you will explore how to best bring a performance to life on screen. You will consider, in seminar discussion as well as in the studio, a range of actor training techniques from the stage and how and when they are transferable to the screen. While there will be scope for experimental forays, the fundamental aim of the module will be to focus on preparation, on-camera audition, and naturalistic, character-based scenes for a performance reel.

Through the interrelated processes of actor training, practical experimentation, personal creativity, individual research, and seminar discussion the module offers you the opportunity to:

• develop and harness your range of expressivity and creative instincts as a performer for screen
• experiment with a variety of actor training approaches and camera/editing techniques to discover your own unique creative possibilities on screen
• interrogate pedagogic and on-set dynamics and consider how they inform your practice and collaborative relationships
• understand the relationship between individual exploration, personal creativity and collaborative group work
• establish techniques and strategies for prioritising respect and wellbeing in rigorous environments of creation; enabling effective processes that help you make your best work
• critically assess various screen performances to understand their cultural and historical significance as well as the techniques employed
• consider how cultures of power in the screen industry affect creativity and production
• consider other means and uses of screen performance (intermedial performance) and how the learning on the module might be applied in other contexts and for future employability

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DRA3108: Applied Drama: Community, Participation and Co-Creation Projects

In this module you will develop an understanding of a range of applied theatre approaches. You will develop your awareness of the appropriate application of drama tools and skills in different settings and explore the role of the facilitator, director, actor, producer, and theatre-maker. You will undertake a group project, which may involve you creating & touring your own performance, or facilitating a creative process for others to participate and perform in. Previous projects have toured co-creation performances, worked with young offenders, young people excluded from school, adults with learning disabilities and others.

All students on this module will be required to complete a DBS enhanced disclosure.

The module aims to provide you with the following:

• The opportunity for you to apply your drama skills within non-traditional theatre contexts
• The ability to create appropriate applications of drama in those contexts
• Explore questions and issues raised by the expectations and demands of the role of the applied drama worker

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DRA3112: Physical Performance: Actor, Director, Maker

This practice-led module invites you to explore the expansive possibilities of physical performance through the roles of performer, director, mover, improviser, composer, designer, and maker. Within a supportive studio environment, you will discover the core principles of physical performance, applying these to a variety of forms, styles, and contexts that reflect your interests. Through workshops, independent trial-and-error experimentation, and collective reflexive practice, you will refine your instincts to create, embody, and interpret—empowering both yourself and others to discover range and ease in expressive practice. Working independently and in small groups, you will have the option to explore physical action and character, physical theatre/dance theatre, ensemble performance, musicality and space dynamics, visual storytelling, intermedial composition, movement within design, and ‘Total Theatre.’

As third years, this module also provides you with the opportunity to engage with professional practitioners and creatives who will share approaches to healthy and considered risk-taking. By engaging with contemporary paradigms of what moves, you’ll develop greater creative freedom and readiness. You will design a series of micro-performances informed by your research, curiosity and ambitions, with assessments offering opportunities to curate future-facing material, articulate and document new work and skill.

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DRA3111: Creative Industries Management: Representation and Cultural Value

How are the creative industries shaped by education, representation, disruption and power? This module explores these questions through a series of cultural texts that reveal the tensions behind creative work, including gatekeeping, hierarchy, visibility, creativity under pressure, and the struggle for legitimacy. Viewing may include selected material from The History Boys (Bennett), The White Tiger (Adiga) and Succession (Armstrong) (alongside other examples that explore networks, authorship and value). Through this module, you will develop an understanding of how cultural value is constructed and contested, and what this means for creative labour today.

This module explores how the creative industries are portrayed across different cultural forms, and how these representations shape wider understandings of creativity, management and cultural value. It introduces a set of critical, values‑led frameworks, to support nuanced analysis of creative work and creative ecosystems.

The module also enables you to apply these conceptual frameworks to real‑world creative organisations and contexts, drawing on case studies from screen, stage, literature and contemporary cultural practice to develop a portfolio assignment.

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DRA3113: ​​The Actor’s Body​: Theories and Practices of Performer Training

How do we train to perform?

What are we training and why?

How do we understand concentration, breath, imagination, emotion, gesture and space through different global training practices?

How can we apply these principles to contemporary performance problems?

How is training used beyond performance towards health and well-being?

Taking as a premise that all training and performance is intercultural, we explore key principles of the body-in-training in a range of practices from across the world including yoga, martial arts, theatres of quietude, butoh, dance and physical theatre.

In this module you will explore practices and theories of actor training and how these approaches are rooted in specific performance traditions, with a particular focus on the body of the performer.

We will do this by:

• Engaging in core exercises and applying them to performance tasks
• Designing and practicing accessible, inclusive group training
• Reflecting critically through practice-based research, lectures, and seminar discussions

By the end of the module, you will be able to:

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DRA3114: ​​Theatre Now! – Key Issues, Current Practices​

What is the state of theatre today? What key issues, trends, and debates are animating contemporary practices? How is theatre evolving in response?

This module explores how theatre is changing in relation to social, cultural, economic, technological, and ecological developments, while continuing to draw on the ancient power of human performance and storytelling in shared space and time.

Through engagement with a diverse range of materials — including performance documentation, recent scholarship, critical commentary, practitioner reflections, and other forms of public discourse — you will develop a broader and deeper understanding of contemporary theatre, considering how specific productions and practices illuminate artistic innovations and new ways of working.

This module will enable you to contribute to ongoing conversations about contemporary theatre and to envision its future.

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DRA3115: Women and Theatre, 1662-1928

What happens when we put women’s theatre work at the centre of our study of theatre history?

In this module, you will explore this question through an independent research project focussing on women’s theatre practices. You will use primary source materials from a variety of archives, including the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and the University of Exeter Special Collections.

Your research will be supported by a programme of reading, seminar discussion, and small group tutorials.

As well as a deeper understanding of the way that history has been written, you will learn essential skills for developing an independent project and communicating your findings in effective ways. You will be encouraged to draw on and develop your interdisciplinary understanding of theatre in society.

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