In this programme, you study half of your modules (60 credits) in English Literature and half in History (60 credits).

First year

English Literature: The first-year literature foundation modules introduce students to a range of kinds and periods of literature, using a lively variety of critical and theoretical approaches. Modules include:

• Literary Aesthetics after 1800 (20 credits) introduces some key notions of form, style and genre in literary texts written after 1800. You will study three major focal texts (or groups of shorter texts) of different genres, and will develop skills in the close analysis of passages and in discursive essay writing.
• Literary Aesthetics before 1800 (20 credits) introduces key notions of form, style and genre in texts written before 1800. You will study three major focal texts (or groups of shorter texts) of different genres, for example, Malory, Morte D’Arthur; revenge tragedies of the 16^th and 17^th centuries; selected verse satire of the 18^th century.
• The Critical Practice module (10+10 credits) focuses on key knowledge and skills central to critical practice in English Studies. You will be introduced to strategies for engaging with primary and secondary sources for literary study and methodologies in literary criticism. This module is closely related to Literary Aesthetics after 1800 and Literary Aesthetics before 1800.

History: The first year is the foundational year in an academic process that will see you progress from being a dependent to an independent learner. You will study modules spanning the early medieval to late modern periods. You can choose either Medieval History 500-1050 and Medieval History 1050-1500 or The Making of the Modern World 1500-1815 and The Making of the Contemporary World 1815-2000 (20 credits per module). These explore fundamental themes and issues focused on key periods and indicate the kinds of questions historians explore and some of the methods they employ in answering them. You will also study Practising History (A): Skills in History (Autumn semester) and Practising History (B): Approaches to History (Spring semester), which look more closely at the techniques of the historian and at the nature and evolution of key historical debates. 

Second year

English Literature: In this year, you take modules that address topics in three major periods of English literature, and which are informed by theoretical as well as textual and historical approaches. You will study:

•  One Option module in Medieval/Early Modern literature (20 credits) chosen from a list of options.
•  One Option module in Modern literature (20 credits) chosen from a list of options. Examples might include Writing and the World in the Nineteenth Century or Victorian and Decadent Literature: The Modern, the Aesthetic, and the Gothic or Making it New: Modernism and Literary Innovation in the Early Twentieth Century or Literature in Britain Since 1945.
•  One Transhistorical Literature Option (10 + 10 credits). Examples may include Satire or Colonial and Postcolonial Literature or Hacking the Book.

History: The second year is an intermediate year that builds on the foundations laid in the first year of study. You engage in Group Research and extend your historical knowledge through two (20 + 20 credit) subject-specific modules chosen from a wide range of options.

Third year

English Literature: The final year is the culmination of your programme, in which you choose two from a number of special option modules, taught by experts in those specialisms, and also undertake a dissertation in which you demonstrate sophisticated understanding of the issues in literature that you have been studying over the last two years. You study:

• Literature Dissertation (10 + 10 credits). You will write a 5,000 word dissertation on a subject of your choice.
• One choice from Literature Options (all 20 credits; see below)
• Either Shakespeare: Works, Time and Impact (10+10 credits) This course, running through the whole of your final year, allows you the opportunity to think widely across all Shakespeare’s texts in their historical, cultural and theatrical contexts; it is taught, in the main, by staff from the University’s Shakespeare Institute, and students are encouraged to draw on the resources of the Shakespeare Institute Library.
• Or a further Literature Option (20 credits)

Literature Options available to final-year students have recently included: Ben Jonson; Chaucer: Pre-modern Writing and Post-modern Reading; Contemporary Irish Writing; Decadence and Aestheticism; English Reformed; ExtraOrdinary Bodies: Difference and Normalcy in Contemporary Literatures; Fantasy and Fandom; Gossip, Scandal, and Celebrity; Hardy and Wilde; Henry James; Literary Modernism; Literature and Politics in the 1930s; Literature, Sexuality, and the Body; Lyrical Ballads; Medieval Manuscripts; The Novels of Virginia Woolf; Paradise Lost: Text and Context; Viragos, Coquettes and Prudes; Voicing Women; Victoria’s Secrets: Literature and Secrecy in the Nineteenth Century; The Works of T. S. Eliot; Utopia and its Discontents.

Not all third-year options run at all times: this information is offered for general guidance only. It may be necessary from time to time to vary timing, content and availability.

History: The third year represents the culmination of undergraduate study and the final stage of your transition to an independent learner. You hone your historical skills in Advanced Option A or Advanced Option B and you also undertake an in-depth Special Subject module, which is chosen from a variety of available subjects. History/Political Science Joint Honours students only can choose to substitute the 20+20 credit Special Subject module in Pathway A with a Joint Honours History Dissertation (20 credits) and a final year History optional module (20 credits) as part of Pathway B.

Additional information about History modules

English Literature

In BA English, we use a balanced range of teaching methods. These include traditional lectures, small- and large-group seminars, workshops and mixed-activity sessions, and one-to-one tutorials. Teaching delivery within individual modules is carefully planned in order to meet the needs both of the students and of the module itself. For example, in the first year, to help you through the transition from school to university, we make greater use of workshop-based skills sessions to support small-group seminar teaching. By comparison, the contact hours for your final-year dissertation: an individual project, chosen and structured according to your own literary interests, consist almost entirely of one-to-one meetings with your supervisor. We also support your independent study with extensive resources and information within our Virtual Learning Environment.

In the first year, the emphasis is on acquiring the foundational skills and knowledge which will form the basis of your studies throughout the rest of your degree. You will work on a wide variety of authors and genres, including texts from the medieval period through to the present day. You will be encouraged to develop your skills in literary analysis and essay-writing, and will also be introduced to the major library and electronic resources relevant to the university-level study of English literature. During your first year you will undergo a formal 'transition' review to see how you are getting on and offer you help for any particular areas where you need support. In the second year, you will continue your studies in all the major literary periods, but will work more closely on the key literary issues and genres specific to each era. In your final year, you will choose from a wide range of research-led modules, each taught by a leading specialist in the field. These optional modules will be complemented by your dissertation and by a year-long Shakespeare module, overseen by our colleagues from the world-renowned Shakespeare Institute in Stratford.

From first to final year, our aim is to guide and support you in your progress through the degree, helping you to gain confidence as a reader, researcher and writer and assisting you to prepare for life beyond your undergraduate studies. To aid you in your academic development, a Personal Tutor is assigned to you at the start of your programme and remains with you until graduation, helping you in three important areas: supporting your academic progress, developing transferable skills and helping with welfare issues.

History

Central to Learning and Teaching in the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham is critical enquiry, debate and self-motivation, summed up by the term Enquiry Based Learning.

What does this mean for you?

Enquiry-based learning describes an environment in which learning is driven by the shared enquiry of students and tutors. Depending upon the level and the discipline, it can encompass problem-based learning, evidence-based learning, small scale investigations, field work, projects and research.
Enquiry-based learning places you at the centre of your own learning process so that you learn through involvement and ownership and not simply by being a passive recipient of information thrown at you.   You will spend time developing comprehension and note-taking skills. History is a subtle and complex subject and the literature you need to master can be demanding and complex. To ‘get’ it, you need plenty of thinking time. Reading, thinking and analysing for yourself are the most important parts of your degree experience.  This approach will enable you to take control of your own learning as you progress through your degree.  Moreover, it will encourage you to acquire essential skills that are highly valued by employers: creativity, independence, team-working, goal-setting and problem-solving.
The overall approach we adopt is one of more heavily weighted contact hours in Year 1, but tapering off over years 2 and 3, as you begin to acquire greater confidence in discussion and writing.  We are strongly committed to small-group seminar teaching, particularly in the final two years of your degree: you will find that most of your teaching happens not in large, anonymous lectures but in smaller groups of students where you can actively participate in discussion and have the benefit of personal contact with academic staff.  In your final year, you will also have individual tuition to help you work on your dissertation. As you progress through the syllabus, you are offered an increasingly wide range of particular subject choices.

Year 1 is highly directed –  much of it lies in helping you to acquire a general overview of the medieval, early modern and near contemporary past.  The ‘Practising History’ module introduces you to the key skills needed to study History at degree level and enables you to study select historical episodes.  All this will help you make more informed decisions about subject choices in Years 2 and 3.  These topics are increasingly specialised and enable you to get to grips with them in real depth. During your first year you will undergo a formal ?transition? review to see how you are getting on and offer you help for any particular areas where you need support.

In Year 2, in each term, you have a choice of around 15 Options to study.  You will start doing preparatory work for your final-year dissertation, selecting a topic, assessing its feasibility and engaging in preliminary discussions with potential supervisors.  The module History in Theory and Practice, provides an overview of the evolution of history writing and an introduction to key issues confronting historians to-day: you will find this helps you reflect on your own historical research.  A notable feature of Year 2 is Group Research: about a dozen specialised historical topics for you to research, not, however, as individuals, but on a collective basis.  You are divided into groups of 5-6 students, to work as a team, and to produce at the end, both individual essays and a group presentation on what you have researched.   The capacity to work as part of a team, to know what it is like to have to accommodate yourself to the way others work, is a valuable asset for future employment.

In Year 3, there are some 20 Special Subjects for you to choose from, ranging from the early medieval period almost up to the present day, and covering a wide range of British, European and non-European areas.  You approach the particular subject not only through reading but also by intensive study of original documents.  In addition, there are around a further 14 Final Year Options to choose from in each of the autumn and spring terms.  The real centre-piece of the Final Year, however, for most students is their dissertation – a piece of extended writing on a subject of your choice and which requires significant use of archival and other primary source materials.  You will have done extensive preparatory work for this in Year 2.  In Year 3, you will have a calibrated set of one-to-one consultation sessions with an academic supervisor, who will comment and advise on your drafts.  This will be real academic writing and the results are often impressive.

Support

Personal Tutor

From the outset, you will be assigned your own Personal Tutor who will get to know you as you progress through your studies, providing academic and welfare advice, encouraging you and offering assistance in any areas you may feel you need extra support to make the most of your potential and your time here at Birmingham. Your Personal Tutor is assigned to you at the start of your course and will usually remain with you until graduation, helping in supporting your academic progress, developing transferable skills and helping with welfare issues. All academic staff will also provide 'Office Hours' each week in term time, during which you are free to contact and discuss any issues you wish with the tutor involved.

Student Mentor and Buddy Scheme

Within the College our enthusiastic current students act as mentors to our new students. This will provide new students with a friendly face to help you settle in. 

Academic Writing Advisory Service

The Academic Writing Advisory Service (AWAS) will provide you with individual support from an academic writing advisor and postgraduate subject-specialist writing tutors. You'll receive guidance on writing essays and dissertations at University-level which can be quite different from your previous experiences of writing. Support is given in a variety of ways, such as small-group workshops, online activities and feedback through email and tutorials.

Learning settings

Lectures explore a particular text, topic or context, often involving brief factual descriptions and outlining major questions and interpretations. Their main purpose is to challenge and stimulate, encouraging you to come to your own conclusions based on further reading and seminar debates.

Small-group seminars run alongside the lecture course, addressing any individual problems you may have and allowing you to consolidate lecture material. Options and special subjects in years two and three are also taught in small seminar groups. When you attend seminars we expect you to deliver short papers and presentations, and to contribute to the sessions through argument and questioning. We want you to develop the confidence to put your own point of view across in complex situations and not to be afraid of challenging the views of others. It's an essential part of History: once you stop arguing about the subject, it becomes dead.

Group research is one of the main features of your second year, with around a dozen specialised historical topics for you to research on a collective basis. Divided into groups of five to six students, you?ll work as a team to produce individual essays and a group presentation on your research findings. The capacity to work as part of a team, and to know what it is like to have to accommodate yourself to the way others work, is a valuable asset for future employment.

One-to-one tutorials become increasingly important as you progress through your course. This is particularly the case in your final year, when a major part of your programme will be a dissertation on a topic of your choice. Tutorials enable you to discuss your research with your project supervisor in depth.

Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is an excellent tool for supporting our academic courses, allowing you to share thoughts on assignments with other students via the discussion group facilities, and even submit your work electronically.

Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) means that learning is driven by the shared enquiry of students and tutors and it's central to our approach. EBL places you, the student, at the centre of your own degree: you learn through involvement and ownership, not simply by being a passive recipient of information thrown at you. It can encompass problem-based learning, evidence-based learning, small scale investigations, field work, projects and research. We believe that this is the best way of learning while you're at Birmingham as it's very effective in enabling you to acquire the key skills and attributes that are valued by employers: creative and independent thinking, self-motivation, self-organisation, team-working, goal-setting and problem-solving. 

English Literature

[Image above - Department of English Graduation July 2012]

Studying for an English BA at Birmingham is an unparalleled opportunity, not only to engage with a diverse cultural, textual and linguistic discipline, but also to develop skills in intellectual analysis, critical thinking and articulate expression – skills that last a lifetime and qualify you for many possible careers. You’ll also be encouraged to acquire practical skills that you’ll find just as useful in your future career, including oral presentation, professional documentation, group work and the uses of information technology.

Fifty per cent of vacancies advertised for new and recent graduates don’t specify a degree subject, and English graduates enter a wide range of careers including advertising, journalism and media, government, law, publishing and teaching at every level. About 25% of English graduates pursue postgraduate study to specialise in an academic area or prepare for careers such as law and teaching.

English graduates from Birmingham have a high rate for employability for the subject, and we’re ranked in the top ten universities nationally for graduate employability. Ninety-one per cent of our English graduates go into work or study within six months of graduation. English graduates from Birmingham have a high average starting salary of £18,000.  Our graduates have started careers with employers including the BBC, Headline Publishing Group, Mirror Group Newspapers and Oxford University Press, in roles such as account executive, editorial assistant, marketing assistant and sales and events coordinator.

Whether you have a clear idea of where your future aspirations lie or want to consider the broad range of opportunities available once you have a Birmingham degree, our Careers Network can help you achieve your goal. This is a unique careers guidance service tailored to your academic subject area, offering a specialised team who can give you expert advice. This includes individual careers advice and events to give you insight into the professions and employers of interest to arts graduates. Our ‘Creative careers’ series is always popular with our students, and features events with employers and professionals from areas such as advertising, PR and communications, careers in journalism, publishing and writing, and careers in the theatre.

English alumni profiles

Careers events

We also hold events covering careers in teaching, event management, marketing and working with charities; we’re developing links with local arts organisations to create some amazing opportunities for students; and you can even apply for our ‘Global Challenge’ to work overseas on an expenses paid placement during your summer vacation. We also encourage all our students to apply their skills in the workplace by undertaking internships in the summer; the work experience bursary scheme enables students to apply for funding for placements in those career fields where they are often unpaid.

History

History graduates have a range of general skills that are highly prized by graduate employers: they can research and analyse complex information, work independently and as part of a team and communicate judgments and arguments articulately. University of Birmingham history students are enquiry based learners, able to take control of their own learning as they progress, to learn through involvement and ownership and to reflect on their learning through feedback. This means that by the end of the degree, they have developed self management skills which are very attractive to employers.

History graduates often go on to pursue highly successful careers in professions such as accountancy, charity work, housing, human resources, international development, law, marketing, media, publishing, politics, retail management and teaching. Central and local government and the public services also attract history graduates, notably the civil service, NHS management, the police and armed services. About 30% of history graduates pursue postgraduate study to specialise in an area of history and cultures of interest to them, or to prepare for careers such as law and teaching.

History graduates have started careers with a wide range of employers from Government departments and local councils to charities and companies in many business sectors. Notable employers which have recruited history graduates include the BBC, the House of Commons, KPMG, Oxfam, and Nestle. They have taken up jobs including Assistant Literary Agent, Assistant Expedition Leader, Journalist, Librarian, Management Consultant, Marketing Assistant, Programmes Officer and Project Manager.

The School of History and Cultures works together with the University's Careers Network to provide a comprehensive service to our students from answering initial questions to in-depth career guidance. Last year around 200 employers visited the university, enabling students to meet them and to learn about skills through employer-led workshops. Outside the business world, our students can also hear from employers working in media, film, communications, publishing and museums and heritage. Throughout the academic year we hold a number of alumni events, careers talks and other initiatives that are designed for our students to answer their careers questions and help them forge useful contacts outside the university. You can find more about careers support at College of Arts and Law Careers.

Extra-curricular activities

To enhance your career prospects even further, you will need to think about engaging in some extra-curricular activities while you're at university to broaden your skills and your network of contacts. This can include the many societies at the Guild of Students and also the many voluntary opportunities offered with local arts organisations. Our employer-endorsed award-winning Personal Skills Award (PSA) recognises your extra-curricular activities, and provides an accredited employability programme designed to improve your career prospects.

Our College of Arts and Law undergraduate research scholarship scheme enables interested students to work on a current academic research project being run by one of the College's academic researchers. Undergraduate research scholars gain work experience over the summer after their first or second year and have the chance to develop skills in both collaborative and independent research.

Cultural Internships

Our innovative Cultural Internships offer graduates the opportunity for a six month paid internship at a leading cultural institution in the West Midlands. These internships are a unique opportunity to learn fundamental, transferable business and interpersonal skills, through experience of real work in an established cultural institution. Our current partners include Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust and the Library of Birmingham. We have plans to expand the scheme to include our own major cultural assets, such as Winterbourne House, the Lapworth Museum, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts. This scheme will give you professional experience to set you apart in a competitive graduate market.