MA English and American Literature
Canterbury, United Kingdom
DURATION
1 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
EUR 18,600 / per year
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
Introduction
Explore the richness and diversity of English Literature from a wide range of periods, cultures, and genres. Strengthen your skills, develop your specialism and expand your critical and theoretical knowledge.
Immerse yourself in your chosen topics and create a bespoke course that suits your interests.
Why study English and American Literature with us
- Cutting-edge literary and theoretical study: You’ll work alongside world-leading researchers with expertise ranging from the medieval to the contemporary
- Teaching new literature and new theories: Explore diverse topics such as new modernist studies, Indigenous literature and decolonial knowledge, global writing and the environment, and the new Brexit novel.
- Make your voice heard: be at the forefront of debate in our lively, confident, and engaged research community.
- Join a new generation of critical thinkers: develop your critique of a culture in crisis and sharpen your critical language
- A vibrant academic community: As a postgraduate student in the School of English, you’ll benefit from a lively, confident, and engaged research culture, sustained by a creative, cutting-edge intellectual community.
What you’ll learn
You'll develop advanced research skills, which you'll apply to your dissertation. This will provide you with knowledge and skills for a range of careers, including teaching, publishing, arts management, journalism and many other sectors, or a solid foundation for PhD study.
Working alongside world-leading researchers with expertise ranging from the medieval to the contemporary, you'll have the opportunity to discover and expand your knowledge on a diverse range of literary periods and topics, including global literature and Indigenous decolonial knowledge, American literature and culture, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, phenomenology, disability studies, migration, and rights and activism.
Gallery
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
Scholarship value
The award covers tuition fees, return airfares and living costs for a one-year taught Master's programme.
Deadline
Deadline for Commonwealth application: - 12 December 2024.
Hold an unconditional offer (with the only outstanding condition, international fee deposit) of a programme of study from the University of Kent - 31 January 2025
Criteria
To be eligible to apply for this scholarship, candidates must:
- Hold an undergraduate degree at UK first-class level equivalent.
- Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by one of the eligible Commonwealth countries listed or be a British Protected Person.
- Be a permanent resident in one of the eligible Commonwealth countries listed above.
- To be committed to the University of Kent, you can apply for more than one course and/or to more than one University, but you may only accept one offer of a Shared Scholarship.
- Not have studied or worked for one (academic) year or more in a high-income country.
- Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship.
- Return to their home country as soon as their period of study is complete. In some circumstances, a student may be permitted to remain in the UK if seeing doctoral study and satisfy certain strict conditions.
- Hold an offer by the deadline for a full-time postgraduate taught degree on one of the eligible courses at the University of Kent:
- MSc Artificial Intelligence
- MSc Infectious Diseases
- MSc Cyber Security
- MA International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
- MSc Applied Actuarial Science
- MSc Conservation Science
- MA English and American Literature
Further details
Commonwealth Shared Scholarships, set up by DFID in 1986, represent a unique partnership between the United Kingdom government and UK Universities.
Funded by the UK Department of International Development (DFID), Commonwealth Shared Scholarships enable talented and motivated individuals to gain the knowledge and skills required for sustainable development. They are aimed at those who could not otherwise afford to study in the UK.
These scholarships are offered under six themes:
- Science and technology for development
- Strengthening health systems and capacity
- Promoting global prosperity
- Strengthening global peace, security and governance
- Strengthening resilience and response to crises - Access, inclusion and opportunity.
How to apply
To be considered for the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship you must:
- Make a formal application for a postgraduate degree at the University of Kent commencing September 2025/26. This can be done online here.
- Complete the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) online application process. For information on how to do that and full details of the application process please go directly to the Commonwealth Scholarships webpages.
- Applications will be considered based on Academic Excellence and a completed application.
- The Commonwealth will accept applications until 12th December 2024 (closing at 16:00 GMT).
Curriculum
Stage 1
Advanced Research in Literary Studies
Stage 2
Dissertation:GPMS
Program Outcome
Programme aims
This programme aims to:
- extend and deepen through coursework and research your understanding of a body of literature in English, with special emphasis on modern and postcolonial literature, and literary and critical theory
- enable you to develop a historical awareness of literary traditions
- develop your independent critical thinking and judgement
- introduce you to bibliographic methods and scholarship and foster in you the research methods that facilitate advanced literary study
- provide a basis in knowledge and skills if you intend to teach English and American literature, especially in higher education
- develop your understanding and critical appreciation of the expressive resources of language
- offer opportunities for you to develop your potential for creative writing (where such a module is taken)
- offer scope for the study of literature within an interdisciplinary context, notably that provided by history
- develop your ability to argue a point of view with clarity and cogency, both orally and in written form.
Learning outcomes
Knowledge and understanding
You will gain knowledge and understanding of:
- authors and texts from British, American and postcolonial literature
- the principal literary genres, fiction, poetry drama and other kinds of writing and communication
- literatures in English from countries outside Britain and America
- traditions in literary criticism
- the challenges of creative writing (where such a module is taken)
- terminology used in literary criticism
- the cultural and historical contexts in which literature is written, published and read
- critical theory and its applications
- literary criticism as a practice subject to considerable variation of approach
- inter- and multidisciplinary approaches to the advanced study of literature
- research methods.
Intellectual skills
You develop intellectual skills in:
- the application of the skills needed for advanced academic study and enquiry
- the evaluation of research findings
- the ability to synthesise information from several sources to gain a coherent understanding of theory and practice
- the ability to make discriminations and selections of relevant information from a wide source and large body of knowledge
- the exercise of problem-solving skills.
Subject-specific skills
You gain subject-specific skills in:
- enhanced skills in the close critical analysis of literary texts
- informed critical understanding of the variety of critical and theoretical approaches to the study of literature
- the ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of texts, concepts and theories relating to advanced English studies
- sensitivity to generic conventions in the study of literature
- well-developed linguistic resourcefulness, including a grasp of standard critical terminology
- articulate responsiveness to literary language
- appropriate scholarly practice in the presentation of formal written work, in particular in bibliographic and annotation practices
- an understanding of how cultural norms and assumptions influence questions of judgment.
Transferable skills
You will gain the following transferable skills:
- developed powers of communication and the capacity to argue a point of view orally and in written form, with clarity, organisation and cogency
- enhanced confidence in the efficient presentation of ideas designed to stimulate critical debate
- developed critical acumen
- the ability to assimilate and organise substantial quantities of complex information
- competence in the planning and execution of essays and project work
- enhanced skills in creative writing (where the relevant module has been taken)
- the capacity for independent thought reasoned judgement, and self-criticism
- enhanced skills in collaborative intellectual work
- the ability to understand, interrogate and apply a variety of theoretical positions and weigh the importance of alternative perspectives
- research skills, including scholarly information retrieval skills
- IT skills: word-processing, the ability to access electronic data.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
Many career paths can benefit from the writing and analytical skills that you develop as a postgraduate student in the School of English. Our students have gone on to work in academia, journalism, broadcasting and media, publishing, writing and teaching; as well as more general areas such as banking, marketing analysis and project management.
Program delivery
How you'll study
Teaching and assessment
Assessment is by a 5000-word essay for each module and a 15,000-word dissertation.