Creative Writing Portfolio: Preparation
Everyone has a story to tell – through Creative Writing Portfolio: Preparation, you will research, plan and begin development of a creative project that is uniquely yours. Continue your development with masterclass seminars and writing workshops that will provide you with the skills needed to take your creative project from conception to completion.
Compulsory•20 credits
Creative Writing Portfolio
You will intrigue us with your fascinating characters, move us as they tackle dilemmas, arcing across landscapes set in believable worlds. You will entice us with your lyricism and imagery, and draw us in with your control of language. As your stories and poems of the unexpected buzz across the page, you will make us want to read on.
Compulsory•20 credits
Writing the Novel
Learn to read like a writer and write like a reader as we encourage you to develop the story that is smouldering inside you. This module reveals many of the secrets of how to plan, write, edit and rewrite long-form prose. Upon completion, you will have the skills, technique, drive and determination to begin writing a novel – your novel.
Crime Scenes
Engaging with a key genre within popular culture, you will analyse contemporary society via a number of prismatic themes, or re-framings of the ‘crime scene’: crime and its (social) environment; the status of the murdered body; the mind of the psychopath; crime fiction’s early engagement with LGBTQ+ issues, and with racial discrimination and oppression.
Unruly Subjects: Voices from the Margins
Study writing which was regarded with suspicion by the authorities and incorporates marginal figures, such as prostitutes, the poor, same-sex lovers and female adventurers. Our subject is unruliness: how it was defined, represented, attacked and, on occasion, celebrated in writing from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.
Voyage Out: Navigating the Language and Literature of the Sea
This module introduces you to sea narratives from the eighteenth century to the present day. You will engage with a range of fictional and non-fictional representations of seafaring and maritime adventure, and diverse perspectives on the individual’s negotiation of the threshold between land and sea.
Writing Britain Now
Read and respond to texts written during the 21st century, novels, short stories and plays that focus on topical issues such as Brexit, immigration, racial inequality, climate change, and terrorism. You will also have an opportunity to reflect on the different perspectives diverse contemporary writers bring to the concerns of our time.
Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror: Writing the Wondrous and the Weird
A module for those for whom magic is real, technology is limitless and there are monsters hiding around every corner – Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror: Writing the Wondrous and the Weird will take you on a journey through your imagined world and encourage you to explore, to play and to craft high-quality genre fiction.
Writing the City
Do you want to write dystopian fiction? Or imagine how to make our cities happier, more democratic places to live? Then Writing The City is the module for you, with its opportunities for debate, writing, workshopping and editing your view of the city.
Intercultural Shakespeares
Examine four Shakespearean texts that dramatise or examine an intercultural encounter, and consider how these plays have been appropriated by and adapted in other cultures and by those intent on challenging dominant cultural norms. The module will be of interest to students who want to gain more understanding of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly in relation to debates regarding race, colonialism, gender and sexuality, and cultural appropriation.
Gothic Imagination
Explore the Gothic as a literary genre and cultural mode from its origins to its contemporary international manifestations. Gothic responds to the dominant culture of its time and represents an important mode of articulation for socially, politically, sexually marginalized groups. It responds to and negotiates racial, religious, gender and political issues and demonstrates an ongoing capacity to register the tensions that lie behind the surface of culture and identity.
Written on the Body
Feminist and gender criticism and theory are going through major developments in contemporary culture. At the same time, new and traditional gender identities, sexual orientation and intersectional, blended identities are raised and analysed in literary texts. This module will allow you to take account of the newest developments in its critical engagement with feminism and gender in relation to a range of contemporary texts.