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English Literature, English Language,

Drama, American Studies

This booklet introduces you to the rich variety of degree courses on offer within the School of English at the University of Sussex.

It is organised by subject area within the School, and will give you a flavour of the kinds of modules we teach through your three years of study. We hope it will encourage you to want to know more, and lead you to explore our website:

www.sussex.ac.uk/english

as well as to come along to one of our Open Days, where you will have the opportunity to talk to members of faculty and see the campus. See the prospectus pages for English at:

www.sussex.ac.uk/study/ug

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The School of English at Sussex

Can we imagine ourselves or the world without language?Prof. Tom Healy, Head of the School of English

The School of English at the University of Sussex combines an illustrious history with a commitment to innovation and interdisciplinarity that places it at the forefront of our disciplines. We are a flagship School within the University. The School comprises around 40 distinguished members of faculty, many recognised internationally for the quality of their teaching and research, together with a lively student body. Set in the stunning South Downs National Park, the university campus is only minutes away from Brighton, one of Britain’s most cosmopolitan cities.

Our degree courses cover the whole range of English Studies, from medieval and renaissance literature to contemporary avant garde poetry, incorporating the study of drama, American literature and English language. Students and faculty share a commitment to exploring the ways in which language, texts and their performances shape our world. We focus upon high quality, small group teaching and flexibility in both curriculum and assessment – the size of our faculty allows us to offer an exciting level of choice and support for each individual student. The result is a unique set of degree courses that can be tailored to your own interests, in an inspirational atmosphere in which to study.

Our degrees are challenging, and invite cross-disciplinary study. We are privileged to attract curious, intelligent and engaged students, and strive to help them fulfil their academic potential. Our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages, and from all over the United Kingdom as well as Europe and North America and many other parts of the world. They leave us with fiercely independent creative and critical minds much valued by future employers.

Our recent graduates have gone on to careers in media and film, the arts, teaching, journalism, publishing, information technology and business, with many pursuing successful academic careers.

What we do

We offer single and joint honours courses in English Literature and English Language, and joint honours in Drama.

We pride ourselves on the essential interconnectionof our teaching, research and creative activities. We run the English Colloquium, a unique weekly workshop of ideas inclusively involving faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. The school also runs regular Quick Fictions events in cooperation with the publisher Myriad, an annual international festival of avant garde poetry and a bi-annual First Fictions Festival engaging with early fiction by both well established and up-and-coming writers.

The School hosts a number of internationally recognised research centres offering students the opportunity to pursue ideas beyond their degrees and to attend talks with invited speakers. These currently include Centres for Early Modern Studies, Modernist Studies, the Study of Sexual Dissidence, Visual Fields and the Research on Language and Linguistics and American Studies Seminars.

In addition Drama has strong ties with cutting edge theatre companies both in the UK and abroad. Michael Attenborough, the Director of the Almeida Theatre, London is a visiting professor and regularly leads workshops.

Links to all our Centres, and a great deal more information about the School can be found on the School of English website:

www.sussex.ac.uk/english

Professor Peter Boxall about to introduce Ian Rankin at the First Fictions Festival�

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Students from within the School also play asignificant role in the University as a whole. They feature prominently in the running of the Sussex Student Union and the campus newspaper, The Badger. The student Drama Society (SUDS) and the Musical Theatre Society (SMUTS) and the Linguistics and English Language Society (LingLangSoc) are also often led by students from the School of English.

The School is closely involved in events locally,from connections to local archives and collections to participation in the internationally renownedBrighton Festival, held each May.

Photo: James Joyce Statue in Zurich by Robert Scarth 2003

Sussex regularly is cited as one of the �00 leading universities in the World. Our success is recognised by good university guides and the National Student Survey:

The National Student Survey affirms English, American Studies and Drama as achieving over 90% student satisfaction with our teaching.

The Guardian University Guide 2012Sussex English places 8th in the UK, American Studies is 6th and Drama ranks �0th.

The Complete University Guide 2011-12English is placed ��th in the UK, American Studies is �rd, and Drama 8th.

The Sunday Times University Guide 2012 places English Studies at �� and Performance Studies at ��.

How you learn

The Sussex academic year is divided into two ��-week teaching terms, each followed by an assessment period.

Modules in the School of English are taught through a combination of lectures, seminars and workshops. Students of English Literature and English Language will begin their first year with core modules based around the twinning of lectures and seminars. As your degree progresses, more teaching is concentrated in small group seminars and more choice is offered, allowing you to shape your degree according to your particular interests, to develop your presentational skills and your ability to work in groups. In Drama, theory and practice complement each other, and practical elements of the course are explored in workshops based in dedicated rehearsal spaces, leading to performance projects in the second and third years.

Assessment includes coursework, ranging from short essays to dissertations, presentations, performances (for Drama) and unseen exams. Longer pieces of written work in your final year reflect your growing ability to study independently and devise your own topics. As your degree course progresses, your marks will also carry greater weight – you will have to pass your first year, but only work done in years two and three counts towards your final degree result.

Engraving of an unknown Jacobean Man 1623�

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Study ResourcesThe School has dedicated administrative staff to help with student enquiries and spaces in which to meet and work. The Library stocks over 800,000 books, receives more than �,�00 periodicals from all over the world, and subscribes to a remarkable collection of databases for student use most of which are available online. The Library collection is renowned and is regularly used by international scholars. The University also invests in technology to provide you with the most up-to-date learning resources. There are also numerous computer clusters for use around the campus.

At the start of your degree course, you are assignedan Academic Advisor who oversees your progress,helping you to choose your modules, consider your future career and study abroad options as well as give you day to day advice and feedback on your work.

Study AbroadThe University also offers the chance to study abroad as part of your degree. Sussex maintains successful student exchanges with over �0 universities in North America and over 90 universities in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Study Abroad can be taken for periods ranging from one term to a full year, with the modules you choose counting towards your Sussex Degree.

For further information on these schemes, contact the Sussex International and Study Abroad Office:

T: +��(0)��7� 678���e: studyabroad@sussex.ac.ukwww.sussex.ac.uk/study/sabroad/forsussexstudents

Photo: by kind permission of Elizabeth Carls, Blue Valentine Press

BA in English Literature

Studying English at Sussex involves being introduced to a range of recent – and often controversial – critical approaches, alongside the opportunity to study a historic range of the discipline, from Chaucer to current fiction and creative writing, from the works of Jane Austen

to those of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There are also opportunities to develop your creative writing skills. We aim to provoke, to challenge, and to inspire. Our degree course fuses a continuing commitment to innovation with the best of our history.

What does it mean to study literature? How has its role in society changed over time? What is the relationship between literature and other cultural forms, including film, photography and the visual arts? By creatively engaging with these and many other topics you become an independent thinker, able to articulate your ideas with intellectual rigour and clarity. Further details are given below, and descriptions of these degree courses can also be found on the University prospectus pages.

TeachingOur teaching focuses on small group seminars led by a member of faculty. Through these, and formal lectures, we will help you to develop the intellectual and practical skills which will allow you to develop and communicate your ideas to others in writing and in oral presentations. We employ a wide range of assessments across your degree including coursework, portfolios, dissertations and unseen exams.

The following brief description of the degree course is for single honours students. Joint honours students take one or two core modules each term in their first year, a mixture of core and options in their second year and a Special Author and Special Subject in their third year. It is not possible for joint honours students to take elective options outside of the School.

Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) by Lady Ottoline Morrell © National Portrait Gallery, London

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The First YearAs a foundational year, the first year is designed to introduce you to the possibilities of literature. Teaching is based around the twinning of lectures and seminars for each module with additional workshops. There are two core modules that run through the year, plus elective options within and beyond the School of English. The first year must be passed to continue, but your marks do not count towards your final degree classification.

Core ModulesTexts in Time and Critical Approaches.

OptionsReading Genre or two electives (these include courses from Modern Languages, Film, Media, Global Studies, Psychology, History, English Language Teaching and Education).

The Second YearHere you are offered a greater range of choice taking � courses in the Autumn term and a further � in the Spring term. The teaching emphasis is on small group seminars along with tutorial sessions. The second year counts towards 40% of your final degree result.

Core ModulesPeriod of English Literature: a choice of ��00-�6��; �6��-�7�0; �7�0-�880; or �860-�9�� in the Autumn Term. The Novel in the Spring term;

OptionsYou take four of these throughout the year and, there are normally more than �� available. They include: Staging the Renaissance: Shakespeare; Writing and the Great War; Tragedy; The Art of

Short Fiction; Reading Postcolonial Texts; Sense and Sexuality: the 18th Century Novel or Avant Garde Cinema. Alternatively two elective courses can be taken from outside of the School.

The Third YearThis is the culmination of the English Literature degree course at Sussex in which the seminar remains the key teaching method along with tutorials. You are also expected to attend the lectures, readings and debates of the English Colloquium that present work at the forefront of English studies. The third year counts for 60% of the final degree mark.

Core ModulesIn the Autumn term you will chose the second Period of English Literature module from the array of: ��00-�6��; �6��-�7�0; �7�0-�880; or �860-�9��.

In the Spring term you will take a module oncontemporary writing choosing from titles such as: 21st Century Literature and Literature and the Environment.

OptionsIn the Autumn term you select a Special Author module focused on one particular writer’s output, such as Marlowe, Wordsworth, Dickens, Hardy, Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, Rushdie.

In the Spring term you choose a Special Subject option from an array including Spectacular Imaginings: Renaissance and Restoration Theatre; The Uncanny; Irish writing after Joyce and Islam and Literature; The Literatures of Africa.

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Letters from Gordon Craig, Arnold Daghani

BA in English Language

Like every other English speaker, you are already an expert on the English Language. So why study it? The problem is you probably don’t know what you know – or what you don’t know. That’s the thing about language, it’s a human phenomenon that comes as naturally to us as walking or humming a tune or recognising faces, and is just as hard to explain in terms of how we do it, how we learnt to do it, and why we do it the way that we do.At Sussex, the study of English Language involves all aspects of the language: its structure; its history; its aquisition, and use. We also explore its representation in our individual minds, its impact upon societies, and it variation across cultures.

Here are some of the questions we like to think about:

What do the ways in which we use English tell us about what it means to be members of an English-speaking culture? What does it mean to be an ‘English speaker’ in these days of globalisation? How is it that we mean more than we say, and that others can understand the things we meant but didn’t say? How is language used to persuade, to vilify, to forge bonds between us?

English has changed dramatically since the days of Beowulf. We can hear English changing now all around us. The words that we use and the accent in which we say them have shifted even over the last few years. How did you get that accent?

You can study English Language either as a SingleHonours degree, or as a Joint Honours degree withEnglish Literature. The following lists the modules you take as a Single Honours student. For Joint Degrees, the core modules might differ on the English Language part of your degree and you would take no electives.

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The First YearAs a foundational year, the first year introduces you to the English language through grammar, pronunciation, meaning and discourse, allowing you to acquire the tools and terminology needed to describe language properly, from grammatical terms to the mysterious squiggles of phonetic transcription. The first year must be passed to continue to the second year, but your marks do not count towards your final degree classification.

Core Modules Approaches to Meaning; Approaches to Pronunciation; Approaches to Grammar; Investigating Language in Context.

Options You take two electives from outside the school in the first year. The module options come from History, Global Studies, Film, Media, Modern Languages and Psychology. You are encouraged to consider taking a modern language for your elective modules, since knowledge of other languages can bring extra insight to the study of English. The Second YearIn the second year, you have the opportunity to apply the descriptive and analytical skills to exploring variation in English and the history of the language gained in the first year. The second year counts towards 40% of your final degree result.

Core Modules Social Variation in English I; Approaches to Discourse; Variation in English II; History of English I and II.

Options You take one module per term from a range such as Translating Cultures and Child Language Acquisition. You also continue to take one elective module from outside the School.

The Third YearIn the third year we offer a wide range of options at the cutting edge of linguistic inquiry. In addition, you will embark on an individual research project, culminating in your final year dissertation. The third year counts towards 60% of your final degree result.

Core Module Research Proposal and Research Project .

Options You can take modules such as: Contemporary Stylistics; Discourses of Social and Personal Identity; Intercultural Communication; Language & Gender; Language in Mind & Brain; Linguistic Typology; Modern Dialectology; Phonology; Pidgins and Creoles and Syntactic Theory.

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BA in Drama and English

Drama Studies offers you an exciting mix of critical thinking, creative writing and performance practice. Available as a Joint Honours degree with English Literature, Film Studies or a modern language, it provides a range of modules that explore canonical plays, avant-garde performance, theatre theories and contemporary practices. Performance in its broader sense is studied as a range of political, social and culturally transformative practices. Students make regular theatre trips to London and work with a range of professional artists.

ResourcesPractical work takes place in the Creativity Zone, a reconfigurable multimedia lab, and in the Debating Chamber and The Silverstone Studio, both flexible spaces used for workshops and smaller-scale productions. From �0��, Drama students will make use of the campus’s newly refurbished Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts. The ACCA will provide large-scale performance, teaching, research and workshop spaces to promote exciting new creative work across the arts. The study of Drama at Sussex helps you develop the intellectual and practical skills to learn and create collaboratively and independently, to write expressively, and to communicate your ideas to others. You learn through small-group seminars and practical workshops. Types of assessment include coursework, presentations, essays and performances.

Drama students preparing their final year performances.

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The First YearAs a foundational year, the first year is designed to introduce you to critical and practical approaches in the analysis of theatre theory, texts and performance. Teaching combines seminars and practical workshops. There are two core modules each term. You must achieve a pass mark for your first year in order to progress but your marks do not count towards your final degree classification.

Core Modules Autumn Term: Reading Theatre Texts; Making Theatre.

Spring Term: Theories of Drama; Staging Text.

The Second YearYou focus on analysing theatre texts and examining in detail the work of international companies. This prepares you for two unique options: the first examines contemporary playwriting, in which you produce your own pieces of creative writing for theatre, culminating in a staged reading, and the second enables those with a historical interesting in drama to study playtexts and performances from the early modern period. Teaching remains a mix of seminars and practical workshops, with some modules integrating both modes. The second year counts towards 40% of your final degree result.

Core Modules Autumn Term: Modern and Postmodern Drama; Approaches to Contemporary Performance

Options Spring Term: Writing for the Theatre; Early Modern and Contemporary Theatre

The Third YearThe emphasis is on specialised courses exploring theatre and performance practice in detail, as well as the development of your independent research abilities. The degree culminates with the Final Year Performance Project, a full-scale theatre production combining practical, critical and research work to a high level. The third year counts for 60% of the final degree mark.

Core Modules Spring Term: Final Year Performance Project.

Options Autumn Term: Performing the Body; Making Theatre Politically; Theatre Performance and Ethics; Postdramatic Theatre.

American Studies in the School of English

American Studies is the interdisciplinary exploration of the literature, history and culture of the Americas. The University of Sussex enjoys a prestigious reputation for research and teaching in American Studies, in which a distinct degree programme is available. Within the School of English opportunities exist for all students to study American literature from colonial times to the present day. Recent modules have included:

American Literature to 1890 This will introduce you to the important texts of America from the Iroquois Indians and Christopher Columbus through to Emily Dickinson and Henry James.

American Literature since 1890 This module introduces significant texts by American writers produced throughout the first part of the twentieth century, notably exploring many of the social and cultural issues associated with the evolution of modernity and American modernist aesthetics.

Special AuthorEach year, the School offers a number of American writers in their Special Author Module, allowing you to study a single writer’s work in some depth. Recent choices have included John Ashbery, Henry James, Alfred Hitchcock, and William Baldwin.

Recent American Writing The twenty-year period we consider sees the emergence of many types of experimentalism at times subsumed under the rubric of the ‘postmodern’. We shall explore a range of different texts in an attempt to see how writers have responded to the challenge of America’s recent history from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror. Pulp Culture: American Popular Literature This module examines a variety of mass produced popular American literatures from the �8th and �9th centuries through to the �0th, many of which were often the bestsellers and most talked about books in their day. Each week we will explore a variety of popular literatures, from pulps such as early magazines and comics, dime novels, Westerns and juvenile or sentimental literature, to “hardboiled” crime fiction, self-help books and “middlebrow” bestsellers of the �0th century.

Documentary America: Non-fiction Writing This course examines the development of iconic non-fictional literature and other forms of visual representation (such as film and photography) from the �9th and �0th centuries. We will look at the style, content and circulation of non-fictional forms and examine their relationship within wider discourses of cultural, social and political representation in America.

Proof for an American flag campaign banner for John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane

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The Entrance to The LanesPhoto Garry Knight

Year Abroad If you are studying American Studies and English Literature, you can spend your third year at one of over forty top-rated US and Canadian partner universities, enabling you to specialise in a diverse range of literary and cultural studies. Whether you are interested in creative writing, African American culture, American modernism, Chicano or Native American literary studies, the year abroad offers a unique and unsurpassed experience.

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BA Degrees in the School of English

Information on each of the degrees below and the possible combination of subjects you can choose to study, entry level requirements, fees and funding, can be found on the prospectus web pages for The School of English. www.sussex.ac.uk/study/ug

BA in English Literature American Studies and English Drama Studies and English English English Language and Literature English and Art History English and Film Studies English and History English and Media Studies Philosophy and English

BA in Drama Drama Studies and English Drama Studies and Film Studies Drama Studies and French Drama Studies and Italian Drama Studies and Spanish

BA in English Language English Language English Language and Literature

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Arts B Arches

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)

Brighton Pier at night Photo Garry Knight

For information about the School of English at Sussexplease contact:

School of EnglishArts B133University of SussexFalmer, Brighton. BN1 9QNT: 01273 877303e: english@sussex.ac.ukwww.sussex.ac.uk/english

For information on undergraduate admissions,please contact:

Student Recruitment Sussex House,University of SussexFalmer, Brighton. BN1 9RHT: 01273 876787e: ug.enquiries@sussex.ac.ukwww.sussex.ac.uk

Photo credits:Front Cover image Animating the Archive and Drama Studies pages – Dr. Sara Jane BailesInside Cover – Michèle HarrisonEnglish Literature – Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) by Lady Ottoline Morrell © National Portrait Gallery, London English Language – Elisabeth Carls, Blue Valentine PressJames Joyce – Robert Scarf 2003 Creative CommonsAmerican Studies – Proof for an American flag campaign banner for John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane – Library of CongressEntrance to The Lanes and Brighton Pier at night – Garry Knight under Creative Commons