English at NTU gives you the opportunity to travel across literary genres and contexts, living different lives and stepping into different shoes. We're interested in everything: what Literature tells us about race, gender and sexuality; climate emergency; politics and society. We research what Literature represents of the past, shows us about the present, and predicts for the future.
You will develop a rich blend of skills and talents to draw on, every day of your life. You'll be able to write, analyse, publish, curate, evaluate, assess, record, anthologise, summarise, call out nonsense and appreciate beauty. You'll work out the strange truth in fiction, and the strange fictions in truth. Responding to texts in articles, podcasts, blogs and creative and critical writing, we will equip you for a future in which you have more than one way to shine. Our graduates are interesting, knowledgeable, adaptable - and extremely employable.
The course is very flexible, offering a broad range of optional modules that allow you to pursue your passions and interests. Not only will you study traditional topics and texts, but you also explore innovative literatures and exciting new approaches to old and new texts and movements. Importantly, throughout the course you will develop a wide range of transferable skills that are highly valued by employers.
What's Different About Us
Approachable and accessible, we are proud of our consistently high student satisfaction score and our range of modules and teaching methods. We are a relatively small course - we know our students and they know us! Year 1 is a shop window, year 2 gives you a chance to explore different concessions, with more optionality; and in year 3, as well as having a passion you want to explore in a dissertation, you will know the exact modules you want to choose to finish your degree.
You'll study English in a City and University that celebrates Literature: NTU is a lead partner of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, and has established a variety of extracurricular opportunities and a host of partners in the creative industries.
In 2015, Nottingham was designated a UNESCO City of Literature – one of only 20 in the world – thanks to our long and diverse literary history. From D H Lawrence to Alan Sillitoe and Lord Byron to J M Barrie, many wonderful wordsmiths have called Nottingham home.
In Year One you’ll cover a range of methodological, critical and theoretical approaches to the study of English. You’ll explore key debates and develop your written and verbal communication skills, while enhancing your career knowledge.
In Year Two, you'll study two core modules and select a number of optional modules based on your individual interests. There's also an opportunity to spend the second half of the year on international exchange at one of our partner universities.
This module will address questions around authorship, textuality, and different ways of interpreting texts, as well as considering what goes into the creation of a ‘text’, as a production between writers and their environments. You will learn key skills around research, writing, referencing, critical reading and forming critical arguments that will help you to develop as an English student.
This module invites you to understand and to question the ‘English Literary Canon’: that is, the texts that have tended to be defined as the ‘most significant’ works of English Literature, and that traditionally underpin its teaching. You will consider the enduring significance of ‘great’ works to our present-day realities, and will develop your own views regarding the question of literary ‘greatness’.
Learn about the many authors, literary movements, and historical events that have shaped American literature from the birth of the republic to the contemporary period. You'll read writers such as Walt Whitman, Washington Irving and Alice Walker. Alongside this you'll pay attention to women writers, African American writers and other ethnic writers, considering how this work transforms the whole picture.
This is a two-part module. The first part will focus on developing your scholarly voice. Working in small groups, with a tutor, you will be required to contribute verbally in a sustained discussion on a single text every week, becoming skilled in concentrated intellectual conversation and textual analysis.
In the second half, the same groups and seminar leaders then work together on Curating Nottingham, a section of the module designed to hone writing skills whilst also introducing students to the practicalities of writing professionally.
Discover ways in which the tension between culture and anarchy has repeatedly surfaced as a driving force in the development of English literature. The module takes a broad historical period ranging from the late 19th to the late 20th Century as its backdrop, but will focus on numerous important moments where various understandings of 'cultural' and 'anarchic' activity have influenced social landscape and on literary texts themselves.
This module aims to enable students to work collaboratively to produce a professional output, either a conference for a public audience, or a published journal. Students will work in groups, and each student will undertake a professional role as well as producing an output. This will enable students to develop professional skills relevant to their intended career, and to articulate employability skills including the effective contribution to successful team projects.
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This module aims to enable students to work collaboratively to produce a professional output, a literary magazine and / or launch event. Students will work in groups, and each student will undertake a professional role as well as producing an output. This will enable students to develop professional skills relevant to their intended career, and to articulate employability skills including the effective contribution to successful team projects.
The module will be structured around four or five thematic clusters of dramatic genre, selected from a range of preoccupations of the period itself and of later critical responses to it. Examples of these include, but are not limited to: Jacobean tragedy, Shakespearean comedy, ‘problem’ comedy, city comedy, and history.
Study the political and social writings of the period of 1780-1851 to create a context for this module’s engagement with Romantic literature. This module will explore how far revolutionary political and social change is reflected in the experimental themes and forms of Romantic writing.
In the first unit, a programme of lectures and seminar/workshops, will build on your close-reading and critical skills. In the second unit, you will be taught further theoretical concerns specific to the editing and scholarly presentation of texts. You will be guided in applying the skills and knowledge already learnt as you work in groups constructing a critical anthology of your own, and you will be invited to reflect on the processes involved as you work towards the final versions of the anthologies you have chosen to compile.
Racial Identity and ethnic diversity have been central to the American experience since the nation’s founding. In this module you will examine literary interactions between people of different ethnic backgrounds and see how writers use ethnicity as a tool of resistance.
Look at how a new generation of professional women writers represented women’s experiences of modernity in texts written between 1918 and 1939. This module will encourage you to provide a a thorough introduction to British women's writing and the importance that this period provided for women's history.
Examine a range of literary texts by black writers written in or about Britain from the 1950s until the present day.
Investigate the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis by examining the way that psychoanalytic theory has developed the way that we interpret literary texts. By reading a selection of clinical, theoretical and literary texts, you'll be required to think about how different approaches to the human psyche have been understood and used by various readers and writers throughout different places and time periods.
This module will encourage you to study and partake in the practice of writing with a focus on the breadth of genre. You'll also rework samples of writing in specialist areas.
You'll be introduced to new writing specialisms with a particular focus on visual and vocal communication. Throughout this module you'll practice independent learning strategies and draft original creative work to enhance collaboration, research, editing and reviewing skills. You'll be taught how to combine information, think laterally and develop resonant visual and sonic narratives.
The final year dissertation module enables you to undertake a sustained, single piece of independently researched work on a topic of your choice, under expert supervision.
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As an alternative to the the critical dissertation, you may wish to do a creative writing dissertation. This alternative will enable you to study and participate in the practice of writing, with particular focus on the production of a long piece of individual creative work.
The module will give you the opportunity to undertake project work in a small group, led by a project supervisor, and to produce a portfolio of critical and reflective writing. Working with an employer on a defined project you'll be able to put into practice the skills and knowledge gained over the course of their degree within a professional setting.
This module will be organized into three related thematic sections. The first will explore approaches to literature in contemporary theory, focusing in particular on innovative developments which work at the intersection of criticism and writing. Section two will examine debates about literature, culture, and technology which will include sessions on digital and other technologies, mobile devices, and electronic literature. Section three will consider recent debates about concepts of the world, transnational social processes, and global culture. These concepts and directions in contemporary theory will be approached through work by, among others, Giorgio Agamben, Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, N. Katherine Hayles, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Gayatri Spivak. Throughout, it will reflect on fiction, poetry, and other literary writing that engages with this module’s principal concerns.
Learn about authors writing in the 16th and 17th Centuries and cover genres such as the sonnet, the epic poem, satire and radical writing. This module will expand your contextual knowledge while exploring political and religious contexts.
Investigate the rise of the Gothic Romance in the late 18th Century and its development into the 19th Century by examining key literary texts from the period. This module will research the ways in which Gothic is a conservative and a reactionary genre; supporting and challenging our perceptions of nature / nurture, natural / supernatural and male / female.
Examine the politics and aesthetics of gender and sexuality in relation to the writing and reading of the 20th Century, the mid-century, the period of the sexual revolution and contemporary literature.
This module will focus on a range of postcolonial texts and consider the relationship between acts of representation and the politics of anti-colonialism and post-colonialism. This module will help you to develop the ability to work across a range of theoretical and literary texts in original ways.
Gain an overview of travel writing and consider the relationship of travel writing to society and to other forms of literature. There will be an in-depth study of selected regions, authors and themes. There are many issues that you may want to explore, such as construction of self and place in travel writing and traveller's representations of other cultures.
Throughout this module you'll explore some of the central features of the many transnational movements of modernism through a selection of literary texts. You'll examine how the experimental qualities of modernist culture were conditioned by responses to changes in social and technological modernity. An innovative feature of the module is the focus upon the modernist little magazine (which will be studied in digital form, therefore introducing some of the ideas of Digital Humanities to students).
Introduces students to the literary and cultural impact of a key technology and the latest debates in the Nuclear Humanities. Engaging students with research being undertaken into this subject at NTU, the module considers the representation of nuclear technology and science in literary texts, as well as the questions raised for literature by the dawning of the nuclear age.
English modules are mainly tested through a combination of examinations, coursework essays, portfolios (which might include reports, reviews, annotated bibliographies, brief reports or short critical analyses), learning journals and presentations.
As well as being internationally recognised for our research, the English team is friendly and approachable. The course is informed by the latest thinking and you'll learn from people with a real passion for their subject. We'll help you find your feet when you first arrive, and stretch you as you become more confident. We look forward to expanding your interests and helping you to realise your ambitions.
NTU is a lead partner of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and the department offers volunteer opportunities in which students can help NUCoL deliver its mission to 'build a better world with words'. Previous students have worked in marketing, social media and event management roles.
We work collaboratively with many regional and national groups and organisations, including:
Our students are part of the research community at NTU, and have the opportunity to take part in a variety of exciting extracurricular and networking events. Our research centres and societies regularly bring high profile writers to Nottingham to deliver talks and workshops. Recent guests have included Maggie Nelson, Michael Rosen, Marion Coutts, Georgina Wilding, and Derek Owusu. Recent creative writing workshops have focused on Writing Statues, Writing the Breastfeeding Body, The Hero’s Journey, and landscape writing.
The NTU extra-curricular WRAP programme offers Writing, Reading and Pleasure, with a range of book clubs, writing workshops and events each term. English students have published their work online, written blogs and taken part in international showcase events, creating friendships across the University and an online profile.
English students are also encouraged to attend informal English Research Seminars to hear papers by guest academics, English staff, and English postgraduate students, and field trips are optional on various modules, including to theatre productions, stately homes, and archives.
Find out more about our ground-breaking research in our Research Centres:
You’ll also have the option to take part in an international exchange at a partner university. Or you could source work placements abroad. These options will enable you to gain impressive international experience, and broaden your perspective and career ambitions.
You’ll experience other cultures, travel the globe and open your eyes to a world of opportunities. Our exchange partnership with a number of international universities enables you to live and study in another country in your second year.
Alongside your study you also have the opportunity to learn a new language. The University Language Programme (ULP) is available to all students and gives you the option of learning a totally new language or improving the skills you already have. Learning a new language can enhance your communication skills, enrich your experience when travelling abroad and boost your career prospects. Find out more about the University Language Programme.
NTU English students have the opportunity to engage with a variety of voluntary roles, both ‘in house’ and in the community. You can become a student representative for your course, a student ambassador representing the university’s student body, a WRAP ambassador, volunteer with NUCoL, or a CERT mentor mentoring your peers on the course. Other opportunities could include voluntary work in local schools on a literacy project, with one of our community partners, internationally, or as a sports volunteer supporting lessons in local schools, after-school or local sports clubs.
At the end of your course, your work could be recognised with a prestigious award. At present four prizes are awarded annually to graduating students (these may vary from year to year):
Here at NTU, we're enthusiastic about the English subject and wish to express a similar enthusiasm to our students. It's much more than a job: it really matters to us that you are inspired, passionate, challenged and motivated by your studies. Here, we talk about the authors who have inspired us and instilled in us a passion for the subject that we teach.
As one of our graduates you will possess a wide range of academic and transferable skills.
Academically, you’ll have an extensive knowledge of a wide range of literary texts. You’ll gain an understanding of the complex nature of literary languages, and the ability to evaluate and debate theoretical viewpoints, which is an important life skill as well as being of benefit to a whole range of employment activities.
However, the major transferable skill of all English graduates is the ability to communicate effectively both in speech and in writing. These skills are invaluable for a wide range of occupations and settings.
Graduates have gone on to develop their careers within large well known organisations (such as Marks & Spencer, BBC etc.) and many graduates are forging successful careers in small to medium sized companies, reflecting the nature of the UK economy. Graduate roles include: publishing, marketing, PR, retail, finance and recruitment.
Some students choose to progress to further study, either to continue their research within English, or to gain more directly vocational qualifications such as journalism, teaching, law and social work.
Our friendly and experienced careers consultants will work closely with you at every stage of your career planning, providing personal support and advice you won't find in a book or on the Internet. You will find consultants on all three campuses. Find out more about our Careers Service.
In our library you will have access to an extensive and diverse range of books including those on your reading list. The library also stocks periodicals that focus on Literary and Linguistics forums. The Clifton Campus has its own Blackwell's Bookshop which stocks relevant academic texts plus a wide range of bestselling novels.
Our IT resource rooms and PC clusters are distributed across the Clifton Campus, with PCs providing access to Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, networked file storage and high-speed online printing services (with a free printing allowance for each student). Resource rooms are available 24 hours a day.
Current students from the School of Arts and Humanities run societies for like-minded students to join including the Languages and Linguistics society and Debating society. Find out more about student societies at the Students' Union website.
In addition to subject specific resources, we have a dedicated teaching and learning building which is home to lecture theatres and innovative teaching spaces. The Clifton Pavilion sits at the heart of the campus and provides a contemporary study and social space, where you can relax, grab a coffee, and work on projects independently or in groups.
120 UCAS Tariff points
Other qualifications and experience
We consider equivalent qualifications and combinations, please see UCAS course search for details and use our calculator to help you work out how many UCAS points your qualifications relate to.
We may also consider credits achieved at other universities and your work/life experience through an assessment of prior learning. This may be for year one entry, or beyond the beginning of a course where applicable, for example, into year 2. Our Recognition of Prior Learning and Credit Transfer Policy outlines the process and options available for this route.
Contextual offers
As well as assessing your application and qualifications, we use contextual data and information to make offers for this course. Depending on your circumstances, we may make you an offer up to two grades below the standard entry criteria. Find out how we assess your application.
Personal statements
For advice on how to write a good personal statement please visit our personal statement page.
Getting in touch
If you need any more help or information, please email our Admissions and Enquiries Team or call on +44 (0)115 848 4200.
You will need the equivalent to:
We accept qualifications from all over the world – check yours here:
If you don’t yet meet our entry requirements, we offer Foundation courses through our partner Nottingham Trent International College (NTIC), based on our City Campus:
You can meet our language requirements by successfully completing our pre-sessional English course for an agreed length of time, or by submitting the required grade in one of our accepted English language tests, such as IELTS:
You may be able to start your undergraduate course in year 2 or 3 based on what you have studied before. This decision would be made in accordance with our Recognition of Prior Learning and Credit Transfer Policy.
Our international teams are highly experienced in answering queries from students all over the world. We also have members of staff based in Vietnam, China, India and Nigeria and work with a worldwide network of education counsellors.
Preparing for the financial side of student life is important, but there’s no need to feel anxious and confused about it. We hope that our fees and funding pages will answer all your questions.
For more advice and guidance, you can contact our Student Financial Support Service on +44 (0)115 848 2494.
Additional Costs
Your course fees cover the cost of studies, and include loads of great benefits, such as the use of our library, support from our expert Employability team, and free use of the IT equipment across our campuses.
Library books
Most study modules will recommend one or more core text books, which most students choose to purchase. Book costs vary and further information is available in the University’s bookshop. Our libraries provide a good supply of essential text books, journals and materials (many of which you can access online) – meaning you may not need to purchase as many books as you might think! There may also be a supply of second-hand books available for purchase from previous year students.
Field trips
All essential field trip costs will be included in your course fees. There may be the opportunity to take part in optional field trips, which do incur additional costs.
Placements
If you're undertaking a placement year, you'll need to budget for accommodation and any travel costs you may incur whilst on placement. Many of our placement students do earn a salary whilst on placement which can help to cover these living costs.
Print and copy costs
The University allocates an annual printing and copying allowance of £20 depending on the course you are studying. For more details about costs for additional print and copying required over and above the annual allowance please see the Printing, photocopying and scanning information on the Library website.
Please see our fees page for more information.
Tuition fees are payable for each year that you are at the University. The level of tuition fees for the second and subsequent years of your undergraduate course may increase in line with inflation and as specified by the UK government.
We offer scholarships of up to 50% of your tuition fee. You can apply for your scholarship when you have an offer to study at NTU.
Get advice on the cost of living as an international student in Nottingham and how to budget:
Find out about advanced payments, instalment plan options and how to make payments securely to the University:
Our international teams are highly experienced in answering queries from students all over the world. We also have members of staff based in Vietnam, China, India and Nigeria and work with a worldwide network of education counsellors.
Ready to join us? Then apply as soon as you can.
For the full-time route just click the Apply button at the top of the page and follow our step-by-step guide.
If you're applying for the part-time route please apply online using the NTU Applicant Portal.
Make sure you check the entry requirements above carefully before you do.
Be honest, thorough and persuasive in your application. Remember, we can only make a decision based on what you tell us. So include all of your qualifications and grades, including resits or predicted grades.
Your personal statement is a really important part of your application. It’s your chance to convince us why we should offer you a place! You've got 4,000 characters to impress us. Make sure you use them to show how your skills and qualities are relevant to the course(s) you’re applying for. For more hints and tips, take a look at our page on how to write a good personal statement.
After you've applied, we’ll be sending you important emails throughout the application process so check your emails regularly, including your junk mail folder.
You can get more information and advice about applying to NTU on our Your Application page. Good luck with your application!
Need help with your application?
For admissions related enquiries please contact us:
Tel: +44 (0)115 848 4200
You can apply for this course through UCAS. If you are not applying to any other UK universities, you can apply directly to us on our NTU applicant portal.
Apply early so that you have enough time to prepare – processing times for Student visas can vary, for example. After you've applied, we'll be sending you important emails throughout the application process – so check your emails regularly, including your junk mail folder.
Be honest, thorough, and persuasive – we can only make a decision about your application based on what you tell us:
Our international teams are highly experienced in answering queries from students all over the world. We also have members of staff based in Vietnam, China, India and Nigeria and work with a worldwide network of education counsellors.
The University's commitment to delivering the educational services advertised.
