4-Term Pathway - Foundation Certificate in Humanities - Continue to Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - English and United States Literature

For students who've finished high school but don’t meet the entry requirements for university, a Foundation Certificate can help them gain entry to an undergraduate degree. After completing this pathway option students qualify for progression to the 1st year of an undergraduate degree at the University of Essex.

A student’s course length is determined mainly by their English language level (UKVI IELTS score). Students on all course lengths take a set of common or similar modules to gain a solid base of skills for university. Students taking a course longer than 2 terms, will take additional modules designed to improve one or more of their English language level, academic skills, and basic knowledge of particular subjects.

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - English and United States Literature

The University of Essex has always been a major centre for American Studies, their expertise across literature, film, art, history and politics allows students to unravel and understand the complexities of US society and the American dream. Students explore nationalism and regionalism, as well as conflicts of race, gender and religion at the heart of US history and culture. Through this, students uncover the deep interconnections in the evolution of US writing and American identities.

Discover the literature of the USA from the early realism of Mark Twain and the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass, through the experimental work of Hemingway and Faulkner, to contemporary authors such as Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison. Students also cover the English literary canon from Shakespeare and his contemporaries through to twentieth-century literature.

This course offers a varied, flexible and distinctive curriculum, focused on the study of US and English literature, but also enabling students to take options from the other courses within the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies including creative writing, filmmaking, journalism and drama.

The academic staff specialize in a range of areas English and world literature, including modernism, U.S. and Caribbean Literature, Shakespeare, the Renaissance, travel writing, nature writing, translated literature, cultural geography, Irish and Scottish writing, and the history of reading.

A good literature degree opens many doors.

The number of careers that lead from courses in literature is almost as large as the number of graduates, but two particular areas in which graduates have had recent success are publishing and the theatre. One of Essex's former students is now in charge of editorial at a large publishing house, and another has just taken over running one of the country’s major theatres.