Master of Arts - Film and Literature

Explore the relationship between literature and film in an exceptionally broad array of contemporary and historical contexts, and from a variety of different perspectives. Students discover cutting-edge approaches to cinematic and literary aesthetics, adaptation, and relationships between different media, reception contexts, ethics, and interfaces between theory and practice.

In this University of Essex course students gain a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical interactions between literature and film, choosing specific areas of literary and cinema studies to complement their preparation for a creative practice or theoretical dissertation project of their choice. Students will forge and develop connections between audio-visual and textual media. Focusing a variety of cultural productions and diverse forms of enlightenment, and entertainment, students will encounter parallel and sometimes more densely intertwined media histories, discovering the complex ways in which media anticipate, interfere with, and draw on one other. Through weekly seminars, screenings and discussions of key cinematic and literary texts, students consider different ways that texts create their meanings. They study topics including: areas such as modernism, poetic practice, American prose, Caribbean literature, and African American literature; documentary and fiction film production including screenwriting, pre-production, camera, lighting, sound, storyboarding, and editing; landmark directors and movements such as Expressionism and the avant-garde; film theory including feminism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, haptic cinema. Students also benefit from a series of masterclasses conducted by invited industry professionals which focus on the craft of filmmaking: developing students' technical understanding of cinematography, directing and editing/postproduction. These also introduce students to potential employment routes and industry career pathways, from setting up their own production company, to identifying and tapping into distribution networks and preparing and marketing their completed films. Essex is ranked top 5 for dance, drama and cinematics in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2020. Essex actively encourages and assists students to find appropriate internship and work placement opportunities during their studies, allowing students to practice and develop their skills and experience as well as enhancing their graduate employment prospects. A number of the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies graduates have gone on to undertake successful careers as scholars, university lecturers, teachers, publishers, journalists, arts administrators, theatre artistic directors, drama advisers, filmmakers, film editors, and translators.