Bachelor of Arts - Joint Majors - English / History

The study of literature can provide students with insights concerning past and present concepts of personal and social identity, cultural traditions and beliefs, and interpersonal and cross-cultural relationships. Since the time of Aristotle, moreover, literary commentators have analyzed “setting” as an important formal aspect of literary writing; literary study can therefore help individual to investigate, and perhaps to reconsider, their relationships with both human and non-human environments. In today’s world, where efforts to resolve intercultural conflicts and environmental problems have taken on a profound sense of urgency, literary study provides a crucial forum for intellectual and ethical debate leading to the revision of cultural practice.

The study of English literature provides students with critical skills of analysis and synthesis, helping them to identify and understand complex problems, and encouraging them to conceptualize viable resolutions and alternative understandings. Perhaps more than any other academic discipline, English literature also emphasizes the importance of literacy, including the development of effective writing and oral presentation skills, thereby providing students with the communications skills so highly valued in the professional world.

The Department of History offers Master of Arts degrees in a two-year program. The major areas of study are North America, Europe, and Latin America with emphasis on Aboriginal, northern, gender, and environmental history. Students are encouraged to contact an appropriate supervisor before applying to the program and to develop a research project through this contact with members of the department.

University of Northern British Columbia MA has two streams. In the first year of the program, all students take three seminars in their areas of interest as well as two courses in historiography and research methods. In the second year of the program, students may choose between writing an MA thesis or carrying out a creative project.