English and History BA (Hons)

This module will introduce students to the underlying concepts and principles associated with their area(s) of study in relation to other areas of the social and political sciences; to provide students with the opportunity to evaluate and interpret these within the context of that area of study. It will also develop students’ ability to present, evaluate and interpret qualitative and/or quantitative data, in order to develop lines of argument and make sound judgements in accordance with basic theories and concepts of their subject(s) of study.

This module will introduce students to the underlying concepts and principles associated with their area(s) of study in relation to other areas of the social and political sciences; to provide students with the opportunity to evaluate and interpret these within the context of that area of study. It will also develop students' ability to present, evaluate and interpret qualitative and/or quantitative data, in order to develop lines of argument and make sound judgements in accordance with basic theories and concepts of their subject(s) of study.

Most people take reading for granted, but active, well-informed, interpretative and critical reading is a highly advanced skill. And with the rise of AI and disinformation, it is one of the most important skills in the world today. This module focuses on the key skills of critical and close reading, as central to the study of literature, but also more widely to allow you to sort out truth from troll. The central aim of this module is to enhance and develop students’ engagement with primary and secondary texts as central to your critical thinking abilities. Students will learn how to analyse and interpret complex texts in various genres, making use of the established techniques and approaches of the discipline. They will engage with the idea of critical reading as a culturally-informed act that must be learned and developed. Teaching is shaped around the goal of developing students’ “reading resilience”, that is, the ability to read, discuss, and write about, varied and challenging texts with confidence. Through discussion, group workshops, lectures and individual tasks, students will become proficient in working with literary and rhetorical texts, learning skills that are essential throughout the degree.

With the rise of social media and now generative AI, the core skills of our degree, reading and writing, have come under fire. Yet just as reading is not about passive reception of information, but rather critical engagement with what you have read, so writing is more than simply following a blueprint. Writing, on our course, is a form of thinking, it is where the critical faculties are tested and developed, and importantly, it is a form of human-centred creativity that the world desperately needs.

The purpose of this module is to enable English students alongside Creative Writers to develop a grounding in effective writing practices and core competencies of textual production. Students will develop an understanding of the different stages of textual production, from prewriting, research, planning and outlining, to drafting, feedback and editing, polishing and submission, as well as an understanding of core writing mechanics. This module will enable students to explore and practice differing conventions of textual production across academic disciplines and in the creative industries. Its focus ranges from non-fiction modes such as the academic essay, critical and reflective writing, to screenplays and fiction manuscripts.  Any machine in the future will be able to put words together in some form of narrative, but this module trains you to become writers, with critical minds and creative practices, which is a very different thing.

Brunel is proud of its West London location and celebrates being a campus university in one of the most exciting cultural capitals in the world today. London is defined by its modernity, its complex history, its challenges, its diversity and, of course, by its global centrality. This module aims to introduce students to the study of the literature of London, introducing key critical approaches and engaging with texts from a range of cultural backgrounds. Students will learn about London’s rich and varied literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of London in literature; and reflect on creative practice and literary production in relation to London’s diverse past and present.

The purpose of this module is to study selected texts in light of their historical, political, cultural, religious, and other contexts. Through the study of a selection of five texts that belong to a particular period or genre, the module will introduce students to the historicist study of literature while at the same time training them in close textual analysis.

Brunel campus is a global majority campus with over 150 different countries represented and well over 150 different languages spoken. It is located in West London, one of the most culturally diverse places on earth, and is just down the road from Heathrow airport. Since its inception, postcolonial studies and diversity in general have always been at the forefront of our programs. This truly innovative module aims to introduce students to the study of World Literature, presenting key critical approaches and engaging with texts from contrasting cultural locations. Students will learn about rich and varied world literary traditions and forms; acquire theoretical perspectives; build a world literary critical vocabulary; engage in debates about the meaning and role of world literature and reflect on creative practice and literary production in world contexts.

This modular block introduces key critical and cultural concepts in modern literary studies and gives students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of these ideas through engagement with a wide range of texts.

This module prepares students for the Dissertation by introducing them to some methodological and theoretical issues that historians encounter in the practice of history. Students are introduced to ways in which historians have engaged with other disciplines. They reflect upon public history and why history matters in today’s society by tracing developments in historical method and examining different approaches to history.

When you leave university – what happens next? What are your career aspirations? How will you realise them? In this module, you will gain confidence and experience in using your unique-to-you interests and skills to stand out from the crowd. At its heart are four professional activities, which you will choose, complete, and reflect on. These could range from work experience in a field that interests you, to volunteering, learning a language, completing business or skills development courses, publishing a website, blogging, or gaining editorial or media production experience. You are encouraged to think creatively: providing that each activity is developmental for you and your tutor agrees, the sky is the limit.

Africa is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the modern world. More often than not, its history is presented as a long series of human disasters, conflict, and disorder. However, Africa’s modern history is also one of resistance, and dynamic and creative responses to changing circumstances. This module examines Africa’s multifaceted history since about 1800.

This module introduces students to a range of contemporary British and Irish fiction, developing knowledge of the variety and complexity of contemporary writing and its relation to social and cultural context. The module examines texts which employ a range of themes, forms, and styles. It asks what we mean by the term ‘contemporary’ and encourages analysis of the relationship between texts and the historical moments in which they are produced and consumed.

This module explores the rise and fall of Fascist Italy through political, socio-cultural, economic and military perspectives, among others.

This module examines the concept and development of insurgency and counter-insurgency from the classical period to the present, with an emphasis on the post-1789 period, especially the post-1945 wars of decolonisation. The module will conclude with the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ and current examples of insurgency and counter-insurgency. 

This module familiarises students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and demonstrates how politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in political debate. Students are encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by everything that’s going on in the world? You are not alone! Written during the opening decades of the twentieth century, the texts we study on this module were processing a modern world that was changing rapidly and radically. There were new technologies and ideas, empires were in decline, religion was losing its hold, and established class and gender relations were disintegrating. Then the First World War happened, followed by revolutions, a global pandemic, economic depression, and the rise of fascism. Writers responded in different ways. Some, like TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield, experimented with content and form, confronting topics that were formerly taboo or using language and structure that shattered convention. Others, including Daphne du Maurier, Dorothy L Sayers, and Christopher Isherwood, used more ‘realist’ styles to work through their anxieties and concerns. Examining novels, short stories, poetry, and experimental artistic manifestos – by these writers and more, and from diverse perspectives – we will explore a modern world in crisis.

The political events of the late eighteenth century – the American War of Independence, French Revolution, and Napoleonic wars – dramatically changed lives, ideas, and aesthetics in Britain. From the mid 1770s to the mid 1820s, the period we now call Romanticism signalled profound changes in the form and content of literature. Working in a range of genres, including the novel, pamphlets, poetry, and philosophical, satirical, and travel writing, Romantic writers responded to a set of urgent, ethical, aesthetic, and environmental changes. In the module we consider the ‘first generation’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake) and ‘second generation’ Romantics (Shelley, Byron, and Keats), and important political writers such as Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Godwin. Alongside these now-canonical names we read a diverse range of women and Black writers who contributed just as significantly to key Romantic debates: Anna Aikin, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Ottobah Cugoano, Ouladah Equiano, Hannah More, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Robinson, Ignatius Sancho, Mary Shelley, Helen Maria Williams, Dorothy Wordsworth, Phillis Wheatley, and Anne Yearsley

This module examines how war has affected the world and how warfare has been affected by broader societal, political, ethical and economic changes in the period from the classical period to the present. It analyses key aspects of warfare, placing them in the broader context of history across a broad span of time and studies change in warfare associated with ‘revolutions in military affairs’ (RMAs). It contrasts ‘total war’ what is termed ‘limited war’ in the period before the French Revolution and after 1945, gives a sophisticated understanding of the evolution of military thought, including in the non-European world with a view to providing a global survey of the subject and not just from a Euro-centric perspective and provides the historical and strategic thought to contextualise wargaming.

This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

• To examine the tactics and strategies that have been employed by oppressed groups and minorities to secure civil rights, focusing on a specific group or groups as examplars
• To examine the campaigning strategies and networks developed by activists.
• To scrutinise the ideas and goals of a movement for emancipation through analysis of primary source documents.
• To give students understanding of the nature of opposition to the granting of civil rights, and the extent to which it was overcome
• To give students awareness of the continuing issues left to be resolved after successes in the struggle were achieved
• To acquire a sound understanding of the historiography on this topic.
• To develop reading, writing, and analytical skills.

Postcolonial writing often comes out of difficult circumstances. Its writers sometimes risked everything to publish what they needed to say. These are the new pioneers of Literature in English, whose works would inspire and define the writings of the future. In this module, we get to grips with key concepts encountered in postcolonial studies, which have been developed to investigate phenomena including colonialism and resistance, multiculturalism and globalization, racism, and Islamophobia. Using these, we will explore works by important and fascinating writers, whose texts show a variety of perspectives on colonialism and its legacies, including those of imperialists and the peoples they tried to suppress.

Shakespeare died over 600 years ago, but his works maintain their relevance, captivating readers and audiences worldwide. In this module, you will study Shakespeare at an advanced level, in greater depth, and with an emphasis on the types of study skills required for advanced critical work in the fields of ‘book history’ and ‘performance studies.’ Using advanced methods of analysis, you will explore early modern texts, both in their original contexts and in their subsequent manifestations in print. You will consider language, performance, and the visual layout of text – both in Shakespeare’s time and in the present day. Overall, you will gain an understanding and experience of the concept of the Shakespearean text as an artefact and art form, one constantly evolving through criticism, editorial intervention and performance

This module aims to introduce the main areas of debate surrounding the origins, course and consequences of the First World War and to introduce the range of different interpretative and historiographical tools used by historians in categorizing and understanding the First World War.

The nineteenth century was an era of innovation. Technological invention, scientific breakthrough, geographical discovery, imperial expansion, the abolition of slavery, the rise of the middle classes, the emergence of mass culture, and an ever-stronger push for women’s equality. Within this culture, the novel – as its name suggests, a literary genre founded on newness – came of age. Through the chronological study of a representative selection of five texts, the module will introduce the key generic elements of the nineteenth-century novel, and chart changes in their deployment over the course of the century. Particular attention will be paid to Realism and Gothic. In addition to narrative form, a range of social and cultural contexts will be suggested as a means of accounting for, and understanding, textual features. Stress will be placed throughout on close textual analysis.

This module provides students with an understanding of the historical emergence of two of the central concepts of modern political thought: the state and revolution, or the constitution of political order and the process of fundamental political transformation. We study the development of these concepts in some of the major events of political modernity, from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

• To introduce and guide students on the research and writing process for dissertations or Major Final Projects
• To support students to develop their reading, writing, and analytical skills for their dissertation.
• To introduce students to the techniques used in designing and executing a research project in their discipline.
• To encourage students’ critical engagement with their chosen dissertation topic

This module develops your ability to plan, design and deliver a research project in your subject area, communicate your ideas clearly and critically evaluate how well your project works.

The English Special Project offers third year students a crucial opportunity to undertake extended independent research, developing their critical and creative skills to investigate a topic of their own choice. Pursuing subjects as diverse as short stories or screen writing, sci fi or romance, and Shakespeare or Salman Rushdie, students construct a 9,500-word dissertation across the course of the year. Guided by regular tutorials with a personal supervisor, this module represents a key stepping stone in their academic career, a culminating moment in the completion of their undergraduate trajectory.

• Develop a wide familiarity with the writings of the nominated writer/s, who will be selected on the basis of the Module Leader’s research interests and academic specialism; 
• Develop a sophisticated understanding of the socio-historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks used in the analysis of the period in which the nominated writer/s were active aesthetically and politically; 
• Engage students with the issues pertaining to the application of such theoretical frameworks to the study of the field; 
• Develop an understanding of the historical context and reception of the nominated writer’s/writers’ work, and how a narrative and/or a mythology about the writer’s/writers’ life/ lives and work was developed and disseminated through criticism, biography, self-reflective writing, cultural reception. 

This module explores representations of identity within a selected body of literature, chosen each year to reflect the Module Leader’s expertise and research interests. It introduces students to key debates in identity studies, enables them to recognise how these ideas are expressed and developed through literature, and develops their ability to apply theories of identity to texts such as plays, poetry, biographies, short stories and novels.

Shaped by industrial revolution and radical social reform, the Victorian period was a time of enormous historical and literary change, introducing key values, institutions, and narratives still shaping modern Britain. Typical of Brunel’s innovative approach to more traditional period studies, this module examines three integral 19^th century ‘case studies’, each focused on a specific aspect of Victorian literature and culture. Case studies may include ‘Working-Class Voices, ‘Crime and Sensation’, 'Victorian Black Lives' and ‘Women and Society’. Its aims are to explore some of the ways in which Victorian literature might encode or challenge particular cultural assumptions; to analyse the relationships between literary forms and social contexts; and finally, to consider how the knowledge of the period may contribute to the interpretation of texts produced during this time.

This module involves reading several key works by Marx, culminating in several weeks on Das Kapital

Brunel English has consistently been a national leader in contemporary literary studies for over two decades. We have a complex and increasingly global understanding of what contemporary literatures can and should mean. In this module we consider the period of the latter half of the 20th century starting with the Second World War which had a major impact on almost every aspect of 20^th century life, with radical implications for society, politics, economics, and culture. This module confronts this shifting global context with a focus on both established and experimental writers, developing students’ awareness of Post-War and Late Twentieth-Century Literatures via a focus on fiction’s negotiation with history. The module foregrounds key sensibilities of this period through an initial discussion of postwar life and art, then moves forward to explore the emergence of the ‘postmodern’ condition. It concludes by examining the experimental fiction of various leading British writers, also considering the influence of late-twentieth century theorists, such as Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Judith Butler.

This module examines the evolution and expansion of the transatlantic slave trade, exploring the motives and wider forces that shaped the development of Atlantic slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It analyses the main features of slave society in the British West Indies and investigates the origins of abolitionism in Britain, before exploring the factors that led to the abolition of both the slave trade and slavery in Britain and elsewhere in the nineteenth century. It also familiarises students with key historiography on slavery, the slave trade and abolition in the Atlantic World, and introduces students to a wide range of sources on the slave trade and slavery.

When it was first launched the Violence module caused quite a stir with its combination of contemporary critical theory and inspiration from the Finnish phenomenon-based learning, leading to a feature on the module in the TLS.  Violence, sadly, represents a shaping force in contemporary life, a site or mode of influence dominating government, society, culture, and the media. This module aims to develop students’ awareness of violence and its representations within modern culture, enlisting a variety of cultural materials, literary, visual, conceptual and technological. It asks a series of questions as regards violence and coercion as they surface in everyday lives, splitting its focus between conceptual understanding and textual readings. Part one, ‘Bioviolence and Biopolitics’, looks at biopolitical theories of power, force, violence, coercion and exclusion as introduced by philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Georgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito. By contrast, part two, ‘Discourses of Coercion 2015-2020’, applies the theory to case studies taken from contemporary events, such as #Blacklivesmatter, Grenfell Tower, Coronavirus, Zombies and of course serial killers.

We survey the Arab-Israeli conflict, covering three overarching themes: 1) Origins of the Conflict; 2) Evolution of the Conflict; and 3) Peace and its Limits. The module covers the origins of both national movements, the development of the conflict under British rule, the major Arab-Israeli wars, peace agreements, and it ends with recent events. 

This module explores the military, political and socio-economic events and developments of the Second World War. Students will focus on the historiography and cultural significance of the war up to the present day and will adopt an “international history” approach by building its analysis around the interaction of states and peoples in this global conflict.

In this module students will explore the role of violence and conflict in the course of eastern Africa’s modern history. Students will gain an in depth understanding of the ways in which violence and conflict have influenced economy, society and polity in the modern era, through a consideration of broad themes, such as age, ethnicity, and resources, as well as specific case studies taken from across the region.