Program Overview

At Bath Spa University many of our undergraduate programmes can be combined, so you don’t have to limit yourself to one subject. If you choose to study a combined award then in Year One you’ll start by studying both subjects in equal depth, then from Year Two you can choose whether to continue with an equally joint course, or a Major/Minor route.

English Literature

This programme provides a broad-based education in English Literature that offers you a wide curriculum across historical periods, literary genres, and across disciplines. Under the general rubric of introducing you to ‘English Literature in the World’, the curriculum is defined by interdisciplinarity, internationality, and a literary engagement with worldly issues such environmental crisis and digital technologies. Studying English at Bath Spa you will encounter not only familiar, ‘classic’ writers and texts – Shakespeare, Austen, Joyce – but also the less familiar, such as postcolonial writing, European literatures in translation and modern experimental poetry as well as ‘popular’ genres such as the Gothic and crime fiction.

The variety of modules offered reflects the capaciousness and openness of the discipline, which allows you to choose modules that will develop your own interests and passions whilst encouraging you to find and explore the connections between the different texts, periods, theories and approaches that you will encounter. This interdisciplinary breadth as well as disciplinary depth of the curriculum encourages you to see English Literature as an encompassing rather than an exclusive discipline, and in turn prepare you for a more expansive and inclusive view of the world around you.

These interdisciplinary, transnational and digital foci draw on staff expertise in key collaborative areas of research within the College of Liberal Arts. Our established specialisms in Environmental Humanities, Medical Humanities, Material Cultures and Book History directly inform our offering across all three levels.

You can study English Literature in a variety of ways

• Study English Literature as a Single Honours award
• Combine English Literature with another subject as part of a Joint or Major / Minor award

Philosophy and Ethics

The study of Philosophy and Ethics as part of a Combined Award enables you to explore diverse responses to fundamental questions as such as what does it mean to be human, what is truth and how ought one think and act? It provides opportunities to examine radically different ways of interpreting and living in the world and encourages you to reflect on your own beliefs, values and identity. It also offers opportunities to understand and assess ethical standards, theories and their implications. You can use the ideas and concepts fundamental to the study of philosophy and ethics in the context of your other subject, exploring this through the perspective of relevant theories, methods and approaches.

We study philosophy and ethics from a global perspective, exploring both western and non-western thinking. You will be able to apply your philosophical and ethical knowledge and skills to contemporary contexts and issues, and use a range of analytical and evaluative tools in examining ‘real world’ concerns, such as ecology, gender and warfare

Philosophy and Ethics contributes to your development as global thinkers who can interpret and represent the beliefs and values of others with respect, empathy and integrity. It provides opportunities to become skilled in argument, analysis and evaluation; to become practised in working collaboratively, creatively and independently; to develop and employ imagination to engage with unfamiliar worldviews; and to become self- reflective and self-critical, recognising possibilities for individual and collective change.