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

Publishing

Publishing at Bath Spa University offers a creative, hands-on practical course, which combines cutting-edge innovation with traditional core skills in the context of a fast-changing international industry. You will learn how to make professional-standard books as well as magazines, websites, promotional material, and multimedia content for social media platforms.

Publishers are expert at identifying talent and trends; developing ideas, stories and information into engaging print and digital formats; and finding an audience for these within a sustainable business model. Collaboration, creativity and high-level content-making skills are essential components of the publishing industry and are central to this BA programme.

Through a series of live briefs and exciting collaborative industry projects you will think on your feet and use your initiative in developing original new products. You follow a meticulous project management process using design-thinking, market and competition research, brand development, prototyping, audience profiling and user testing, marketing strategy, and a final pitch presentation.

You will be guided by your tutors to graduate from the course as a highly employable creative with excellent transferable skills and a clear sense of your own expertise, all demonstrated by your stunning digital portfolio and specialist industry CV.