Literature and Languages
Postgraduate Applicants
Taught Degrees
A wide range of taught postgraduate courses are available in the Department. You will find links to more detailed descriptions of each course below.
M.Litt in Creative Writing
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M.Litt in English Language & Linguistics
The MLitt in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Stirling offers students the opportunity to study the intricate workings of language and explore its central role in human society.
The programme is wide-ranging and extensive, centred around the study of the English language, and covering both theoretical approaches to linguistics and the application of these techniques in a broader cultural context.
You will gain a thorough grounding in the way language works, with a particular focus on the structures and varieties of English, and will develop advanced skills to help you explore more detailed topics according to your own interest, such as: the study of Old and Middle English; the historical and social development of the English language; how children learn language and how it is represented in the brain; how language is used to reflect and construct social and individual identity; how language use in different contexts influences its development and change; and how complex language originated and evolved in humans.
The programme is suitable both for students keen to further their knowledge of English language and linguistics, and for those who plan to move on to advanced research.
The MLitt is available for both full-time (12 months) and part-time (24 months) study.
Further details on the MLitt in English Language & Linguistics
M.Litt in English Studies
The singularity of the artwork is not simply a matter of difference from other works (what I term “uniqueness”), but a transformative difference, a difference … that involves the irruption of otherness or alterity into the cultural field. Derek Attridge |
The M.Litt in English Studies is a year-long (full-time) taught Masters programme; the M.Litt can also be studied part-time, over a period of 27 months.
Students are not required to specialise in a particular area of English Studies. Instead, you will be able to pursue your interests in reading and writing about a range of literary texts.
What is unique about the Stirling M.Litt is a core module that situates students’ reading of primary texts within the most recent thinking on what Derrida calls ‘this strange institution, literature’. Beginning with a consideration of the various attempts to define the elusive category of ‘the literary’, the module asks students to look critically at a number of key concepts such as close reading, genre, historicism, aesthetics and the ‘singularity’ of literature. You will have the opportunity to consider the relationship between literature and cultural studies, the notion of a radical aesthetic, literary value, the impact of new technologies and digitization, and the place of literature within the university and the world at large.
The aims of the M.Litt are:
• to give students a grounding in the research methodologies and critical practices of the discipline of English Studies at an advanced level
• to explore in detail a selection of key literary texts in historical and other contexts
• to cater to individual students’ interests by providing option modules in topics such as “Popular Fiction”, “Tragedy”, and “Literature, Publishing and Society”
• to address fundamental questions about the nature of literature and ‘the literary’
• to give students the experience of participating in a lively community of other taught masters research studentFurther details on the M.Litt in English Studies
M.Litt in the Gothic Imagination
Emily Dickinson |
Contemporary culture is characterised by nothing if not a reawakened interest in the Gothic, the aesthetic discourse of horror and terror which arose and flourished in the wake of the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764. From the current vogue for horror film, the heightened preoccupation with terror and monstrosity in the media, the popular success of writers such as Anne Rice and Stephen King, or even manifestations of an alternative Gothic mode in fashion, music and lifestyle, Western modernity, one might say, has found itself in the clutches of a dark Gothic ‘renaissance’. And as the case of Japanese Manga, Asian horror cinema and the popularity of writers such as S.P Somtow suggest, this monstrous Gothic rebirth has assumed significant global dimensions too.
The M.Litt in the Gothic Imagination at the University of Stirling offers an intensive historical, critical and theoretical investigation of this curious cultural phenomenon, from the rise of Gothic in the aesthetic and political discourses of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through its nineteenth-century British and American fictional manifestations, and into a range of contemporary global, literary and non-literary contexts.
The Stirling M.Litt in the Gothic Imagination is one of the few taught Masters degree programmes available worldwide that is devoted exclusively to the dynamic, ever-expanding field of Gothic studies. While aspects of the Gothic feature prominently on undergraduate university curricula across the globe, the Stirling programme is unique in the advanced levels of specialisation, skill and expertise with which it aims to equip its graduates. Long acknowledged as a centre of excellence for the study of the Gothic, the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling has been proud in the past to welcome students from as far afield as Greece, Spain, India, Luxembourg, Indonesia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Mexico, Argentina, Canada and the USA. The course structure is flexible too, and course content in any academic year varies according to particular student interests and needs. Under the close guidance and mentorship of internationally acknowledged experts in the field, the programme offers students the opportunity to explore all possible manifestations of the Gothic aesthetic, be it literary, filmic, dramatic or otherwise. The programme’s ultimate success is attested to by the fact that a high proportion of its graduates proceed to Doctoral research in related fields, rendering the Department of English Studies at Stirling a rich, vibrant and supportive Gothic research community. This, together with the excellent library resources, makes the University of Stirling an ideal locale for intensive postgraduate research in the exciting field of Gothic studies.
Further details on the M.Litt in the Gothic Imagination
M.Litt in Modern Scottish Writing
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Scotland’s national status ‘is both dangled before us and tantalisingly withheld’, according to the poet Don Paterson. How does Scottish literature appear in this light, in these political and historical circumstances? In modern Scotland the provisional and unstable nature of all writing powerfully resonates with actual cultural conditions: familiar critical questions about language, representation and canonicity are not merely theoretical, but urgently relevant to ongoing debates.
The MLitt in Modern Scottish Writing explores modern Scottish literature and intellectual history, focusing on the specific contribution of Scottish writing to 'cultural modernity'. Writers and themes studied will include:
- The ‘Scottish invention’ of historical fiction, from Walter Scott and James Hogg to James Robertson
- Language, voice and authenticity from Robert Burns to Liz Lochhead and Suhayl Saadi
- Scotland and the romance of Empire, from John Buchan and R.L. Stevenson to Irvine Welsh
- The possibility of poetic tradition, from Ossian to Hugh MacDiarmid to Edwin Morgan
- Scotland’s extended modernism, from Sorley MacLean to James Kelman and Janice Galloway
- The portrayal -- and production -- of Scottish landscape and cultural territory, from Johnson and Boswell to Alan Warner
- Postmodernity and the ‘postnation’ in Muriel Spark and Alasdair Gray
We focus on writing from Robert Burns, Walter Scott and James Hogg, through Victorian and late 19th-century writers (Galt, Buchan, Stevenson) to the modernist experiments of Hugh MacDiarmid and his followers, and on to provocative twentieth-century experiments in language, textuality and historical re-telling (Welsh, Galloway, Kelman, Spark, Gray, Saadi, Robertson). No previous experience in studying Scottish literature is required. The course aims to provide students with the literary grounding and critical vocabulary to consider how Scotland became estranged from the normative cultural modernity to which its own Enlightenment and Romantic literature made crucial contributions.
Further details on the M.Litt in Modern Scottish Writing
M.Litt in Postcolonial Studies
Wole Soyinka, 'New York, U.S.A.' |
This course allows students to explore postcolonial writing and theory through a focus on what is perhaps the subject's most central and exciting category: diaspora. The movement and migration of cultures has challenged the ways in which we understand 'Culture'. If literature is still largely conceived in terms of fixed national traditions ('English Literature'; 'American Literature'), then this course will encourage students to develop new ways of thinking about the location of culture, beyond the confines of the nation-state. The programme has an international focus, concentrating on the border narratives to have emerged both within and between South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Americas and the United Kingdom. Students will have the opportunity to consider diaspora culture within both colonial and post-colonial contexts, with topics ranging from the middle passages of the slave trade to the new technologies of globalisation. The programme is informed by an interdisciplinary focus and students will be able read 'high' cultural documents alongside popular discourses such as film, photography and music. The work of key literary figures such as Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, Bharati Mukherjee, Hanif Kureishi as well as the work of diaspora intellectuals like Paul Gilroy, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Clifford, Deleuze and Guattari will be available for study.
Further details on the M.Litt in Postcolonial Studies
M.Res in Renaissance Studies
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The M.Res in Renaissance Studies is offered jointly with the University of Strathclyde, under the auspeices of the Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies.
The SINRS M.Res is aimed at those who are interested in the literary and broader cultural aspects of the Renaissance and who wish to acquire a more specialised knowledge of this rich domain of study.
The aims of the course are to:
• Introduce students to key areas of critical debate in Renaissance Studies by comparing different canonical accounts of the period
• Explore the distinctiveness of Northern Renaissance culture, including Scotland, and consider how historical and theoretical paradigms might be adapted to reflect this
• Develop a critical understanding of the variety of genres, media and pratices employed by Renaissance writers and visual artists
• Equip students with the technical skills necessary for conducting independent research in Renaissance Studies, presenting information and constructing scholarly arguments.
Further details on the SINRS M.Res in Renaissances Studies
M.Litt in Publishing Studies
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The M.Litt in Publishing Studies is offered via the Stirling Centre for International Publishing & Communication located in the Department of English Studies.
The M.Litt programme instructs students in the best current practice in publishing throughout the world. It is an international course, reflecting the increasingly global quality of modern publishing enterprises, and covers the complete publishing process, from efficient planning, through editorial and production, to marketing and publication management and project development
Further details on the M.Litt in Publishing Studies can be found here.
M.Sc in International Publishing Management
Our M.Sc, the first in the world focussing exclusively on the future leaders of publishing, has only a dozen places available each year. Could you fill one of them? |
The M.Sc in International Publishing Management is offered via the Stirling Centre for International Publishing & Communication
This one-year programme provides the vitally important training needed by upper-tier managers in the international publishing industries. The course will:
• analyse issues of strategic management within the international publishing industries
• apply theoretical and conceptual knowledge derived from real-world case studies of the communication industries
• research and construct effective case studies derived from the international publishing industries
Each course member will learn how to make effective strategic decisions relating to their roles within their companies.
Further details on the M.Sc in International Publishing Management can be found here.