Postgraduate Studies in English Literature: an Introduction

Glasgow's Department of English Literature has a large and thriving graduate community, with over a hundred registered students at present. The Department's national standing is indicated by the high percentage of students supported by British funding councils and trusts; our international reputation is confirmed by the growing number of graduate students who come to us from beyond the UK.

The Department has a long-established international reputation in such topics as Renaissance Studies, Romanticism, Victorian Literature and Modernism/Post-Modernism, and has also developed as a major centre for American Literature and Creative Writing. Recent appointments have strengthened these areas and extended the Department's range of teaching and research interests in new directions. The strengths of the Department are extraordinarily diverse, and manifest themselves in wide-ranging research on literary, intellectual and social history, critical theory, creative writing, translation studies, cultural studies (including work on the role of print, and on scientific writing), film history and theory, and popular culture.

The Department is also active in interdisciplinary research. There are strong links both with our cognate departments in the School of English and Scottish Language and Literature (English Language, Scottish Literature) and elsewhere in the University (eg. with Theology, Film and TV Studies, Theatre Studies, Modern Languages, History of Art etc.). The Department also plays a key role in the special interdisciplinary Centres which exist within Glasgow's Faculties of Arts and Divinity (eg. the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Centre for European Romanticism, the Centre for Literature and Theology, the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies etc.).

Graduate research in the Department reflects this diversity. Topics under investigation range from Renaissance and Restoration drama and poetry through eighteenth-century literature, Romanticism and Victorian studies to Modernism, American studies, contemporary writing, literary theory and cultural studies. Research in film, in collaboration with the Department of Film and TV Studies, covers documentary and the British Surrealists, and adaptations of Shakespeare. Medieval English studies are offered primarily in collaboration with the Department of English Language. Many of these projects are informed by theory and/or by the interdisciplinary perspectives which the structure of School and Faculty actively encourages. 

We offer graduate study in the following areas:

• Medieval, Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Literature
• Eighteenth-Century (Long), Romantic and Victorian Literature
• Modernism, Postmodernism and Theory
• Colonial & Postcolonial Studies
• American Literature
• Creative Writing
• Translation