An English degree at Sussex helps you become a critical and imaginative reader and thinker, giving you the opportunity to engage with the huge variety of ways writers use words: from Anglo-Saxon epic to current avant-garde poetry; from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; from theoretical works on language and culture to developing your own creative writing.
The School of English brings together a number of areas of inquiry: English and American literature, Drama, and English language and linguistics. These disciplines share a commitment to understanding and rethinking the ways in which language creates and shapes our world : imaginatively, structurally, and in performance.
The School combines world-leading research with a rich investment in innovative, creative teaching. Our tutors and lecturers are distinguished scholars, many of whom have won academic prizes and research awards. Our degrees are widely recognised as inventive, exciting and challenging, inviting interdisciplinary study. Students in the School of English come from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages, from all parts of the United Kingdom, the rest of Europe, Africa, Australasia and The Americas. The wide-ranging expertise of our faculty allows us to cater for interests across virtually all areas of English and American literature, contemporary critical and cultural theory, and new developments in drama, English language and linguistics.
Alongside a large faculty who are successfully redefining the boundaries of their fields on both national and international stages, the strengths of the School of English are reflected in the number of thriving research centres operating within it. These centres represent strong interdisciplinary interests, bringing together colleagues and students from a variety of disciplines. In addition, drama has established strong ties with several cutting edge theatre and performance companies in both the UK and abroad. Currently, the Centres are the Centre for Early Modern Studies, the Centre for Literature and Philosophy, the Centre for Modernist Studies, the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence and the Centre for Visual Fields. Links to all of the research centres can be found on the right.
