School of English

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."  Mark Twain

I look forward to welcoming you to the School of English at Sussex. The School engages with the cultural, historical, creative, performed, theoretical, and linguistic aspects of English as a world language and literature.

Comprising over 44 faculty, the School offers opportunities for study with some of the most innovative and exciting scholars in Britain in a supportive and welcoming environment. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise 95 per cent of the School's research was rated as internationally recognised. From the University's foundation, English at Sussex has been a shaping force in virtually all aspects of the discipline, with current and past faculty forming something of a 'who's who' of English studies of modern times.

Language is the foundation for the investigations we undertake about the human place in the world. The School pursues diverse intellectual directions to understand how language works. We employ creative and critical methods to probe imaginative literary writing across a wide cultural and historical range. We re-conceptualise the nature of dramatic performance. We explore the premises that account for linguistic phenomena. We investigate the intersections of the verbal and the visual in film and photography. We consider how theoretical ideas about gender and sexuality, psychoanalysis, and the relationship between language and reality challenge our perceptions of what and how we know.

Through our teaching we seek to develop independent, informed and questioning thinkers. In a world of increasing complexity, the School believes that a trained critical imagination - one that grasps the importance of the analytic and the evocative, the poetic and the explanatory - is vital to negotiate the intricacies of both self and society.