MA, 1 year full time/2 years part time
Subject overview
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Sussex is ranked among the top 20 universities in the UK for English in The Times Good University Guide 2013 and in the top 30 in the UK in The Complete University Guide 2014.
In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 95 per cent of our English research was rated as recognised internationally or higher, and over half rated as internationally excellent or higher.
English at Sussex has a well-established international reputation for producing research that develops and extends the boundaries of the subject.
English runs a wide range of innovative MA degrees, taught by faculty working at the forefront of English studies.
We support research centres such as the Centre for Modernist Studies and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, which focus on interdisciplinary research and teaching, and attract high-profile speakers from around the world.
We have a diverse and thriving community of postgraduate students who contribute to an outstanding research culture.
Programme outline
This MA enables you to study in depth the work of theorists and thinkers only superficially encountered at undergraduate level. There is a strong emphasis on the writings of Marx, Freud, Derrida, Adorno and Cixous, as well as on a range of contemporary writers in queer theory and postcolonialism.
This MA also provides you with an excellent foundation for doctoral study in English, philosophy or another humanities discipline.
This MA is associated with the Centre for Literature and Philosophy.
Assessment
You are assessed by four 5,000-word term papers and a dissertation of 15,000 words.
We continue to develop and update our modules for 2014 entry to ensure you have the best student experience.In addition to the course structure below, you may find it helpful to refer to the 2012 modules tab.
Full-time courses can also be followed part time over two years, with taught seminars in the autumn and spring terms.
Autumn and spring terms: you take four from a list that may include Derrida • Issues in Queer Theory • Psychoanalysis and Creative Writing • Psychoanalysis and the Image • Style: The Necessary Failure • The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory • Theory in Practice.
Summer term: supervised work on the MA dissertation.
Current modules
Please note that these are the core modules and options (subject to availability) for students starting in the academic year 2012.
Critical Issues in Queer Theory
30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1
This module provides a forum for addressing some of the most compelling issues facing queer studies today through examining queer theory both as an academic discipline and as a possible political praxis for radical social change. Queer theory mediates in culture between normative ideologies and material practices, between intellectual enquiry and social activism, and between text and context. Unlike its lesbian/gay studies counterpart, often concerned with the politics of sexual difference alone, queer theory operates as a critical lens for (re-)reading the complexity of the cultural worlds we inhabit and as a potential site for social transformation, exposing and critiquing (hetero)normativity as it is imbricated within a range of social norms, categories, and institutions, including, but not limited to, sexuality, the body, the family, gender, censorship, racial and national fantasy, reproductive politics, health care, and the mobility of 'queer', as a materiality and as a discourse, across the globe. Initial lines of enquiry will address how queer theory, with its investment in the endless proliferation of social differences, might enable new understandings of subjectivity, child development and maturation, gender, race, history, imperialism, and postcolonial nationalism.
You will consider the ways in which queer theory functions as a mode of analysis and as a strategy of opposition for reading the signifying practices that constitute culture by challenging the heteronormative social order embedded in most standardised accounts of the world. This implies attention not only to sexuality as an axis of theoretical investigation, but to the persistent pressures of other normalising regimes pertaining to race, gender, social class, nationalism and geopolitical spatialisation, citizenship, and the effects of globalisation without losing sight of specific cultural, historical, and local contexts in any particular instance. Primary theoretical texts will be read alongside cultural texts, where appropriate, including literature, film, music, visual art, clinical texts, and legal documents, in order to demonstrate the approaches and contingencies of queer theoretical work.
Derrida
30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1
This module provides an introduction to the work of Jacques Derrida. This entails an engagement with a range of fields and discourses, including philosophy, politics, ethics, psychoanalysis, film and, above all perhaps, literature. Each seminar considers a particular topic or aspect of Derrida's work. In each session we will focus in depth on a specific text by or about Derrida plus, where appropriate, other texts (literary and non-literary).
Psychoanalysis and the Image
30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1
This module turns to psychoanalysis as a powerful way of thinking about the idea of the image, and the politics of vision, in contemporary cultural life. You will read a selection of texts in psychoanalysis including Freud, Lacan, and Winnicott. This will help you to explore ideas of violence and spectacle, sexuality and power, identity and hatred, and to reflect on psychoanalytic understandings of vision and visuality.
Style: The Necessary Failure
30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1
Style is what draws us to works of art, but it is also something that we find very difficult to define or describe. It is understood variously as belonging to groups or to individuals; as being difficult or easy; as something superficial to the work of art, or else as the substance of its depths; as either apolitical, or as the sign and guarantor of political commitment. This module will pursue the problem of artistic style across a number of periods and artistic media, including literature, visual art, and cinema. Readings will include works of aesthetic theory and philosophy, film theory, literary theory and criticism, and art history. We will think about style as a historically shifting category of artistic experience by engaging a number of case studies in which style becomes an object of contention, controversy, or disagreement.
The Migrant Writer: Postcolonialism and Creativity
30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1
`To write is to travel', according to Iain Chambers, and the module will use this idea to explore the displacement of the writing subject within the historical context postcolonial migration. We will analyse the work of key immigrant writers in relation to central concepts in literary and cultural criticism, including: hybridity and dialogical discourse, the development of `border languages', mimicry and the migrant subject, homelessness and the creation of new cartographies, and diasporic and non- originary histories. In the process the centrality of migration, exile and displacement to a range of critical and theoretical approaches will be highlighted.
Theory in Practice: Readings in Contemporary Theory and Literature
30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1
What is 'theory'? Although it goes in and out of fashion with the speed of rising or plunging hemlines, the use of theory, literary theory, or literary criticism as a way to read literary texts is always useful. And contrary to popular opinion, it's not the application of an arcane or secret language to garner a secret knowledge. Rather, it is a self-conscious and informed method of analysing the presuppositions behind the apparently natural way we read; indeed, sometimes it's a method of reading in itself, derived from a philosophy or theory of language, as is the case with Bataille or Derrida. Theory sounds dull, but really it's a creative practice, as is reading, which Walter Benjamin likened to telepathy.
This module seeks, through a number of case studies, to address a number of critical paradigms that have proved significant in the post-war period. In particular, notions of materialism, materiality and historicity will be set in tension with ideas about relativism, deconstruction and 'play' as very different ways of construing some iconic American texts. Alongside the close reading of primary and secondary texts, discussions in class will be directed towards such subjects as: the construction/reflection of subjectivity in language and discourse; the relation of the literary text to sociality; the effects and efficacy of modernist/avant-garde/postmodern literary techniques; and the writing of race, gender and class.
Entry requirements
UK entrance requirements
A first- or upper second-class undergraduate honours degree in a relevant subject.
Overseas entrance requirements
- Overseas qualifications
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If your country is not listed below, please contact the University at E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk
Country Overseas qualification Australia Bachelor (Honours) degree with second-class upper division Brazil Bacharel, Licenciado or professional title with a final mark of at least 8 Canada Bachelor degree with CGPA 3.3/4.0 (grade B+) China Bachelor degree from a leading university with overall mark of 75%-85% depending on your university Cyprus Bachelor degree or Ptychion with a final mark of at least 7.5 France Licence with mention bien or Maîtrise with final mark of at least 13 Germany Bachelor degree or Magister Artium with a final mark of 2.4 or better Ghana Bachelor degree from a public university with second-class upper division Greece Ptychion from an AEI with a final mark of at least 7.5 Hong Kong Bachelor (Honours) degree with second-class upper division India Bachelor degree from a leading institution with overall mark of at least 60% or equivalent Iran Bachelor degree (Licence or Karshenasi) with a final mark of at least 15 Italy Diploma di Laurea with an overall mark of at least 105 Japan Bachelor degree from a leading university with a minumum average of B+ or equivalent Malaysia Bachelor degree with class 2 division 1 Mexico Licenciado with a final mark of at least 8 Nigeria Bachelor degree with second-class upper division or CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0 Pakistan Four-year bachelor degree, normally with a GPA of at least 3.3 Russia Magistr or Specialist Diploma with a minimum average mark of at least 4 South Africa Bachelor (Honours) degree or Bachelor degree in Technology with an overall mark of at least 70% Saudi Arabia Bachelor degree with an overall mark of at least 70% or CGPA 3.5/5.0 or equivalent South Korea Bachelor degree from a leading university with CGPA of at least 3.5/4.0 or equivalent Spain Licenciado with a final mark of at least 2/4 Taiwan Bachelor degree with overall mark of 70%-85% depending on your university Thailand Bachelor degree with CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0 or equivalent Turkey Lisans Diplomasi with CGPA of at least 3.0/4.0 depending on your university United Arab Emirates Bachelor degree with CGPA of at least 3.5/4.0 or equivalent USA Bachelor degree with CGPA 3.3-3.5/4.0 depending on your university Vietnam Masters degree with CGPA 3.5/4.0 or equivalent If you have any questions about your qualifications after consulting our overseas qualifications, contact the University at E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk
English language requirements
IELTS 7.0, with not less than 6.5 in each section. Internet TOEFL with 95 overall, with at least 22 in Listening, 23 in Reading, 23 in Speaking and 24 in Writing.
For more information, refer to English language requirements.
Visas and immigration
Find out more about Visas and immigration.
For more information about the admissions process at Sussex
For pre-application enquiries:
Student Recruitment Services
T +44 (0)1273 876787
E pg.enquiries@sussex.ac.uk
For post-application enquiries:
Postgraduate Admissions,
University of Sussex,
Sussex House, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
T +44 (0)1273 877773
F +44 (0)1273 678545
E pg.applicants@sussex.ac.uk
Related programmes
Fees and funding
Fees
Home UK/EU students: £5,5001
Channel Island and Isle of Man students: £5,5002
Overseas students: £13,0003
1
The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
2
The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
3
The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
To find out about your fee status, living expenses and other costs, visit further financial information.
Funding
The funding sources listed below are for the subject area you are viewing and may not apply to all degrees listed within it. Please check the description of the individual funding source to make sure it is relevant to your chosen degree.
To find out more about funding and part-time work, visit further financial information.
Chancellor's International Scholarship (2014)
Region: International (Non UK/EU)
Level: PG (taught)
Application deadline: 1 May 2014
25 scholarships of a 50% tuition fee waiver
Fulbright-Sussex University Award (2014)
Region: International (Non UK/EU)
Level: PG (taught)
Application deadline: 15 October 2013
Each year, one award is offered to a US citizen for the first year of a postgraduate degree in any field at the University of Sussex.
Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust for Postgraduate Study (2014)
Region: UK
Level: PG (taught), PG (research)
Application deadline: 1 October 2013
The Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust are offering bursaries to Postgraduate students following any postgraduate degree courses in any subject.
Santander Scholarship (2014)
Region: International (Non UK/EU)
Level: PG (taught)
Application deadline: 1 May 2014
Two scholarships of £5000 fee waiver for students studying any postgraduate taught course.
USA Friends Scholarships (2014)
Region: International (Non UK/EU)
Level: PG (taught)
Application deadline: 3 April 2014
Two scholarships of an amount equivalent to $10,000 are available to nationals or residents of the USA on a one year taught Master's degree course.
Faculty interests
Faculty research interests are described briefly below and on the right. For more detailed information, visit the School of English. The following list includes all the English faculty, and other contributors to English MA degrees.
The journals Renaissance Studies, Textual Practice, The Oxford Literary Review and The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory are edited within the School of English.
Dr Sara Jane Bailes Contemporary experimental theatre, live art and visual practices, ideology and performance.
Dr David Barnett Post-war European drama and theatre, post-Brechtian political theatre.
Professor Peter Boxall Modern and contemporary fiction and drama.
Dr Sara Crangle Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies. 20th-century literature.
Professor Brian Cummings 16th- and 17th-century literature and history.
Dr Sue Currell American literature and culture 1890-1940, 20th-century mass culture.
Dr Alistair Davies Modernism and post-modernism, 20th-century English and American literature.
Dr Denise DeCaires Narain Postcolonialist writing; feminist cultural theory; contemporary women’s writing in English, especially poetry.
Dr Matthew Dimmock 16th- and 17th-century literature and history, national identity, Islam.
Professor Andrew Hadfield Renaissance literature and politics, Britishness, Shakespeare, Spenser, and national identity.
Dr Doug Haynes European and American modernism, postmodernism.
Dr Margaret Healy Renaissance literature and culture, the political stage, Shakespeare, Dekker, medicine and literature.
Professor Tom Healy Head of School. 16th-and 17th-century writing and cultural history.
Dr Vicky Lebeau The convergence of psychoanalysis, literature and cinema; and feminist theory.
Dr William McEvoy British playwriting and directing; theatre, writing and ethics.
Dr Daniel Kane 20th-century American literature, the avant-garde, poetry since the 1960s.
Dr Maria Lauret American feminist fiction and theory; race and ethnicity.
Professor Stephanie Newell West African literature and popular culture, postcolonial theory.
Dr Rachel O’Connell Late 19th- and early 20th-century British literature; gender, queer, and disability studies.
Dr Catherine Packham 18th-century literature and philosophy; political economy and moral philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment.
Dr Jason Price Popular theatre histories and practices; politics and performance.
Dr Vincent Quinn Lesbian and gay studies, the history of sexuality, 18th-century studies, Irish studies, and the history and theory of biography.
Dr John David Rhodes Italian cinema, modernist and avant-garde cinemas of Europe and the US, queer art cinema.
Professor Nicholas Royle Modern literature and literary theory, especially deconstruction and psychoanalysis; the uncanny.
Martin Ryle 19th- and 20th-century fiction; the politics of ‘culture’, with especial reference to education; and topographical and travel writing.
Dr Minoli Salgado Postcolonial literature and theory, memory and migrant identity, the short story, Rushdie, and Ondaatje.
Professor Lindsay Smith 19th-century literature and painting; photography in Victorian culture.
Dr Keston Sutherland Contemporary and 20th-century English and American poetry; Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory.
Professor Jenny Bourne Taylor 19th-century literature and culture; literature and science; illegitimacy and the family.
Dr Pamela Thurschwell Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies. Psychoanalysis, 19th- and 20th-century interest in the supernatural.
Professor Norman Vance 19th-century literature, religion and society; Anglo-Irish literature.
Professor Marcus Wood Satire in the romantic period, the representation of slavery, and colonial and postcolonial literature and theory.
Careers and profiles
Our graduates have gone on to careers in teaching and education, publishing, website production and marketing, journalism and writing, the charity sector, and NGOs. A number of our graduates go on to further study and careers in academia.
Sarah's student perspective
‘I chose Sussex as I was keen to study critical theory alongside literary practice, and Sussex’s top reputation for contemporary theory and expertise in 20th-century literature meant I was really well supported in both these areas. With the extensive range of specialised courses on offer and freedom to choose them from across programmes, I could tailor my MA to meet my exact interests.
‘I can’t imagine a better environment in which to make the challenging transition from taught studies toward independent research. Seminars were engaging – often heated – and formed a supportive space to exchange ideas and stake out your own critical voice. Resources are really accessible; alongside a well-stocked library with 24-hour access and all the electronic journals you could want, the University also has Special Collections with original papers from authors like Woolf and Kipling, which can lend a real edge to your work!
‘Outside the classroom, frequent guest seminars hosted by research centres allow you to tap into international cutting-edge research, while departmental events, from short fiction ‘open mic’ nights to poetry readings, are a great chance to unwind with fellow students and staff over a drink.’
Sarah MacDonald
MA in Critical Theory
For more information, visit Careers and alumni.
School and contacts
School of English
Over the last 30 years, English at Sussex has played a key role in shaping the direction of the discipline in Britain and throughout the world. The School of English offers you exciting potential for engaging with English as a world language and literature.
School of English, Postgraduate Admissions,
University of Sussex, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9QN, UK
T +44 (0)1273 678468
E englishpg@sussex.ac.uk
School of English
Postgraduate Open Day 2013
4 December 2013, 1pm-4pm
Bramber House, University of Sussex
- talk to academic faculty and current postgraduate students
- subject talks and presentations on postgraduate study, research and funding
- choose from our exciting range of taught Masters and research degrees
- find out how postgraduate study can improve your career prospects
- get details of our excellent funding schemes for taught postgraduate study.
To register your interest in attending, visit Postgraduate Open Day.
Can’t make it to our Postgraduate Open Day? You might be interested in attending one of our Discover Postgraduate Study information sessions.
Discover Postgraduate Study information sessions
If you can’t make it to our Postgraduate Open Day, you’re welcome to attend one of our Discover Postgraduate Study information sessions. These are held in the spring and summer terms and enable you to find out more about postgraduate study and the opportunities Sussex has to offer.
Visit Discover Postgraduate study to book your place.
Other ways to visit Sussex
We run weekly guided campus tours every Wednesday afternoon, year round. Book a place online at Visit us and Open Days.
You are also welcome to visit the University independently without any pre-arrangement.