2025/26 entry Applications also open for 2024/25
BA (Hons) English, Media and Cultural Studies
Why study English, Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University?
- Extensive range of texts studied, from Milton, Woolf and Dickens to Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro and Arundhati Roy
- Taught by leading scholars who have published books on many topics, from Sherlock Holmes to Irish rock music and teenage bedroom culture
- Large range of option modules to choose from depending on your interests
- Work placement opportunities in Britain and overseas in teaching, public relations, international development, charities, tourism, the media, creative and heritage sectors
- 97% of students surveyed said academic support on our English courses was good or very good (National Student Survey 2024)
- 95% of students surveyed said the teaching staff on our media courses were good at explaining things (National Student Survey 2024)
About your course
The BA (Hons) English, Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University gives you an opportunity to look at how literary and media texts address their audiences. Through gathering expertise in critical appraisal, analysis of case studies and independent study, students learn to communicate effectively in interpersonal, formal and digital environments.
You will achieve this through the study of media institutions, publishing and journalism, as well as forms of applied communication in practical areas including, public relations, social marketing, fiction, documentary, video games, magazines and new media. You will also examine cultural trends and practices, including popular music, youth culture, world literature, neo-Victorianism, social media, travel, and fashion. Your study of literature will be defined by an eclectic choice of texts, from the classics to popular fiction.
We are interested in traditional authors such as William Blake, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf and in contemporary writers such as Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro and Arundhati Roy. Alongside British literature we study American literature and culture and Irish, postcolonial and world writing.
We introduce you to many different types of text such as detective novels, children's fiction, fairy tales, ballads, prison testimonies, African American slave narratives, travel writing, protest literature, diaries and letters. Our diverse portfolio of options lets you explore new topics and choose your own pathway through the degree as your interests develop.
The programme is designed with your future employability in mind, so you are encouraged to develop transferable skills such as research, formats for professional writing, communication, problem solving, teamwork and independent working.
Some modules ask you to engage in collaborative blogging, contributing to online archives and improving your digital skills. Although we focus on theoretical and critical study, we incorporate applied case studies and work-related learning into many aspects of the programme, including a period of work experience with a local or national organisation.
"I didn't know what I wanted to do when I started University, people kept asking me but I just wanted to study. In the third year I had done so many things I was ready to start applying for communications jobs and found the role that was right for me."
Professional accreditation/links
This course has strong links with local, national and international media organisations providing excellent opportunities for student work placements and research projects. They include: Sky Sports, Liverpool Echo, Juice FM, Odeon Cinema, Everyman Theatre, The Royal Court, National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, TATE Liverpool and the BBC.
Fees and funding
There are many ways to fund study for home and international students
Fees
The fees quoted above cover registration, tuition, supervision, assessment and examinations as well as:
- library membership with access to printed, multimedia and digital resources
- access to programme-appropriate software
- library and student IT support
- free on-campus wifi via eduroam
Additional costs
Although not all of the following are compulsory/relevant, you should keep in mind the costs of:
- accommodation and living expenditure
- books (should you wish to have your own copies)
- printing, photocopying and stationery
- PC/laptop (should you prefer to purchase your own for independent study and online learning activities)
- mobile phone/tablet (to access online services)
- field trips (travel and activity costs)
- placements (travel expenses and living costs)
- student visas (international students only)
- study abroad opportunities (travel costs, accommodation, visas and immunisations)
- academic conferences (travel costs)
- professional-body membership
- graduation (gown hire etc)
Funding
There are many ways to fund study for home and international students. From loans to International Scholarships and subject-specific funding, you'll find all of the information you need on our specialist funding pages.
Employability
The career paths followed by our graduates are varied in nature.
Alumni can be found working in advertising, marketing, public relations, museums, arts administration, media production, the publishing industry, retail, leisure and charitable organization management, educational administration, accountancy, the social services, teaching and the Civil Service.
Student Futures - Careers, Employability and Enterprise Service
A wide range of opportunities and support is available to you, within and beyond your course, to ensure our students experience a transformation in their career trajectory. Every undergraduate curriculum includes Future Focus during Level 4, an e-learning resource and workshop designed to help you to develop your talents, passion and purpose.
Every student has access to Careers Zone 24/7, LJMU's suite of online Apps, resources and jobs board via the LJMU Student Futures website. There are opportunities for flexible, paid and part-time work through Unitemps, LJMU's in-house recruitment service, and we also offer fully funded Discovery Internships.
One-to-one careers and employability advice is available via our campus-based Careers Zones and we offer a year-round programme of events, including themed careers and employability workshops, employer events and recruitment fairs. Our Start-Up Hub can help you to grow your enterprise skills and to research, plan and start your own business or become a freelancer.
A suite of learning experiences, services and opportunities is available to final year students to help ensure you leave with a great onward plan. You can access LJMU's Careers, Employability and Start-up Services after you graduate and return for one-to-one support for life.
Go abroad
LJMU aims to make international opportunities available to every student. You may be able to study abroad as part of your degree at one of our 100+ partner universities across the world. You could also complete a work placement or apply for one of our prestigious worldwide internship programmes. If you wanted to go abroad for a shorter amount of time, you could attend one of our 1-4 week long summer schools.
Our Go Citizen Scheme can help with costs towards volunteering, individual projects or unpaid placements anywhere in the world. With all of these opportunities at your feet, why wouldn’t you take up the chance to go abroad?
Find out more about the opportunities we have available via our Instagram @ljmuglobalopps or email us at: goabroad@ljmu.ac.uk.
A life-changing experience
There's so much more to university than just studying for a degree.
What you will study on this degree
Please see guidance below on core and option modules for further information on what you will study.
Further guidance on modules
Modules are designated core or optional in accordance with professional body requirements, as applicable, and LJMU’s Academic Framework Regulations. Whilst you are required to study core modules, optional modules provide you with an element of choice. Their availability may vary and will be subject to meeting minimum student numbers.
Where changes to modules are necessary these will be communicated as appropriate.
Level 4
Core modules
Media Texts
20 credits
This module will enable you to analyse the social, cultural and political importance of the mass media in precise ways. Centrally positioned as leisure resources and tools of citizenship, the media have a major impact on how we understand our world, ourselves and other people. At the same time, the media cannot be taken as simply offering windows on the world; the image of reality that we get from television, radio, music, press, the internet and film is more accurately understood as a construction whose version of reality is influenced as much by economic, political and aesthetic factors as it is by the world in which we live. This module will introduce you to a range of methods for studying media texts, and their relevance for an understanding of contemporary socio-cultural debates.
Literary and Cultural Theory
20 credits
The aim of this module is to provide you with an understanding of the basic strands of literary and cultural theories, such as feminism, Marxism, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis. It will allow you to explore and evaluate these theoretical perspectives through practical application to literary texts as well as to other primary sources.
Media Institutions and Audiences
20 credits
This module introduces you to the study of the institutions that produce our media and the audiences that consume them. We will consider broadcast media institutions and examine the tensions that are created when trying to serve the public interests of citizens and the private interests of shareholders. Current institutional case studies include the BBC and the birth of radio, ITV and the early years of television and the rise of Sky in an era of apparent deregulation. We will then move on to examine what audiences may take from their consumption of media and how we can go about researching them. We will consider a range of topics including early research into media effects, uses and gratifications theory, the encoding/decoding model and ethnographic studies of domestic media consumption.
Professional Writing
20 credits
Professional writers produce content for audiences. On this module you will develop your writing skills to a professional standard to produce an original portfolio of writing, containing a feature, review, news story and podcast. You will also critically reflect upon your work and the influence of your practice on the content you have produced. On the module you will learn about: attribution and referencing; editing and proof-reading; writing to meet a brief; various forms of journalistic practice, e.g. print, online, podcasts.
Liverpool Legacies
20 credits
This module will introduce you to Liverpool as a global city with a rich literary heritage, tracing the creativity and multiculturalism which has shaped, and continues to shape, our world-famous city. You will read a range of works authored by or about Liverpudlians and consider the historical, social, and geographical contexts for writing in and of the city.
Critical Keywords for English
20 credits
This module introduces you to the study of English literature at undergraduate level, through set texts drawn from different historical periods and covering fundamental literary categories (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama). It will give you a grounding in the key terms that you will need in critical writing, such as form, narrative, character, and irony, and in the skills needed for English studies, including close reading, reading quickly and efficiently, and researching and writing essays.
Level 5
Core modules
Public Communication
20 credits
Public Communication is a work-based learning module about advertising and its role in awareness raising, communicating information and persuasion. We will introduce you to the study of advertising as persuasive communication and you will examine both theoretical and popular responses to advertising as a cultural form and develop critical analytical skills to deconstruct it. We will then move on to the world of Public Information Campaigns (PICs), those not-for-profit campaigns that encourage us to eat healthily, to drive soberly and to engage in sexual activity safely. You will be briefed by a real-world client about a Public Information Campaign they want you to develop. You will then work in campaign teams to design and then pitch a campaign in response to the client brief.
Optional Modules
Body, Mind and Soul: seventeenth-century literature and culture
20 credits
The aim of this module is to introduce you to a range of seventeenth-century writings in their historical and cultural context to enable you to recognise different forms and genres used in the period. This module will also facilitate an understanding the concept of the Early Modern and issues of historical change and continuity.
Public Relations
20 credits
The module examines a distinct field of communications practice, that of public relations but its not just a module for students with PR in mind as a career option. Were all familiar with the concept and the language of spin. PR practices have become pervasive: tactics that we see people engaging in all the time, from politicians to reality TV celebrities. This module enables you both to critique what goes on in the name of public relations and also to make creative use of its tools and practices. Central to the module is the idea of producing effective communication in our case, effective, persuasive writing. We think about how organisations go about doing this: how they cope with challenges that threaten their reputation, and how they take advantage of opportunities to build up their reputation.
Popular Journalism: Research in Practice
20 credits
Magazines are a popular form of journalism, read by many thousands and often staffed by freelance writers. In this module you will both critically evaluate journalistic practice, in contemporary publications like Vogue, Cosmopolitan and When Saturday Comes, and produce professional standard copy for real-world audiences. The module focuses upon contemporary industry practice with an emphasis on lifestyle and feature journalism. You will examine a range of issues that influence the production and consumption of popular journalism. You will undertake research for your own professional-standard portfolio of original reviews and features which meet the professional demands of real-world publications.
Poetry Matters
20 credits
This module enables you to develop a critical vocabulary to enhance your understanding of poetry. You will be introduced to a range of poetry from different periods, in different forms and from different cultural locations. Alongside this, you will learn to identify the aesthetic qualities of different poetic traditions.
Postcolonial Writing: Power, Art and Protest
20 credits
This module will introduce you to the field of postcolonial studies through a selection of literary and critical works. It will introduce the debates on the relationship between art, politics and culture at the heart of postcolonial literary criticism.
Mediating Popular Culture
20 credits
From Spotify to podcasting, the rise of digital media technologies has seemingly led to an ever-expanding range of ways to engage with popular culture. This module questions how far these developments have led to transformations in our experiences of popular cultural texts. For example, how is engaging with a podcast different to listening to radio? In what ways has YouTube transformed our consumption of music videos? Paying particular attention to popular music, the module explores the implications of the mediation of music across a range of technological forms, including: radio, podcasting, video games, television, narrative and documentary film, YouTube and social media.
Romanticism: Revolution, Reaction and Representation
20 credits
In this module, you will develop an understanding of the manifestations of Romanticism in nineteenth-century literature to assess the cultural afterlife and importance of Romanticism and its modes. You will explore the connections between politics, social history, and literary culture in Britain during a period of social instability and intense and rapid changes in many areas of life at home and abroad.
Short Cuts: Writing in Brief
20 credits
The aim of this module is to analyse a wide variety of short writing from the post-Second World War era to develop skills of close reading and textual analysis. You will also explore the relationship between short writing and modernity/contemporary culture.
The Victorians: Realism and Sensation
20 credits
Within this module, you will extend your familiarity with a range of Victorian texts including novels, poetry and essays. You will explore how the Victorian age was characterized by rapidly developing scientific discourses and popular interest in them and understand how contemporary understanding of genre and cultural prestige were inherited from the Victorian period.
English Independent Study
20 credits
This module promotes independent learning activities to give you an opportunity to pursue their own research-informed projects. This module promotes key skills relating to Level 5 work identifying a set of aims or key questions exploring a body of published literature relevant to the project, and effectively communicating information, arguments and analysis.
Study Year Abroad - EMCS
120 credits
The aim is to provide students with an additional year of study at an approved overseas partner that will complement their programme at LJMU. This is an additional year of full-time study at an approved higher education institution. The modules to be studied must be agreed in advance, and must be appropriate for the student's programme of study. Assuming successful completion of this year, mark-bearing credit will be awarded by the Faculty Recognition Group. The grade conversion scale to be used will be made available in advance of the year abroad.
Study Semester Abroad English and Media and Cultural Studies
60 credits
The aim is to provide student with a semester of study at an approved overseas partner that will replace one semester of their LJMU programme at level 5.This is a semester of full-time study at an approved higher education institution which will replace one semester of level 5 study at LJMU. The modules to be studies must be agreed in advance, and must be an appropriate substitute for the modules being replaced. Assuming successful completion of this semester, mark bearing credit will be awarded by the Faculty Recognition Group. The grade conversion scale to be used will be made available in advance of the year abroad.
Life Stories: Telling Tales and Keeping Secrets in Auto/Biographical Writing
20 credits
The aim of this module is to introduce you to the diversity of auto/biographical writing. It will equip you with the critical vocabulary and analytical tools to explore and analyse modern life-writing. You will understand key critical topics relating to life-writing, including the relations of subjectivity and form; the intersections of gender, race, class and embodiment; the role of memory and nostalgia; narrative strategies of confession and secrecy.
Forms of Slavery
20 credits
This module examines slavery from a long historical interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. It will analyse a range of 'slave texts' such as autobiographies, novels about slavery, abolitionist poetry, and contemporary film, to interrogate the diverse ways in which slavery has been represented historically, and contemporary debates around that history.
Gender Trouble
20 credits
This module will develop your understanding of the relationships between gender, sexuality, and literature. Building on the feminist theory you will encounter in your first year, you will explore literature’s role in the developments of the sexual politics and gender norms of Western society and culture since the nineteenth century and up to the present day.
Writing Race in Britain
20 credits
This module focuses on post-1948 literature about ethnic diversity in Britain. You will explore a tradition of writing by and about post-colonial migrants and their British-born children, including works of prose, poetry, and drama, and read these texts in relation to contemporary debates about multiculturalism, race and (anti-)racism, and British identity and society.
Words and Music
20 credits
This module helps to gain a deeper understanding of poetic form and how it relates to musical form. It also helps to understand how politics and poetics inform lyrics. You will also gain knowledge of how gender, race, intertextuality, and acculturation processes can influence musical production.
Working Class Writing
20 credits
This module covers a range of working-class literary traditions and genres from the nineteenth century to the present. You will examine the relationship between literary form and social class, consider how working-class writers have appropriated and developed particular genres, and explore the intersections between class and other markers of identity.
Theories 2.0
20 credits
Building on your encounters with key strands of critical theory in your first year, this module offers you the opportunity to further explore contemporary theoretical concepts and ideas, including postmodernism, posthumanism, gender and queer theory, and critical race theory.
Level 6
Optional Modules
Feminist Fictions: Contemporary Women’s Writing and the Politics of Feminism
20 credits
This module will extend your understanding of contemporary women's fiction and its relationship to feminist theory, politics, and practice. You will be equipped with an advanced understanding of the complexity and diversity of the history of feminism and feminist theory from the 1960s to the present day.
English Independent Study
20 credits
This module will give you an opportunity to pursue your own intellectual interests to undertake an independent academic study, working on your own initiative and building strong time management skills.
Our House: Representing Domestic Space
20 credits
The aim of this module is to analyse domestic space as an important aspect of contemporary culture, to familiarize you with a range of disciplinary and philosophical traditions which have focused upon domestic space.
Digital Writing
20 credits
This module is about becoming an excellent writer who can produce content suited to the digital environment. This environment can vary hugely, including writing for personal and professional purposes, on behalf of organisations, and as produced by a range of individuals, from global celebrities to ordinary people blogging from their bedrooms. We will critically and creatively explore notions of voice, originality, community, and the desire to share, and examine how audiences are attracted to content in an increasingly competitive attention economy. The module involves tasks where you will be analysing, producing, and editing writing suitable for a range of careers and audiences.
C21: British Fiction Now
20 credits
This module will extend your knowledge of the diversity and range of British writing in the twenty-first century in order to explore key events that shape literary culture in Britain today.
Race in America
20 credits
You will learn important critical and theoretical views relating to racial formations, racial identities, and racism in American history to develop cultural and historical understanding of the dynamics of race in post-war America.
English and Media and Cultural Studies Dissertation
40 credits
The EMCS Dissertation is one of the core directed modules which you must choose for your Level 6 Portfolio. The module requires you to undertake a sustained piece of academic analysis from Media and Cultural Studies and/or English and present this in a proper academic form. This allows you to achieve a thorough understanding of theoretical and methodological issues relevant to your chosen subject of study.
Shakespeare
20 credits
This module will reinforce the ability to critically analyse texts in close detail to examine a range of Shakespeare's plays in the context of their original cultural production.
Terrorism and Modern Literature
20 credits
Terrorism and Modern Literature will establish terrorism as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in modern literature (1880s to present), and examine key instances in which the language and concept of terror is at issue.
Mediating Diversity
20 credits
This module aims to equip you to explore, interpret, and analyse representations of diversity and diverse identities in the media. The module will present a range of themes and topics alongside case studies of media and cultural texts that represent and mediate key issues in contemporary culture to enable students to critically engage with diverse representations in media, culture and communication texts. Case studies will be used to explore key themes and issues. These currently include: representations of democracy in the UK/US; reporting conflict(s); representing Pride & LGBTQIA Communities; femininities & masculinities; the Black Lives Matter movement; #MeToo and gender power relations; disability and migration.
Vamps and Villains: Exploring Gothic Fiction
20 credits
This module will examine the genre of Gothic fiction as it has developed over two centuries to explore the cultural, historical and intellectual contexts that shape the moment of its production.
Social and Digital Media
20 credits
This module seeks to explore social and digital media theory and practice. We will examine the rise of new platforms an+C985:C1597d forms of storytelling and then examine the stories that they frame and narrate about various groups and individuals. We will engage in some social and digital media practice which will critically interrogate its own construction and challenge modes of representation commonly found in popular social and digital media spaces. We will explore social and digital media through a range of case studies, including: Hashtag activism; Game streaming; Fan commentaries; Instagram influencer marketing; ephemeral media forms: TikTok and Snapchat; online sports talk and the political economy of Twitter.
World Literature: Writing from the Periphery
20 credits
This module will introduce the concept of 'world literature' through a selection of texts from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries in relation to the rise and expansion of a global modernity. You will examine on-going critical debates around key areas of research in the global humanities: a singular modernity, the politics of translation, the periphery and the world system.
Screen Media
20 credits
Within this module you will have the opportunity to develop critical, analytical and evaluative skills appropriate to the textual study of screen media. You will begin to identify and critically evaluate the discursive roots of given examples drawn from screen media. This will further provide you the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of screen media narratives and their historical contexts.
Britain, Brexit, Europe and the Media
20 credits
This module highlights the relationships between politicians and the media and the role of the media as a primary space for political agenda setting. The module will look at the political structures in Britain, including what devolution has meant for people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It will encourage you to engage closely with the political economy of the news media in Britain and the role that it plays in political communication. It will address the historically often jingoistic and patriotic nature of the English-based national news media and how that led to the grotesque caricatures of other nationalities and identities from the 19th century onwards. This ultimately led to the Euro-sceptic tradition in British newspapers which developed from the 1980s, just a decade after Britain had entered Europe, to the heated media and public debates leading up to Britain’s exit from the European Union following the Brexit referendum of 2016.
Media and Cultural Industries
40 credits
This module will enable you to identify and develop transferable skills relevant to the enhancement of employability. You will foster initiative through an evaluative approach to the assessment of work experience or career planning in the context of academic career planning. This will require you to produce a sustained and evidenced piece of critical reflection.
Transitions: Identities in the Interwar Years
20 credits
This module examines shifting identities and the intersections of class, sexuality, gender and regionality in British literature of the interwar years. It moves across popular, middlebrow and experimental fiction and looks at poetry, non-fiction and magazine publishing as a means of examining the changing cultural formations of the period.
Violence in Nineteenth-Century Literature
20 credits
This module will establish violence as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in nineteenth-century literature (1800-1900), and examine key works in which the issues of class, empire and gender were explored by authors of this period in relation to conflict and crisis.
Green Victorians
20 credits
This module explores how Victorian writers responded to environmental changes. It examines key historical and intellectual developments shaping debates about the natural world in the Victorian period; you consider links between the historical past and current modes of environmentalism.
Mind Readings
20 credits
This module explores the representation of the mind and mental states in literary texts, with a focus on madness and unconventional states of mind. It introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of literature alongside psycho-sciences, including psychoanalytic literary criticism, the history of psychiatry, medical-model psychology, and cognitive literary studies. Students will question established discourses and modes of representing madness and the mind in contemporary culture, challenging scientific and medical authority.
Space and place: travel writing at home and abroad
20 credits
This module enhances students' understanding of non-fiction travel literature, encouraging nuanced interpretations and effective long-form writing. It explores travel narratives' reflection of encounters with otherness, reassessment of the familiar, and their link to human identity and the non-human world. Indicative texts range from Mary Wollstonecraft to Robert Macfarlane, spanning from the late-eighteenth to the early 21st century.
Developments in Contemporary Writing and Publishing
20 credits
This module delves into contemporary literature, covering fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and explores current debates in the English-speaking publishing world. It emphasizes how production circumstances shape contemporary texts and encourages reflection on the writer's role in modern society. Topics include women's history in the era of #Me Too, climate fiction, diversity in publishing, gender identity, freedom of speech, 'cancel culture,' and pandemic writing. Students will engage with works by various authors such as Hallie Rubenhold, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and Akwaeke Emezi.
Modern Fiction and Environment Crisis
20 credits
This module focuses on modern fiction focused on the urgent environmental crises with which we are now obliged to reckon. Some of the issues you will engage with on this module include climate, the environment as a concept, the non-human, and the alternative approaches to nature represented in indigenous narrative systems.
Black Lives in American Literature
20 credits
This module explores writing by and about African Americans from the mid-twentieth century to the present; you will consider how Black writers and artists have contested racial injustices, articulated new identities, and identified grounds for solidarity and alliance.
Migrants to the Screen
20 credits
This module focuses on recent works of transnational fiction that have been adapted for the screen. Drawing on literary studies, film studies, adaptation studies, and postcolonial studies, you will examine novels about migrants alongside their film adaptations, considered as ‘migrants’ from page to screen.
Popular Fiction and Publishing
20 credits
This module poses the question: why is popular fiction popular, and how does it maintain that popularity across a range of narrative media, including books, films, TV, comics and even games? This module offers you the opportunity to analyse storytelling across a variety of commercial narrative media forms. We currently examine two case studies - the genres of detective fiction and the thriller and consider how they adapt to changing cultural climates from the 19th century to the present day. We also analyse the production and consumption of popular fiction within the context of creative, economic and institutional imperatives, to see how publishers, film companies, and other makers and distributors of media predict and fail to predict - what will be popular.
Teaching and work-related learning
Excellent facilities and learning resources
We adopt an active blended learning approach, meaning you will experience a combination of face-to-face and online learning during your time at LJMU. This enables you to experience a rich and diverse learning experience and engage fully with your studies. Our approach ensures that you can easily access support from your personal tutor, either by meeting them on-campus or via a video call to suit your needs.
Teaching is delivered via lectures, seminars, workshops, online activities, peer presentations and film screenings and fieldwork trips (for example, to Copenhagen) and you are expected to spend a significant proportion of your time in private study, using our virtual learning environment, as well as our archives and special collections. Online discussion boards allow you to further debate, with your tutors and peers, ideas that arise in the classroom.
Work-related Learning
The programme is designed with your future employability in mind, so you are encouraged to develop transferable skills such as research, formats for professional writing, communication, problem solving, teamwork and independent working.
Some modules ask you to engage in collaborative blogging, contributing to online archives and improving your digital skills. Although we focus on theoretical and critical study, we incorporate applied case studies and work-related learning into many aspects of the programme, including a period of work experience with a local or national organisation.
We offer a range of different options in English and further opportunities in Media and Cultural Studies for work-based and work-related learning. For instance, if you choose the Working in the USA module, you will have the opportunity to spend a month or more in the United States at the end of your second year.
Past students have worked for the editor of Vogue, an advertising agency in New York, a National Park in the Appalachian Mountains, an architect's office in California and theme parks in Florida.
Support and guidance
Dedicated personal tutor, plus study skills support
If you study English, Media and Cultural Studies at LJMU, you will join a friendly and stimulating environment in which you will be encouraged to achieve your full potential in both your academic work and your future career. We pride ourselves on our informal and supportive relationship with our students.
You will be assigned a personal tutor who will be responsible for your academic and personal progress throughout the course. Along with this scheduled one-to-one support, you will receive regular feedback and guidance from your module tutors on your research, writing and study skills.
Assessment
Assessment varies depending on the modules you choose, but will usually include a combination of exams and coursework.
We believe that all students perform differently depending on how they are assessed, which is why we use a combination of assessment methods. In fact this course has received national recognition for its innovative assessment methods. They include exams (seen and unseen), essays, log books and diaries, group and individual presentations, research projects, response papers, blogs, organised debates and seminars.
Throughout your course you will be given regular constructive feedback and have opportunities to discuss this with your personal tutor and course lecturers. This is particularly useful in helping you to identify your strengths as well as the areas where you may need to put in more work.
Course tutors
Our staff are committed to the highest standards of teaching and learning
Dr James Whitehead
Programme Leader
I am currently Programme Leader for English and am happy to field any questions about our degree programme from current or prospective students. My research and teaching interests include Romanticism and its legacies, psychiatry and other psy-sciences in relation to nineteenth and twentieth-century literature, and life-writing (autobiography and biography) about mental health and illness. My core undergraduate teaching includes 5111ENGL Romanticism and 5108ENGL Poetry Matters. I am also very happy to discuss postgraduate study and research plans in these areas.
The English Literature programmes at LJMU integrate the study of the authors, texts, and periods you'd expect in high-quality courses with dynamic new approaches including eco-criticism and the study of world literature. Our friendly team of expert teaching staff are research-active and are keen to help our students in their next steps.'
Facilities
What you can expect from your School
The School of Humanities and Social Science offers an ideal environment in which to expand your knowledge and horizons. Situated on Mount Pleasant in the new ‘Knowledge Quarter ' of Liverpool, the School is home to five subject areas: English, History, International Relations, Sociology, and Media, Culture & Communication. It has a lively programme of cross-disciplinary research seminars, conferences, visits from international scholars and public events. Research from the School is recognised nationally and worldwide.
Entry requirements
Please choose your qualifications below to view requirements
Grades/points required from qualifications: BCC-BBB (104-120)
Qualification requirements
GCSEs and equivalents
A levels
BTECs
Extended Diploma: DMM
Access awards
International Baccalaureate
Acceptable on its own and combined with other qualifications from a relevant subject
OCR Cambridge Technical
Extended Diploma: DMM
Irish awards
Acceptable on its own and combined with other qualifications from a relevant subject
T levels
International requirements
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IELTS
6.0 overall with no component below 5.5, taken within two years of the course start date.https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/study/courses/international-entry-requirements
Further information
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DBS, Occupational Health requirements
Can this course be deferred?
Yes
Is a DBS check required?
No
Please Note: All international qualifications are subject to a qualification equivalency check.
Application and selection
Securing your place at LJMU
UCAS is the official application route for our full-time undergraduate courses. Further information on the UCAS application process can be found here https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/study/undergraduate-students/how-to-apply.
All applicants should possess a real enthusiasm for literature and for finding out about the societies and ideas that produce and infuse it.
We'll be looking for evidence that you've read widely outside your set-texts, and are interested in writing in a range of different eras, mediums and cultures.
You'll have the ability to express your own ideas and opinions in a clear and lively way, as well as the desire to listen to and learn from other peoples' views, which may be very different from your own.
You'll have great analytical skills, so that you can critically assess all kinds of forms of communication, including adverts, films, website, television, print-media and literature.
We'll also expect confident research and IT skills, so that your work is well-informed and well-presented.
The university reserves the right to withdraw or make alterations to a course and facilities if necessary; this may be because such changes are deemed to be beneficial to students, are minor in nature and unlikely to impact negatively upon students or become necessary due to circumstances beyond the control of the university. Where this does happen, the university operates a policy of consultation, advice and support to all enrolled students affected by the proposed change to their course or module.
Further information on the terms and conditions of any offer made, our admissions policy and the complaints and appeals process.