Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English Literature and Creative Writing (with Sandwich Year)

at University of Hertfordshire - De Havilland Campus United Kingdom

Our Creative Writing course explores and develops your creative writing practice. We offer a stimulating and supportive place in which to explore your ideas, hone your craft and understand a wide variety of texts. Our creative writing modules are taught by lecturers who are themselves award-winning practitioners and who bridge the gap between creative and academic approaches to writing. They include:

• Poetry lecturer Dr Wayne Holloway-Smith, winner of the Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and Seamus Heaney Prize nominee.
• Fiction and Non Fiction writer, Dr Lorna Gibb, author of five books, winner of the Granta Memoir prize and shortlisted for the Sperber Biography prize in the US.
• Dramatists Simon Vinnicombe and Drew Pautz, with writing credits that include the whole gamut of scriptwriting, from work in current production as feature films to Eastenders to the Old Vic and Royal Court. They have international reputations with performances, in original and translated versions, in Canada, Europe and the United States.
• Fiction and non-fiction writer, Helen Gordon, a former editor of Granta, with two acclaimed books and numerous short publications.

Over the three years you can choose specialist creative writing modules in poetry, creative non-fiction, drama, short story writing and prose fiction. As well as fostering your own creative writing skill, you will study a huge range of different texts, both literary and commercial, to gain understanding of what makes a piece successful as well as have an overview of the industry marketplace.

Recent successes for our students include short stories published in Bandit and AnotherLenz magazines and poetry published in Rising and international magazine Poetry London.

In your first year, an underpinning core module, Becoming a Writer, will introduce you to genres and forms and examine the universalities of dialogue, plot and language. A second core module, Identity and Contemporary Writing, presents some of the most exciting new writing as a model for your own work, while optional modules enable you to specialise in writing for the screen, develop your critical skills with texts in different genres, or explore twentieth century culture and society.

Other core modules will develop your writing practice in creative non-fiction, short stories, poetry and writing for the stage, while a range of options will allow you to choose between literary analysis, 20th century English literature or writing a historical documentary.

For your final year, your particular creative interest can be channelled into a long piece of writing, which can be poetry, prose or drama. This work will be discussed and reviewed in tailored workshops that will allow you to both explore and develop your own voice. The third year also offers a wide range of core and option modules that look at different fiction genres, including fantasy, crime, horror and romance, as well as writing serial drama, late Victorian literature, and exploring the lives of women from a historical perspective.

Top reasons to study Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire:

• The opportunity to develop and explore your writing skill in an encouraging and supportive environment.
• A brilliant team of lecturers who are all recently published writers in their own field and can use their industry experience, as well as their academic skill and knowledge, to nurture your talent.
• A flexible course of study with a wide range of options to choose from, allowing you to focus on the topics that interest you most.
• Careers development helping you to understand the practicalities of how to get published.
• The chance to study at a University with a Gold Rating for Teaching.
• A dedicated (and free!) writing academy before the academic year starts to help with the return to learning, if you have been away from education.

Indicative course structure
A business degree is a powerful, career-launching qualification, and if you’re interested in a career in business, combining two subjects will give you sought-after skills, exciting experiences and a whole world of future career opportunities.

We’ve designed our course to get your career off to an incredible start. You’ll be able to study product innovation, consumer buyer behaviour, and marketing planning as well as key modules on managing media and communications and market and social research. Marketing is creative, strategic and hugely dynamic, spanning a whole range of jobs in advertising, social media, consumer insights, communications, market research, public relations, sales, brand management, product innovation, retail services and the creative industries.

Why choose this course?

• Open the door to a broad spectrum of careers in industry, commerce and the public sector.
• Develop your knowledge in a broad range of business areas.
• Learn the key elements of marketing and put theories into practice.

The course offers a coherent and intellectual learning experience, providing you with a critical understanding of the subject and enabling you to employ the tools of analysis used by a wide range of finance and investment banking professionals.

This course will Provide:

• Provide students with an intellectually challenging programme of study leading to an awareness of issues, themes and applications within the field of finance and investment banking and associated subject fields
• Provide students with an opportunity to undertake an one-year work placement of full time work experience
• Provide students with the knowledge and practical skills to identify suitable tools for the investigation of issues in areas such as investment analysis, fund/asset management, economics analysis and financial reporting;
• Provide students with the necessary IT analytical skills which reinforce the theoretical and empirical underpinning of the programme. The students will learn quantitative methodology, to carry out quantitative analyses of relevant financial and economic problems

This course gives you the broad-ranging skills to support the development of automotive products. It blends practical study in workshops and well- equipped labs (such as computer simulation, design, vehicle technology, production and manufacture) with management and business studies modules. A particular focus is on group work, which will enable you to develop your team-working skills and improve your employability. You’ll also have the unique opportunity to work with engineering students in designing, building and racing a Formula Student race car.

This BSc Honours degree course in Automotive Technology with Management is part of a suite of automotive related courses

• Our BSc Automotive Technology with Management students have previously completed work placement years at companies including: Nissan and Triumph Motorcycles
• Graduates highly employable in wide range of firms from Formula One to major motor manufacturers
• Involvement in Formula Student Competition from year 1, if you wish
• Recent Automotive Technology graduates have gone on to work at organisations including: Nissan, Dyson, and Bentley Motors
• You do not need an A-level in Mathematics or Physics to gain entry to this course, you simply need the correct UCAS points and your enthusiasm for the subject.

This award is targeted at those who have a good Honours degree in computer science or a very closely related discipline, and who wish to extend and deepen their knowledge in two or more different sub-discipline areas. It will enhance your career prospects or preparing for a programme of research that requires knowledge of one or more of these sub-discipline areas. Those studying for this award will have a wide range of taught modules from which to choose, and will be expected to complete a major project that extends and applies what they have learnt in one or more of the taught modules they have taken.

Graduates obtaining this award will be equipped to pursue research to PhD level, or to enter specialist employment in technically advanced and unpredictable working environments requiring sound judgment and the exercise of personal responsibility and initiative.

Philosophy explores and challenges the assumptions that frame the way we think, act and see the world around us.

Here at Hertfordshire, you won’t just be learning about philosophers and understanding their theories, you’ll be doing rigorous and creative thinking of your own. Our internationally regarded academics will help you learn to address the arguments of others, to understand and engage with them so that you can arrive at your own conclusions and create your own original work.

All our lecturers are active researchers, so you’ll share the excitement of doing original work in a supportive and highly-rated academic community. Our Philosophy team is in the top 15 in the Guardian League Table 2019 and rates as one of the 100 best Philosophy departments worldwide in the 2017 QS rankings.

On this course no prior knowledge of philosophy is assumed, although students with Religious Studies A-level may be familiar with topics such as ethics, mind, knowledge and reality. In your first year you’ll explore new dimensions to these topics and consider questions about the meaning of life. You’ll also study social and political philosophy, the central concern of which is the best way of organising society. A first-year module on the philosophy of film and literature takes you beyond the mainstream. Studying fiction and films such as Back to the Future allows you to address the assumption that anything is possible in fiction and consider to what extent that is true.

In your second year you’ll be able to delve deeper into areas such as philosophy of art and philosophy of mind. A module on virtues, vices and ethics focuses on specific virtues, such as forgiveness, hope or love, from both a secular and religious point of view and examines what it means to live a good life. 

In your final year you can pursue your own research interests through a dissertation. Recent topics have included the ethical issues of playing video games, the nature of the imagination, environmental philosophy and the obligations of the state, and a proposed solution to the paradox of the liar. You’ll also build on previous specialisms to explore in more depth philosophers such as Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, feminist or political philosophy, contemporary moral philosophy, or the philosophy of psychology.

• An exceptional academic team, conducting internationally renowned research
• A flexible programme of study, allowing you to concentrate on areas you find especially interesting
• The opportunity to write a dissertation on a topic about which you are passionate
• CV-building potential through extra-curricular activities

• Digital Media Arts provides an opportunity to study one or more digital specialisms including video, kinetics, animation, sound, games, photography, social and interactive media.
• Experiment and explore emerging technologies and develop innovative and effective combinations of practices and media.
• Develop high-level skills in your chosen specialisms or areas of interest supported by expert tutors.
• Project-based work where the emphasis is on the creative, informed application of new technologies and devices to produce compelling user experiences.
• You will be able to produce a substantial self-initiated digital media project supported by excellent resources and expertise

Digital Media are everywhere in the modern world, affecting all aspects of our lives, our work, leisure and social and personal relationships. The MA Digital Media Arts award allows students to gain practical experience and knowledge of the ways that a range of contemporary digital media are produced and used, both alone and in combination. Working in one or more specialisms which can include video, kinetics, animation, games, photography, social and interactive media, students are encouraged to experiment with combinations of media through digital ‘sketches’ and then, through developing more extended works informed by their individual interests, to pursue a substantial, practical enquiry into an original creative application of digital media in a major project.

Students typically explore areas such as interactive advertising, responsive objects and environments, networked information and social-media systems, interactive video, live performance technology and digital art installations.

This course gives you the broad-ranging skills to support the development of automotive products. It blends practical study in workshops and well- equipped labs (such as computer simulation, design, vehicle technology, production and manufacture) with management and business studies modules. A particular focus is on group work, which will enable you to develop your team-working skills and improve your employability. You’ll also have the unique opportunity to work with engineering students in designing, building and racing a Formula Student race car.

• This BSc Honours degree course in Automotive Technology with Management is part of a suite of automotive related courses
• Our BSc Automotive Technology with Management students have previously completed work placement years at companies including: Nissan and Triumph Motorcycles
• Graduates highly employable in wide range of firms from Formula One to major motor manufacturers
• Involvement in Formula Student Competition from year 1, if you wish
• Recent Automotive Technology graduates have gone on to work at organisations including: Nissan, Dyson, and Bentley Motors
• You do not need an A-level in Mathematics or Physics to gain entry to this course, you simply need the correct UCAS points and your enthusiasm for the subject.

This course develops your understanding of the business of sport, exploring the sports industry in the UK, as well as from a broader global perspective. You’ll learn key business concepts and theories, using them to review modern sports businesses and best practice in sports management. Throughout the course, we put a strong emphasis on the leadership and management of sports events, as well as developing the strategic skills you’ll need to be successful in today’s sports industry. We’ll help you develop your entrepreneurial skills, so that when you graduate you’ll have a balanced portfolio of knowledge and practical skills which really boosts your employability.

Our BA Philosophy and Journalism degree allows you to examine our fundamental desire to communicate and discuss important shared events and experiences, through two distinct approaches. You’ll develop a range of journalistic skills while exploring and challenging the assumptions that frame the way we think, act and see the world around us.

In your first year you’ll be introduced to the practical craft of journalism, explore the law and ethics surrounding journalism and learn to think critically by examining reason and persuasion in the media, including the use of rhetoric and propaganda. You’ll also study social and political philosophy, covering topics such as freedom of speech and terrorism, and examine the nature of knowledge and reality.

All our philosophy lecturers are active researchers, so you’ll share the excitement of doing original work in a supportive and highly-rated academic community. Our Philosophy team is in the top 15 in the Guardian League Table 2019 and rates as one of the 100 best Philosophy departments worldwide in the 2017 QS rankings.

Our journalism team are highly experienced practitioners, who’ll help you develop the skills to produce work in different styles and for diverse markets. You’ll learn how to source stories and get hands-on experience as part of a vibrant student community and through work placements. You’ll take part in News Lab workshops, conduct interviews, write features and join lively group discussions.

In your second year you’ll delve into influential works of philosophy and political theory such as the themes in Plato’s Republic. You’ll also have the opportunity to specialize in news or feature writing, radio journalism or social media.

In your final year you’ll develop your journalism skills portfolio, examine journalism, government and the people and have the opportunity to develop your interests in topics such as political or feminist philosophy, or the philosophy of language.

• A flexible programme of study, allowing you to concentrate on areas you find especially interesting
• An exceptional academic team, conducting internationally renowned research
• Stimulating, innovative courses that allow you to make rewarding connections between two disciplines
• CV-building potential through work placements and extra-curricular activities