Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in History and Journalism (with Sandwich Year)

at University of Hertfordshire - De Havilland Campus United Kingdom

A degree in English Literature with Film will help you grow from passionate reader and film-fan into a critical thinker able to understand literary and cinematic works by applying a wide range of critical, theoretical, political and historical perspectives. The disciplines of Literature and Film Studies are highly complementary, and as you progress through your degree you will find many fruitful connections between them.

This fascinating degree is both geographically and historically wide-ranging. This means you’ll study literature written in English from the Renaissance to the present day, by writers from all parts of the globe; and alongside this, you’ll explore film and television from America, Asia, Britain and the rest of Europe, from the earliest days of moving images to some of the most exciting contemporary work being produced today.

In both disciplines, you’ll be taught by research-active academics who bring fresh thinking to our accessible, engaging courses. We’ll introduce you to writers and film-makers who will open doors to contemporary worlds and cultures remote from your own, and also help you explore more familiar works – both textual and visual – in ways that challenge your preconceptions.

Whatever your taste in literature, there will be something to interest and provoke you. From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Jane Eyre, from Paradise Lost to Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, we’ll broaden your literary horizons and hone your critical thinking.

A core Literature module in your first year will equip you to read and interpret both traditional and contemporary literary texts critically as a scholar of English literature. Alongside this you can choose to revisit Shakespeare and consider his cultural relevance today through fictional, cinematic and TV adaptations; or to deepen your understanding of Gothic writing by tracing its origins back to the Romantic era.

In your second year you’ll focus on period-based literature from the Renaissance onwards and gain an understanding of literary history, from Elizabethan verse and drama, via Augustan poetry and the emergence of the novel in the 18 th century, to the radical transformations of the Victorian age, and the emergence of modernity in the twentieth century.

You’ll also have the opportunity to consider ways of reading that go beyond textual analysis or historical context, such as understanding literature through the political or ideological lens of Marxism, feminism and post-colonial theory. You’ll have the chance to specialise in your final year, tailoring your literary study to reflect your own interests. Themed options include children’s literature, young adult fiction, Renaissance tragedy, European crime fiction, literary adaptations and the culture of print in the 18th century.

At the same time, your minor in Film will further hone your analytical skills, and give you a sophisticated appreciation of the craft of filmmaking. You’ll look at how the film and television industry has evolved and adapted to new technologies, how novels are recreated in film and how film gives us fresh perspectives on the world. You’ll also have opportunities to design and run film programmes, write and produce your own short films and hear guest lectures by film, television and media professionals. Topics covered range from silent movies to the Golden Age of Hollywood, the birth of the blockbuster, the influence of European style on American film, the way digital technology has transformed the industry, and why franchises have proved so successful, from James Bond and Star Wars to the Marvel cinematic universe.

This degree enables you to explore the nature of current sound and music technologies, using the latest digital audio hardware, software and programming packages. You'll investigate topics such as sampling, sequencing, mixing, remixing, signal processing, sound editing and recording, alongside audio programming, internet audio and electronics, ensuring that you'll be well equipped with the knowledge and hands-on experience expected of today’s professionals.

• Our programme is Accredited by JAMES, who represent the Association of Professional Recording Services (APRS), the Music Producers Guild (MPG) and Associate Industry Bodies.
• Develop excellent technical skills over the course of your degree, and benefit from our high quality studio, listening room, venue and sound resources including those by SSL, Yamaha, Avid, Focusrite, Quested, Genelec, Neumann, TLA, Lexicon and Drawmer to name but a few.
• Excellent industry input is built into the design of the degree awards from a huge number of areas within the wider music industry.
• The degree awards within the programme are designed to expose you to areas of music, sound and audio technology that you might not even know exist yet.  "Coming to this course has really given my brain the kick-start it needed, and I'm beginning to see near endless possibilities with where I can go." - Glenn Osborn, second year student
• We have a strong record of students from the programme securing placement years between years 2 and 3 of their studies.  Placement destinations include Focusrite,  Sound Technology (a leading distributor of high profile brands for the Music Retail and Professional Audio industries), The Famous Company, and a number of recording studios.
• Every year, organisations and companies approach us to recommend our graduating students.
• Music business is woven into your degree study at every year giving you the skills to slot into the music industry (or create your own business).
• Organise and Participate ‘live’ projects, and our ‘JamJar’ showcase live events.
• Benefit from studying in creative arts school and collaborate with filmmakers and animators in realising fully featured, professional standard media projects.
• We have some of the best resources in the UK, including the 39 million pound entertainment venue – the Forum where our students perform, and engineer every month, and state-of-the art music studios and film and TV facilities in our 12 million pound building for Music, Film and media.

Course Details

The BSc (Hons) Music and Sound Design Technology course is designed for students who wish to interrogate music and media through music, sound design and immersive audio applications.  Focus is placed on sound and music as a component of multimedia, including the world of sound design as a creative process.   Students create and work on a range of media focused projects including moving image, game audio and voice over production as well as determining how sound can be delivered within both multi-speaker environments and ‘virtual’ spaces. 

Core modules studied alongside music and sound design technology practice modules develop students’ techniques and approaches using a range of sound technologies, as well as fostering professional and industrial contextual immersion and awareness, and experience with specialisms within connected music and sound related fields.

BSc (Hons) Music Production sits within the overarching Music & Sound Technology Programme.  There are four degree awards within this programme: BSc (Hons) Music Production, Bsc (Hons) Music and Sound Design Technology, BSc (Hons) Live Sound and Lighting Technology. 

All courses share the same ethos, and you’ll have opportunities to work alongside our music composition and music industry management students too, ensuring you benefit from teaching and experiences within a large community of musicians, composers, technologists and performers.

Within the wider school of creative arts at UH, there are opportunities to collaborate with students from other creative areas, including animation and film and TV, allowing you to network with a broad range of creative industries.

Studying an MBA can transform the way you think and the way you work, change the way others see you and open up new leadership and management opportunities.

This full-time MBA enables you to develop the critical and reflective strategic leadership skills you need to succeed in an uncertain world, challenging your assumptions, cultivating flexible thinking, effective decision making and responsible management.

What will I study?

Our teaching and learning methods ensure you are able to actively engage with your own development. You’ll benefit from a blended learning approach which utilises web-based activities and reading, alongside simulations, reflective writing, discussions and live enterprise projects.

All of the teaching resources have been designed in a highly structured way and complementary way to take you progressively through business concepts and to give you confidence, enhance your skills and expertise when completing specific tasks.

A participative style is used throughout to enable you to learn from your fellow students, as well as from teaching staff. Experiential learning is central to our teaching philosophy.

There is a considerable emphasis on the utilisation of theory and knowledge to make sense of your own and fellow participants' experiences at work. Case study material is widely used alongside case histories developed by fellow participants.

The MBA at the University of Hertfordshire has multiple pathways for students:

• MBA
• MBA (Human Resource Management)
• MBA (Entrepreneurship)
• MBA (Digital Marketing)
• MBA (Finance)
• MBA (Healthcare)
• MBA (Public Services)
• MBA (Sustainable Industries)
• MBA (Data Analytics)
• MBA (Project Management)
• MBA (Management Consultancy)
• MBA (Information Systems)

Philosophy explores and challenges the assumptions that frame the way we think, act and see the world around us. Film is one particularly powerful medium in which this can be achieved. Further your skills with a unique film course which combines the study of film as an art form with learning the practical skills of film making whilst engaging with a variety of deep philosophical issues.

In your first year, you’ll be introduced to film criticism, genre and style. In your philosophy modules, you will be introduced to a variety of philosophical issues ranging from the nature of reality, knowledge and mind, to questions about how we should live, what we should value, and what would be the best way of organizing society. There is also a philosophy module dedicated to exploring the scope and limits film and what it can represent about 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.

In your second year, you’ll be able to select areas on which to focus, such as on influential works of philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and social and political philosophy. There is also a philosophy of art module, which tackles the question of the relation between artistic representations (in various media) and reality. In your film modules, you’ll also gain knowledge of film production and you’ll think more about European or US cinema.

In your final year, you’ll have the opportunity to make your own video essay as one of your film modules, and will delve deeper into more specialist areas of philosophy, such as the philosophy of language, the philosophy of psychology, or feminist philosophy.

• 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. Previous students in this department have had year long paid placements at Warner Brothers in London, Hatfield House and local museums.
• An expert film team with in-depth knowledge of the film industry plus the opportunity to get involved with local cinemas and our own bespoke film club.

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.

The MSc in Computer Networks and Systems Security considers current research and practice in computer networks and systems security. You will develop technical expertise and practical skills in the design, management and evaluation of networks, and in the use of tools and techniques for systems security. This MSc can lead to a career such as a network system designer or administrator, or as a security consultant.

This course is part of our Master's programme in Computer Science. 

• You will gain industrial experience by applying the skills you have learned throughout your studies into practice.
• One of a range of advanced courses within our postgraduate Master's programme in Computer Science, this particular course provides you with a specialism combining theoretical knowledge and practical skills in computer networks and systems security.
• You will develop technical expertise and practical skills in the design, management and evaluation of networks, and in the use of tools and techniques for systems security. Advanced topics studied include network systems administration, wireless mobile and multimedia networking, distributed systems security, and secure systems programming.
• Taught by a highly-regarded and long-established computer science department with strong links to business.
• Half of the research outputs in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire have been rated at world-leading or internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014.

Our BA History and English Literature gives you the opportunity to study two subjects that speak closely to each other.

Just as poems, plays and novels can offer historians different ways to look at the past, historical documents can also be read as texts to be interpreted as works of narrative.

For both English Literature and History we have modernized and diversified our curriculum to reflect our changing world. Within our research-led courses you’ll study canonical texts and periods of history familiar to a traditional English or History degree but also voices and histories that reflect our modern, globalized 21 st century experiences.

You’ll start this joint degree with a core module that will teach you the skills of close analysis of literary texts. Reflecting on poetry by Danez Smith and Sylvia Plath, Caryl Churchill’s play Cloud 9 as well as work by Shakespeare and Zadie Smith, you’ll discover new ways of thinking about what literature is, and how to read it.

Also in your first year you’ll work through the Historian’s Toolkit, which helps you make the transition from school to university-level study. You will be introduced to an array of primary sources. You’ll also gain insights into historiography, to understand what influences historians, why they write the way they do and how they interact with one another.

Throughout your course, the common link between the two disciplines will be your analysis and interpretation of texts. The skills you’ve learned in your close reading of fiction are in many respects the same as those you will apply to your analysis of historical documents.

One of your second-year core English Literature modules is period-based, focusing on the 18th century, and offers a good example of how English and History are complementary. Your study of 18th century print culture and the emergence of the novel will be enhanced by your understanding of the politics of the day.

In your final year your courses will cover themes aligned to our academics’ research interests. You’ll have the chance to follow your interests and shape your studies, which could include African American literature, young adult fiction, or literary adaptations. Your History modules may focus on a particular region, such as Europe, or period, such as the 20th century.

We give you: 

• A flexible program of study, allowing you to concentrate on areas you find especially interesting
• Exceptional academic teams, conducting world-leading research
• Stimulating, innovative courses that allow you to make rewarding connections between two disciplines
• CV-building potential through work placements and extra-curricular activities
• Teaching rated excellent by 92.14% of our English students in the 2018 National Student Survey, with our History students reporting almost 94% overall satisfaction with their course

All three of our model design courses share the same First Year, giving you an excellent introduction to model making, prop making, sculpture and special effects. Building on this foundation, you’ll focus on developing your artistic and technical skills to produce models, animatronics and other effects. You’ll also gain hands on experience of the specialist equipment used to produce rain, fire, smoke, wind and snow, and learn about the safe use of pyrotechnics.

In Second Year, you will acquire an understanding of special effects design and receive a thorough grounding in the practical aspects of this. You will be able to combine your artistic and technical skills to produce animatronics, action props, models and special effects.

In your Final Year, you’ll work on major projects and create a professional portfolio to impress employers. Throughout your studies you’ll use a mix of traditional techniques and modern technology. This course is accredited by Creative Skillset, reflecting the highest standard of teaching and facilities.

• Combine your artistic and technical skills to produce animatronics, action props, models and special effects.
• Gain ‘hands on’ experience of special effects equipment used to produce, rain, fire, smoke, wind and snow etc. and learn about the safe use of pyrotechnics.
• Use of traditional workshop machinery and cutting-edge technologies, plus access to specialist industry standard facilities for animatronics, model making and prop making.
• Close contacts with industry, which provide outstanding work experience opportunities and collaborative projects.
• High graduate employment rates for Special Effects students. 
• The only Creative Skillset Tick accredited Model and Special Effects course in the UK.

This course focuses on contemporary approaches to fine art and the practice and theories that inform it. You’ll be actively encouraged to explore your ideas through a range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, video, installation, photography and digital media. Supporting you will be a team of internationally practising artists, each bringing their unique research, experiences and interests directly into their teaching. The lively and diverse lecture program sees visiting artists and art professionals discuss their own practice while encouraging debate and discussion. Throughout the course, we’ll foster your natural abilities and interests in a stimulating environment. Excellently equipped facilities and your own personal studio space allow you to experiment and develop your practice.

Our course has an international and outward-looking approach. From year one, our students are offered a range of external opportunities, including:

• The option to take a semester-long, funded Erasmus residency in one of our overseas partner institutions in Europe
• A year-longer Study Abroad residency, in one of our global partner institutions, e.g. North America, Japan, Canada, Australia.
• The chance to exhibit their work nationally and within the region, in venues such as Courtyard Arts, Hertford, the Truman Brewery, London and the renowned UH Arts Gallery on campus.
• Participation in collaborative projects with our international schools in places such as Moscow.

Closer to home, students benefit from opportunities to:

• Undertake a sandwich year placement to gain more extensive experience within the creative sector.
• Benefit from the programme’s close ties with University of Hertfordshire’s MA in Art Therapy, through access to staff and when relevant, taught modules.

A distinctive feature of the programme is that from the outset students develop a strong and supportive peer group dynamic that frequently results in ambitious collaborative projects, sharing of opportunities, a growing network and a proactive alumnus.

Teaching and technical Support
The program values one-to-one teaching in support of individual development, alongside peer learning within technical skills workshops and group seminars.

Teaching on the program is delivered by tutors who are practicing artists exhibiting internationally and supported by a vibrant program of visiting artists and industry professionals. Within the School, there is a lively and diverse lecture program with contributions from artists, poets, art critics and curators, so our students can link with practicing artists and contemporary artwork.

Taught workshops traverse all areas of contemporary practice, including painting, sculpture, digital imaging, printmaking, moving image, installation, photography, moving image and more. Alongside this, the Critical and Cultural Studies modules provide students with the skills to critically analyse contemporary visual arts and culture, both in written studies and within the context of the studio.

The course has been developed to enable you to develop advanced knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• Business Analytical Methods and Information Technology
• Business Problem Structuring and Solving
• Consultancy Skills in the Business Environment

These themes are explored through modules in Business Analytics, Computer Simulation, Creative Problem Solving, Consultancy Skills and Business Statistics. The course also includes a project based module where you will solve a problem for a client using the knowledge and skills acquired during your study. There is then a further applied consultancy project, which allows you to independently research, investigate and analyse a current business problem.

The course focuses on

• Computational, mathematical, philosophical and management science approaches to business analytics
• Developing problem solving skills
• Enhancing your ability to use business software and other information technology
• Encouraging independent and creative thinking
• Effective communication in all formats appropriate to a business environment.