English and Drama

English and Drama are natural bedfellows. Combining the two, you can study Shakespeare to Stanislavski, science fiction to Japanese Noh Theatre, and playwriting to poetic practice.

From Beowulf to the Booker Prize, English offers you the opportunity to study the full historical range of literature in English as well as the latest developments in the field, and even to pursue your own creative writing.

You can discover the earliest works in English, deepen your knowledge of Shakespeare, find out what is great about Renaissance literature, darken your view of the 18th century, and unpack the Victorians. The course's structure allows you to develop a sound understanding of key periods, genres, authors, and ideas as well as choosing from a huge range of options. You can study Modernism, Postmodernism and American literature, explore literary criticism, develop your own creative writing, and analyse the latest developments in global literatures in English.

Choosing to study Drama at Royal Holloway will put you at the centre of one of the largest and most influential Drama and Theatre departments in the world. You'll create performances, analyse texts, and bring a range of critical ideas to bear on both. On this course the text and the body, thinking and doing, work together. There's no barrier between theory and practice: theory helps you understand and make the most of practice, while practice sheds light on theory. By moving between the two, you'll find your place as an informed theatre-maker, and by studying a variety of practices, by yourself and with others, you'll get knowledge of the industry as a whole, and learn how your interests could fit into the bigger picture.

We are top-rated for teaching and research, with a campus community recognised for its creativity. Our staff cover a huge range of theatre and performance studies, but we're particularly strong in contemporary British theatre, international and intercultural performance, theatre history, dance and physical theatre, and contemporary performance practices.

• Unique, integrated joint degree.

• Consider contemporary British theatre, physical theatre and theatre history.

• Work experience links, from publishers to arts agencies.

• Assessment by coursework, performance and presentations.

• English & Drama students taught together for dedicated link courses.

Course Modules

Core Modules

Year 1

• Reorienting the Novel

• Introduction to Poetry

• Critical Foundations: Thinking As A Critic

• Theatre and Performance Making 1

• Theatre and Text 1

Year 2

• Shakespeare from Page to Stage

• Theatre and Ideas 2

Year 3

• Final Year Project - Dissertation

• Group Project

• Final Year Project - Special Study

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Middle English Poetry

• Tolkien's Roots

• Medieval Dream and Vision

• Strange Fictions: Romance in the Middle Ages

• Renaissance Literature

• Intensive Shakespeare: Comedy, History, Tragedy

• Drama and Witchcraft

• Early Modern Bodies

• Literature after the Conquest: 1066-1340

• Victorian Literature

• Romanticisms

• Creative Writing: Structure and Style

• Literature of the Fin de Siècle, 1883-1903

• Contemporary Debates in Literary and Critical Theory

• Modernisms

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Adaptation

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Casting

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Tragedy

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Knowledge and the Body

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Time

• Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Gender and Sexuality

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Money

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Acting

• Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Live Art

• Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Race and Indigeneity

• Theatre and Ideas: Arts Entrepreneurship

• Theatre and Performance Making 2

• Theatre and Performance Making: Scenography

• Theatre and Performance Making: Dance and Theatre

• Theatre and Performance Making: Theatre Directing

• Theatre and Performance Making: Devising

• Theatre and Performance Making: Playwriting

• Theatre and Performance Making: Acting for Camera

• Dancing Bodies, Global Culture

• Theatre and Culture: Cultures of Memory

• Theatre and Culture: Aesthetics of Anxiety

• Theatre and Culture: Theatre for Young Audiences

• Theatre and Culture: Southeast Asian Theatre and Performance

• Theatre and Text: Greek Tragedy

• Theatre and Text: Staging the Real

• Theatre and Text: Dramaturgy

• Theatre and Text: Decoding debbie tucker green

• Literature and the Digital

• British Drama from Shaw to Priestley

• Writing as a Critic

Year 3

• Ideas in Contemporary Fiction

• On Murder

• Advanced Shakespeare: The Problem Plays

• Literature and Philosophy

• James Joyce: Revolutions of the Word

• Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

• Reading Like a Victorian

• First World War Literature

• The Girl in the Book

• Children's Literature

• The Post-Colonial Novel

• Literature, the Digital and the Creative Industries

• Byron, Modernity and Europe 1780-1830

• Poetic Practice

• Violence, Sex and Magic in Medieval Literature

• Visual and Verbal in the Long Nineteenth Century

• The New York Schools: Poetry, Painting and Music in the 1950s

• The 1930s British Fiction and the Road to War

• Special Author: Virginia Woolf

• Special Author: Chaucer

• Special Author: Charles Dickens

• Special Author: Herman Melville

• Reading the Waste Land

• Screenwriting

• English Dissertation

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/english/english-and-drama/

You’ll be taught through a combination of lectures and seminar/workshops, and participate in study groups, essay consultations and guided independent study, plus for Drama, presentation of your research and practical experimentation, with or without written texts. In your first year, you will also work in small groups of just four or five students focusing on study skills such as close reading, essay writing and presentation and self-editing. As you progress through your degree, these tutorials focus on your own personal development, for instance working on your CV. IT applications are used to explore many aspects of the subject, and we support your capability in this area through an Information Technology Skills course. Private study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle. When you start with us, you are assigned a Personal Tutor to support you academically and personally.

The course has a modular structure, whereby students take 12 course units at the rate of four per year. Some course units are compulsory, while others are elective, thereby offering flexibility and some choice. During your second and third years you accumulate the marks that make up your final degree award.

This system provides an effective and flexible approach to study, while ensuring that our degrees have a coherent and developmental structure.

You will take a study skills course during your first year, designed to equip you with and enhance the writing skills you will need to be successful in your degree. This course does not count towards your final degree award but you are required to pass it to progress to your second year.

We use a variety of assessment methods, including long and short essays, formal examinations at the end of each year, online tests and exercises, presentations, commentaries and portfolios of creative work. For Drama, assessment will include practical assignments such as a seminar presentation or a performance, and you will sometimes be assessed as part of a group.