MA American Literatures

Gain a rich understanding of the variety and interconnections of American writing, exploring major poetic, fictional, non-fictional and dramatic works. You will read from the cannon of American literature, as well as texts that are topical and contemporary.

At Essex, we challenge the study of the United States as a territorially bound space by embracing an expanded conception of ‘America’, which explores the richness of U.S. and Caribbean literatures in dialogue. This allows you to formulate sophisticated analyses of the role of space and place in the production of American writing and identities.

You explore how cultural geography may be integrated into literary history, concentrating on American literatures topics including:

• How violence and conflict have shaped writing across the American tropics
• The difference between reality and the “American Dream”
• Caribbean modernity’s and post-colonialism
• US nationalism and regionalism in literature
• African American literature

We are ranked among the top 200 departments in the QS World University Rankings (2019).

Your future

A good literature degree opens many doors.

We offer supervision for PhD, MPhil, and MA by dissertation in different literatures and various approaches to literature, covering most aspects of early modern and modern writing in English, plus a number of other languages.

Our university is one of only 11 AHRC-accredited Doctoral Training Centres in the UK. This means that we offer funded PhD studentships which also provide a range of research and training opportunities.

Several our Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies graduates have gone on to undertake successful careers as writers, and others are now established as scholars, university lecturers, teachers, publishers, publishers’ editors, journalists, arts administrators, theatre artistic directors, drama advisers, and translators.

A 2:2 degree in one of the following subjects: American Studies; Art History; Creative Writing; Film and Media Studies; History; Journalism; Law; Literature; Modern Languages; Music; Performance Studies; Philosophy; Politics; Sociology; Theatre/Drama Studies.