Modern and Contemporary Writing MA

University of East Anglia

Overview

The MA Modern and Contemporary Writing has two main focuses: the relationship between key writers of modernism and contemporary literature, and between creative and critical writing. Our course draws on UEA’s strengths as one of the largest and most distinguished departments for 20th-century literature in Britain and as the UK’s leading department in Creative Writing and in Literary Translation.

We believe that the critical study of literature can also be creative, and that creative writing is always in itself an act of criticism. At UEA, literary critics and theorists rub shoulders and exchange ideas with practising poets, novelists, dramatists, and biographers.

You’ll also have opportunities to develop your interests in translation and in neighbouring disciplines such as philosophy, film, anthropology, and American studies.

About This Course

The School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at UEA has a long and celebrated history for its role not only in the study of modern and contemporary literature, but also in fostering its creation. Alongside our world-leading role in the teaching of creative writing and literary translation, we also boast one of the largest and most diverse groups of scholar-critics working on 20th- and 21st-century literature of any university in the world.

Our course offers a high level of flexibility. You can specialise in modernism, contemporary literature, or the period in between. You can focus on the relationship between creative and critical writing, literature across languages, on poetry or fiction, or on literature in relation to philosophy or to historical contexts. You’ll be able to choose optional modules from among UEA’s rich offerings in translation, philosophy, American literature, film and, subject to space, creative writing.

This course is unique in inviting you to explore criticism and creation through one another. At UEA, we believe that reading and writing are or should be one. Distinctive optional modules will offer you the chance to develop your critical writing in ways that are themselves creative and artistic, through formal and linguistic experimentation, and through modes of literary understanding such as parody, imitation, and transposition that preceded the invention of literary criticism in the 20th century.

You’ll find yourself in seminars where your fellow students will be novelists, poets, playwrights, biographers, and translators, as well as students of philosophy, film, and American literature.

As a postgraduate here, you will be part of a vibrant mix of MA and PhD students who are engaged in modern and contemporary literature in a variety of ways, whether it be through producing critical studies of novels, poetry or plays, or through writing their own.

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