English and History QV31

English and History degree

This English and History degree is one of the most popular of our Joint Honours degrees, in which students divide their time equally between two subjects. If you studied both English Literature and History and want to continue your interest in both, then the English Literature and History degree may well be for you. As well as enabling you to deepen your knowledge of both subjects, the English and History degree will help you both to understand literature in its historical context, and to understand the culture of different historical periods through the literature which they have produced.

As a student on the Aberystwyth English and History degree, you will be taught by tutors from two Departments in which both the quality of teaching and the general student experience have been nationally assessed as excellent.

English and History Degree Course Structure

Year 1

In the first year of your English and History degree, you take three Core Modules which lay the basis for all your studies at this level:

• Encountering Texts
• Aspects of Genre
• Introduction to History

There is then a broad range of Option Modules, which you will choose from according to the historical periods and literary genres which interest you, and the interpretative skills and techniques which you want to develop. There is great flexibility within the scheme, including even the possibility to take an Arts module from an entirely different subject area.

Years 2+3

In the second and third years of your English and History degree, that flexibility continues and, if anything, increases.

In year 2 of your English studies, there are still compulsory Core Modules:

• Reading Theory/Reading Text; and two of:
  • Medieval and Renaissance Writing
  • Nineteenth Century Literature
  • Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature
  • Twentieth Century British Literature

These lay the ground for you to specialise from within a very broad range of options in Year 3, including everything from Elizabethan Drama to Detective Fiction.

The Core History Modules in Years 2+3 deal with Historiography in its broadest sense, looking at Historians and Historical Writing in many different periods. From year 2 of your studies onwards, there are three different History pathways to follow, combining two different kinds of modules: Survey Modules and Skills Modules. As their names suggest, Survey Modules are fundamentally period-based, designed to deepen your knowledge of the history of particular periods and places; Skills Modules focus more on methods of historical research, analysis and writing. Combining these two kinds of modules, in a proportion which suits your needs, gives you a fully rounded approach to history. 

Careers related to your English and History degree

Graduates of our English and History degrees go on to very diverse futures, in work and further study. They take with them a strong portfolio of skills much in demand from employers. As a graduate of the Aberystwyth English and History degree, you will have learned to research, collate and analyse data and to communicate the results of your research clearly and economically; working independently as well as in small groups and in workshops. You will have broadened your skills and increased your confidence, so that you can enter the employment market with every prospect of achieving your personal goals and aspirations