BA Creative Writing and Theatre

Compulsory modules

Introduction to Creative Writing

Develop your skills in creative writing across a range of genres. You will develop an understanding of how to compose, criticise, revise, and polish your work through workshop discussions and the completion of a critical essay.  

Poetry in English

From the Renaissance to the present, uncover the history of poetry as you explore key genres related to love, politics, pastoral, elegy, satire, the sonnet, the ode, and the dramatic monologue. You’ll study poems drawn from the wider English-speaking world including Ireland, the Caribbean and North America, encountering the diversity of voices found in gender and sexuality.  

Analysing Theatre and Performance

Critically interpret theatre texts and performances, enhancing your understanding of the conventions of production, the organisation of meaning in performance, and deviations from mainstream conventions. Engage with performances from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary, focusing on their historical, cultural, stylistic and performative contexts.

Radical Forms in Theatre and Performance 

Discover the history, traditions, practices, and theoretical and analytical perspectives of radical theatre making and experimental performance practice. You’ll learn to appreciate the cultural, political, and aesthetic significance of radical experimentation in theatre and performances, and express critical understanding of creative practice and risk-taking.

Optional modules

Introduction to Drama

Discover the genre of drama as you explore a historical range of texts from the early modern periods. You’ll focus on four plays as you explore comedy, tragedy, form, structure, and the elements of change and continuity found within the genre.  

Shelf Life

Become acquainted with English literature’s material dimension and how writers, both past and present, have depicted the library as a symbol. As you study, you'll interpret poems, novels and plays, and investigate books and other archival documents as physical objects.  

Comedy on Stage and Screen

Gain insights into how comedy intersects with film, theatre and television through a series of case studies. You’ll learn how humour highlights critical issues such as identity politics (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability), taboo, embarrassment, cult, cancel or outrage culture, and explore relevant production, industrial and socio-cultural contexts.

Modern American Culture and Counterculture

Discover American countercultures in work, from 1950s Beat poetry to fiction responding to the Black Lives Matter movement. You’ll study the perspectives of African-American, Native American and white American creatives in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, YA fiction, science fiction, drama, songs, films, war reportage and the graphic novel.  

Thinking Translation: History and Theory

Learn about the current thinking on translation by exploring some specific case studies. The historical approach to translation will allow you to develop a critical awareness of the role played by: genres, readership, institutional influences, market constraints, gender attitudes and discourses, purpose. In seminars, you will explore the challenges facing translators when dealing with literary, scientific, philosophical and political texts

What is Comparative Literature? 

Learn about the major critical and theoretical issues in the study of Comparative Literature, as well as the important methodologies for studying literature in a comparative context. Approach a cluster of texts from different cultural and historical traditions, you'll be be encouraged to reflect on the practices and consequences of reading transnationally.

Optional Language Modules 

Learn one of 10 languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Compulsory modules

Identity, Performance and Culture

Understand the construction, representation and performance of diverse modes of identity in theatre and in culture. You’ll develop skills of close textual and performance analysis, and learn how local, national and global contexts have influenced playwrights, theatre makers and theatre cultures.

Optional modules

Creative Writing: Creative Non-fiction

Study memoirs, essays, blog posts, long-form journalism, biography and auto-fiction as you explore the exciting and ever-evolving contemporary genre. As you study these texts, you’ll write your own piece of creative non-fiction and support others with creative feedback.  

Myth, Legend and Romance: Medieval Storytelling

Explore storytelling in medieval England as you take in the fantastical tales of ancient heroes, drama that blends comedy and religious devotion, and magic and supernatural beings. You’ll consider the stark contrast of narrative structure, character development and language use by medieval writers in contrast to our own.   

Creative Writing: The Short Story

Explore the process of the creative cycle, from reading literature to writing it. You’ll engage critically with a range of short stories as you encounter key debates about the form and write your own short fiction in response. 

Victorian Literature

Victorian literature consists of a period where authors began to consider people’s place in the world with God, the workings of the mind, and the role of class and gender in the construction of identity. You’ll engage with these ideas as you consider some of the greatest works of the period – from Dickens and Hardy to Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.   

Contemporary Fiction

Study a selection of fiction from the 1980s to the present day, exploring the formal, thematic and cultural diversity of Anglophone fiction produced in this period. You’ll consider these texts within a number of social, political and historical contexts, such as multiculturalism, feminism and globalisation.  

Placement and Employment Skills

This module provides you with an opportunity for reflective learning and intensive research through an industry role of your choice. You’ll reflect critically on your career development and acquire transferable skills for future employment.

Writing in the Public Sphere

Study literature designed to prompt social and political change as you examine speeches, pamphlets, tracts and political posters from the early modern period to the present. Consider how such literature shapes debates on race, class, religion, nationality and women’s rights across Britain and Ireland.  

Documentary

Develop skills to critically analyse and produce non-fiction films and television through close analysis of texts and engagement with various industrial and technological contexts. You’ll engage with critical debates and conceptual issues and put ideas into practice. You’ll understand documentary-makers’ creative decision-making and their connection to ideological concerns.

Reworking Shakespeare in Performance

Understand Shakespeare as a powerful signifier of culture, explore adaptations of Shakespeare and learn how these relate to broader cultural and political contexts. You’ll learn about the practices and preoccupations that currently affect interpretation of Shakespeare and gain the ability to make connections between social and cultural concerns and their presentation on stage. 

Directing and Dramaturgy

Explore a culturally diverse range of directing and dramaturgical approaches to creating performance. You’ll be equipped with a toolbox of critically informed and aesthetically exciting strategies, an understanding of the significance of research-informed performance practices, and gain confidence in leading theatre-making processes. 

Television and Contemporary Culture

Engage with issues of genre, globalisation, industry, and representation. You’ll examine the construction of critical and contextual frameworks that underpin television studies. Explore television’s international flows, build a picture of national industrial practices, and analyse digital media practices and platforms. You’ll develop a critical understanding of conventions and histories of selected genres and explore the implied impact of ideologies of representation.

Film Forms and Cultures

Discover the rich variety of film forms and explore critical and conceptual issues of form, including theoretical perspectives, questions of form, and form’s meaning and politics.

Creative Writing: Poetry

Engage critically with a range of poems and key debates around form. You’ll write your own poetry in response, experimenting with the possibilities within the genre as you and your peers share constructive feedback.   

Modernism in Poetry and Fiction

Examine the concepts of modernity, modernism, and the history of early twentieth-century poetry and fiction. You’ll explore experimentation and innovation in poetic and narrative form, and their relation to wider social upheaval and cultural movements in the period. 

Enlightenment Revolution and Romanticism

Study the political revolutions that shook British society to its core during Age of Enlightenment (c.1680-1790): England’s bloodless ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688; the colonial revolution of American independence; and the French Revolution of 1789.

The Business of Books

You’ll cover the history and development of modern trade publishing and have focused sessions on some of its key players, including publishers and literary agents. Through a combination of theoretical, methodological, and hands-on teaching sessions and workshops, you’ll study the role and function of books in historical and institutional contexts including libraries, bookshops, publishing houses, and board rooms. 

Early Modern Literature 

Discover the rich and fascinating literary culture of the early modern or Renaissance period. You'll explore the ways that English literature was shaped by, and helped to re-shape, English culture in the years between the Reformation and the Civil Wars.

Critical Thinking 

Approach familiar ideas and issues from unfamiliar angles that prompt you to re-examine the unspoken grounds on which common-sense ways of thinking are based. You’ll take part in exciting and rewarding discussions on issues of language, power, and identity, ideology, gender, and race.

Writing America: Perspectives on the Nation

Examine the construction of American national identity in American literature from a range of different perspectives. You’ll study a diversity of American voices and central themes including myths of the frontier, Manifest Destiny, personal and political liberty, and the construction of race, gender and sexuality.

Optional Language Modules 

Learn one of 10 languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.

Optional modules

Creative Writing Dissertation

Develop a sustained piece of independent writing such as a short story, a play, a screen play or a collection of verse. You’ll work closely with a peer community of creative writers to self-organise and conduct workshops as you develop your advanced research and writing skills.  

Theatre Dissertation

Apply the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired in the previous modules to a major piece of independent work around an area you are interested in. Independently initiate and develop the project under the guidance of a supervisor.

Creative Research Project

Apply your previously gained knowledge and skills to a significant research-based project that includes a creative element and critical research and reflection. You’ll develop the project independently under supervision.

Creative Writing Masterclass: Poetry

Develop and design a short collection of poems with a view to submit to print or an online magazine. Engage with weekly workshops as you elaborate your style and voice, alongside focusing on emerging voices and subject matter.  

Lyric Voices, 1340-1650

Explore lyric poetry from the Middle Ages and the renaissance. You’ll look at the presentation of themes such as love and longing, grief, and the fear of death, and compare the ways in which authors make use of literary conventions to present such themes.   

British Black and Asian Voices: 1948 to the Present

Examine a range of British texts (poetry, drama, novels, short stories, films) by writers of Black and Asian descent. You’ll read theoretical and historical material as you examine issues of cultural capital, national identity, and minority communities.    

Performance and Design

Critically explore theatre and performance design by engaging with historical and contemporary scenographic practices. You’ll learn about the role of designers in shaping and reimagining theatre and performance. You’ll advance the ways you read, see and encounter the visual, aural, spatial, material and technological elements of design. Get involved in critical reading and discussions on a diverse range of international designers, methods and performance environments. You’ll gain exposure to professional contexts through visits to archives, talks or masterclasses from visiting designers and/or scholars. 

Literature and Mental Health

Discover how literature engaged with mental health in the first half of the twentieth century, a crucial turning point in psychology. You’ll consider the de-stigmatisation of mental health in the wake of World War I, the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology that emerged from it, and how literature engages with trauma, anxiety and obsession.   

Creative Writing Masterclass: Prose

Deepen your understanding of narrative techniques and sharpen your ability to write prose. You’ll use a range of short stories, narrative non-fiction and novel extracts as a springboard, advancing your knowledge on matters such as structure, characterisation, dialogue and quality.  

Writing Women: Nineteenth-Century Poetry

Explore writing primarily by (but also about) women in the nineteenth century, including Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. Ask how women found a voice in a predominantly patriarchal society, what subjects were deemed suitable for female poets, and how such poets overcame the limitations of expectation.

Adaptations across Stage and Screen

Develop your knowledge and artistic practice in film, television and theatre through exploration of the processes of adaptation and engagement with critical, cultural and political considerations. You’ll have the opportunity to explore a range of practices, such as page to stage/screen, citation of iconic characters, fanfiction and digital reworkings, docudramas and documentary theatre, intercultural retellings and translations, contemporary retelling of historical narratives, and reworkings of productions in the same media.

Placing Jane Austen

Examine the movements of Austen's characters through rooms and houses, the patterns of their dances in assembly halls, the paths of their journeys through town and country. Investigate how these movements sometimes represent changes of heart or class, of mind or fortune and how they are always significant for the carefully drawn lines of her narratives.

Musical Theatre

Explore the theories, themes, politics, and practices of contemporary musical theatre. You’ll focus on the research and development (R&D) of musical theatre, its dramaturgy, political context, modes of production, representation, and reception. 

Film Festivals and Programming

Gain advanced knowledge of modes of programming arthouse, alternative, and experimental venues, as well as organising festivals. Through seminars, workshops and group projects, you’ll explore how festivals (such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin) work as effective filters for wider distribution, and how festivals and programming are key to understanding the kinds of world cinema we watch.

Children's Literature

Explore issues surrounding children’s literature and its criticism. Questions and analyse critical assumptions and formulations around authorship, memory, observation, readership, and identity.

The Bloody Stage: Revenge and Death in Renaissance Drama

Explore the representation of revenge and death in revenge tragedies performed on the Renaissance stage. Analyse the staging of death scenes and whether there are differences in the ways that men and women die on stage. 

Modern and Contemporary British Poetry

Study key trends in poetry's engagement with changing circumstances in England, Wales, and Scotland in the twentieth century and beyond. Consider issues including the aftermaths of modernism, gender and poetry, British poetry and post-war retrenchment, the 'poetry wars' of the 1970s and the perpetuation of 'Movement' ideals down to the present.

Advanced Scriptwriting

Create original scripts and develop your critical understanding of key storytelling issues such as narrative, character, dialogue, and place. Your scriptwriting practice will include both individual and collaborative forms of writing and rewriting, and you'll engage with discourses around scriptwriting emerging from both theatre pedagogy and screenwriting studies, including projects for decolonising stage and screen writing traditions.

Screen Bodies

Discover how diverse bodies move on screen, and how those bodies engage the spectator’s body. You’ll explore how the screen representation of the body is shaped by culturally situated ideas about body and society, and power and desire – including creative traditions, influences, technologies, and innovations. As you examine how the screen body generates meaning, you’ll study access to representation, visibility, marginalisation, and consent.

From Romance to Fantasy

Explore the role played by fantastical or wondrous elements in English literature from the middle ages to the present day. Focus on a range of key narrative structures (such as the quest), persistent motifs such as magical objects, and influential modes, such as the gothic. 

Decadence and Degeneration: Literature of the 1890s

Engage with iconic texts in English literature, including Stoker's Dracula, Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, and Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, while exploring what's meant by these terms 'decadence' and 'degeneration', calling, amongst many other things, on portrayals of 1890s' foppishness, Darwinian models of evolution, the emergent New Woman phenomenon, the Wilde trial, and the portrayal of prostitution.

Optional Language Modules

Learn one of 10 languages offered by the University at a level appropriate for you. 

These are the modules that we currently offer for 2024/25 entry. They may be subject to change as we regularly review our module offerings to ensure they’re informed by the latest research and teaching methods.

Please note that the University cannot guarantee that all optional modules will be available to all students who may wish to take them.

You can also register your details with us to receive information about your course of interest and study and life at the University of Reading.