Year 1

In Year 1, your modules will equip you with the fundamental skills for investigating English and History.

Core modules

• Writing Matters
• The Shock of the Modern
• Barbarism and Civilisation: Medieval and Early Modern Europe
• Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (double module)

Option modules

Choose three option modules from:

• Classic US Texts
• Feminist Fiction
• Global History: Connections and Cultures in a Changing World, 1750 to the present
• Great Britain: The State We're In
• US History since 1877
• Europe 1861-1991: Emancipation and Subjugation

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Year 2

Year 2 allows you to explore an even greater range of literary and cultural movements alongside the historical currents and events that shaped them.

Core module

• Perceiving the Past

Plus either Renaissance Literature B (double module) or Chaucer and Medieval Culture (double module)

Option modules

Choose one option module from:

• Religious History
• Histories of Violence
• Blood, Position and Power: The Nobility of Later Medieval England, 1066-1485
• Madness, Monarchy and Politics in Georgian Britain
• Jack-the-Ripper: Crime, Popular Culture and Policing in Victorian Times
• Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

Plus one of the following three options:

• Love Wars: Gender, Writing and Society, 1660-1789 B (double module)
• Or Concepts in Criticism B (double module)
• Or two from
  • Love Wars: Gender, Writing and Society, 1660-1789 A
  • Concepts in Criticism A
  • Sin and Redemption in Medieval Literature

If you are planning to write a History dissertation in Year 3, you will also study Becoming the Historical Researcher.

If you are planning to write an English Dissertation in Year 3, you will choose two further option modules:

Choose two option modules from:

• The Latin World: Ancient, Medieval and Modern
• Enter the Dragon: Modern Chinese History, 1839-1989
• From Beer to Fraternity: Alcohol, Society, and Culture in North America
• History in the Classroom
• Heritage Field Project
• All Bourgeois Now? Class in History
• Gender History (double module)
• Race and Ethnicity (double module)

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Year Abroad (optional)

If you wish, you can spend your third year studying abroad at one of our partner institutions (eligibility is dependent on your academic performance in Years 1 and 2). Alternatively, you can opt to continue studying at the University and complete your degree in three years.

Studying abroad is not just for people who are interested in travelling and meeting new people. It is about acquiring life skills that are becoming increasingly significant for a wide range of jobs in our modern globalised society. Whether you go on to work in the private sector, the state sector, a non-governmental organisation or become self-employed you will find the experience invaluable. Find out more from our Study Abroad Unit.

Please note that a year spent abroad still incurs a tuition fee, but this is much lower than for a normal year at Leicester. See our Fees and Funding section for details.

English and History at Leicester have links with several European universities, administered through the Erasmus+ scheme. If you are eligible for a loan from Student Finance you can apply for a travel grant from them. Languages courses, at both beginners and advanced level, are available through the University’s Languages at Leicester scheme.

• For the latest information on the future of the Erasmus+ scheme at UK universities please see our Brexit microsite.  

We have links with the following universities:

• Paris Diderot University - Paris 7, France
• Universität Salzburg, Austria
• Universität Heidelberg, Germany
• Universität Leipzig, Germany
• Università di Bologna, Italy
• Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
• Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands
• Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands
• Université de Genève, Switzerland

History at Leicester also has links with Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. If you are receiving financial assistance from Student Finance your support will continue and you may also be eligible to apply for additional travel grants or scholarships.

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Final Year (English dissertation)

Core module

• Dissertation

Option modules

Choose two option modules from:

• The USA and the Vietnam War
• Crime and Punishment in African American History
• The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
• Disasporas and Migrations in the Modern World
• From Empire to Nation: Modern South Asia, c. 1857-1947
• Gender, Crime and Deviance in Eighteenth Century Britain

Then choose two option modules from:

• The Imperial Economy: Britain and the Wider World, 1815-1914
• What Difference Did the War Make? British Society and the Great War, 1900-1939
• When Two Dragons Fight: China and Japan at War in the Twentieth Century
• Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, c1350-1650
• The Medieval Natural World
• Abolitionists: Antislavery Activism in Britain and America, 1787-1865 

Plus two option modules from:

• Literatures of Protest: Reading and Political Action
• Modern Literature
• Postcolonial Literature
• Autobiography and American Literature
• Late Victorian Gothic: Texts and Contexts
• Modern Monsters: The Other in Contemporary American Texts
• Representing the Holocaust
• The Thatcher Factor: The 1980s in Literature
• Jane Austen: The Novels, their Contexts and their Adaptations
• Tragedy
• Writing for Laughs
• Life and Fate: Russian Literature from Pushkin to Grossman
• Rewriting Britain 

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Final Year (History dissertation)

Core module

• History dissertation

Option modules

Choose one option module from:

• Coming of Age in America: Representing Adolescence in Fiction and Film
• The Forms of Modern Poetry
• Feminist Fiction
• Writing Voices
• Classical Worlds: Translation and Reception
• Writing Prose Fiction
• Clinical Encounters? Narratives of Doctors and Patients from the Victorians to the Present Day
• Language, Power and Persuasion
• The Living and the Dead in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture
• Shakespeare, Sex, and Gender

Plus one option module from:

• Romanticism: Revolutionary Writing from Blake to Shelley
• Victorians: from Oliver Twist to The Picture of Dorian Gray A

 Plus either Rewriting Britain (double module) or Postcolonial Literature

Finally choose one or two option modules from:

• Literatures of Protest: Reading and Political Action
• Postcolonial Literature
• Autobiography and American Literature
• Late Victorian Gothic: Texts and Contexts
• Modern Monsters: The Other in Contemporary American Texts
• Representing the Holocaust
• The Thatcher Factor: The 1980s in Literature
• Jane Austen: The Novels, their Contexts and their Adaptations
• Tragedy
• Writing for Laughs
• Life and Fate: Russian Literature from Pushkin to Grossman
• Rewriting Britain
• The Imperial Economy: Britain and the Wider World, 1815-1914
• What Difference Did the War Make? British Society and the Great War, 1900-1939
• When Two Dragons Fight: China and Japan at War in the Twentieth Century
• Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, c1350-1650
• The Medieval Natural World
• Abolitionists: Antislavery Activism in Britain and America, 1787-1865

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.