Literature

Welcome to the English Literature pages at the University of Westminster.  Here you will find information relating to the activities of the English Literature Subject Area, including staff contact details and research interests, forthcoming events, and information on undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

 

The University of Westminster's historic relationship to the literary and cultural life of London is well established. The Royal Polytechnic Institute, 309 Regent Street, at which most of our teaching is based, was, in 1896, the venue for the Lumière brothers first show of moving pictures in Britain. In a résumé written in 1909, the modernist poet Ezra Pound described himself as ‘Troubadour, ... Fellow in Romantics ... [and] Lecturer to Regent St. Polytechnic’.  And, indeed, the Polytechnic was the site for Pound's first foray into literary criticism, when he gave a series of lectures there on Medieval Romance Literature. More recently, the Modern Poetry conferences held at the then Polytechnic of Central London in the mid-1970s, and including contributions by the likes of Eric Mottram, Basil Bunting, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Lee Harwood, were crucial events in the history of the avant-garde British Poetry Revival.   

 

Today the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes devised for those who wish to study literary texts closely, and in relation to a variety of other disciplines such as philosophy and the visual arts. In addition to offering a diverse course content, which broadly reflects the teaching and research interests of our staff, we also host the regular Westminster English Colloquium, as well as a series of postgraduate seminars linked to our Masters programmes.

 

Undergraduate students can study English Literature either as a single subject or in combination with another subject such as Linguistics, English Language, a foreign language, Creative Writing, History, or Cultural Studies.

 

At Postgraduate level, the Department offers an MA in English Literature as well as MAs in Cultural and Critical Studies and in London Studies. English Literature at Westminster has a very active Research culture, and we welcome applications from those wishing to study for MPhils or PhDs. Particularly strong areas of research in the Subject Area include Victorian literature and culture, modernism and the avant-garde, London literature, gothic studies and contemporary writing.

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