English Literature and Politics BA (Hons)

ENGLISH LITERATURE

*Single Hons English Literature is available for 2025 entry only

The city of Liverpool is the perfect place for literature lovers to study. There is a rich cultural scene with literary organisations, festivals, and performances, independent bookshops, and the famous Central Library. The Reader Organisation in the beautiful Calderstones Park is a short walk from the Hope Park campus where English Literature at Liverpool Hope is taught. The BA English Literature programme will offer you the opportunity to explore literature across different genres and periods as well as the history, ideas, people and places that shape it and are shaped by it. Throughout our course, we emphasise how literary texts address and influence the most important issues facing society today.

Key features of our programme include:

- Study of a wide range of literature from different historical periods, and critical and theoretical writings that help us to better understand them. The course includes fiction, poetry, drama and a range of non-fiction prose including autobiography, slave narratives, essays and travel writing. You will study well-known authors, but will also have the chance to explore work by writers who will be new to you, and who offer fresh, alternative perspectives on the themes and ideas we examine

- An emphasis on literature’s relationship to sustainability and the environment, work and employability, travel and global perspectives, and health, happiness and well-being

- A focus on books, publishing, and reading that includes working with historically important items from Liverpool Hope’s collection of rare books and manuscripts, digital approaches, and creative hands-on learning

- A strong commitment to individual student support through small group teaching and personal tutors

- Employability awareness and skills development embedded in our curriculum and enhanced by activities and events.

Our English Literature programme is taught by experienced tutors with internationally recognised expertise in their fields. Our staff are active researchers and writers who publish books and articles that are rated highly. In the last national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) English was identified as the strongest subject for research outputs in the University: over 80% of publications by staff in English at Liverpool Hope were rated "world leading" or "internationally excellent".

We pride ourselves on offering a stimulating and challenging degree that allows each student to develop not only sophisticated knowledge and interpretations of a broad selection of literature but also highly sought-after skills including critical analysis, problem-solving, and effective communication. Our graduates are informed, independent, and imaginative thinkers who go on to a range of wide range of careers including publishing, the creative industries, journalism, marketing, teaching, and further academic study.

POLITICS

Politics affects all of us. It is central to human life and human affairs. It is fundamental to how we organise and govern ourselves and to how we resolve conflicts. The decisions we make as political communities, who makes them and how, have consequences for how we live, from questions of war and peace, the distribution of wealth, our rights, freedoms, responsibilities, our access to education, transport and health care.

In this rapidly changing world, new challenges are constantly arising – from climate change to new technologies, from identity politics to Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic – and the study of politics needs to respond. At Liverpool Hope, therefore, we seek to engage with politics and political issues in the real world as they evolve and change over time. In doing so, we actively encourage free and open debate and discussion amongst our students, encouraging a stronger awareness and appreciation of different points of view.

On this programme of study, you will explore key ideas, institutions and politics in an international, national and local context. You will be taught by staff who are experts in their fields, who will teach you to engage with political research and develop the capacity to be an independent, critically-minded scholar. The course also aims to equip you with transferable skills to take into the world of work.

Liverpool Hope can also offer work placement opportunities. In Politics we’ve also organised a Practitioners in Politics series of events, in conjunction with our Careers Office, where individuals including MPs, the Mayor of Liverpool and the Merseyside Commissioner for Crime and Policing have come to advise students on pathways into political careers and the skills needed to get there.