Future Students

English

A diversity of critical approaches is encouraged and a wide variety of units and texts to be studied are offered.

You can study an extensive range of units including Screen Studies, Creative Writing, Australian Literature, Post-colonial and Post-modern Literatures, Gender Studies, English Literature from the fourteenth century onwards, Shakespeare, Ecology and Culture, Literary and Cultural Theory.

English and Cultural Studies includes the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature and the Centre for Women's Studies. It is possible to major in English with two semester units at level one and at least six semester units over the two upper level years.

However, students majoring in English are strongly recommended to complete further units within the discipline. Students majoring in other subjects such as Asian Studies, Anthropology, Classical and Modern Languages, Communication Studies, Fine Arts, History and Philosophy will find units in English a valuable adjunct to their studies. 

English can be studied as a major within the Bachelor of Arts or the Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies). This includes combined courses which include these degrees. You may be able to study individual English units within other degrees.

Level 1
You may choose to study Level 1 English units for one semester or the whole year. If you wish to major in English you should complete two English Level 1 units. You may be able to substitute another Level 1 unit for a Level 1 English unit as approved by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Level 1 English units include topics of:

• An Introduction to Creative Writing
• Ideas of Modernity, 1780-1900
• Romance: History, Ideology and Imaginative Form
• Screen Cultures/Print Cultures
• Voicing Difference and Desire

(Please note:  not all units are available in each semester.  Please consult the official University handbook for unit availability.)

Level 2 and 3
There are many interesting topics you can study in upper levels. These include:

• Avant-garde Theatre
• Contemporary Australian Literature: Fiction into Film
• Ecotexts: Nature/Writing/Technology
• King Arthur: Chivalric Myth in Medieval Europe
• Love and Death in the Renaissance
• Magic and Marvels in Early English Narrative
• Modernism: Cultural Critique and Avant-Gardism
• Myself and the Aliens: Writing about Strangeness and Ourselves
• Performing Bodies/Performing Selves
• Post-Colonial Literatures
• Postmodern Narrative
• Professional Writing
• Reading Film
• Reading Texts, Mediating Culture
• Romanticism and Revolution
• Self.Net: Communicating Identity in the Digital Age
• Sex, Bodies, Spaces: Masculinity and Femininity in Contemporary Culture
• Shakespeare and the Movies
• Shakespeare''s Tragedies and Romances
• Sites of Subversion in Australian Writing
• Spaces of Resistance: Subversive Theatre and Performance
• Studies in Cold Fire: Poetry and Poetic Language
• Text and Gender: Feminist Theory and Practice
• The Story of My Life: Textual Selves
• Theory and Practice of Creative Writing
• Victorian Ideologies 

Career opportunities

Students majoring in English are highly successful in obtaining a wide range of jobs, from teaching to management, from journalism to the public service, and in all aspects of the cultural life of our society. Many proceed from studies in English to specialised training in one of the professions such as law, psychology, librarianship, industrial relations or theatre and media work. Many come from very diverse backgrounds to enhance their understanding or qualifications.