Any exciting English Literature degree courses out there?

[ZandathePanda]

Dd is thinking of doing Eng Lit an university. She has had 2 outreach talks from Cambridge Uni and loves the city but doesn't want to go there because:

1. doesn't want to be surrounded by private school pupils.
2. thinks the course looks old and stuffy exacerbated by the recent media coverage about no black authors.
3. wants to enjoy the experience and thinks she'll be under too much pressure (we know 2 people who have dropped out of Cambridge due to mental health issues).

I think Durham may be out of the question if she is not wanting too many private school pupils around her! She likes the course at Newcastle and it seems more 'progressive'. They seem to do well on research.
Any ideas for other unis to look at?

Oh DD also liked the look of the Southampton course - it was just too far for her. I think it also has a slightly lower offer than a lot of the other Russel Groups so might be a good insurance. Our neighbour has also just finished her third year of English lit at Lancaster, got a first and is staying on to do an MA and really loved it.

And DD disliked the Bristol, Edinburgh and Nottingham courses because they seemed very narrow.

Kings, London
Durham
Exeter
Royal Holloway
Manchester
Birmingham
Oxford
Glasgow
Edinburgh
Cambridge

All excellent EngLit departments.

And for the sceptics: a graduate with a good degree in English, who's taken up the opportunities offered her within the Department & the university for enrichment, exchange, internships, working on student publications, getting involved with organising visiting speakers & student societies, then employment prospects with an English degree are excellent.

Your daughter sounds very thoughtful, but I would advise against choosing a university (for a BA degree) on the basis that it teaches ‘progressive’ 20c/21c authors. You can actually study those writers anywhere (including with some terrific faculty at Oxford or Cambridge). But if you want to read Zadie Smith or Salman Rushdie or Chinua Achebe or Derek Walcott (say) critically, as part of a university education, you need to know the writers they read, something about the history of the (not all white, but mostly white; given historical constituency of English-speaking countries) literature prior to 1900. Also: her interests after one or two years at university will probably be different from her current interests... Who knows: she might end up wanting to write a thesis on Shakespeare!

I would encourage her to look for a course that offers excellent teaching across the whole chronological range of periods, a good student/ staff ratio, and a teaching / exam model that she likes (eg small classes vs large lectures, end of year exams vs coursework).

York is an excellent department. UCL is at least as public schooly as Oxbridge, and much more expensive! Durham and Bristol also have high public school quotients. But if she likes Cambridge, why not apply and see...? If she gets a place she can still turn it down, but will have a much better sense of the fit after going through the whole interview process. Some college accept almost entirely state school applicants.

I just saw this. Can I jump in?

2) thinks the course looks old and stuffy exacerbated by the recent media coverage about no black authors.

There are not no black authors!

The students' Open Letter asked for more black and minority ethnic authors to be included on the core reading lists. I think this is a good idea. But you can study BME authors in several papers of the course already.

I teach medieval literature and I make decolonising the canon a huge part of my teaching. Last week we discussed Said and Lorde in relation to a medieval poem that uses orientalist imagery; a couple of weeks before that we read a text about a black Muslim man who marries a white Christian woman.

We also do work on gender and sexuality, and all sorts of political issues. I've ended up talking about disability politics, about Brexit, about the ethics of studying English Lit, about histories of sexuality and about the earliest women writers in English.

Cambridge gets a lot of media attention because it's Cambridge. That's not a bad thing, but it might give the misleading impression that Cambridge is some kind of dinosaur and other universities are all bastions of racial equality and loveliness. All universities have to work to diversify the canon. I'm just proud of our students that they are engaged enough to want to say so, loudly. It's not the case everywhere.

For what it’s worth, my daughter is studying English literature at Exeter university and absolutely loves the course.

LRD thanks for your post. I know the recent media coverage must have been infuriating. The 'no black authors' was, of course, too simplistic but, as you know, drip-feeds into pupils' perceptions. The 'dinosaur' image of the course is definitely dispelled in the description of your lectures - I can imagine her being very animated in those discussions!
The talks she has had on Cambridge have been all about the college systems, how to get in, how it's not all private school pupils (that immediately put the opposite idea into my daughter's head). I think your post is so much more inspiring. I will show her tonight.

You're welcome!

She might just not like the Cambridge course, which is totally fair - but I didn't want anyone to think we don't teach anything interesting, because I think we do!

My DD loves her English literature course at Oxford. She's in the final year. She is really engaged by the course and has had a great time so far, although I think the last couple of terms are very stressful, as there are no exams/ dissertation in the second year.

She seems to have really matured and has always been very positive about the course content. She's also managed to fit in fun things with drama and film.

On the whole public/private thing, it is the case that in her experience, English lit students tend to be middle class with professional parents (Lammy is right about this), but they are as likely to go to a grammar/high performing comprehensive as to a mid-range independent.