Postgraduate Prospectus

www.essex.ac.uk/lifts | Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Film screening facilities at our Colchester Campus
Derek Walcott, our Professor of Poetry, undertaking
a reading to our students at our Colchester Campus
are taught by our film specialists and by
professional film/video makers.
Graduates will have a strong sense
of independent, documentary and
experimental filmmaking practices, and
our course is intended to act as a bridge
if you wish to pursue careers or further
courses in film and video.
MA Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious•
This interdisciplinary course draws on
complementary expertise in our Department
and in our Centre for Psychoanalytic
Studies. You critically explore theories of
myth, both ancient and modern, but focus
on the depth psychological theories of
Freud and Jung, which postulate that the
real subject matter of myth is the
unconscious mind. With these theoretical
foci, you examine the role of myth in
literature, with special emphasis on mythic
representations of the city in western
culture and the uses of myth in some key
texts of literary modernism, whose authors
worked in an intellectual milieu informed by
the new depth psychologies.
Graduates develop key skills in oral
and written communication, and are
able to work in an interdisciplinary way
with literary and psychoanalytic texts, which
will enhance your career prospects. Our
course will also prepare you for possible
progression to doctoral research.
MA Theatre•
MA Theatre allows you to take between
two and four of our specialist theatre
modules. Our theatre modules have two
emphases: Shakespeare and Playwriting,
with Playwriting modules recommended
if you wish to write your own stage plays.
We introduce you to a range of
contemporary plays and give you an idea
about the possibilities that exist within the
form of contemporary drama. Whilst this
study is taking place, you begin your own
writing. We will encourage you to work
independently as scholars in your specific
fields of investigation, and to formulate and
present a reflective view of your findings,
which will enhance your career prospects,
as well as prepare you for possible
progression to doctoral research.
MA Wild Writing: Literature and the
Environment•
This course offers a unique combination of
science and humanities, focusing on writing
about the environment. Its concerns are
global, though our core modules focus
these through a study of the writing and
environment of the local region, and through
an introduction to twenty-first-century
writing about nature.
You can join our MA Wild Writing: Literature
and the Environment with or without a
specialist background in literary studies
or biological sciences, as one distinctive
feature is our combination of literary and
scientific analysis, although you can vary
the balance of these two elements. We
include field trips in the local area and a
creative writing route is also available by
choosing our creative writing modules and
the creative writing form of assessment
for your core course and/or dissertation.
Postgraduate Prospectus 2012 | 161