English Literature and History

English literature and history are natural intellectual companions. Literature gives you access to how people in the past understood their world, expressed their feelings, and imagined alternatives to the lives they lived. History provides the context that allows you to understand what those texts meant when they were written and how they have been read differently across time.

Together the two disciplines develop an unusually rich set of analytical and communicative skills.

At the University of Northumbria at Newcastle this extended degree runs over four years full time and includes a sandwich year with a work placement and a year abroad. The extended structure gives you time to develop genuine depth in both disciplines, the placement year places your academic skills in a professional context, and the year abroad extends your intellectual and personal horizons by placing you in a different academic and cultural environment.

You will study literary texts across periods and genres, from medieval writing through to contemporary fiction and poetry, developing skills in close reading, interpretation, and argument. The history strand takes you across periods and places, training you to evaluate sources, construct historical arguments, and think comparatively about the past. You will write frequently and at length, developing the precision and clarity that are central to both disciplines.

Graduates of English literature and history are employed across an unusually broad range of careers. Law, journalism, publishing, public relations, the civil service, education, arts administration, marketing, and management all regularly recruit from these disciplines. The combination of analytical rigour, written fluency, and the professional experience gained from the placement year makes graduates well positioned in a competitive graduate market.

Many also continue to postgraduate study in literature, history, law, journalism, or related fields.