English
English as an academic discipline encompasses the study of literature written in the English language across many centuries, genres and national traditions, alongside the critical, theoretical and historical frameworks through which we analyse and interpret those texts. It is one of the most intellectually flexible degree subjects, developing skills of close reading, argument, research and communication that prove valuable across a very wide range of careers and further study.
The University of London offers this programme in a part-time and distance learning format, which means you can pursue a serious, university-level engagement with English literature while managing other commitments. Distance learning requires self-discipline and the ability to organise your own study, but it also gives you a degree of flexibility that residential study cannot. The University of London's distance learning provision has a long and distinguished history, and the academic content is full and rigorous.
You will engage with poetry, fiction and drama from across the English literary tradition, developing analytical reading skills alongside the ability to write with clarity and authority about complex literary and cultural questions. The programme is structured to allow you to build your understanding progressively, developing the theoretical and historical knowledge that supports advanced literary analysis as the degree proceeds.
Studying English at this level, even at a distance, cultivates habits of mind that transfer well beyond the subject itself: careful attention to language, openness to multiple interpretations, the ability to construct well-evidenced arguments and the capacity to engage with ideas that resist simple resolution.
Graduates from English programmes work in education, publishing, journalism, communications, the creative industries, the civil service, law, marketing and many other fields. The part-time and distance learning route is particularly well suited to those who are already working in a relevant field and wish to formalise and deepen their literary knowledge, or to those who wish to move into a new career and are using the degree to build a new set of credentials and capabilities.