Bachelor of Arts (BA)

BA English Literature and American Studies

English Literature and American Studies at Manchester combines literature with history, politics and popular culture of the United States.

  • Duration: 3 years
  • Year of entry: 2025
  • UCAS course code: QT37 / Institution code: M20
  • Key features:
  • Study abroad

Full entry requirementsHow to apply

Fees and funding

Fees

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £26,500 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

Policy on additional costs

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

Scholarships/sponsorships

Course unit details:
Interdisciplinary Literature and Theology: Empathy, Ethics, Liberation

Course unit fact file
Unit code ENGL35111
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 3
Teaching period(s) Semester 1
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

This course examines the interdisciplinary conversation between theology and literature by reading and discussing theoretical perspectives from theologians, ethicists, and literary scholars, alongside novels short stories, and poems. We will consider different interdisciplinary approaches to the relationship between theology and literature; and examine how these different disciplines contribute to contemporary debates over empathy, ethical action, and liberative theologies. Central to the course is understanding how liberative perspectives in feminist, womanist, postcolonial, disability, and queer theologies engage with literature to raise questions of how to represent specific lived experiences in literary and theological texts. The class enables students to develop the critical skills to identify theological and ethical questions emerging from different literary modes, as well as perspectives on reading and interpreting literature as a community. Students will be encouraged reflect on how specific texts have shaped their own worldviews and to develop their own theological and ethical readings of literary texts. Students do not need to have studied theology or literature before, as they will be familiarised with relevant secondary material on literary texts and on the interdisciplinary study of literature and theology.

Assessment methods

Essay 1: 30%

Essay 2: 70%

Recommended reading

• Cynthia Wallace, Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering, 2016.

• Heather Walton, Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces, 2011.

• Katie Cannon, Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community, 1995.

• Heather Walton, Literature, Theology, and Feminism, 2007.

• Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987. • Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1993.

• Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass and Iron, in Uncanny Magazine.

• Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 2017.

• Lesley Nneka Arimah, What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, 2015

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Wren Radford Unit coordinator

Return to course details