Economic & Social History/English Literature

Economic and social history with English literature is an intellectually distinctive combination that brings together the historical analysis of economic and social change with the critical study of literature, creating a programme that can examine how societies have developed materially and structurally alongside how they have represented and interpreted their own experience through imaginative writing. Economic and social history examines how economies have evolved, how industries and trade have developed, how social structures including class, gender, and ethnicity have changed, and what the lived experience of economic change has been for different groups. English literature, at Glasgow, encompasses the full range of writing in English from early modern to postmodern, including American, Irish, and postcolonial literatures alongside British writing.

At the University of Glasgow, this four-year full-time programme benefits from expertise across a wide range of areas in English literature, as the current description notes, including critical theory, creative writing, and the relationship between literature and other arts, media, and science. This breadth means you will engage with literature in its full cultural and historical context, and the combination with economic and social history creates particular opportunities to examine how literary texts reflect, respond to, and sometimes challenge the economic and social conditions of their times.

The programme includes a year abroad, providing international study experience that broadens your engagement with both economic history and literary traditions in a different academic and cultural context.

Graduates from programmes combining economic and social history with English literature pursue careers in education, research, journalism, publishing, archive and heritage work, cultural organisations, policy research, and a range of professional roles where the ability to contextualise and interpret complex materials with analytical precision is valued. Postgraduate study in history, literature, or cultural studies is a natural progression for those with research or specialist professional ambitions.