English Literature and Drama with a Year Abroad

English literature and drama, studied together, explore two of the most enduring forms of human expression. Literature asks how language, narrative, and imagery shape our understanding of ourselves and the world, while drama and theatre extend those questions into the embodied, collaborative, and live dimensions of storytelling. Both disciplines develop your capacity to read carefully, think critically, and engage imaginatively with the ways human beings make meaning, and studying them in combination lets each illuminate the other: plays become literary texts, and novels become theatrical possibilities.

At UEA this four-year programme incorporates a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study English literature and drama in a different academic culture and to bring an international perspective back to your final year. The programme's description positions both disciplines as powerful artforms that tell us about our history and give us the tools to explore who we are and who we could be, a framing that reflects UEA's long tradition of combining literary seriousness with creative ambition. You will engage with dramatic texts, theatrical history, and performance theory alongside the full range of literary forms and periods.

The programme runs full time.

Graduates from English literature and drama programmes pursue careers in publishing, journalism, arts administration, theatre-making, education, writing, and cultural programming. The combination of analytical rigour and creative sensibility is also valued in media, public relations, marketing, and the civil service. Many graduates proceed to postgraduate study in literature, creative writing, theatre studies, or cultural criticism, and others train as teachers, bringing both subjects into secondary education.

The breadth of the skills the degree develops makes graduates competitive across many professional fields.