English Studies and Film & Media

English studies and film and media together give you two complementary lenses on how human beings communicate, tell stories, and make meaning through language and image. Literature asks you to read texts closely, to understand how form and language create meaning, and to locate writers within their historical and cultural contexts. Film and media studies extends this to the moving image and the digital landscape, examining how cinema, television, journalism, and social platforms shape experience, representation, and public life.

At the University of Stirling this four-year, full-time programme draws on the strengths of both disciplines and the conversation between them. You will study English literature from earlier periods through to contemporary writing, developing sophisticated skills in close reading, critical argument, and literary history. In film and media you will engage with the theory and history of cinema and media, analysing how they work, what they represent, and what cultural work they do.

A year abroad is built into the programme, offering you the chance to study at a partner university overseas and to experience different literary and media cultures at first hand.

The analytical, argumentative, and communicative abilities you develop are genuinely transferable. Graduates move into careers in publishing, journalism, broadcasting, media production, advertising, and the creative industries, as well as education, the civil service, public relations, and the cultural sector. The programme is well suited to anyone who wants to understand how language and image make meaning, and who wants to apply that understanding professionally.

Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in English literature, film studies, journalism, creative writing, or media studies, and the degree provides a strong foundation for research or further professional training in any of these areas.