Literature and History with a Year Abroad

Literature and history share a fascination with how people in the past understood themselves and their world, and how those understandings were expressed, contested, and transmitted over time. Literary texts are themselves historical documents: they capture the languages, preoccupations, anxieties, and aspirations of the periods that produced them. And history, in turn, depends on interpretation, on reading sources carefully and asking what they meant and to whom.

Studied together, the two disciplines develop a particularly rich set of analytical and interpretive capabilities.

At the University of East Anglia, this four-year full-time programme with a year abroad integrates literary and historical study in ways that allow each discipline to enrich the other. UEA is famous for its creative writing programme, and that culture of serious engagement with texts permeates the English and humanities teaching more broadly. The history provision is equally strong, and you will be working in a university where literary and historical scholarship is taken seriously at the highest level.

The year abroad opens the opportunity to study at a partner university in another country, bringing a different national tradition of literary and historical study into your education and broadening your analytical perspective.

You will read texts from a range of periods and places, developing close reading skills and the ability to situate literary works in their historical contexts. You will also engage with historical sources, building the research and analytical skills that serious historical enquiry demands. Writing is central to both disciplines, and the extended essays, critical arguments, and research projects you produce will develop your ability to construct and sustain complex arguments clearly.

Graduates in literature and history work in publishing, journalism, education, the heritage sector, museums and archives, arts administration, the civil service, broadcasting, law, and a wide range of other roles where strong reading, writing, and research skills are valued. Postgraduate study in literature, history, journalism, publishing, museum studies, or law is a natural continuation. The year abroad adds an international dimension to your record that many employers find attractive.