English Literature/Sociology

English literature and sociology bring together two disciplines that each, in different ways, ask what it means to be human in a social world. English literature explores that question through close attention to texts: examining how writers represent experience, construct meaning, and engage with the cultural, historical, and political conditions in which they write. Sociology approaches the same territory through empirical inquiry and theoretical analysis, investigating how social structures, institutions, inequalities, and collective practices shape individual lives and social outcomes.

Studied together, they develop complementary ways of seeing that make each more powerful.

At the University of Glasgow, this part-time programme gives you access to a department of English literature with expertise across American, Irish, postcolonial, and European literatures alongside critical theory, creative writing, and the relationship between literature and other arts, media, and science. The sociology strand will train you in the major theoretical traditions, from classical sociology through to contemporary debates on identity, globalisation, and digital society, as well as in the research methods needed to investigate social phenomena rigorously. The programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study in a different academic environment and to experience how these disciplines are approached from other national and intellectual traditions.

Graduates from English literature and sociology programmes bring a distinctive combination of analytical, interpretive, and communicative skills to a wide range of professional contexts. Careers in journalism, publishing, education, social research, cultural policy, the civil service, and community organisations are all natural destinations. Further study at postgraduate level in either English literature or sociology, or in interdisciplinary fields such as cultural studies, media studies, and social policy, is available for those who wish to pursue specialist or academic careers.