School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics
One stop shop for SELLL Newsletters
Students on QW38: English Literature with Creative Writing will have the opportunity in their first year to write in different forms, before specialising in their subsequent years. Students will choose between:
One undergraduate student has kindly allowed us to share their script. Joint depicts a tense scene between a mother and son.
Continue reading “Scriptwriting – Student Work”Lots of our modules offer opportunities to delve into local archives and collections, housed right here in the Newcastle University Special Collections. Digital exhibitions transform physical archives into online spaces that you can enjoy online.
One SELLL student took this opportunity to raise awareness for Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s LGBT History. LGBT Histories draws attention to the people and places who have helped shape the region as a liberal space. The exhibition features items on literary legend Jane Gomeldon and suffragist Ethel Williams, as well as local LGBT spaces such as the nightclubs on Newcastle’s Bigg Market.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into the exciting work our students have been creating.
If you have any questions about Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics with email english@ncl.ac.uk.
Poetry is a thriving Creative Writing discipline in the School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics. Through the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA) the School provides a site for enhancing the public understanding of poetry. The NCLA hosts a popular and wide-ranging programme of regular visiting poets from around the world.
Poetry is another popular Creative Writing strand available to QW38: English Literature with Creative Writing students.
‘Holding Hands Among The Hedgehogs (available to download above) is an example of poetry written by a QW38 student who has kindly given permission for us to share their work.
Continue reading “Poetry, Creative Writing – Student Work”Creating Writing is an important subject in the School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics. QW38: English Literature with Creative Writing students have the opportunity to try different forms and genres of writing before specialising in Stages 2 and 3. Prose is a popular writing strand, focusing on short stories, novellas and chapters within longer pieces of fiction.
A Journey (available to download above) is an example of prose written by a QW38 student who has kindly given permission for us to share their work.
Continue reading “Prose, Creative Writing – Student Work”In Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics there are growing opportunities to present your research in a multimedia format. Digital exhibitions introduce students to the principles of textual editing for digital platforms, as well as writing for an online audience. Digital exhibitions are also a great way of promoting your research, gaining a wider online audience and drawing attention to lesser known archival material and special collections.
In 2014/15, English Language and Literature student Claire Boreham, created the William Corbett’s Bookshop website as part of the UTLSEC Innovation Fund project Making the Archives Public: Digital Skills, Research and Public Engagement. The project was devised and convened by Dr Ruth Connolly and Dr Stacy Gillis.
Continue reading “William Corbett’s Bookshop – Student Exhibition”As you progress through your degree, you will increasingly specialise your topics of interest and research. This means at Stage 1 you will do broad modules that will likely cover a huge breadth of time and geographical space. By Stage 3 the modules are increasingly specialised, meaning you will gain an in-depth knowledge (as well as the breadth of knowledge you gained in your previous years).
SEL3392: Between the Acts: English Theatre, 1660-1737 is a Stage 3 module, currently run by Dr James Harriman-Smith, than focuses on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama. In this module students look at lots of different genres from the time period, including tragedies and comedies, but also pantomimes, burlesques, satires and more. They will also examine texts that describe performance, such as the first English acting manuals, early theatre reviews, and legal and business records about the stage.
Continue reading “Between the Acts: English Theatre, 1660-1737 – Student Work”In Newcastle University School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics there are lots of opportunities to get creative with your assessments – from podcasts to film, digital exhibitions to posters, you will have lots of scope to learn new skills and get creative.
One of our first year modules SEL1008: The Nature of Language asks students to submit “anything but an essay” to demonstrate the Linguistics work they’ve been learning in the first semester. This is a really exciting project that allows students to get creative.
Here are some examples of work students submitted in 2020.
Caitlin Knaggs produced an illustrated children’s story on bilingual language acquisition.
Continue reading “The Nature of Language – Student Work”Hello Everyone,
Congratulations on your offer of a place at Newcastle University! Following the UK government announcement regarding 2020 Exam results on Monday 17 August, we wanted to reassure you that your offer still stands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics in September. If you do want to find out more about the University’s approach please read our statement and our offer holder FAQs. I am a lecturer in Renaissance literature and the module leader for ‘Introduction to Literary Studies 2’ which introduces our first-year students to texts from the medieval up till the Romantic period. The specific texts change slightly every year, and I will circulate a reading list before the Christmas break.
Your Induction
Our flexible and enhanced University Induction programme for new students will provide you with a warm welcome and introduction to Newcastle University and Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU).
From Monday 28 September you’ll be able to access our Induction programme on Canvas – our Virtual Learning Environment. All information and activity will be offered online and we’ll send you full instructions on how to access Canvas the week before term starts. Some activities may include on-campus opportunities, but these will be dependent on physical distancing requirements at the time and will follow Covid-19 safety guidelines.
You’ll also receive school-specific induction information in the near future, designed to introduce you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and your degree programme. This will include everything you need to know before starting, including selecting optional modules, accessing your timetable and reading lists.
Frequently asked questions and COVID-19
We’re regularly updating both our COVID-19 FAQs and our Student Experience 2020 guide with all the latest information you need about starting your course as the Covid-19 situation continues.
Pre-arrival activities
I thought it would be useful here to suggest some more general reading and listening that you can do now in order to get to grips with some of the conversations we’re going to be having throughout your undergraduate degree. You by no means need to look at all of these!
General: why we read, and how we frame arguments
Studying literature is not just about encountering new books, it is also about learning how and why we read them. If you have the time, I recommend that you look at Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle’s An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory (5th edition, 2016) at some point this summer. It is a highly readable guide to literary criticism, with short chapters focusing on themes (e.g. narrative, ghosts, the colony) with concrete examples of how each theme can be applied to a certain text. You can browse a copy on Google Books (which, by the way, is a useful resource for finding academic books online) or you can try searching for this title as a PDF online, before deciding if you want to buy a copy. There are numerous editions of this book: the more recent have some additional chapters, but most of it is the same whichever edition you use.
Thinking about pre-modern race
One of the main questions that we will be exploring in ‘Introduction to Literary Studies 2’ is as relevant to the study of literature as to history: how can we meaningfully engage with texts which seem culturally and aesthetically distant from our own context? Part of the way that we practice this is not just by learning about the historical contexts and literary genres of the past, but also by learning how to spot the way literary critics and historians frame their interpretation of a text.
This summer we have seen how important it is for all of us to confront our colonial legacy in Britain and beyond, and there are renewed calls on universities to decolonise their curriculums. The next few resources are ones that I have found helpful in educating myself about how we can examine earlier historical periods through this critical lens:
1. Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018) is an important text which questions the common assumption that concepts of race and racism only began in the modern era. For a shorter introduction, you can read this exhibition by Heng.
2. For an excellent demonstration of how two twentieth-century writers (J.R.R. Tolkein and Toni Morrison) approached the issue of race in Beowulf (one of the texts we study in Introduction to Literary Studies 2),read this short article by Dorothy Kim (2019).
3. For another great introduction to the topic of studying Shakespeare and race, listen to this podcast from the Globe Theatre with Farah Karim Cooper, Ayanna Thompson and Noémie Ndiaye. In this podcast they focus on one of the texts we will be studying on ILS2 (Titus Andronicus).
Self-aware history
As students of both English and History, you should find Natalie Zemon Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre (1983) a great way into thinking about the relationship between literature and history, women’s history, and the fine line between fabrication and trial records. She was the consultant on a film of the same title (released 1982), and her book was written to fill in the uncertainties that were inevitably left out of the film’s more stream-lined narrative. This book provoked a famous discussion between Zemon-Davis and her main detractor, Robert Finlay, about the methods historians use to interpret women’s history. If you do not want to read the full book, this blog post by Claire Potter (2018) is worth reading as it explains why this book and the discussion around it are so important for students. It includes links to that original exchange between Finlay and Zemon Davis too.
These suggestions are intended to make you think about the relevance of studying earlier historical texts and periods today. My colleagues and I would love to hear more from you about what you discover, so please do feel free to get in touch with us through email or social media, for example on the Twitter hashtag #NCLReady.
All the best, and I look forward to welcoming you to Newcastle soon!
Kate De Rycker
Lecturer in Renaissance Literature
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Hello Everyone,
My name is James Harriman-Smith and I’m both an undergraduate admissions director and a lecturer in literature at Newcastle University. Following the UK government announcement regarding 2020 Exam results on Monday 17 August, we wanted to reassure you that your offer still stands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics in September. If you do want to find out more about the University’s approach please read our statement and our offer holder FAQs.
Your Induction
Our flexible and enhanced University Induction programme for new students will provide you with a warm welcome and introduction to Newcastle University and Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU).
From Monday 28 September you’ll be able to access our Induction programme on Canvas – our Virtual Learning Environment. All information and activity will be offered online and we’ll send you full instructions on how to access Canvas the week before term starts. Some activities may include on-campus opportunities, but these will be dependent on physical distancing requirements at the time and will follow Covid-19 safety guidelines.
You’ll also receive school-specific induction information in the near future, designed to introduce you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and your degree programme. This will include everything you need to know before starting, including selecting optional modules, accessing your timetable and reading lists.
Frequently asked questions and COVID-19
We’re regularly updating both our COVID-19 FAQs and our Student Experience 2020 guide with all the latest information you need about starting your course as the Covid-19 situation continues.
Pre-arrival activities
Today I’d like to share a message and an exercise written for you by Dr Zoe Cooper, who teaches the script parts of our English Literature and Creative Writing degree. I hope you enjoy it, and please do take a look at the other material we are making available on Twitter and our other social media platforms.
Now, over to Zoe:
I’m writing this to you from my spare bedroom, in my little red house. I’m looking at the row of other little red houses on the opposite side of my street. I am listening to the seagulls that rest on the roofs in Newcastle because we are so near the sea.
It is a funny time to be thinking about writing for theatre, when we are all trapped inside in our homes, wondering when we will be able to get out. Plays are a little bit different to poetry, novels or even films in that you need people to be in a room together for them to really work. So, what I want to do with the following exercise is to invite you to start to dream about being together again in a room to hear and see a story. I think a good way to do that is to think about location and set.
1. Do a Google Image search for one of the following kinds of location. Pick one of the results that interests you
a. Beach
b. Bedroom
c. School canteen
d. Park
Once you have chosen your location, use your own memories and experiences to write a short prose description of that location. This can either be in one continuous paragraph or using a series of bullet points.
2. Now I want you to think about a character that could exist in that space. Write 1-21 down the side of a page and answering the following about that character
1. Age
2. Name
3. Shoes they are wearing
4. Last time they danced
5. Brothers and sisters (how many and names)
6. How do they spend their days? Work? School? Something else?
7. Where do they get their money?
8. How much do they currently have in their bank account?
9. When, where and who was their first kiss?
10. Most prized achievement?
11. What makes them angry?
12. If they were an animal what animal would they be?
13. What is the thing that they want most today?
14. What is the thing that they want most this year?
15. What is the thing they want most by the end of their life?
16. What is getting in the way of them getting the thing they want most today?
17. What is getting in the way of them getting the thing they want most by the end of the year?
18. What is getting in the way of them getting the thing they want most by the end of their life?
19. What do they need?
20. Another character enters the space. Describe them
21. Who are they to this character?
3. In theatre we call objects that are used on stage ‘properties’, or ‘props’
Props that get handled, moved or otherwise used during the course of a play are called ‘practical props’. Can you write a description of a significant prop that exists in the space that you have described? Write a short description of that prop and some notes on how it might be handled or changed through the course of a scene set in that space? How does it gain significance?
4. You are now ready to start writing your scene
a. Start with the stage directions, using your notes from question 1. How much description do you need? How much detail? Which aspects of the set are important? Try to be as concise as possible. Do you want your character/s to start in the space? Or will they enter? Do they do anything before they first speak?
b. Now you can start thinking about the dialogue. If you feel stuck a good scenario for a scene is that character A wants something (by the end of the day, end of the month, by the end of the year) and character B presents character A with an obstacle in some way, either intentionally or unintentionally.
c. If you can try not to go back and edit your scene until you have got all the way through. This will mean that you can see what the shape of the scene is before you decide which bits to rewrite or cut.
I am really looking forward to meeting you all in the autumn.
Best wishes,
Zoe Cooper and James Harriman-Smith
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Hello Everyone,
My name is Emma Whipday, and I am a lecturer in Renaissance literature at Newcastle University. Following the UK government announcement regarding 2020 Exam results on Monday 17 August, we wanted to reassure you that your offer still stands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics in September. If you do want to find out more about the University’s approach please read our statement and our offer holder FAQs. I teach the ‘Renaissance Bodies’ module to our second years and the ‘Women on Trial’ module to our third years.
Your Induction
Our flexible and enhanced University Induction programme for new students will provide you with a warm welcome and introduction to Newcastle University and Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU).
From Monday 28 September you’ll be able to access our Induction programme on Canvas – our Virtual Learning Environment. All information and activity will be offered online and we’ll send you full instructions on how to access Canvas the week before term starts. Some activities may include on-campus opportunities, but these will be dependent on physical distancing requirements at the time and will follow Covid-19 safety guidelines.
You’ll also receive school-specific induction information in the near future, designed to introduce you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and your degree programme. This will include everything you need to know before starting, including selecting optional modules, accessing your timetable and reading lists.
Frequently asked questions and COVID-19
We’re regularly updating both our COVID-19 FAQs and our Student Experience 2020 guide with all the latest information you need about starting your course as the Covid-19 situation continues.
Pre-arrival activities I am writing to you today to share some videos I produced about dangerous homes in Shakespeare’s tragedies (and one comedy). I hope that they give you some food for thought before you start your degree in the Autumn:
In addition to watching these videos, you might want to have a think about the following questions in relation to any other Shakespeare plays you know:
Finally, do look out for further material on this topic and others that will appear on our Twitter page, with the hashtag #NCLReady. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, either through social media or by email.
Best wishes,
Emma Whipday
Lecturer in Renaissance Literature School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics