English, American Studies and Creative Writing at The University of Manchester

The English, American Studies and Creative Writing department is a thriving community of students, lecturers and writers working in three broad areas: American Studies, English Literature and Creative Writing.

The University of Manchester pioneered the academic study of the history, literature and culture of the United States in the UK. Today, our American Studies programme is the oldest of its kind in the country. Our courses and research in American Studies range from the colonial era to contemporary hip-hop culture and Hollywood film, encompassing music, politics, history, cultural analysis, and three centuries of American literature.

There are close connections between our teaching and research in American Studies and in English Literature. Our English Literature courses range from Anglo-Saxon literature to 21st Century writing and film, by way of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. That’s more than a thousand years’ worth of literature and culture to explore: everything from medieval romance to the postcolonial and postmodern.

This is also the home of the highly regarded Centre for New Writing, which runs our Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature programmes. Student workshops in Creative Writing are led by some of the most adventurous poets, novelists, and science-fiction writers in the UK, including our new Professor of Creative Writing, Jeanette Winterson.

Why study English, American Studies and Creative Writing with us?

If the chance to study a wide range of literature, history, and culture, from a variety of different theoretical perspectives, interests you, then welcome to English, American Studies and Creative Writing at Manchester: you’re the kind of intellectually curious and ambitious student we’re looking for.

You will become part of an intellectually vibrant academic community, which boasts internationally recognised specialists working across the full spectrum of the subject area.

All members of the department, from professors to junior lecturers, teach on our first, second and third year courses. So our students know that they are being taught by specialists working at the cutting edge of research in their fields.

We have also been recognised for the high quality of our research – English and American Studies was ranked second in the most recent (2008) UK Research Assessment Exercise.