English Literature and History (BA)

Through lectures, seminars, workshops and tutorials, you'll explore the latest developments across your subjects while developing your own ideas and interests. These on-campus activities will be blended with a range of online environments that will enhance your learning experience and extend your studies beyond the classroom.

You'll discuss key texts and sources, debate different interpretations and work closely with expert academics and fellow students. As you progress through your degree, you'll have opportunities to undertake independent research and pursue topics that interest you most.

You'll develop sought-after skills in research, analysis, communication and critical thinking, preparing you for a wide range of careers. 

How will I be supported?

You'll be supported throughout your degree by a network of academic, professional and wellbeing services.

Your personal tutors will provide academic guidance and regular opportunities to discuss your progress. Welsh-speaking students can request a Welsh-speaking personal tutor.

Alongside your tutors, you'll receive support from lecturers, seminar tutors and module leaders. If you undertake an independent research project, you'll work closely with an academic supervisor, while weekly office hours provide additional opportunities to ask questions and seek advice.

Your virtual learning environment - Learning Central - gives you easy access to course materials, reading lists, presentations and additional learning resources.

The Writing Development Centre offers specialist support with academic writing through workshops, online resources and one-to-one sessions.  You'll also have access to a wide range of University services (co-located at the Centre for Student Life), including careers support through Student Futures, wellbeing and counselling services, money advice, disability support, academic skills guidance, student mentoring, specialist librarians and excellent library resources. 

How will I be assessed?

You'll be assessed in a range of ways that reflect the different skills you'll develop across your degree. These include source analyses, close literary readings, research projects, reviews, presentations, creative-critical portfolios and blog posts, alongside more traditional assessments such as essays and exams. 

Some assessments involve working collaboratively on projects and communicating your ideas to a wider audience. Others give you the chance to create work for different contexts, from designing a museum exhibition and producing a guide to historical sources to creating podcasts and digital content. 

Longer essays across both subjects allow you to explore key questions and debates in greater depth, while a dissertation in either subject gives you the opportunity to carry out sustained, independent research on a topic of your choice. 

You'll receive regular feedback on your work, both individually and in groups, helping you reflect on your progress and continue developing your skills. 

What skills will I practise and develop?

The Learning Outcomes for this Programme describe what you will achieve by the end of your programme at Cardiff University and identify the knowledge and skills that you will develop. They will also help you to understand what is expected of you.

On successful completion of your Programme you will be able to:

Knowledge & Understanding:   

• Systematically comprehend literature from different cultures and periods (including pre-1800) and the range of principal literary genres across prose, poetry, and drama.
• Systematically comprehend the relationships between literature and other cultural forms, or the complexity and diversity of the past in a single country or in relation to particular themes or texts.
• Systematically comprehend the changing assumptions and methods that historians use to explain the past, or the interplay between reading and different forms of writing.
• Systematically comprehend how culture, language, technology, and economics affect how, where, and by whom texts or disciplinary knowledge are produced and received.

Intellectual Skills:           

• Examine different kinds of literary or cultural materials closely and critically.
• Organise and defend arguments about a range of historical issues, problems and debates using historiographical ideas and methods.
• Develop and apply arguments that respond to literary and critical sources or that critically evaluate historical and cultural change.
• Generate and justify arguments about a range of historical issues, problems and debates using historiographical and/or literary ideas and methods.
• Compile appropriate primary sources, reflect upon their nature and analyse them critically to address questions and solve problems.​​​​​​​

Professional Practical Skills:

• Compile and systematically evaluate complex information and diverse evidence with accuracy.
• Communicate persuasively, conveying academic ideas and technical arguments to specialist or non-specialist audiences, using written or oral techniques.
• Assess and solve problems independently, taking the views of others into account in a systematic and evaluative way.​​​​​​​

Transferable/Key Skills:

• Explain information and ideas clearly and professionally, applying advanced knowledge and skills to unfamiliar or wider world challenges or contexts.
• Develop initiative by taking responsibility for structuring and time-managing a research task, working in teams when appropriate.
• Develop positive and effective working relations with others in teams, especially through constructive and collaborative dialogue and feedback.
• Generate imaginative solutions of your own that are rooted in evidence.
•  Develop enterprise skills to solve problems and analyse diverse, partial or ambiguous evidence using critical thinking, initiative and creativity.