Course summary

Course outline As a student on the BSc (Hons) History and English course, you’ll have opportunities to study topics such as nationalism, state-building and inter-state relations; the history of war and peace; religious and ethnic conflict; trauma and memory; and issues of globalisation in the present that can only be understood by looking to the past. For example, you’ll learn how the British Empire helped to create the NHS, why Britain voted to stay in the EU in 1975 and why Margaret Thatcher became the first pop star of British international relations. With a global outlook, our teaching is informed by exciting historical research. As part of the course, you’ll participate in field trips to historical sites and get your hands dirty by digging into local archives, as well as conducting original research on a topic of your choosing. Studying cutting-edge techniques such as digital and oral history will give you new insights and further boost your employment prospects. In English, you’ll harness the power of the written and spoken word to discover how English works in society and become an expert communicator. The English programme has been designed with your future in mind, linking your studies to professionally relevant contexts with practical applications. It is directly informed by the research expertise of our staff, who specialise in disciplines including literary linguistics, forensic linguistics, language education, workplace communication, corpus linguistics, and contemporary and historical literature. We study everything from poetry and plays to news reporting and social media, providing you with the opportunity to develop skills in linguistic analysis, while exploring literary genres from Shakespeare to post-apocalyptic science fiction, considering periods from the seventeenth century to the present day. You’ll study literacy as a social practice and explore how and why people read and write at all levels of society. You’ll develop theoretical knowledge, cutting-edge linguistic skills, and techniques in close reading and literary analysis, with applications in legal, educational, and business contexts and beyond. We will train you to critically engage with a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts, and you’ll have the chance to develop your skills as a writer through our creative writing module. Together, both History and English will equip you with the knowledge and analytical skills that will enable you to think critically and work independently. This includes how to design a research project, collect and handle data and, most importantly, develop an advanced analytical mindset. This training will be essential for your final-year dissertation, during which you will carry out your own individual research project. This experience will provide you with a skillset that is highly desired in a wide range of industries and areas of work. Key benefits

• As part of your degree you’ll undertake a professional placement year, gaining valuable practical experience that employers demand. Aston University’s Careers and Placements team was recognised as the ‘Best University Placement Service’ at the National Undergraduate Employability (NUE) Awards 2022.

• English at Aston University was ranked first in the UK for ‘graduate prospects – on-track’ (Complete University Guide, 2022), which measured our graduates’ satisfaction with their career trajectory 15 months after completing their degree.

• English at Aston University was ranked among the top 5 universities in the UK for ‘spend per student’ (Guardian, 2023).

• 93 per cent of students on history programmes at Aston University agreed that their course has provided them with opportunities to bring information and ideas together from different topics (National Student Survey, 2022).