BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing with Foundation Year

This will be a team taught module that utilises the expertise of the entire team and will cover a range of texts from different eras, cultural heritages, genres and forms, but all with a local connection to the West Midlands region.

This module aims to integrate the critical reading of creative non-fiction with the student's choice of writing assignment. You will examine theories of self-representation in various forms and cultures and consider past and contemporary markets, publication outlets and trends for creative nonfiction texts. You will be encouraged to explore the possibilities of different forms, genres and sub-genres encompassed in the term of creative non-fiction (e.g. the lyric essay, the graphic memoir, travel writing, nature writing, food writing, true crime, the comedic essay...). Special attention will be paid to narratives that address the complexity of the self in all its different iterations including gender, sexuality, class, race, health and more.

This module will explore a broad and inclusive selection of poetry from different periods of literary history and representing diverse voices, including Black, Asian, and minority ethnic poets from global backgrounds. Using these examples, our emphasis will be on learning techniques for formal analysis (close reading), creative expression (writing poetry), and performance. We will consider aspects of reading, writing, and performing poetry, including form, rhythm and meter, diction, figurative language and sound. We will also consider the development of particular genres (e.g. the ballad, the sonnet) and forms (e.g. blank verse, free verse) over time and across cultures, from the medieval period to the present, with an emphasis on the reader expectations that accrue around poetic forms and genres.

This module will teach students how to read with an eye for technique. It will focus on how writing is structured and the various ways in which authors create compelling narratives. It will address a variety of modes of writing and genres including novels, short stories, poetry, and creative non-fiction, and tap into reading and critical theories. Students will be given the opportunity to experiment creatively within those modes, and reflect on what can be learned from the study of other people's work.

This module will introduce students to the devices and concepts of narrative structure in film, and provide models with which to analyse narrative and its various functional elements. We will consider the particular aspects of film narrative, and how these have been drawn from and, in turn, influenced other narrative forms. This will include addressing the processes through which written and graphic text, and dramatic performance, become transferred and adapted into film narrative. These issues will be explored further through a group assessment exercise in which a scene from a short written narrative will be adapted into a scene from a screenplay.

This module aims to integrate the critical reading of horror and speculative fiction with the student's own choice of writing assignment. You will examine theories of representation in various forms and cultures and consider past and contemporary markets, publication outlets and trends for horror and speculative fiction texts. Especial attention will be paid to ways in which the horror and speculative fiction genres can be made more diverse and inclusive by means of addressing contemporary debates around sex, gender, race, class and health through fiction.

How do we think about the outside world, the relationship between our environment, humanity and its living inhabitants? What cultural and philosophical, religious, political and racial attitudes shape the literature of space, and place and do they affect our daily lives? This module examines historical and contemporary cultural attitudes to nature and the environment by examining a range of texts across multiple genres, places, cultures and periods which engage with notions and representations of 'nature', place, the pastoral, cities, development, agriculture, animals, gardening, outdoor leisure, environmentalism, industry, climate change, social justice and the ways in which humans have conceptualised our relationships with the natural world. You will engage with poems, plays, novels, non-fiction, religious texts from multiple traditions, film, television and other media from across the world and throughout history, plus appropriate critical and theoretical work including eco-fiction theory.

This module studies the personal essay across a range of cultures and periods, examining its diversity, its formal properties and its social and personal value as witness to oppression, a form of consciousness- raising, personal testimony and literature. This module also takes from other similar forms such as memoir and biography to offer the students a wide array of techniques and approaches to writing about the self.

This module explores contemporary culture’s continuous reworking of texts across different media. It investigates film and television adaptation as a heightened example of postmodern approaches to originality and authorship which encourage us to think of “all texts as intertexts, all reading as rereading, all writing as rewriting” (Leitch 2005, p.239). The sessions explore historical explanations of adaptation, from fidelity analysis to dialogism, and apply these ideas to diverse adaptations of both canonical and non-canonical sources.

This module explores professional approaches to writing scripts for film and television, and gives you the experience of creating and developing a short screenplay. You will be introduced to two common practices for script development: the increasingly common "writer's room" practice; and the scriptwriter/script editor practice.

Verse-atile - Poetry for Page, Stage and Beyond. Poetry is a constantly changing landscape. These changes are heightened in the light of our digital and multimedia cultures. You'll place your work in this context with this module. The focus on this module is to explore and experiment with new and radical ways of exploring poetic practice. Each week we'll experiment with some of the cutting edge practices in contemporary poetry, and explore different ways of presenting these. You'll study Ekphrastic Poetry, Geopoetry, Conceptual Verse, Hybridity, Film Poetry, Instapoems and Performance Poetry. Each week’s key concept or theme will be used as a way of considering different non-traditional forms. As such, the reading for each week will include a filmpoem, a performance piece and a non-traditional text form, as examples of the theme or concept we’ll explore in that session. Through this you will play with a diverse range of different forms and concepts; expanding and stretching your understanding of poetry, poetics and presentation. You will consider different and non-traditional forms of poetry for the digital age, in the anthropocene, in a hypermodern context. Together, we'll move, on one large project, from concept through to execution - producing sequences of poems Assignment: You will be required to submit a portfolio of work including: a sequence of poems based on one of the forms and concepts studied during the module; an in-class group performance or group filmpoem screening (as part of a public event); a critical reflection that discusses your poetics and considers the relationship between language, form and presentation.

In this module you'll research the readership and style of various magazines, websites (including blog spaces) and organisations, with a view to writing perfectly pitched feature articles. You will learn the varied forms of the feature and get practical experience of working on real-world publication ideas. This practical experience will also include the establishment, design and up-keep of an independent blog space, to provide a working knowledge of journalism/feature writing online. You will also have to produce a professional profile for yourself as a writer. Practical application is emphasised in this module and the assessment is relevant to the current freelance writing industry.

In this module students will develop an understanding of the narrative approaches used in writing crime and psychological thriller fiction. We will also consider the different target groups these works may be written for. Students will analyse examples of crime and thriller fiction, and then use their acquired knowledge of the conventions and possibilities in those genre to create and evaluate examples of their own crime and thriller writing. Throughout the semester, students will be given the opportunity to present work and receive feedback for such work, in both written and verbal form. This will culminate in a portfolio assessment at the end of the semester, where written feedback will again be provided.

This module offers students the opportunity to explore ways of working creatively with region and identity in their writing, particularly with regard to how the former impacts on the latter. It will consider the significance of setting, and the extent to which voice and character can be determined by place. It will create a context in which students can reflect on, and respond creatively to, their own environment as a means of producing original writing in a variety of forms.

The various futures of writing involve a number of emerging practices. Good writers and editors can put their skills to use in a myriad of professional careers, including content writing and editing, book and magazine publishing, corporate communication, podcast writing, video games, publishing, web content development, arts promotion, advocacy, and many others. Although the career opportunities are wide and various for this discipline, all of them assume that practitioners have learned to handle text professionally and can apply key skills in a variety of industry contexts.   In this module, you will learn different writing skills and registers to build your own portfolio as a professional writer. You will become familiar with professional fields such as marketing, content writing, podcasts, video games, journalism, and more. You will also explore other aspects of the professional writing career such as having a writing routine, dealing with rejection, creating professional relationships with agents and publishers, finding a writing community and many more.   Assignments will build your skills in document design, writing in multiple modes and media, usability testing to develop more accessible texts, and ethical considerations for communication in professional settings.  

Why is Austen's work filmed, adapted, re-read and referenced across different cultures, social classes and ethnic communities in such profusion? This module examines the evolving history of Jane Austen fandom, the changing cultural position of Austen's work across a range of global cultures, sexual identities and communities, the different critical perspectives brought to bear on her work including Marxist, feminist and decolonising lenses, and a range of adaptations, sequels, retellings and responses across different media. You will study some of Jane Austen's work as well as films, novels, fan fiction and Austen-related material in various media.

We live in a time of fraught climate, ecology and nature debates and poetry is taking a centre stage in these discussions. This module is a creative exploration the cutting-edge practices of Geopoetics - The Expression of the Earth. This module will develop your awareness of geological, ecological and geographical debates and concerns and consider how the Earth Sciences can be used in conjunction with poetry. You will be encouraged to offer your own creative voices to the existing poetic conversations about nature, climate and the living world.

This module provides an opportunity to apply academic skills and knowledge to a project negotiated with an external organisation. Students are required to identify, negotiate and research an issue which is relevant to both their academic study and the external organisation. This enables the student to demonstrate an awareness of academic research within an organisational context, together with an understanding of the parameters of research methodologies within an academic framework.

The Creative and Professional Writing Project enables you to work independently in an area of your choice and under the supervision of an appropriate member of staff, who then serves as the supervisor of that project. It allows you an opportunity to pursue an interest in a given subject/issue related to creative or professional writing or to produce extended creative writings to a greater depth and breadth than before. At the same time, it provides you with the chance to display the skills in organisation and research methods you’ve acquired in previous modules, as well as to demonstrate your mastery of the craft of creative and professional writing.

This module maps, historicises and analyses our rapidly changing experience in the digital age, which confronts us with new and diverging forms of social relationships, identities and changing human behaviour. The module explores how narrative form is changing by paying attention to new modes, media, formats, platforms and reading devices with new temporalities and possibilities, such as literature published via Twitter, gaming narratives, cell phone novels, and new genres such as 'tech thrillers'. We also analyse game narratives. Particular attention is paid to gender representation in the digital age, digital inequality in relation to class and ethnicity, and how technology responds to post-secular contexts. Relevant theoretical contexts include post-humanism, digital humanities, AI and computational literary studies.

The aim of this module is to Familiarise you with the scope of employment and enterprise opportunities available to graduates engaged in the active pursuit of a career in the creative industries. Enable you to effectively investigate and then demonstrate knowledge of the current professional creative industries landscape and to contextualise this in relation to your own career goals and personal development needs To assist you to identify, understand research and reference information pertinent to your personal career ambitions. To provide opportunities for you to utilise written, verbal and visual presentation techniques in order to develop your transferable skills and gain confidence in applying for and attending formal  job interviews. An opportunity to produce a body of evidence to secure the University of Wolverhampton Enterprise and Employability Award You will produce a variety of documents/artefacts to support entry into the creative industries and actively engage in class exercises to enhance your personal development. The exact scope of these will be outlined in the assignment brief in accordance with your specialist subject.

This module approaches medieval literature through the lens of feminist and queer studies. It covers texts from the tenth to sixteenth centuries which either trouble or resist categories such as male/female; heterosexuality/homosexuality and Christian/Muslim/Jewish, or which disrupt heteronormative narratives and time. The module reads and workshops medieval poetry, drama, prose and art from a wide variety of genres in relation to key queer and feminist theorists. It covers early examples of what we would now term gay, lesbian, bisexual and asexual narratives; cross-dressing and trans narratives; female masculinity; the relationship between gender, race and oppression in the medieval imagination and early evidence of the emergence of what we now consider ‘queer’ art forms, such as camp and drag performance.

This module explores the ways postcolonial texts challenge dominant discourses of 'race', gender, sexuality, class, disability, and religion. Students will study a range of texts by authors of colour from Britain, the U.S. and other parts of the world and consider the intersections between different constructions of identities in literature and culture. Postcolonial cultural theory and critical race theory will be central to this module, alongside feminism and disability studies. Guest speakers will contribute towards the module at various points. Alongside the set texts on the module, students will be encouraged to bring literary and cultural texts from their own experiences to the classes, and to feed into the assessment. Students will have the opportunity to work together to produce a digital artefact which communicates their expert knowledge of this topic to audiences beyond academia.

This module draws on a range of texts and cultural practices to address the extremes of representation. We will examine some examples of the ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural texts that are hidden from mainstream society, and those which are rejected by both/either the populace and the academy. Our objects of enquiry will be representational strategies, and their real effects on individuals and on society. Topics may include debates around representations of racism, genocide, disablism, sexual 'deviance', blasphemy, obscenity, political extremism, cancel culture, screen violence, animal rights and wrongs. Students are asked to contribute their own examples of problematic texts and to engage with current and ongoing culture wars. A wide range of theoretical approaches will be applied, including postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, cultural materialism, animal studies, disability studies.

This module follows on from 6CW001 Writing the Novel: Planning, Process & Preparation with the unique aim to enable you to continue to develop a longer work of prose at UG level. Since you will have already completed the first 4,000 words of an original novel together with a synopsis of the complete story as part of your 6CW001 submission, this complementary follow-on module will take you beyond those first chapters, enabling you to have the vision of the whole work as you continuing writing towards a mid-way point and/or beyond. This module will, therefore, be completely unique in its pedagogical strategy by tailoring weekly module content according to your collective and individual writing objectives. This will mean a fair percentage of self-directed study to further your creative process and in terms of meeting more personalised learning outcomes. For example, as per your requests, we might focus upon managing the genre balance or ensemble cast storylines; the techniques used in narrative tension for story arcs; instigating subtexts out of contexts. In essence, you will take ownership over your own learning as devised from your own practice. Module teaching will, therefore, be a combination of seminar and workshop, peer review, tutor supervision and peer mentoring, close reading analysis, publication pitches, guest speakers, and self-promotion techniques. You will look to complete the next 4,000 words of your project, including an account of how the project will add to existing canons, and how it may be pitched to prospective publishers.