Dept of English and Related Literature at Uni of York
Welcome to the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York #UoY.
8th in UK University Guide
A world top 35 Department
Athena Swan Silver Award
- Become an #undergraduate at #York and read a diverse array of texts from across historical periods and around the globe, with options in film, foreign literature, and creative writing.
- #OTD in 1694 French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian Voltaire was born in Paris. Voltaire produwrotecing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions.
- We offer an extraordinarily wide range of taught MA programmes, which reflects the Department's research culture as well as the diversity of our staff, postgraduate community and research interests.
- #OTD we say #HappyBirthday to #American #novelist Don Delillo, born on this day in 1936 in New York, US. DeLillo's novels have covered consumerism, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, television, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.
- We welcome applications for research projects across a whole range of literary periods and genres, including world literature, film, literatures in languages other than English, works in translation and creative writing.
- #OTD in 1953 #American #poet Tony Hoagland was born in North Carolina, US. His poetry collection, "What Narcissism Means to Me" (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and his poems and work have appeared in American Poetry Review and Harvard Review.
- Join us tomorrow for the first in a series of three lectures this year by Visiting Professor Adam Phillips, Writer and Psychoanalyst. "On Irreverence", Weds 19 November, 5pm to 6.30pm buff.ly/KHjdRBB.
- #OTD we say #HappyBirthday to #Canadian #novelist and #poet Margaret Atwood. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale". Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes.
- Join us for this Centre for Women's Studies event on Weds 3 December at 5pm: "Legacies of Anti-Fascist Resistance" A book launch and conversation with Claude Cahun translator, Susan Demuth and Dr Boriana Alexandrova.
- #OTD in 1916 #American #author Shelby Foote was born in Mississippi, US. Foote primarily viewed himself as a novelist, but is best known for writing "The Civil War: A Narrative", a history of the American Civil War. Foote wrote by hand with a nib pen, later transcribing into type.
- #DidYouKnow our #undergraduate module "Villains of Romantic Gothic" challenges traditional distinctions between ‘Romanticism’ and ‘the Gothic’, as well as between ‘male’ and ‘female’ Gothic writing, and covers the work of Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Dacre, and Joanna Baillie.
- #OTD in 1944 #American #writer Gary Roberts was born in Massachusetts, US. His work focused on writing improvement, and was the author of works including 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing with Style and Power (1985).
- #DidYouKnow our #undergraduate module "Empires and Aftermaths" investigations the imperial transitions and consequences that dominated the twentieth century, and delves into four key topics areas: Plantation & Slavery; Travel & Territories; Writing Back; and A World of English/es(?)
- #OTD in 1850 #Scottish #writer Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. He is best known for the novels Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1893), and the poetry collection A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).
- #DidYouKnow our module "The Translation of the World: Reading the Global Nineteenth Century" explores how literary activity participated in the creation of a global modernity through the translation of texts into English, in some cases from languages untranslated before this period.
- #OTD in 1915 #French literary theorist and #essayist Roland Barthes was born in Cherbourg. Barthes is best known for collection Mythologies, which reflected upon popular culture, and the "The Death of the Author", which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism.
- #OTD in 1821 #Russian #novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled political, social and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.
- Today is #ArmisticeDay, also known as #RemembranceDay in the Commonwealth. Many poets have written about their experiences of war. To mark the occasion, here's a poem from #English #soldier and #warpoet Wilfred Owen: "Anthem for Doomed Youth".
- #DidYouKnow our #undergraduate module "Modern Latin American Literature" explores literary responses to dictatorship and authoritarianism, conflict, colonialism, race, class, and national identity in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and Puerto Rico/US. buff.ly/NXXBfPr.
- #OTD in 1759 #German #poet and #playwright Frederick von Schiller was born in Marbach am Neckar, Germany. Schiller was one of Germany's most important classical playwrights. He developed a friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who he encouraged to finish works.
- #DidYouKnow our #postgraduate module "Gothic Bodies" asks how bodily pain is imagined, explores attitudes to pleasure and desire, thinks about anxieties surrounding contagion and madness, and looks at how the Gothic treats specific figures like the mother or the mute.
- #OTD in 1913 #French #novelist Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, French Algeria. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.
- #DidYouKnow our #postgraduate module "Transforming Worlds: The Interdisciplinary Eighteenth Century" explores the breadth and complexity of the 18th century through an interdisciplinary focus, combining approaches from literary study, history, art history, and archaeology.
- Today we say #HappyBirthday to #American #novelist Colson Whitehead, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- #DidYouKnow our #undergraduate module "Modernism's Queer Spaces" takes you on a tour of modernism’s most enticing queer spaces, asking important questions about censorship evasion and canon formation. What does it mean to tell it straight? Why are some writers ‘in’ and others ‘out’?
- #OTD in 1605 #York born conspirator Guy Fawkes attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder. While Fawkes failed, the date is celebrated every year on the 5th November as 'Bonfire night' with fireworks. Learn more with this reading list curated by ForReadingAddicts:
- See our upcoming events including on Wednesday 12 November, "Bernard O’Donoghue: Editing Heaney". Bernard O’Donoghue will be in conversation with York’s own Hugh Haughton, and here will be an opportunity to ask Professor O’Donoghue about the work of Seamus Heaney.
- #OTD in 1862 #English #author Eden Phillpotts was born in Mount Abu, India. Phillpotts was was educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for ten years before studying for the stage and eventually becoming a writer of novels and drama.
- The University of York is pleased to be awarding six AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards and three Wolfson Humanities Postgraduate Scholarships for doctoral research beginning in September 2026. To apply, please submit your application by the beginning of December buff.ly/UkIammd
- #OTD in 1794 #American #poet William Cullen Bryant was born in Massachusetts, US. Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. He has been grouped among the fireside poets for his accessible and popular poetry. buff.ly/oAcKHdj
- It's #Halloween. Here's a #booklist curated by SpookyLittleHalloween to get you in the spooky mood.
- #OTD in 1795 #English #poet John Keats was born in Moorgate, London. Indifferently received in his lifetime, his poems grew in fame rapidly after his death. Keats had a style "heavily loaded with sensualities", notably in his odes, and he accentuated emotion through natural imagery.
- The Aesthetica Film Festival is running from 5th to 9th November. From 5-9 November 2025, it will welcome filmmakers, games developers and VR experts from around the world to the 15th anniversary edition of the festival, both in-person in York and online.
- #OTDS in 1885 #American #poet Ezra Pound was born in Idaho, US. Pound was a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce.
- Digital Remediations of Manuscript Archives: This talk explores methods for making handwritten documents accessible to computational analysis and discusses some of the results of topic modeling and network graphing of the Ballitore Collection. Tuesday 11 Nov, 5pm
- Warm congratulations to Dr Lola Boorman on the publication of her monograph 'Grammar and Twentieth-Century American Fiction'. The book charts the invisible yet ubiquitous role that grammar has played in literature and literary criticism. www.york.ac.uk/english/abou...
- #OTD in 1905 #English #novelist and #industrialist Henry Green was born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. He is best remembered for the novels Party Going, Living, and Loving. He was one of the group designated in the 1920s/30s as the 'Bright Young Things'.
- There's a busy events schedule this Autumn in the Department of English and Related Literature, including 'Bernard O’Donoghue: Editing Heaney', 'Interpolation and/as Interpretation in Dante’s 'Commedia' and 'Legacies of Anti-Fascist Resistance'. Take a look and book your place today.
- #OTD in 1903 #English #writer Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead, London. Waugh's works include early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), and the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language
- The Looking Glass Society is looking for submissions! Produced by the Publishing society, they edit and publish student works in a high quality physical anthology every year. It's a great opportunity to experience the publishing process and receive close feedback on your work.
- #OTD in 1932 #American #poet and #novelist Sylvia Plath was born in Massachusetts, US. Plath is credited with furthering the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for "The Colossus and Other Poems", "Ariel", and "The Bell Jar". buff.ly/bRrRjvb
- 📢 Bookings are open for the 2025 Annual Dr Williams’s Lecture, delivered by our own Prof Mary Fairclough @maryfairclough.bsky.social at CECS & @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social Book your place for this exciting event on 29 October at the School of Advanced Study, London: www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
- The focal points of our research are our four major schools. In the Modern school, our research interests centre on the period from 1830 to the present, exploring the Victorian novel to postcolonial theory, and from modern poetry to 21st-century fiction.
- #OTD in 1923 #British #American poet Denise Levertov was born in Ilford. Levertov was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and the Vietnam War, which she explored in her poetry book "The Freeing of the Dust". She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
- Lecture by Adam Phillips on Weds 19th November: 5.00pm: 'On Irreverence' SLB/118, Spring Lane Building. Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst as well as one of the most influential essayists and thinkers writing today. Adam has been Visiting Professor in the Department since 2006.
- #OTD in 1919 #British #writer and #novelist Doris Lessing was born in Kermanshah, Persia. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels include "The Grass Is Singing" (1950), "The Golden Notebook" (1962) and "The Good Terrorist" (1985).
- #DidYouKnow our #postgraduate module "Viking Poetry" examines a wide range of poetry, both Eddic and skaldic, composed in Old Norse between about 850 and 1050, paying due attention to later preservation in Icelandic sagas and poetic treatises.
- As part of the Joseph Rowntree Centenary, The Rowntree Society is hosting a public event exploring a fascinating yet little known chapter in the Rowntree family’s history, their ownership of newspapers in the early 20th century. November 3rd at 7pm in Bootham.
- #OTD in 1772 #English #Romantic #poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon. Coleridge was a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth and wrote the poems "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan".
- #OTD in 1854 #French #poet Arthur Rimbaud was born in Charleville. He was known for known for his transgressive and surreal themes, for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism, and for his contributions to symbolism.
- Submissions of Creative Writing for "The Vanity Papers Oxford Literary Review" are invited for the ninth issue. The theme is ‘Translation’ to be interpreted as you wish. Submissions are open until the 30th of October 2025.
