About Department
Welcome to the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies (LiFTS). We combine expertise in English literature and comparative literary studies, creative writing ,film studies, and drama and theatre studies. At Essex, you have the opportunity to study English literature in dialogue with postcolonial writing, the classics and literature from Europe and the Americas.
You will be encouraged to acquire a deeper understanding of different cultural contexts by enriching your study of English and world literature with film, drama, creative writing and the history of ideas. Every step of the way you will be supported by friendly and committed teachers who are leading scholars in their field.
Excellence in teaching by theorists and practitioners
Alongside Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, our Visiting Professor of Poetry since 2010, our Department offers the unique opportunity to be taught by established poets, novelists, playwrights and filmmakers. We also offer a variety of critical approaches through our wide choice of degree schemes at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
International perspective
We have a strong international perspective, apparent both in the background of our staff and in our research interests, which includes among many others cultural history, drama and performance, world cinema, creative writing and the literature and cultures of the Americas. In The Guardian University guide 2013 league table, the University of Essex was rated fourth in the UK for American Studies.
Research profile
The quality of research in the Department has been confirmed in the 2008 national Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), with more than half of our research rated as "internationally excellent" or higher, and a further 40 per cent rated as of "internationally recognised quality".
Established areas of research excellence include Renaissance writing, Romanticism, American literature - US and Caribbean particularly - eighteenth-century drama and literature, colonial and postcolonial literature, travel writing, translation studies, contemporary theatre, world cinema, film and creative writing.
Our Strengths
· Interdisciplinary department with excellent expertise in English literature, comparative literature, creative writing, film, drama and theatre studies.
· Rated fourth best place in the UK in a 2013 Guardian League Table for American Studies - of which modules from the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies play a significant part.
· Established areas of research excellence include: English literature, comparative and world literature, American literature - both of the United States and the Caribbean - Early Modernism, Romanticism, drama theory and practice, world cinema, translation studies, colonial and postcolonial studies.
· Excellence in research established in the 2008 RAE.
· First-rate poets (including a Nobel Prize winner), novelists, dramatists, theatre practitioners and scholars at the cutting edge literature, creative writing, film, drama and theatre.
· Dedicated and supportive teachers with a constructive and friendly learning environment.
· Dedicated film screening as well as editing suite facilities.
· Use of our state of the art Lakeside Theatre for drama practitioners.
· Thriving global community of staff and students.
Our subjects
