English

About English

English at Carlow College, St. Patrick’s is a central discipline in our academic programmes and the study of literature has been a vital force in our educational mission. Over the years,graduates who have studied English at Carlow College have gone on to a wide range of exciting and diverse careers and many have completed further postgraduate study in universities at home and abroad to MA and PhD level.We offer a variety of scholarly and critical approaches to the study of literature and literaryhistory. As both teachers and scholars of English, our strengths are in the major forms of literature–poetry, fiction, and drama–as well as in creative writing in poetry and prose. You Will study the breadth of literature in English from the Renaissance to the contemporary moment, from Ireland, English and Anglophone cultures from all over the world

What Will You Learn?

Embedded in our approach to English is interdisciplinary, and the modules we offer draw from other disciplines such as history, philosophy, cultural studies, gender studies, politics and media. The spine of English at Carlow College is the history of literature in its many forms, and how different cultures, movements and environments were key to the production of some of the greatest and best known works of literature.Central to English at Carlow College is the nurturing of students as scholars, researchers and communicators. As a student of English you will learn about the various forms of literature and develop powers of reading, writing, analysis and argument, as well as an understanding of the historical contexts for literature. Our ethos is based on the fostering of students’ ability to develop their own personal capacity to express their own ideas orally and in writing, and to develop their own research projects by the end of their programme.Our people have particular research strengths in Irish writing from the nineteenth-century right up to the present, and we teach modules in modern and contemporary Irish writing, genderand sexuality in Irish writing and culture, and the literature of the Irish revolutionary period.Wealso offer an array of modules on different genres and traditions of English, from Shakespeare To Postmodernism, and from Gothic fiction to World Literature. In addition to the study of literature, we have exciting modules in creative writing in poetry and fiction, and many of our creative writing students have gone on to have their work published