English and History of Art BA

Course overview

This engaging course provides you with an opportunity to develop an understanding of literature in English from the medieval period to the present day, as well as an awareness of the ways that art is produced and perceived and how this has changed over time.

You will be introduced to the key skills and knowledge needed to critically analyse texts and art, and the historical contexts of the production and reception of art. Our wide range of optional modules allow you to specialise in areas that are of interest to you, whether Jane Austen or David Bowie, Shakespeare or world theatre, aesthetics or museum studies.

With so many galleries and museums located in the region, such as the Leeds Art Gallery, the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, as well as a vibrant cultural scene, it’s a fantastic place to discover these two complementary disciplines.

Facilities

Leeds has plenty of excellent resources for studying English and the history of art. Our world-class Brotherton Library has a wealthof archive, manuscript and early printed material in its Special Collections including a Shakespeare First Folio, letters by Charles Dickens, materials from the Brontë family, the collection of Bram Stoker papers, as well as more recent archives for writers such as Peter Robinson, Simon Armitage, and Tony Harrison.

The School of English has its own print studio, allowing you to learn traditional typesetting and printing techniques and print your own works.

Take a look around our libraries:

Brotherton Library
Laidlaw Library
Edward Boyle Library

Course details

A joint honours degree allows you to split your time equally between two subjects, advancing your knowledge and skills in both areas.

In your first year, you’ll take introductory modules covering the key concepts and approaches in the History of Art, as well as choosing to explore poetry, drama or prose. This allows you to build a good knowledge base on which you can build in the following two years.

You’ll choose from modules that might include everything from Chaucer to refugee narratives, from Jane Austen novels to African American literature, from Romantic poetry to the digital humanities. At the same time, you’ll select from a range of modules in History of Art, from the Renaissance to 20th century Modernisms and the New York School.

Throughout your studies you’ll develop analytical and research skills that allow you to form your own conclusions from the information you find. In your final year, you’ll get the chance to apply them to an independently researched dissertation in either subject.

Year 1

Year 1 compulsory modules:

Reading Between the Lines (20 credits) - This module equips students with a critical vocabulary for sophisticated literary study. Through close analysis of texts from a range of periods, the module introduces the creative, argumentative, and exciting discipline of ‘English Studies’. Students will encounter some of the theories that have shaped the discipline, and in turn, will discover how an English degree might change how they read the world. Guided critical reading, collaboration with peers in group presentations and seminars, and a variety of assignments will introduce students to the different kinds of assessment required later in the degree.

Writing Matters (20 credits) - Writing and communication skills are vital to most professional careers and are at the heart of English studies. This module uses well-known texts to explore the theoretical approaches and rhetorical strategies used to write about literature. Students will enhance their own writing by engaging ethically both with the text and what has been written about it, developing structured arguments, expressing ideas clearly and concisely, working with feedback, and practising writing as a process. As a result, students will cultivate a deeper understanding of how writing works, within the context of the degree, the discipline of English, and the wider world beyond.

Art History as Practice (20 credits) - Taking art-historical research as a dynamic and inclusive set of practices grounded in questions that matter now, this module draws on the varied expertise of teaching staff to introduce you to the combined and converging challenges of a deep understanding of past cultures, engagement with current issues in the field and methods for developing independent research. This module presents a wide array of art-historical topics, with a global perspective and covering a broad chronology, placing emphasis on the question of what it means to be an art historian now.

From Art History’s Myths to Critical Art History (20 credits) - This module sets out a broad range of art-historical topics and questions, with a focus on modernity and the contemporary, together with a direct, critical engagement with some of the prevailing myths of the discipline. You’ll be equipped with an understanding of key moments in the history of art in texts, practices and institutions and with an ability to reflect on how the history of art both illuminates and shadows our work as art historians today. While gaining in-depth knowledge of art movements and practices up to the present, we will explore how the interpretation of art has been coloured by notions of nationhood and claims to universality, by the very notion of ‘modernity’ and by myths of origins and authenticity.

Year 1 optional modules:

• Ways of Seeing (20 credits)

• Ways of Thinking Seeing (20 credits)

• Critical Approaches to Display, Institutions and Engagement (20 credits)

• Cultural History (20 credits)

• Modern Fictions in English (20 credits)

• Race, Writing, Decolonization (20 credits)

• Drama: Text and Performance (20 credits)

• Poetry: Reading & Interpretation (20 credits)

You can also choose to take a Discovery module in another subject offered elsewhere in the University

Year 2

At Year 2, you are required to take 120 credits. Over levels 2 and 3 combined, you must take:

• English: a minimum of 80 credits (at least 40 credits must be at Level 3)

• History of Art: a minimum of 80 credits (at least 40 credits must be at Level 3)

Year 2 compulsory modules:

Writing Environments: Literature, Nature, Culture (20 credits) - This module examines what it means to live as human beings on a more-than-human planet. We’ll investigate how literary texts from different times and places have understood the relationship between nature and culture. We’ll address human impacts on the environment in relation to historical phenomena such as colonialism. And we’ll explore the insights that literature can offer at a time of concern about climate change and other environmental issues.

Body Language: Literature and Embodiment (20 credits) - At the heart of this module are big questions such as: what does it mean to be ‘human’? Does technology change who we are? What are the links between the body and the mind? Tackling the relationships between embodiment, language, and representation in texts from different periods and in different forms and genres, the module examines how writers have imagined the relationship between material bodies and literary representation.

Methods in Practice: Art-Historical Research (20 credits) - This module builds core skills through a focused critical engagement with methods in art-historical research. Combining detailed reflection on the concerns and approaches of key art historians with work-in-progress explorations of the development of live research, this module equips you to build your own projects with a strong sense of the resources and choices open to us, and of the discipline of Art History as an inclusive, dynamic space to be developed though the questions that matter now.

Origins, Structures, and Critique: Framing the Discipline of Art History (20 credits) - This module interrogates the history and legacies of the discipline of Art History, with a view to a critical reflection on what art history can do in the world we face today. We explore the distinct formation of Art History as a discipline rooted both in historical or antiquarian studies and in philosophical aesthetics, while also reflecting on its complex entanglements with discourses of nationalism and racial hierarchies and other more or less hidden structures of power. This module equips you to deal critically and reflexively with complex and often difficult legacies and to understand transformative potential of the discipline.

Year 2 optional modules:

Typical modules from which you can choose in the History of Art include:

• The New York School (20 credits)

• Seeing in Asia (20 credits)

• Cinema and Culture (20 credits)

• Variant Modernism (20 credits)

• The Grand Tour: travels, excavations, collections (20 credits)

• The Art Market: Moments, Methodologies, Meanings (20 credits)

• Art, Power and Portraiture (20 credits)

• Renaissance / Anti-Renaissance: Critical Approaches to Early Modern Art in Europe (20 credits)

• Bodies of Difference: Gender, Power and the Visual Arts (20 credits)

• Option modules in English Literature include:

• Medieval and Tudor Literature (20 credits)

• Renaissance Literature (20 credits)

• Modern Literature (20 credits)

• Postcolonial Literature (20 credits)

• The World Before Us: Literature 1660-1830 (20 credits)

• Other Voices: Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Literature (20 credits)

• American Words, American Worlds (20 credits)

• Contemporary Literature (20 credits)

Year 3

Year 3 compulsory modules:

Final Year Project (40 credits) - This module encourages independent, self-directed learning, and provides the culmination to the research strand emphasised in other modules. Working with their supervisor and supported by a programme of lectures and workshops, students pursue their own intellectual interests and passions by designing, defining and creating their own capstone project.

Year 3 optional modules:

Option modules in the History of typically include:

• From Trauma to Cultural Memory: The Unfinished Business of Representation and the Holocaust (20 credits)

• Cultural Diversity in Museum and Material Culture (20 credits)

• Unmaking Things: Materials and Ideas in the European Renaissance (20 credits)

• Reading Sexual Difference (20 credits)

• Critical approaches to photography (20 credits)

• Art, Ecology and Empire (20 credits)

• Humanity, Animality and Globality (20 credits)

• Antique Dealers: The Market for 'Decorative Art' from Curiosities to Retro (20 credits)

• Art of the Silk Roads (20 credits)

• The Ripped and the Raw: Aspects of European Art 1945-1960 (20 credits)

• Africa and the Atlantic World: History, Historiography and the Visual Arts (20 credits)

There are a wide range of modules in English Literature. Examples of typical modules include:

• Sex and Suffering in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (20 credits)

• Telling Lives: Reading and Writing Family Memoir (20 credits)

• Home Bodies: Companion Animals in Contemporary Literature (20 credits)

• Postcolonial London (20 credits)

• Global African Writing (20 credits)

• Shakespeare and Global Cinema (20 credits)

• Refugee Narratives (20 credits)

• Fictions of the End: Apocalypse and After (20 credits)

• Bowie, Reading, Writing (20 credits)

Learning and teaching

We use various interactive face-to-face teaching and learning methods to help you benefit from our tutors’ expertise. These include small group seminars, which are at the heart of this degree, but you’ll also encounter lectures, workshops, one-to-one tutorials, group work, and guided online learning through Minerva, our Virtual Learning Environment.

Our globally recognised research feeds directly into your course and shapes what you learn at Leeds with the latest thinking.

Independent study is a vital element of this course since it enables you to develop your research and critical skills and form your ideas. 

On this course, you’ll be taught by our expert academics, from lecturers through to professors. You may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

Assessment

We also use different types of assessment. Usually, we use a mixture of exams and essays, but you may also be assessed on oral presentations or group work in some modules. Support will be on hand throughout your time at Leeds – for example, you’ll be able to attend extra classes on exam technique, structuring an essay and public speaking if you need them.

We also use different types of assessment. Usually we use a mixture of exams and essays, but you may also be assessed on oral presentations or group work in some modules. Support will be on hand throughout your time at Leeds – for example, you’ll be able to attend extra classes on exam technique, structuring an essay and public speaking if you need them.

Entry requirements

A-level: AAB including A in English (Language, Literature or Language and Literature)

Other course specific tests:

Where an applicant is taking the EPQ in a relevant subject this might be considered alongside other Level 3 qualifications and may attract an alternative offer in addition to the standard offer. If you are taking A Levels, this would be ABB at A Level including A in English (Language, Literature, or Language and Literature) and grade A in the EPQ.

We welcome applications from mature students with Access qualifications, and from students with a wide range of qualifications.

Alternative qualification

Read more about UK and Republic of Ireland accepted qualifications or contact the School’s Undergraduate Admissions Team.

Alternative entry

We’re committed to identifying the best possible applicants, regardless of personal circumstances or background.

Access to Leeds is a contextual admissions scheme which accepts applications from individuals who might be from low income households, in the first generation of their immediate family to apply to higher education, or have had their studies disrupted.

If you live in a neighbourhood where there is low participation in higher education, we may be able to give priority to your application.

Find out more about Access to Leeds and contextual admissions.

Typical Access to Leeds offer: BBB including English (Language, Literature or Language and Literature) at A Level and pass Access to Leeds.

Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

This course is designed for students whose backgrounds mean they are less likely to attend university (also known as widening participation backgrounds) and who do not currently meet admissions criteria for direct entry to a degree.

The course will give you the opportunity to be taught by academic staff and provides intensive support to enable your development of academic skills and knowledge. On successful completion of your foundation year, you will progress to your chosen degree course. Find out more about the Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

Alternative Entry Scheme for Mature Students

If you are a mature applicant (over 21) and you don’t have the required A Levels or GCSE English and maths qualifications, you can complete our Alternative Entry Scheme (subject to meeting the eligibility criteria for the scheme). As part of this, you may be asked to take tests in English and maths and to write an essay.

Contact the Lifelong Learning Centre for more information.

International

We accept a range of international equivalent qualifications. For more information contact the School of English admissions team.

International Foundation Year

International students who do not meet the academic requirements for undergraduate study may be able to study the University of Leeds International Foundation Year. This gives you the opportunity to study on campus, be taught by University of Leeds academics and progress onto a wide range of Leeds undergraduate courses. Find out more about International Foundation Year programmes.

English language requirements

IELTS 6.5 overall, with no less than 6.0 in any component. For other English qualifications, read English language equivalent qualifications.

Improve your English
If you're an international student and you don't meet the English language requirements for this programme, you may be able to study our undergraduate pre-sessional English course, to help improve your English language level.

Fees

UK: To be confirmed

International: To be confirmed

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2025/26
The fee for UK undergraduate students is decided by the Government and may vary if policy changes. The fee may increase in future years of your course in line with inflation, and as permitted by law.

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2025/26 will be £9,535.

The tuition fee for the following programmes with an integrated foundation year is £5,760 for the foundation year, and £9,535 for subsequent years of study:
•    Business Studies with Foundation Year BSC
•    Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year BA
•    Interdisciplinary Studies with Preparation for Higher Education BA
•    Social Science (foundation year) BA
 

Tuition fees for international undergraduate students starting in 2025/26
Tuition fees for international students for 2025/26 are available on individual course pages.
 

Tuition fees for a study abroad or work placement year
If you take a study abroad or work placement year, you’ll pay a reduced tuition fee during this period. For more information, see Study abroad and work placement tuition fees and loans.

Read more about paying fees and charges.

There may be additional costs related to your course or programme of study, or related to being a student at the University of Leeds. Read more on our living costs and budgeting page.

Scholarships and financial support

If you have the talent and drive, we want you to be able to study with us, whatever your financial circumstances. There is help for students in the form of loans and non-repayable grants from the University and from the government. Find out more in our Undergraduate funding overview.

Applying

Apply to this course through UCAS. Check the deadline for applications on the UCAS website.

Read our guidance about applying.

Alternative Entry Scheme for Mature Students

If you are a mature applicant (over 21) and you don’t have the required A Levels or GCSE English and maths qualifications, you can complete our Alternative Entry Scheme (subject to meeting the eligibility criteria for the scheme). As part of this, you may be asked to take tests in English and maths and to write an essay.

Contact the Lifelong Learning Centre for more information.

International students apply through UCAS in the same way as UK students. Our network of international representatives can help you with your application. If you’re unsure about the application process, contact the admissions team for help.

Read about visas, immigration and other information in International students. We recommend that international students apply as early as possible to ensure that they have time to apply for their visa.

Admissions policy

University of Leeds Admissions Policy 2025

This course is taught by

School of English
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

Contact us

School of English Undergraduate Admissions

Email: englishug@leeds.ac.uk
Telephone:

Career opportunities

This degree will equip you with a range of valuable transferable skills that are attractive to employers.

You will have analytical and critical skills that allow you to form your own conclusions, and you’ll be a strong communicator who can present and defend your views effectively. You’ll be able to work independently and in a team – and you’ll have the organisational skills and self-reliance that come with managing two different subjects.

Graduates have achieved success in a variety of careers such as curating, the creative industries, heritage sector, marketing, education, civil society and not-for-profit organisations, journalism, law, publishing, media, business charity work, civil service, management consultancy and leadership. Others have gone onto postgraduate study or further training.

Careers support

We encourage you to prepare for your career from day one. That’s one of the reasons Leeds graduates are so sought after by employers.

The Careers Centre and staff in your faculty provide a range of help and advice to help you plan your career and make well-informed decisions along the way, even after you graduate. Find out more about Careers support.

Study abroad and work placements

Study abroad

On this course you have the opportunity to apply to spend time abroad, usually as an extra academic year. We have over 300 University partners worldwide and popular destinations for our students include Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Latin America. 

Find out more at the Study Abroad website.

Work placements

Practical work experience can help you decide on your career and improve your employability. On this course you have the option to apply to take a placement year module with organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK, or overseas.

Find out more about work experience on the Careers website.