Course overview

Cinema was the dominant international medium of mass visual culture for the first half of the twentieth century. Our histories of that period have been profoundly influenced by film. The movies became not only a habitual part of the lives of millions, but film spawned some remarkable creative innovation and cinema was established as an industrial and technological process in many countries.

Since then, film has enjoyed a new lease of life as one of a range of global media leisure pursuits, enjoyed and celebrated in different kinds of spaces: in the cinema, at home on TV, video and DVD and now via the internet. It remains a popular entertainment, yet is also an experimental art form viewed in galleries. Cinema is now widely studied and written about in a variety of guises: by film fans in weblogs, by journalists and critics in the media, and by teachers and students across the education system.

At Portsmouth we study the history of film as mass entertainment. We consider its pioneers and innovators, its production regimes and audience markets. We explore cinema’s changing roles in shaping and expressing national identities and cultures. We employ a range of critical approaches to reading film texts. And we debate the dynamic relationship between film theory and video production as film practice. From its beginnings in the 1970s, film studies in higher education has come a long way. If your passion for film exceeds the shelves of Blockbuster or HMV, and if your desire to pursue cinema goes beyond your local multiplex, why not join us on our journey?

Course content

This course allows you to build on your interests in literature, film and cinema. It will appeal to you if you enjoy reading fiction, poetry or drama, debating the meanings of literary works, going to the cinema or theatre, watching film and television, and reading film magazines.

You will explore a variety of texts and topics from a wide range of genres and periods, and will be encouraged to analyse them from historical, formal, cultural and theoretical perspectives. Film studies elements of the course will give you an opportunity to study in depth, critical and theoretical approaches to a wide range of films.

Year one

• Introduction to Film Research
• Introduction to Poetry
• Studying Film
• Spectacular Hollywood
• Literary Theory
• Literary History 1: 16th Century to 19th Century

Year two

You will study the following:

• Adaptations
• Literary History 2: 19th Century to the Present Day
• Costuming The Screen
• Literary Prizes And Public Acclaim
• Two options include from:
  • A Foreign Language
  • Learning From Experience
  • Student Enterprise
  • Music: Practice, Performance and Research
  • Professional Experience
  • Eighteenth Century and Romantic Literature
  • American Literature
  • Early Modern Drama
  • Nation and Travel
  • Victorian Literature and Visual Culture
  • Forensic Linguistics
  • World and Transnational Cinema
  • Critical Hollywood
  • Costuming the Screen

Year three

You will study the following:

• Dissertation
• Film Dissertation
• Options from:
  • Film Stardom and Celebrity Culture
  • Gender, Sexuality and Cinema in The Hispanic World
  • Black American Film
  • Researching Animation
  • Tracing Borders: Women and Writing 1890–1940
  • Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Fiction
  • Early Modern Literature and the Bible
  • Enlightenment: Literature, Culture And Modernity
  • Magical Realism
  • Postmodern Historical Fiction
  • War and Fascism
  • Media Fan Cultures
  • Comedy Culture and Form
  • Film Journalism
  • Marketing Movies
  • Consuming Fictions: Food and Appetite in Victorian Culture
  • Friendship, Community and Identity In 17th Century Poetry
  • Charles Dickens
  • European Literary Decadence
  • Holocaust Literatures
  • US Masculinities

Teaching and assessment

Students at Portsmouth experience considerable intellectual freedom and choice, with specialist options built into our degrees to enable personal exploration. You will also have the opportunity to contribute to the annual creative writing anthology, Borderlines, and the dissertation or special exercise in your third year (which is worth a third of the total mark during the final year) is based on a topic that you select.

Here at Portsmouth we place a lot of emphasis on student support. You will be assigned a personal tutor in year one, who is responsible for your pastoral support and guidance. The personal tutor system is closely allied to the study skills element in your first semester and as you continue into year two, you will continue to have the same tutor for careers tutorials.

In year three your personal tutor will be your dissertation supervisor, who is assigned according to the project you have developed in year two. You will also have access to a full range of support services for personal issues and academic study including Academic Skills Unit, Careers and Recruitment, Library and IT services, the Students' Union and the Portsmouth Centre for Enterprise.

You will also encounter a range of assessment methods in this course. You may be assessed through essays, video productions, film scripts or group presentations. You might also sit an exam, write a report or develop a research portfolio. Overall, we have sought to develop a range of assessments that allow you to demonstrate different skills and talents.

Career prospects

You will graduate with a unique set of communication and research skills, complemented by professional practical capabilities. We encourage our students to actively seek work experience and extracurricular activities if they wish to pursue a career working in or with the media and creative industries. The University's Purple Door Careers and Recruitment service is available to help you research and apply for placements.

Possible career destinations include media research, film, television or music production, film research, publishing, web design, arts and events management, local and community broadcasting, entertainment management, marketing, public relations, teaching and increasingly, many of our students pursue postgraduate study.

Facilities and features

You will have access to our dedicated Learning Resource Centre which houses thousands of DVDs and videos for student research, as well as the University Library, which is at the centre of academic life. Open from 8am until midnight every day during term-time, it provides a variety of information to help with study and research. It has also invested heavily in the purchase of electronic resources and has thousands of electronic journals and ebooks that can be accessed across campus, from home or wherever there is an internet connection.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) English and Film Studies for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).