MA Contemporary Literature, Culture & Theory at King's College London

Our MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture & Theory lets you explore a range of texts and concepts from 1945 to the present, with an emphasis on the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The course offers you the opportunity to study cutting-edge topics such as literary production after 1999; imperialism and sexuality; contemporary experimental poetry; new directions in gender and race theory; realism and its others; emerging concepts of the human; theories and histories of violence; Marxist theories of value; the intersection of aesthetics and politics in relation to transparency and secrecy; urban culture; performance studies; and cultures of conflict and dissent from Africa to the Middle East.

Faculty: Faculty of Arts & Humanities  |  Department: Department of English  |  Duration: One year full-time, two years part-time, September to September  |  Study mode: full-time / part-time  |  Intake: September 2027  |  Location: London, England, United Kingdom

What you will study

You’ll start this Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory MA with a required module that looks at literature, culture, and theory post-1945. Each week you’ll learn from a different academic, who’ll share their expertise as you review a set of texts and consider the representational problematics of 20th and 21st-century literature. You’ll learn how to conceptualise the contemporary as a distinctive historical entity while also reading the contemporary as it has been constituted differently by various writers, practitioners, and theorists in each decade.

Official programme page