Master of Arts - Wild Writing: Literature, Landscape and the Environment

University of Essex is one of the oldest inhabited areas of the British Isles, a landscape shaped by human history. Their MA Wild Writing allows students to explore this landscape and the wilder landscapes of Britain, as well as those across the world, through a combination of science and literature modules. The field trips take students outside the classroom, often in sun, sometimes in snow or rain. Students gain an understanding of key environmental challenges while building their own ways of approaching writing about the wild: creative, critical, and scientific. One of only five universities in the UK to offer a taught postgraduate course on literature and the environment, Essex is unique in their combination of modules on contemporary nature writing, ecocriticism, and psychogeographic literature. The full-year focus on writing about landscape, place, and the environment allows students the choice of focusing on developing their scholarly abilities through exploring ecocriticism, or on developing their creative writing practice about the natural world – or students can aim to advance both. The core modules cover topics including: the emergent creative non-fiction genre exemplified by figures such as Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie, and Helen Macdonald; 19th-21st century environmental poetry and prose; contemporary ecocriticism and environmental literature; psychogeography. An unusual collaboration between the departments of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies and Biological Sciences, Essex also offers students the opportunity to gain a greater scientific depth of knowledge about the natural world as they develop as writers. Students might want to explore the impacts and management of pollution or the ecology of fisheries. Students will explore the literature of landscape and the environment both within the seminar room and beyond, exploring the wild spaces of Essex and East Anglia through field trips that take them to wonderfully wild worlds in the company of leading experts. Students get to visit inspiring areas including Mersea Island, Orford Ness, Tilbury, and the Norfolk Fens. A number of Essex's graduates from the MA Wild Writing have gone on to undertake successful careers as writers; others are practising artists, scholars or environmentalists. One now works on climate change in Washington, another is a “wild practitioner” who work on the relation between nature and mental health and another now works for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police around Chesapeake Bay!