MA (Literature and Publishing)

This innovative programme introduces students to a new set of relationships which are rarely studied in depth at undergraduate level: the interfaces between literature and publishing, between writing and the marketplace, and between the aesthetic and the material aspects of texts.

This programme provides students with the opportunity to
examine literary texts within the context of the history and business
of publishing. While the course is not specifically vocational, it
offers a perspective on the industrial and commercial dimensions
to the production of literature and provides insight into subjects
such as book history and book production, copyediting, publishing
law, marketing, electronic publishing and digital studies.

Selection is based on the candidate's academic record, motivation for study and statement of intent.

The course is a full-time degree which commences in September and continues until the following August. Students take three courses each semester, including a required course in Book History and five courses from a range of options. A minor dissertation is submitted in August. The journal ROPES is published each year by students on the programme. The course also includes a weekly speaker series, Publishers on Publishing, in which people working in publishing both in Ireland and abroad discuss their experience in the industry and in which experts in publishing studies and book history discuss trends in the field. Students have the option to take a non-assessed course in electronic publishing.

 The programme is based on six modules:

Courses include: Publishers on Publishing; Electronic Publishing; Book
History; Contemporary Publishing; Copyediting and Proofreading;
Publishing Law; Marketing Communications; Textual Studies; Early
Modern Print and Manuscript Cultures; Twentieth-century Irish
Womens’ Writing; Travel Literature; Literature of North America;
Medieval Aesthetics and Poetic Art; Discovering the Archives; Theatre
and Globalization; Theatre and Modernity in the Irish Literary Revival;
Irish Playwrights Since the Sixties; Studies in Oral History; Literature and
Colonialism. A minor dissertation is completed during the summer.

Students are assessed at the end of each semester, either by essay, continuous assessment or a combination of both.