MA (Literature and Publishing)

Course details

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 contemporary publishing, including print and online production, copyediting, publishing law, marketing, electronic publishing, digital studies and book history.

Key facts

Entry requirements

• NQAI Level 8 degree with an overall degree result of H2.2 and with a H2.1 in one subject is required (GPA 3.0 or equivalent overall).
• Please note the IELTS score of 6.5 or equivalent if applicable.
• Two satisfactory hardcopy academic references are required for this programme at application stage (or relevant professional recommendations in the case of applicants who are a long time out of the education system).

Course outline

The course is a full-time degree which commences in September and continues until the following August. Students take six or seven courses, depending upon ECTS weighting, and 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 discuss trends in the field. Students have the option to take a non-assessed course in electronic publishing.

The programme is based on six or seven modules. Courses include:

Contemporary Publishing; Copyediting and Proofreading; Publishing Law; Promotion Management; Introduction to Business; E-Business Marketing; Book History; Practicum; Critical Approaches; Introduction to Digital Humanities;Textual Studies; Medieval Aesthetics and Poetic Art; Early Modern Print and Manuscript Cultures; The Nineteenth Century Literary Marketplace; Travel Literature; Discovering the Archives; Thinking about Theatre; Irish Drama from Wilde to O’Casey; Irish Drama from Beckett to the Present; Literature and Colonialism; Studies in Oral History; Regional Identities; Film in the Digital Age.

Requirements and assessment

Students are assessed at the end of each semester, either by examination or continuous assessment. A minor dissertation is submitted at a specified date in mid-August.