English Literature: Writing the 21st Century is a specialisation of the Master's programme in Literary Studies at VU Amsterdam. This one-year specialisation approaches the twenty-first century through the texts that shape and question it.
Reading contemporary literature in English through cultural and literary theory, you will examine how stories register, refract, and reshape the political, ecological, and social forces that define our world. The programme invites you to read critically, question assumptions, and develop the analytical precision to interpret — and intervene in — the narratives of the present.
The programme is structured around genres and forms that define contemporary literature: speculative fiction, autofiction, the Gothic, revisionist adaptation, and comics. By the end of the programme, you will not only have deepened your command of contemporary Anglophone literature; you will also have gained the analytical sharpness needed to interpret — and challenge — the stories that shape the world you inhabit.
