For English, go Dutch! (Modern and Contemporary Writing At University of Sheffield)

Member Name: jatkinson100

Product:	Modern and Contemporary Writing At University of Sheffield
Date:	08/11/00 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The content, different styles and authors, and you will learn without really knowing you are. Duco, the lecturer, is great, and will be your favourite lecturer. Every book (bar Tales of the City) is a great read.

Disadvantages: One book, Tales of the City by Maupin, is absolute crap and by far the worst book I've read, but the course is named after it, so it can't be dropped.

MA in Modern and Contemporary Writing/ Fiction.

I have just completed my MA in the writing section (a mixture of poetry and fiction (see my thoughts on books and poets)), and loved every minute of it (well,....?). Sheffield is a great place to study, and was voted in a Virgin Poll 3rd (I think) best city to study in in the world, behind New York and somewhere else dead glam! The pubs are good, the clubs are good, and the locals are, generally, very friendly people. With a nursing/ midwifery college, a teaching hospital, a police training area, and Hallam, there are loads of students here, so many things are catered for them.

Back to the course, I have two pointers, 1) avoid Archive and Methodology. It is very interesting, and the lecturers are really nice, but it is geared towards PhD students, and although helpful, you would get more help from doing it in your first year of PhD rather than at MA.

ii) Do Tales of the City!!! They have their own web site on it (I made it) at

http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/D-H/el/amst uds/totc/index.html

(access direct or from "course related web pages" on the English Lit homepage) and it is the best course I did. The lecturer, Duco van Oostrum (whose e-mail you can find on the web page) is a truly nice guy, and is Dutch, hence the title. He made the course fun and very enjoyable. It was on the strength of him that I chose to do American Sports Lit in the Second semester, which was also very interesting, despite my lack of knowledge on Baseball. The best, and most popular, course has to be Tales of the City, however. I will, and have, recomended it to people thinking of doing their MA.

Duco will be happy, I'm sure, to speak to you about the course, but be warned, once you have heard the full details, you will want to go.

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