MA Children’s Literature

The academic study of children’s literature has developed over the past 30 years, and is now a recognised multidisciplinary field of enquiry. The MA Children’s Literature will enable you to explore the relationship between reader, writer, text and context, and consider the critical perspectives that underpin those interactions.

Why study MA Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths?

• This postgraduate course will deepen your familiarity with a range of children’s literature, from ‘classic’ works, to contemporary texts. Through this, you’ll develop a detailed knowledge of the issues and debates in the field, analysing children’s literature using theories from education, cultural studies, literary theory, psychology, sociology, history and philosophy.
• We foster a critical stance towards children’s literature, academic reading, and ideological underpinning. All of our staff are actively involved in research in the fields of education and children’s literature. Award-winning author Michael Rosen is part of the leading team on this programme.
• The Masters in Children’s Literature aims to incorporate and respond to your unique background as an individual. we encourage you to use this to address the challenging issues of representation and diversity in children’s literature. You may come from a publishing background or work in education or children’s media. If you have a passion for children’s literature then this is the course for you.

• Students on this programme’s creative writing pathway will be able to work with published creative writing lecturers, including the novelists Ardashir Vakil and Sara Grant, to create short stories, novels, and poems for children and young adults. Creative writing alumni have had their work published, including a recent book by Dashe Roberts ‘The Bigwoof Conspiracy (2020); a creative writing handbook co-authored by Harry Oulton ‘The Writing Deck: 53 Prompts for Putting Pen to Paper (2019); and Anna Dempsey won the Costa Short Story Award (2019).