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Reading the Now

English Literature: Writing the 21st Century

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.

Read the stories of Amrita and Jules.

VU Master's Event

Saturday 7 March 2026

International Master's webinar

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Discover English Literature: Writing the 21st Century

Discover English Literature: Writing the 21st Century

Explore how contemporary literature in English thinks with—and against—the political, ecological, and cultural forces shaping the twenty-first century. In this programme, you read across 21st-century genres and media, work closely with theory, and develop the critical tools to analyse the narratives that organise our present.

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Change your world, study English Literature: Writing the 21st Century

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