About Myth Studies
The Centre for Myth Studies
The Centre for Myth Studies
at the University of Essex aims to supports the academic study of myth in
all its varieties: ancient and modern, local and global. It promotes
multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work, including studies of specific
myths, theories of myths, and social and cultural applications of myth from
literary, depth psychological, religious, and other perspectives.
The
Centre’s activities include the organisation of conferences, of which the first
was an international conference on Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious
(University of Essex, 2-4 September 2010) and the second will be an
international conference on Translating Myth (firstsite, Colchester, 5-7
September 2013); a reading group; and Acad-Myth, an online discussion list (in
collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Myth at the University of
Aberdeen).
Serious scholars and
students of myth, both within the University of Essex and beyond, are welcome to
join the myth discussion list and to become affiliated to the Centre for Myth
Studies.
The BA in Literature and Myth sets out to
investigate the uniqueness of myth. It examines the relationship between myth
and literature and provides the theoretical grounding for a contemporary
understanding of classic forms of myth through the study of a number of key
literary and mythological texts drawn from a range of cultures. Myth tells us
something fundamental about the world in which we live, and about ourselves. It
does so by creating a narrative and symbolic order that is unlike any other, a
parallel universe in which we lose ourselves, only to find ourselves once more,
transformed by the experience.
The MA in Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious is an interdisciplinary course
drawing on the complementary expertise of the Department of Literature, Film,
and Theatre Studies and the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies. The course
critically explores a variety of theories of myth, both ancient and modern, but
focuses on the depth psychological theories of Freud and Jung, which postulate
that the real subject matter of myth is the unconscious mind. With these
theoretical foci, the course examines the role of myth in literature, with
special emphases on mythic representations of the city in western culture and
the uses of myth in some of the key texts of literary modernism, whose authors
worked in an intellectual milieu informed by the new depth psychologies.
Research Degrees
Graduates who are interested in working for research
degrees are welcomed to apply to the University. For more information on
staff interests and specialisms, please consult the
staff pages for details on individual lecturers’ publications and
research interests.
The Director of the Centre is
Leon Burnett
The
Director of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies is
Roderick Main.