Literature courses cover a broad range of kinds of literature in English - from Britain and North America through to the literatures of postcolonial nations and anglophone diaspora communities. British and American film, television and new media also form an additional important focus. linguistics courses give special emphasis to applied linguistics. The staff has expertise in varieties of English as a world language, language teaching, sociolinguistics, and computer-assisted corpus analysis. The Department has always had a strong interest and expertise in the history of English and medieval studies.