Do you enjoy the adventurous and analytical work of interpreting texts? Are you keen to explore Literatures and Cultures in an unbordered way, so that national boundaries, disciplinary divisions, and linguistic know-how are no barrier to where your curiosity and intellectual ambition might lead? If so, you are a comparatist in the making!
Comparative Literatures and Cultures takes you on a journey across and between cultures that will sharpen your analytical skills and equip you with a cultural agility fit for our globalised world. The programme challenges narrow ideas of capital-L Literature or of ‘the canon' and knocks down false boundaries between ‘high' and ‘low' culture by exploring the diversity of literary and cultural production across the globe – from Italy to Russia, Morocco to China, Brazil to Senegal – and across the centuries. Through both core and optional units, our comparatists examine the long and fascinating history of interactions between literary works and other forms (portraiture, book illustration, film), media (video, digital literature) and disciplines (visual arts, philosophy, history, social sciences).
This degree considers the many ways in which Literatures and Cultures move through time and space, such as through individual forms of contact (reader reception, influence, and intertextuality), sociopolitics (trade, migration, colonization) and technologies that have shaped literary and visual culture.
All texts are studied in English through the tool of the curious comparatist: translation. You will benefit from the Translation Studies expertise in the School of Modern Languages as you discover the varieties and varied roles of translations in the movement, adaptation, and appropriation of texts.
Bristol's multilingualism and cultural diversity make it the ideal location for this degree. The city offers countless opportunities for you to take your cultural analyses from the seminar into the ‘real world', be this through encounters with Banksy's street art, with murals honouring the Bristol Bus Boycott's fight for racial equality or through work on how Bristol's institutions have responded to decolonization.
The degree fosters qualities valued by all kinds of employers: intercultural understanding and sensitivity, analytical and critical thinking, clarity, self-confidence and daring in communication, an aptitude for collaborative work, and creativity. It will instil habits of curiosity, openness, rigour, self-reflection, and evidence-based thinking, which will prepare you for a flexible career across a wide range of sectors.
This course is available in Clearing. If you have submitted an application, you can add this course. If you haven’t sent us an application yet, you can do this until 24th September 2026.
This is the equal consideration deadline. You can still apply after this date, but your application may not receive guaranteed consideration.
University of Bristol has participated in the Teaching Excellence Framework. These ratings were awarded in 2023, for four years.
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The following entry points are available for this course:
The University of Bristol welcomes applications from international students, and accepts a wide range of qualifications for undergraduate study. If you studied at a school, college or university outside the UK, please select the relevant page for further information on qualification equivalences, scholarships and details of our education representatives in your country/region: bristol.ac.uk/international/countries/
Find out more about qualification requirements for this course.
We accept a wide variety of qualifications and welcome applications from students of all backgrounds. We consider a large range of contextual factors when making application decisions.
If you receive and accept an offer from the University of Bristol, and you meet the terms of your offer in full, you will be accepted.
This section shows the range of grades that students who received offers were previously accepted on to this course with (learn more).
It is designed to support your research but does not guarantee whether you will or won't get a place.
Admissions teams consider various factors, including interviews, subject requirements, and entrance tests. Check all course entry requirements for eligibility.
We are unable to show previous accepted grades for this course. This could be because the course is new, it's a postgraduate course, there isn't enough historical data, or the provider has opted out of sharing their entry grades data for this course - learn more.
This report uses your grades to show how students with similar results have done when applying to this course in the past. Sometimes, there isn’t data for every possible set of grades. When that happens, universities and colleges occasionally fill in the gaps for sets of grades that are typically accepted.
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Tuition fee status depends on a number of criteria and varies according to where in the UK you will study. For further guidance on the criteria for home or overseas tuition fees, please refer to the UKCISA website.
Fees are subject to annual review and are liable to rise each year. Home fees will be set in line with UK government policy and updated as per their guidance, while international fees increase annually in line with expected inflation rises. Visit bristol.ac.uk/ug-fees-funding for further information, including estimated fees for subsequent years and typical total costs.
Email:choosebristol-ug@bristol.ac.uk
Phone:+44 (0)117 370 2618
Email:choosebristol-ug@bristol.ac.uk
Phone:0117 394 1649
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At University of Bristol
