Comparative Literature and Cultures with History of Art and Visual Culture

Choosing this course enables you to combine the study of Comparative Literature and Culture (75% of the course) with History of Art and Visual Culture (25%).

Comparative Literature and Culture (CLC) offers you the opportunity to study global literature as well as to explore film, philosophy and visual arts. CLC combines a fascinating breadth of material with a focus on contexts – places, periods, and genres – to explore how key cultural shifts transform how we see, represent, and make sense of our changing world. CLC at Royal Holloway is a unique and intellectually stimulating degree which will develop you as a culturally-aware, creative and adaptable thinker.

We’ve developed this degree so that you can tailor it to suit your own evolving interests, choosing from our exceptionally wide range of fascinating options, ranging across continents and centuries, from antiquity to the present day, novels and poetry to philosophy, cinema and art. We will read, watch, and compare from Ancient Greece to contemporary New York, from Cuba to Korea, from epics to crime fiction, and from tragedy to the avant-garde. CLC enables you to study texts originally written in many languages, all translated into English.

If you have a passion for the visual arts, History of Art and Visual Culture will give you the skills to read, interpret and analyse images and artefacts across cultures. You will benefit from the research expertise of staff in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, engaging in the key phases in the development of the history of art and visual culture of Europe and Latin America, equipping you with the skills You can take courses on key historical skills and take options that combine the study of art history with that of photography, film and other media, ranging from medieval times to contemporary visual culture.

• Make use of Royal Holloway’s exceptional collection of Victorian Art housed in the Founder’s Picture Gallery

• Choose options in Visual Culture from across the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Course Modules

Core Modules

Year 1

• Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature

• Visual Arts 1: Artists and their Materials

• International Film 1: Contexts and Practices

• The Birth of Film

Year 2

• Histories of Representation

• Critical Worlds: Theory for Comparative Literature and Culture

• International Film 2: Readings and Representations

• Visual Arts II: Genre and Movements

Year 3

• Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film: Dissertation

• Visual Arts Dissertation

  Optional Modules

  Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

  Year 1

  • Key French Texts: The Individual and Society

  • The Visual Image in French Culture and Society

  • Introduction to German Studies

  • International Film 1: Contexts and Practices

  • Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature

  • Tales of the City: Introduction to Thematic Analysis

  • The Birth of Film

  • Strange Encounters: Texts and Contexts in Modern German Culture

  • Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and their Heritage

  • Discovery, Subversion and Destruction in the Hispanic Worlds Visual Arts 1: Artists and their Materials

  • Journeys of Identity

  Year 2

  • Histories of Representation

  • Critical Worlds: Theory for Comparative Literature and Culture

  • International Film 2: Readings and Representations

  • Visual Arts II: Genre and Movements

  • Writing Romance and Desire

  • Cinema in France

  • Death, Desire, Decline: Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka

  • Postwar Italian Cinema: the Auteur Tradition

  • Art and Literature in Renaissance Florence

  • Belonging and the Self in Contemporary German Fiction and Film

  • Fake News, Gossip, and the Pursuit of Truth: From Renaissance Newsletters to Online Journalism

  • Deceit, Desire and the Self: Literature of the Spanish Golden Age

  • Seducing the Nation: Spanish Film 1940s to 1980s

  • Conflict in Latin American Literature

  • 21st-century World Food Fictions: Feeding Interdisciplinary Understandings of Identity Constructs

  • World Literatures: Texts and Identities in Motion

  Year 3

  • Tongues of Exile: Exophonic and Translingual Literature

  • 21st-century World Food Fictions: Feeding Interdisciplinary Understandings of Identity Constructs

  • From Aestheticism to the Avant-Garde

  • Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film: Dissertation

  • Comparative Literature and Culture: Comparative Dissertation

  • Text and Image in France: from Cubism to the Present

  • Blindness and Vision in French Culture

  • Villains and Villainy in Early Modern French Theatre

  • Redefining the Erotic in Contemporary French Literature and Film

  • Narrative and Identity: The German Novel from the 18th to the 21st Century

  • National Socialism and the Third Reich in German Film and Visual Culture from 1933 to the Present

  • Art and Literature in Renaissance Florence

  • Seducing the Nation: Spanish Film 1940s to 1980s

  • Deceit, Desire and the Self: Literature of the Spanish Golden Age

  • Conflict in Latin American Literature

  • Fake News, Gossip, and the Pursuit of Truth: From Renaissance Newsletters to Online Journalism

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/undergraduate/comparative-literature-and-culture/comparative-literature-and-culture-and-history-of-art-and-visual-culture/

The course has a modular structure. Some modules are compulsory while others are elective thereby offering flexibility and choice.

Our teaching combines a majority of seminars and small group work as well as role play and conversational activities, with some lectures. Private study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources such as Powerpoint slideshows, copies of selected primary and secondary texts, audiovisual materials, class and seminar preparation aids, links to relevant external sites, quizzes and grammar and essay writing guidance, and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle. When you start with us, you are assigned a Personal Tutor to support you academically and personally and who holds regular surgery hours at least twice weekly.

Assessment is by a mixture of coursework and end-of-year examination in varying proportions, depending on the course units you take. Coursework includes essays, language exercises, translations and reports. Oral presentations and computer-based tests are used in some course units to assess grammar and comprehension skills. You can, to some extent, choose course units which suit your own assessment preferences. The first year is foundational and marks do not count towards your final degree. The second year, year abroad and final year marks do count, with more importance being given to the final year marks in order to reward progress and achievement.

You will take a study skills course during your first year, designed to equip you with and enhance the writing skills you will need to be successful in your degree. This course does not count towards your final degree award but you are required to pass it to progress to your second year.