Comparative Literature and Culture

Comparative Literature and Culture offers you the opportunity to study literature from across the world, as well as exploring film, philosophy and visual arts. This course 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. Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway is a unique and intellectually stimulating course that will develop you as a culturally-aware, creative and adaptable thinker.

We’ve developed this course so that you can tailor it to suit your own evolving interests, enabling you to choose from our exceptionally wide range of fascinating options. These span continents and centuries, from antiquity to the present day, covering novels, poetry, philosophy, cinema and art. You will read, watch, and compare texts from Ancient Greece to contemporary New York, from Cuba to Korea, from epics to crime fiction, and from tragedy to the avant-garde. Comparative Literature and Culture also enables you to study a variety of foreign texts originally written in many languages, all translated into English.

You will be taught by world-class experts who genuinely want to get to know you. We create a supportive environment, often using group work so you can try out new ideas and participate in lively discussions. Throughout your studies, you will receive personal guidance to ensure your course is aligned with your strengths, interests and career plans. As part of our close-knit international community, you will be able to get involved with an array of cultural initiatives that take place on campus and make the most of being within easy reach of London and its many events and attractions.

Studying Comparative Literature and Culture will broaden your horizons, interests and passions, and give you a critical edge in a competitive global marketplace.

• Gain global cultural awareness and an internationally prestigious degree.

• Our teaching methods are diverse, ranging from lectures and small group seminars to e-learning.

• Become a creative, flexible and critical thinker.

• Shape your programme according to your own interests.

• Available as a joint honours degree with a wide variety of subjects.

• Consider a year abroad or studying a language

Course Modules

Core Modules

Year 1

• Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature

Year 2

• Histories of Representation

• Critical Worlds: Theory for Comparative Literature and Culture

Year 3

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/

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminar groups, and tutorials, in which you will be able to try out new ideas by giving presentations and participating in lively discussions in a supportive environment. Independent study and preparation are essential parts of every course, and you will have access to many online resources and the University’s comprehensive e-learning facility, Moodle, which provides a variety of supporting materials.

We use a range of assessment models to suit different learning styles, from online comprehension tests and individual and group presentations to coursework-based assignments such as essays, critical commentaries, blogposts and reviews.

When you begin you will be allocated your own Personal Advisor, a member of academic staff who will support you academically. In your first year you also take a study skills course designed to equip you with and enhance the 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.