Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures

MA Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures

Birkbeck’s MA Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures is a highly flexible course offering you the chance to explore the languages and cultures of the French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish and Latin American worlds. It also gives you a thorough grounding in theoretical approaches to comparative literary and cultural studies, so you can develop intellectually and hone your critical and analytical skills.

Why choose this course?

• It is designed to be responsive and adaptive to your needs. We will help you tailor a pathway through the course that reflects your interests, career ambitions and language knowledge.
• You will be taught by a team of renowned academic experts who bring their research experience and insights in a variety of different specialisms: comparative literature, cultural studies, history, thought and visual culture, from the Enlightenment to the twenty-first century.
• The flexible nature of this course means that you can take a broadly comparative pathway through the degree or instead develop your interest in more specific cultures by focusing on particular strands within modules. You can choose to study texts in the original language or in English translation.

What you will learn

The core module provides you with frameworks for engaging with comparative literature and cultural theory, embracing the work of thinkers like Roland Barthes, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Rosi Braidotti, Audre Lorde and Judith Butler.

You will then choose option modules that allow you to explore the modern world across different cultures and texts, according to three main themes: ‘Interrogating the Self’, ‘Imagining the Nation’ and ‘Memory and History’. Each module embraces several strands which allow you to explore core questions established in the first weeks via more specific cultural contexts. In place of an option module, depending on your interests, you may choose to take an advanced language-learning module or another School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication module such as Inside Out of Culture: Organisations, Placements and Practice, which includes a mini-placement.

If you opt for a language module, you choose one module at advanced level in French, German, Italian, Spanish or Japanese. This will incorporate academic writing workshops and allow you to enhance and perfect your language skills in conjunction with multiple forms of cultural analysis.

You will develop your research and writing skills through a series of workshops, culminating in a dissertation on a chosen topic. If you opt for a European language module, you will usually undertake a research project instead of the dissertation.

How you will learn

This course is available to study full- or part-time with classes taking place in the evening, so you can balance your studies with other commitments. Our language-learning modules are taught on campus, but all of our other modules are offered as HyFlex, so you can choose to study in person or online depending on your circumstances.

Our teaching on this course is mainly interactive and seminar-based, with small groups led by our expert teachers, fostering in-depth discussion and dialogue. Our research-skills workshops culminate in a mini-conference where you present your dissertation/research project to other students and staff.

If you require a Student visa to study in the UK, you will only be able to attend this course on campus. The online option will not be available to you because it may affect the conditions of your visa.

MRes Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures

The MRes is ideal if you wish to pursue a more research-oriented pathway through this course, as it offers you specialist training in research skills. You can opt to write your dissertation on a specific language-speaking area or areas and, if you also work with cultural artefacts in the original language/s, the title of your award will reflect this, for example, MRes French Studies, or MRes German and Japanese Studies.