Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures,MRes

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: cultural studies, comparative literature, visual culture, history and thought, 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 focus on one or more specific cultures by choosing 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 Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Audre Lorde and Judith Butler.

You will then choose option modules that explore the study of culture and the modern world across different cultures and texts, and specialise via one or more language strands focusing on specific cultural contexts. In place of an option module, you may opt for an industry placement, available each year.

For the languages element, you can 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 offered on campus, but other modules may also be offered online, so you can choose 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.

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.