Modern Languages and Comparative Literatures MA

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 will I learn?

The core module provides you with frameworks for engaging with comparative literature and cultural theory.

You then choose option modules according to three main themes: ‘Interrogating the Self’, ‘Imagining the Nation’ and ‘Memory and History’. In place of an option module, 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 study at advanced level in French, German, Italian, Spanish or Japanese, with writing workshops to allow you to perfect your language skills.

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 language, you will usually undertake a research project instead.

How will I learn?

This course is available to study full- or part-time with classes in the evening. 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.

Our teaching on this course is mainly interactive and seminar-based. Our research-skills workshops culminate in a mini-conference where you present your dissertation/research project to other students and staff.

Highlights

* You will be taught by specialists from our School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication, a multidisciplinary centre of teaching and research excellence.

* Our Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies, Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies and Eighteenth-Century Research Group host multiple workshops, lectures and conferences you can attend each year.

* The School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication offers a number of bursaries.

Careers and employability

On successfully graduating from this course, you will have gained an array of transferable skills, including:

* a sophisticated use of written and spoken English

* an advanced critical ability in the use of theoretical perspectives

* enhanced intercultural awareness

* facility and precision in the use of analytical tools

* strong skills and initiative in collecting and organising complex materials and writing up clear, well-presented reports.

You will find graduates following careers in international organisations or businesses, translating, teaching, research, journalism, publishing, law and the civil service. Possible professions include:

* teacher

* researcher

* journalist

* translator

* academic librarian

* writer

* arts administrator

* advertising copywriter.