Classical Studies & Comparative Literature

Study a degree in the heart of London combining the comparative study of Western literature with special attention to the literatures and cultures of the Classical world, including language. The comparative component offers study of a variety of themes, genres and historical periods.

Classics:

• One of the very best classics departments in the country, renowned for its quality of teaching, student experience and cutting-edge research.
• Central location offers collaborations with the British Museum and the Museum of London, which are incorporated into undergraduate teaching.
• The department stages an annual Greek play in the original language, providing students with an opportunity to experience the Greek dramatic tradition.
• Degree programmes combine focus and flexibility, allowing students to pursue their interests.
• Graduates are equipped with analytical and presentational skills valued by employers, leading to careers in heritage-related professions, the media, education, civil service and the performing arts.

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Comparative Literature:

• The course draws on the teaching and research expertise of some of the highest ranked literature departments in the UK.
• Flexible degree programme – students have the opportunity to choose from a wide variety of courses across a number of departments.
• Central location offers students the opportunity to benefit from London’s unique cultural resources.

This programme combines the comparative study of Western literature with special attention to the literatures and cultures of the Classical world. The Classical component can be organised round either an intensive study of Latin and/or ancient Greek language and literature, or a more broadly-based approach to Greek and Roman culture as a whole, with a smaller (but still indispensable) element of language work. The comparative component offers study of a variety of themes, genres and historical periods.

The Comparative Literature programme draws on the teaching and research expertise of internationally renowned departments. These include several of the highest rated literature departments in the UK. Classics embraces the cultures of Greece and Rome (their languages, literature, thought, religion, art, archaeology and history) and their influence on later ages. King's Department of Classics is acknowledged as one of the very best in the country, for stimulating teaching and overall quality of student experience as well as for cutting-edge research; the variety and flexibility of its teaching fully reflects the richness of the subject.

Study abroad
Selected students in year 3 have the opportunity to study in the United States for one semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Greek Play
Every year (since 1953), students in the Department of Classics have produced and performed a Greek play - the only production in the UK to be performed annually in the original Greek. Read more about the Greek Play (and its history) at King's: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/about/greek/index.aspx

King's reviews its optional modules on a regular basis, in order to continue to offer innovative and exciting programmes. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that any particular optional course will run in a given year and the options listed below are subject to change.

Compulsory modules:

• Greek or Latin language
• Introduction to Comparative Literature: Methods & Theories

First year students choose from a range of optional modules from across the School of Arts & Humanities at King's (including modules offered by the departments of English, Film Studies, French, German, Hellenic Studies and Spanish), which would typically include options such as:

• Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome
• Greek & Latin Literature: An Introduction
• Introduction to Ancient History (c. 1200 BC-AD 600)
• Working with Greek & Latin Literary Texts: An Introduction
• Reading Modern Poetry Comparatively: Greek / English
• The Novel in 18th-Century Europe
• Ours Once More: Perceptions of the Past in the Greek World
• Writing London
• Reading Poetry
• Literature of the Renaissance
• Introducing Literary Theories
• Introduction to Film Studies: Forms
• Introduction to Film Studies: Contexts
• Subjects and Selves: an Introduction to French Thought
• Text and Performance: an Introduction to French and Francophone Theatre and Film
• Medieval Germany: Language, Literature and Society
• German Literature from Luther to Goethe
• German Literature: 19th and 20th Centuries
• Medieval Spain: from Frontier to Empire
• Introduction to Modern Spanish Culture

Compulsory modules:

• Views of Antiquity or Languages & Literature II

Second year students choose from a range of optional modules from across the School of Arts & Humanities at King's (including modules offered by the departments of American Studies, English, Film Studies, French, Hellenic Studies, German and Spanish), which would typically include options such as:

• Literature of Empire
• Post-Colonial Literature and Theory
• The Ancient & Early Medieval Book
• The Medieval Book
• Views of Antiquity
• Building Greece & Rome
• Greek History down to 322BC
• Roman History down to 31BC
• Greek/Roman Drama
• Greek/Latin Language
• Greek/Latin Texts
• Narrative Literature in Antiquity
• Roman/Hellenistic Art
• Subjects of Desire in Medieval Literature
• Jacobean Theatre
• Modernist Fiction
• Literature & Psychoanalysis
• Modern Theatre
• Australian Literature & Film
• Women & Love in the Renaissance
• Literature & Enlightenment in the French 18th Century
• Writing & Politics
• Twentieth-century Women's Writing
• Introduction to Francophone African Literatures
• Heinrich Heine
• Modernism & the Avant-Garde
• Economic Thought & Literature
• Portuguese Symbolism & Realism
• After Franco: Films & Texts of the Transition
• Perceptions of Modernity: Spanish America 1800-1920
• Culture & Identity in Spanish America
• Goya & the Dream of Reason

Full module descriptions can be found on our website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/index.aspx and http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/complit/modules/index.aspx

All final year students are required to research and write a Comparative Literature dissertation on a topic involving Classics.

Final year students choose from a range of optional modules from across the School of Arts & Humanities at King's (including modules offered by the departments of English, Film Studies, French, German, Hellenic Studies and Spanish), which would typically include options such as:

• Greek Sculpture 750-300 BC
• Archaeology of the Western Roman Provinces
• Augustus: Power & Propaganda
• Alexander the Great
• Ancient Slavery
• Greek Religion
• Greek/Latin texts
• Rome in the Age of Cicero
• Theory of Literature
• The Classical Tradition in English Poetry
• Surrealism
• Nineteenth-century American Literature
• Visual Culture: an Introduction
• American Postwar Fiction
• Literature and Nation: Greece and Europe since 1922
• Cavafy, Seferis, Ritsos
• The Novels of Nikos Kazantzakis
• Jacobean Shakespeare
• Postcolonial Perspectives
• Medieval Romance
• Experimental Theatre
• Jane Austen in Context
• French Feminist Writing
• Contemporary Algerian Literature
• Flaubert
• Shadows of Enlightenment
• Introduction to Francophone African Literatures
• Heinrich von Kleist
• The Third Reich in the Postwar German Novel
• The Medieval Erotic Lyric
• Stereotypes in Modern Spanish Cinema
• Don Quijote: Text and Screen
• Latin American Visual Arts

Full module descriptions can be found on our website: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/classics/modules/index.aspx and http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/complit/modules/index.aspx