Teaching & modules
Modules
Required modules
You are required to take:
- Theorizing Literature across Cultures: Contemporary Debates (15 credits)
- Research Skills in Comparative Literature (year-long) (15 credits)
- Dissertation (60 credits)
Optional modules
In addition, you are required to take six modules totaling 90 credits from a range of options from within the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. At least 60 of these should be from the list of dedicated Comparative Literature modules which may typically include:
- The World Novel (15 credits)
- Melancholia & Hypochondria in 18th-Century Europe (15 credits)
- Queer Connections: Male-Male Desire & the Classical Past (15 credits)
- Translation, Colonialism, Postcolonialism (15 credits)
- Myth after Slavery (15 credits)
- Africa in the World, the World in Africa (15 credits)
- Diplomacy and World Literature (15 credits)
- Renaissance Transgressions: Identity in European Perspective (15 credits)
- Rights before Human Rights: Eighteenth Century Theories and Representations (15 credits)
- Creative Practices in the Global Iberias (15 credits)
If you are a part-time student, you will take Theorizing Literature across Cultures: Contemporary Debates in your first year and Research Skills in Comparative Literature and your dissertation in your second. If you are a part-time student, you will take 45 credits of optional modules in your first year, and a further 45 in your second.
Teaching methods - what to expect
If you are a full-time student, we will provide you with six to eight hours of teaching a week through lectures and seminars, and we will expect you to undertake 33 hours of independent study.
If you are a part-time student, we will provide two to four hours of teaching each week through lectures and seminars, and we will expect you to undertake 17.5 of independent study.
For your dissertation, which you will focus on over summer, we will provide four hours of one-to-one supervision and you will undertake 594 hours of independent study. If you are a part-time student, we will provide this supervision in your second year.
Typically one credit equates to 10 hours of work.
Application closing date guidance
Key Information
Course type:
Master's
Delivery mode:
In person
Study mode:
Full time / Part time
Duration:
One year full-time, two years part-time, September to September
Application status:
Open
Start date:
September 2026