BA Modern Languages and Comparative Literature and Culture

As a joint honours student with Modern Languages you will gain fluency in a language of your choice – French, German, Italian, or Spanish. Whether you start at beginners’, advanced or native-speaker levels, you will gain skills in writing, reading, speaking and listening. You will study core language components for the language you have chosen, being taught wholly or in part by native speakers.

The remainder of your modern languages study will give you an opportunity to explore the literature, art, culture and history of the language area you are studying, from seventeenth-century French theatre to representations of childhood and youth in German culture, and from Italian fashion and design to visual arts from across the Spanish-speaking world. As a modern linguist, you will develop excellent communication and research skills, and combine proficiency in multiple languages with cross-cultural perspectives.

In your third year you will have the opportunity to spend a year working, teaching or studying abroad, where you will immerse yourself in another language and culture, truly broadening your horizons in the process.

Comparative Literature and Culture offers you the opportunity to study global literature as well as to explore film, philosophy and the visual arts. You will look at a fascinating breadth of material with a focus on contexts – places, periods, and genres – and explore how key cultural shifts transform how we see, represent, and make sense of our changing world. This is a unique and intellectually stimulating subject which will develop you as a culturally-aware, creative and adaptable thinker.

We’ve developed this course so that you can tailor it to suit your own evolving interests. You can choose options which range across continents and centuries, from antiquity to the present day, novels and poetry to philosophy, cinema and art. You will read, watch, and compare from Ancient Greece to contemporary New York, from Cuba to Korea, from epics to crime fiction, and from tragedy to the avant-garde. You will also be able to study texts from a vast array of countries and cultures, all translated into English.

Regarding funding: Royal Holloway has been successful in every application to the Turing Scheme. We will continue to apply for funding in each cycle to support student mobility