MPhil (Research) Comparative Literature

Comparative Literature is an exciting interdisciplinary, intercultural, and inter-medial discipline housed in our School of Modern Languages and Cultures with expertise in ten modern languages and cultures.

Overview

The strengths of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) lie in the languages and literatures of Europe, both east and west. For this reason our Comparative Literature Programme might be subtitled: European and European Influenced. There is indeed still much work to be done in having East meet West since the fall of the Wall so many years ago, and we are proudly placed, with our Slavonic subject areas, to enable research and teaching in this cross-over area. We cross into the New World as well, having staff working on, for example, Quebecois literature, Mexican and Brazilian, as well as North American Anglophone literature.

Comparative Literature has close collaborative links, not only with disciplines such as Translations Studies, English Literature, Scottish Literature and Classics, but also with History, Art History, Philosophy, Gender History, as well as Central and East European Studies and Economic and Social History, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Medical Humanities, and Digital Humanities. We are also involved within larger networks such as Human Rights Network and GRAMnet (Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration network), and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures is home to the Stirling Maxwell Centre for Text/Image Studies.

This allows us to offer a very wide variety of research pathways for students with diverse backgrounds and interests. Our special strengths linguistically include languages of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe and Latin America as well as Mandarin. Links with other Schools provides access to classical, mediaeval, and other modern languages.

We currently have a cohort of 25 taught Masters and roughly 30 postgraduate research students within the School of Modern Languages and Culture. Our research students organise a regular seminar series and play an active role in building a thriving research environment beneficial to all postgraduate students within modern languages and cultures.

Thesis length: 30,000-40,000 words (including references and bibliography).

A Master of Philosophy (Research) requires you to undertake a postgraduate course of special study and research that represents a distinct contribution to knowledge.