PhD Comparative Literature

Overview

With literary specialists across the range of eight languages taught in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, the University of Liverpool is ideally positioned to provide varied supervision in the areas of Comparative and World Literature. Researchers have played a pioneering role in work on postcolonial and translingual writing, and have contributed actively to major research programmes such as ‘Translating Cultures’ and projects such as ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’. The Department offers expertise across a range of genres, including the novel, short story, travel writing and graphic fiction, and staff have demonstrated international excellence in emerging areas such as digital media. Supervisors have an interest in canonical literatures as well as in emerging voices, and offer expertise across a range of theoretical approaches.

Collaboration between schools means that researchers from the Department of English make a full contribution to this pathway, extending the range of comparison to literatures from throughout the Anglophone world. This ensures that students have full access to the Centre for New and International Writing. Co-supervision is also available with the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology as well as the Institute for Irish Studies.

In addition, researchers in Comparative Literature at the University of Liverpool contribute to the wider field of translation studies and include practicing translators. Comparatism is underpinned by a commitment to researching multilingually and to extending the theoretical bases of Comparative Literature beyond conventional understandings of the field.

Current and recent PhDs supervised include: translingual writing in the Afghanistani diaspora; masculinity in Anglophone and Francophone African fiction; and the representation of China in contemporary British fiction.