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Studying Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in Modern Languages

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
  • Convenor: Mari Paz Balibrea Enriquez
  • Tutors: all teaching staff in the department
  • Assessment: two 2500-word essays (50% each)

Module description

On this module you will study comparative literature and cultural studies with reference to individual modern languages and read recommended texts to acquaint you with the traditions from which the study of culture has emerged, while comparing concepts in the chosen texts. This will prepare you to produce theoretically informed work in your chosen areas of specialisation, which your further develop in the second part of the module offered in Term 2. For this second part, you will divide into three possible strands: Comparative Literature; French Studies; Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Cultural Studies (other strands may be available).

Indicative module syllabus

Part one

See recommended reading list below.

PART TWO

STRAND 1. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

  • Introduction: Key concepts in comparative literature, especially translation: a case study
  • Modernism sans frontières: Proust and Joyce, Woolf and Sarraute
  • Orientalism/Occidentalism
  • Intercultural theatre
  • Cross-cultural themes: colonial and post-colonial representations of the ‘Other’
  • Cross-cultural themes: the poet as prophet
  • Cross-cultural themes: epistolary encounters, writing sentiment and gender in the eighteenth century

STRAND 2. FRENCH STUDIES

  • Hypothetical beginnings: the social self
  • Exotic encounters: sociability and sexuality
  • The social construction of consciousness versus the individual 'authentic consciousness'
  • The social construction of gender and of female identity as the 'Other'
  • The social construction of race and divided self-perception of the colonised, Black subject
  • The social institutionalisation of literature and culture and the notions of cultural and economic capital
  • Capitalist constructs of society
  • Biopolitics: the 'Self' and the 'Collective'
  • Deconstructing European society after the fall of the Berlin Wall
  • Social reform and political militancy

STRAND 3. SPANISH, PORTUGUESE AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

  • Modernity at large
  • Modern times
  • Art and modernity in Spain
  • Gender and modernity in Spain
  • Vision and modernity in Latin America
  • Third world cinema

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will able to:

  • competently reflect on and critically engage with the tradition of literary criticism within modern languages and, emerging from it, that of comparative literature
  • understand the emergence of cultural critique and its connections and implications for the study of modern and European languages and beyond, including Latin American and Japanese studies and linguistics
  • understand the historical,  philosophical, methodological and political differences implied in the different approaches to the study of modern languages and cultures
  • make comparisons and connections across time periods, spaces and disciplines
  • analyse and critically assess some of the dominant themes, salient authors and cultural objects within your chosen strand and cultural tradition
  • demonstrate skills in close textual analysis
  • show critical awareness of the meanings and functions of cultural production within the social and cultural contexts of their production and reception
  • engage with complex cultural and historical criticism material.