Comparative Literature with Film Studies

This three-year course combines both required and optional modules to achieve a total of 120 credits for each year. You also have the option to study abroad in your third year.

You are required to take the following modules:

Comparative Literature:

• What is Comparative Literature? Conceptions & Methods (15 credits)

• The Writer in the Text (15 credits)

• Comparative Literature: Theoretical Foundations (15 credits)

• Genres of World Literature (15 credits)

Film Studies:

• Introduction to Film Studies: Forms (15 credits)

• Introduction to Film Studies: Contexts (15 credits)

Comparative Literature

In addition, you are required to take 15 credits from a range of optional modules which may typically include:

• Forms of Shorter Narrative (15 credits)
• The Novel in Eighteenth-Century Europe (15 credits)
• Reading Modern Poetry Comparatively: Greek & English (15 credits)
• Genres of World Literature (15 credits)

Additionally, you are required to select a further 15 credits of modules from Comparative Literature or optional modules from within the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.

2nd Year

You are required to take the following modules:

• Literature of Empire (15 credits)
• Ideas of Nation (15 credits)
• The Book in the Modern World (15 credits) or the Canon (15 credits)

You are required to take Comparative Literature modules totalling 30 credits that may typically include:

• Romantic Britain & Italy (15 credits)
• Writing Africa (15 credits)
• Palestinian & Israeli Literature (15 credits)
• Forms of Discovery: Hardy, Cavafy & the Modern Short Poem (15 credits)
• The Faust Tradition: Dramatic Transformations (15 credits)
• Socialism & Literature in India in the Twentieth Century (15 credits)
• The Medieval Book (15 credits)
• Escape Attempts: Incarceration, Freedom, Expression (15 credits)

You are also required to take 30 credits from the following optional Film Studies modules, which may typically include:

• Asian Popular Cinemas (15 credits)
• Cinema & Spectatorship (15 credits)
• Chinese Cinemas (15 credits)
• Authorship & Creativity in the Cinema (15 credits)
• Film Forms (eg Documentary Film, Experimental Film) (15 credits)
• The French New Wave (15 credits)
• Italian Neo-Realism (15 credits)
• Contemporary European Cinema (15 credits)
• Topics in World Cinema (15 credits)
• Film Forms: Avante-Garde Cinema (15 credits)
• Contemporary Spanish Cinema (15 credits

You may also take up to 15 credits from approved optional modules offered by the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.

3rd Year

In Year 3 you are required to write a dissertation, which must involve a Film Studies element. Additionally, you will take Comparative Literature & Film Studies options.

• Dissertation (30 credits) which must involve a Film Studies element.

You are also required to take at least 30 credits in Comparative Literature optional modules that may typically include:

• Surrealism (15 credits)
• Imaginary Geographies (15 credits)
• The French Revolution Effect (15 credits)
• Testimony: The Holocaust & Rwanda (15 credits)
• Listening across the Channel (15 credits)
• Modern Arabic Literature (15 credits)

Additionally, you are required to take 30 credits in Film Studies optional modules that may typically include:

• Film and Transnationalism (15 credits)
• American Underground Cinema (15 credits)
• Cinema & Social Formations (15 credits)
• Film Genre: Hollywood Musical (15 credits)
• Documentary in the Twenty-First Century (15 credits)
• Film Noir (15 credits)
• Film & Religion (15 credits)
• Film & Architecture (15 credits)
• The Biopic: Historical Lives and Biographical Screen Practices (15 credits)
• New Waves in East Asian Cinema (15 credits)
• Film Style, Criticism & Interpretation (15 credits)

You may also take up to 30 credits from approved optional modules offered by the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, to increase your credit total to 120, if this is not already achieved by your Comparative Literature and Film module choices.

You will have the opportunity to study abroad in the first semester of the third year. Partner universities currently include:

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Hong Kong University
• University of Bologna (Italian language required)
• University of Sydney
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (German language required - this is a German department exchange which Comp Lit students can access where space is available)
• Université Sorbonne IV (French language required - this is a French department exchange which Comp Lit students can access where space is available.)

King’s College London reviews the modules offered on a regular basis in order to provide up-to-date, innovative and relevant programmes of study. The optional modules offered may therefore change.