MA Languages, Literatures, Cultures

at Durham University

Core module:

Critical Theory and Frameworks

This module introduces and develops knowledge of cutting-edge cultural and literary theories, and allows you to extend your skills of critical analysis. It provides a crucial foundation for the course, and offers you critical and conceptual tools to take forward as you pursue your optional modules and dissertation. The module foregrounds questions about literature and textuality, and covers themes such as identity, gender, race, disability, and ecology, through multiple theoretical frames, from literary theory to psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies.

Dissertation

You will write a research-led dissertation of 15,000 or 20,000 words, on a topic of your choice, and are provided with guidance and support in individual supervisions with an expert (or two) in the field.

Examples of optional modules:

You can select from a wide range of optional modules from within the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as options from the wider Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Options include:
 

• Selected Topics in World Literatures

• World Literature and Translation

• Science, Technology and the Re-making of Nature

• Visual Modernities

• History of Translation

• Work Placement

• Crossing Cultures: Word, Text and Image in Translation

• Transnational Cinema

• German Reading Skills for Research 1

• French Reading Skills for Research 1

• Things That Matter: Material and Culture in/for the Digital Age

• Romantic Forms of Grief

• Classical Modernisms

• Narrative Transformations: Medieval Romance to Renaissance Epic

• The Contemporary US novel

• Women and the Novel in the Eighteenth Century

• Modernism and Touch

• Shame

• Modern Poetry

• Narrative and Thresholds of Consciousness

• Anti-Capitalist Poetry and the Modern World System

• Illness and Narrative Practices

• Divergance, Deviance, and Disability in Nineteenth-Century Literature

• Grant-Writing for Master Students

• The Nature of History: Approaches to Environmental History

• Transnational History

• Science and the Enlightenment

• Current Issues in Aesthetics and Theory of Art

• Ethics, Medicine and History

• Environmental Philosophy

• Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind

• Ideologies and Political Thought

• Contemporary Political Philosophy

• The Politics of East Asia.

You will be expected to have a BA degree (upper-second class degree or equivalent) in a relevant subject, such as language (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian), literature or linguistics from a recognised national or international university.

Students holding a degree in a non-language-related field may be admitted provided they can demonstrate they have the required competence (C1 following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) in one of the above mentioned languages.

Fees and funding
 

• Home students    £10,300 per year
• EU students    £22,500 per year
• Island students    £10,300 per year
• International students    £22,500 per year

The tuition fees shown are for one complete academic year of full time study, are set according to the academic year of entry, and remain the same throughout the duration of the programme for that cohort (unless otherwise stated).