Comparative Literature and Hebrew

Comparative literature and Hebrew at the University of St Andrews is a four-year combination that opens up one of the world's most important ancient and modern languages alongside a mode of literary study that is deliberately borderless, reading texts from any culture, any period, and any genre in pursuit of what human storytelling, across its vast diversity, shares and how it differs. Hebrew is both the language of the Hebrew Bible and one of the great linguistic achievements of the modern era: revived as a living language in the twentieth century and now the mother tongue of millions in Israel, it carries connections across Jewish literary and religious tradition from antiquity to the present day. The programme includes a year abroad.

Comparative literature at St Andrews draws on expertise from across the School of Modern Languages and encourages you to read without the constraints of national or linguistic canons, exploring the relationships between literatures around the world and developing skills in textual analysis that work across boundaries of culture and form. Hebrew study gives you access to primary texts in one of the world's most historically significant languages, and the combination with comparative literature opens rich opportunities to examine how Hebrew literature relates to other traditions, how translation mediates between them, and what specifically Jewish perspectives bring to global literary history.

A typical entry tariff of 200 points reflects the selectivity of the programme. Graduates from comparative literature and Hebrew programmes are well placed for careers in academia, publishing, journalism, translation, teaching, cultural institutions, and organisations concerned with Israeli and Jewish cultural life. Many continue to doctoral research in Hebrew, comparative literature, Jewish studies, or translation theory.