Comparative Literatures and Cultures

Comparative literatures and cultures is a discipline that opens up literary study beyond any single national tradition, asking what can be understood when texts from different languages, cultures, and historical periods are read alongside and in relation to each other. It treats the boundaries between national literatures not as walls but as creative frontiers, examining how stories, forms, and ideas travel across them, how works written in one context are received and transformed in another, and what the diversity of human literary expression reveals about the capacities and concerns of the species.

This three-year, full-time programme at the University of Exeter develops your ability to read literature across multiple traditions with critical rigour and cultural sensitivity. The programme includes a placement year and a year abroad, both of which give you the opportunity to develop professionally and to engage with literary and cultural traditions in a different national context. The year abroad is particularly significant in a degree that places emphasis on crossing boundaries and encountering difference, and the placement year connects your academic work to real-world contexts in publishing, education, cultural organisations, or related fields.

Graduates of comparative literatures and cultures are genuinely versatile. The skills of close reading, cross-cultural analysis, and persuasive argument developed by the degree are valued in publishing, translation, journalism, education, international organisations, arts and cultural administration, and the civil service. The multilingual orientation of comparative study is particularly relevant in roles that require engagement across language communities or national contexts.

Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in comparative literature, literary theory, area studies, or translation, pursuing academic careers or specialist professional expertise in literary fields.