Modern Languages & Cultures

We offer expertise, teaching and supervision in a diverse range of fields within French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Our degree programmes are designed to help you develop full proficiency in speaking, understanding, reading, writing and appreciating languages and culture.

French

Our leading research and teaching ranges from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period, and includes expertise in:

• literature
• history
• cultural studies
• theory and thought
• visual cultures, including emblems, fine art and cinema

German

Our expertise embraces a wide variety of specialisms across the modern period including:

• German literature in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries
• aesthetics and the history of ideas
• psychoanalytical theory
• German cultural theory

Italian

Our expertise ranges across topics including:

• the history and literature of the Italian Resistance to Fascism
• women and 20th century Italy
• the literature of Trieste and the perception of cultural identity
• 20th century Italian theatre and poetry
• contemporary Italian literature

Portuguese

Our teaching and research covers material from across the Portuguese-speaking world, including:

• Brazilian cinema
• postcolonial literature and visual culture (with a focus on Africa and Asia)
• early Modern Portuguese literature and visual culture

Russian

We are a centre of excellence in the field, with diverse and multi-disciplinary expertise in:

• gulag literature
• life writing
• the historical avant-garde, especially Russian Futurism

Spanish

We teach and research the languages, literatures and cultures of Spain, Latin America and the wider Spanish-speaking world, including areas like:

• Spanish & Latin American literature from 16^th-21^st Centuries
• Catalan Studies
• visual cultures, with a focus on women artists, as well as Spanish & Latin American Cinema
• sociolinguistics