Course Catalogue

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This course represents the required independent piece of research work for students taking the MLitt in Comparative Literature. It shall be a research piece of 12,500-15,000 words and be comparative across cultures, media and/or disciplines.

10 hours of meetings with supervisor at times to be arranged with individual student.

Mandatory Entry Requirements

Satisfactory completion at Grade C of better of the course requirements for the core and optional courses (i.e. submission of essays and delivery of presentations at stated times throughout the year) to a total of 120 credits.

Standard entry to Masters at College level.

None

N/A

Assessment

At the end of the course each student will submit a 12,500-15,000-word dissertation.

This course aims to:

■ enable the development of a sustained argument at the appropriate depth for this level in an area of the student's personal research interest within the field of Comparative Literature;

■ promote an engagement with the scholarly, critical, and theoretical arguments relevant to that area;

■ encourage the application of acquired research skills to a supervised project;

■ lay the foundation for potential further research work at PhD level;

■ promote writing in appropriate academic English and following the conventions of academic discourse, including those of referencing sources.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ identify, formulate and solve a research question within a selected area included in the broad, interdisciplinary nature of Comparative Literature;

■ acquire, use and critically evaluate information and approaches in a specialist area or areas of Comparative Literature;

■ select and synthesise complex information from both primary sources and secondary/ scholarly literature;

■ successfully locate their extended research piece within a wider picture of research questions and themes;

■ define, plan, execute, present and defend an extended item of research work demonstrating elements of originality and advanced disciplinary competence;

■ use effectively all appropriate bibliographic and information resources;

■ write a substantial piece of written work in clear and appropriate academic English, using relevant reference and bibliographic conventions

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.