Advanced Studies: Topic

Work with a critical eye in all aspects of arts and culture Studying Comparative Literature provides you with the ability to examine literature critically and from many different perspectives. You will gain insight into your own writing and see how modern texts are associated with older ones. These qualities, along with an understanding for historical change, are increasingly important in society. The knowledge provided by Comparative Literature is useful in many different fields. You could work in publishing or theatre, in the media or in teaching, or at public authorities with links to arts and culture. Critics, writers and researchers in aesthetic subjects also benefit from having studied Comparative Literature. Read about research in this subject

Advanced and autonomous examination of literary themes and theories On this course, you will undertake advanced analysis and discussion of literary and theoretical works relating to a specific theme. This theme is chosen by the teacher and will link to current research, which you will independently analyse. You will also train problematising and contextualising the theme of the course and, more broadly, take an independent approach to advanced texts and problems in literary theory. The course is examined through a written take-home exam.

Examine literature from modern and historical perspectives In Comparative Literature, you study literary texts in the widest sense, from the first literary texts to the present day. Literature not only includes novels and poems, but also plays and theoretical texts. Film, theatre and computer games can also be studied through the lens of Comparative Literature. This means that you read literature both against the background of its historical context and from modern critical perspectives. Are you interested in literature in general and critical reading in particular? There is a strong societal link in Comparative Literature, as literature always deals with issues relating to society, relationships and power. Older literature provides us with perspectives on contemporary societal issues and gives us the opportunity to investigate them historically and critically. Courses in Comparative Literature at Södertörn University have grown from gender theory and therefore have strong links to modern critical perspectives such as gender and queer theory and postcolonial theory. Comparative Literature at Södertörn University includes an element of creative Swedish, in which you have the opportunity to link your own writing to the texts being read, and to discuss this with your fellow students.