Skip to content | Change text size
Handbooks Courses Units Related information
  /pubs/2009handbooks/aos/arts-ug-study-comp-lit-cult-studs.html
Monash University

print version

Comparative literature and cultural studies - Faculty of Arts

Offered by the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Campus availability: Clayton

Relevant courses

  • 2433 Diploma in Arts (Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies)
  • 0002 Bachelor of Arts (and associated double degrees)
  • 3910 Bachelor of Arts (Global)
  • 0202 Bachelor of Letters

Units under this heading are administered by the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies and taught jointly by the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies. The centre is an interdisciplinary teaching unit with responsibility for teaching and research in three main areas of work:

Comparative literature is the study of literary texts in ways that go beyond particular national or linguistic boundaries. We study literary texts written in other languages - including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish - as well as in English. All texts are studied in English translation, but the people teaching them will normally know the original as well.

Cultural studies is the study of literature in its political and social contexts and in relation to other arts and media, for example the press, film and television. We study the interrelationships between texts and codes, both 'artistic' and 'popular' verbal and visual. We look at the connections between social institutions like the international media conglomerates, cultural technologies like printing and film and cultural forms such as the novel and the soap opera.

Critical theory is an umbrella term for a whole series of contemporary approaches to literary and cultural criticism, for example hermeneutics, semiotics, post-structuralism, ideology critique, psychoanalysis, and so on. Such theories are central to recent work in literary and cultural studies. Although the emphasis varies from unit to unit, much of our work deals with all three areas.

Undergraduate students can take a first-year sequence in comparative literature and cultural studies and then go on to do a major or minor sequence in comparative literature and cultural studies, drawing on units taught by the centre as well as up to two second or third-year specified units from other disciplines in the Faculty of Arts. A first-year sequence in advanced German, French, Italian or Spanish or in English literature can also be taken as the qualifying first-year sequence for a minor or major in comparative literature and cultural studies.

An honours program is also offered. The undergraduate and honours sequences in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies are administered by the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, but taught jointly with the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies. Its units deal with three main areas of work: comparative literature, comparative cultural studies and critical theory.

Sequences

First year sequence

A first-year sequence in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies consists of CLS1010 and CLS1020.

For the purposes of a minor/major, a first-year sequence in CLS can be replaced by an appropriate first-year sequence in advanced German, French, Italian or Spanish or in English literature.

Minor sequence

Students complete a standard minor chosen from the units listed below.

Major sequence

Students complete a standard major chosen from the units listed below.

Units

First-year level

  • CLS1010 Texts and contexts 1
  • CLS1020 Texts and contexts 2
  • CLS1040 Introduction to cultural studies*

Second/Third-year level

* Not offered from 2004.

* Not offered from 2006.

Contact details

Enquiries (Clayton): Room S423, fourth floor, South Wing, Menzies building

Telephone +61 3 9905 2281 or +61 3 9905 2223

Email lcl.enquiries@arts.monash.edu.au

Visit http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/lcl/ and http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/index.php