Overview

Through a weekly combination of lecture and seminar, this module will first introduce you to key concepts and methods in modern languages research (including questions such as language variation across time and space, language conflict, translation, intercultural communication and reading in the target language). The course will then cover five thematic blocks of two weeks each devoted to the following subjects in transnational cultural studies (colonialism, travel, popular cultures, art, testimony). During each thematic block, students will be first introduced to relevant key concepts and then shown, through a variety of applications and case studies, how engagement with language-related issues enhances our understanding of each these concepts and beyond.

Learning Outcomes

• 1. Comprehend how knowledge of modern languages helps us to understand cultural and historical phenomena from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

• 2. Use a range of theoretical and critical approaches that are key to modern language study

• 3. Confidently analyse a wide range of cultural products in their historical context and from transnational perspectives

• 4. Engage with cutting-edge scholarship on cultural analysis and its applications to contexts across time and space

• 5. Present arguments in essays and written assignments, supported by cultural and historical evidence

• 6. Recognize, value and work with linguistic and cultural diversity