Comparative Literature and Cultures with History of Art and Visual Culture Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)

Choosing this course enables you to combine the study of Comparative Literature and Culture (75% of the course) with History of Art and Visual Culture (25%).

Comparative Literature and Culture (CLC) offers you the opportunity to study global literature as well as to explore film, philosophy and visual arts. CLC combines a fascinating breadth of material with a focus on contexts – places, periods, and genres – to explore how key cultural shifts transform how we see, represent, and make sense of our changing world. CLC at Royal Holloway is a unique and intellectually stimulating degree which will develop you as a culturally-aware, creative and adaptable thinker.

We’ve developed this degree so that you can tailor it to suit your own evolving interests, choosing from our exceptionally wide range of fascinating options, ranging across continents and centuries, from antiquity to the present day, novels and poetry to philosophy, cinema and art. We will read, watch, and compare from Ancient Greece to contemporary New York, from Cuba to Korea, from epics to crime fiction, and from tragedy to the avant-garde. CLC enables you to study texts originally written in many languages, all translated into English.

If you have a passion for the visual arts, History of Art and Visual Culture will give you the skills to read, interpret and analyse images and artefacts across cultures. You will benefit from the research expertise of staff in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, engaging in the key phases in the development of the history of art and visual culture of Europe and Latin America, equipping you with the skills You can take courses on key historical skills and take options that combine the study of art history with that of photography, film and other media, ranging from medieval times to contemporary visual culture.


+ Make use of Royal Holloway’s exceptional collection of Victorian Art housed in the Founder’s Picture Gallery


+ Choose options in Visual Culture from across the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures