Skip to 0 minutes and 0 seconds How do nations built stories about themselves and myths about others? How do those stories shifts across borders, languages and cultures? And how does Comparative Literature challenged them? This three-week course offers a taste of the vibrant world of Comparative Literatures and Cultures. An exciting exploration of literary and cultural products and critical issues that span national and linguistic borders, as well as history and media. You’ll discover how literature and culture travels, transforms and sparks change. From notions of self to global celebrity, and from cultural diplomacy to the role of art in political movements. Join us for an inspiring journey into the stories that connect people, places and cultures.
Comparative Literatures and Cultures: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
Explore world literatures, cultural encounters, and visual cultures as a taster for advanced study in comparative fields
Duration
3 weeksWeekly study
3 hours100% online
How it worksDigital upgrade
Free
Comparative Literatures and Cultures: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
Develop critical and creative thinking across languages, media and contexts.
Explore how texts and cultural expressions move across languages, borders, and traditions. Comparative Literatures and Cultures offers powerful frameworks for understanding global cultural circulation, power dynamics, and urgent contemporary questions.
This course, designed for prospective Master’s students, explores world literature, cultural encounters, and visual culture theories that sit at the heart of Bristol’s MA in Comparative Literatures and Cultures and similar programmes.
By the end, you’ll have a stronger sense of the field, its methods, and how it engages with global questions.
Understand comparative and world literatures
Explore key ideas in comparative and world literature, including how texts move across languages, borders, and cultures. You’ll examine concepts like literary translingualism and how reading across traditions challenges national or monolingual perspectives.
You’ll consider how comparative approaches open new ways of thinking about canon, reception, and global circulation.
Learn about cultural encounters, power, and identity
Examine cultural encounters through lenses like postcolonial studies, cultural diplomacy, and soft power. You’ll discuss how culture intersects with migration, racism, gender equality, the global north–south divide, and environmental consciousness.
You’ll begin to see how cultural analysis helps understand and critique global power dynamics and relations.
Explore visual culture theories and interdisciplinary methods
Learn theories of visual culture, including art and activism and film studies, showing how images participate in cultural and political debates. You’ll explore how visual and textual materials can be read together, and reflect on your own learning strategies for participation in diverse academic communities.
Syllabus
Week 1
Comparative Literature: Texts Across Borders
Welcome to the course
Hello and welcome to the course! Before we begin our first week on comparative literature, please watch the video below, where Dr Shuangyi Li introduces the course and gives an overview of what we will be exploring together.
Introduction to World Literature (Dr Carlos Grigsby)
World Literature studies how texts move beyond national borders through translation, circulation and cultural exchange. It challenges the idea of literature as tied to one nation.
Understanding Literary Multilingualism (Prof Natalie Edwards)
Literary Multilingualism refers to literary works that incorporate more than one language within the text. Like World Literature, it challenges the idea that literature belongs to a single nation or language.
End-of-Week Reflections
This activity invites you to reflect on the topics covered during the week and consider two important questions: Why do these concepts matter? How do the ideas explored connect to the wider world?
Week 2
Cultural Encounters: Exchange, Power and Influence
Welcome to week 2
Hi and welcome to our second week of the course. Please watch the short video below in which Dr Shuangyi Li introduces this week’s theme — cultural encounters — and highlights the key topics we will be exploring together.
Cultural Encounters in the Premodern World (Dr Rowan Tomlinson)
Explore how cultural encounters are shaped by exchange, power and influence. Through a historical example and literary voices, consider how narratives are formed, whose perspectives are heard, and how they can be challenged.
Soft Power through Cultural Encounters (Dr Charlotte Faucher)
This topic explores soft power as a contemporary form of diplomacy enacted through cultural encounters. It examines how nations use culture and the arts to shape global perceptions and build international relationships.
End-of-Week Reflections
This activity encourages you to reflect on the topics covered during the week and consider the “so what?” and how the concepts explored help us understand the world around us and why they matter.
Week 3
Visual Culture: Media, Art and Meaning
Welcome to week 3
Congratulations on completing the first two weeks of the course. This week, we'll explore visual culture and how images, media and art shape meaning. Please watch the short video below, where Dr Shuangyi Li introduces the topics.
Visual Culture and the Making of Celebrity (Prof Catherine O'Rawe)
This topic explores how the concepts of stardom and celebrity have evolved from historical and Hollywood icons to today’s digital influencers, examining how media shape fame, identity and audience perception.
Visual Culture and Revolution (Prof Siobhán Shilton)
This topic explores how contemporary Tunisian artists represent the 2011 Revolution through visual culture, challenging iconic images and revealing its ongoing complexity and uncertainty.
End-of-Week Reflections
In this activity, you will reflect on the topics covered during the week and consider why these concepts matter and how they help us understand the world around us.
When would you like to start?
Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.
Available now
Learning on this course
On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Discuss a number of concrete ways of approaching global literature, cultural issues, and visual products comparatively.
- Assess how theories and practices of comparative literature, and cultural and visual productions challenge and reshape traditional ways of thinking about global power dynamics and about linguistic, national, and cultural borders and relations.
- Develop appropriate learning strategies up to the postgraduate level.
Who is the course for?
This course is ideal for prospective and incoming students of the University of Bristol’s programmes in Comparative Literatures and Cultures. It will also appeal to teachers, lifelong learners, and anyone curious about literatures, cultures, languages, and global perspectives.
Who will you learn with?
Who developed the course?
University of Bristol
University of Bristol is one of the leading institutions among the UK’s Russell Group of universities and is recognised for its research and academic excellence.
What's included?
University of Bristol are offering everyone who joins this course a free digital upgrade, so that you can experience the full benefits of studying online for free. This means that you get:
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn
Learner reviews
Learner reviews cannot be loaded due to your cookie settings. Please and refresh the page to view this content.
Do you know someone who'd love this course? Tell them about it...
You can use the hashtag #BristolCLC to talk about this course on social media.
More courses you might like
Learners who joined this course have also enjoyed these courses.
Browse more in Language and Literature
