Comparative Literature and English and American Literature with a Year Abroad
I’m always in the Templeman Library! It’s really fantastic.
I thought Comparative Literature sounded so different from any other literature I had studied at A level. Kent was one of the few universities that offered it, and when I came to the Open Day and talked to the lecturers they just lit up when they spoke about their subject. Also, as somebody who has immigrated from a different country [the US], being in an international environment like the University of Kent really appealed to me. I decided to do joint honours with English and American Literature because I felt the modules really complemented each other.
One of the most interesting aspects is that you have this conversation between different cultures and disciplines. For instance, it's not just limited to writing about literary texts – you can also write about films, about art. It enables you to look at themes in literature from a broader perspective. In one module we compared an opera with a couple of plays and a couple of books, all on the same theme.
It's a small department so everybody knows everybody, and your lecturers really do care about how you’re doing. Teaching is mainly through seminars rather than lectures. In my first seminar I thought ‘Oh, this is going to be so scary’, but everybody is in the same boat. Once you get comfortable around your peers, everybody becomes a lot more talkative and they’re very supportive, even if your ideas differ from theirs.
My absolute favourite is one I took on gender in my second year – it focuses on women's writing and concepts of feminism and the body, and what it means to be a woman. You look at texts all the way from the Brontës to works written in the 2010s and it really sparked my passion for feminism. For my dissertation, I'm trying to do a feminist reinterpretation of female silences in male–female relationships in two texts and one film.
I’m always in the Templeman Library! It’s really fantastic, there are always plenty of desks, plenty of sockets for charging, quiet spaces if you want to work in complete silence, social areas if you need a little bit more noise. Recently I've noticed that they have a chill-out zone with fairy lights and beanbags, and it's really cool.
I studied literature at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice. It was the best year of my life. Being able to study in a different country was such an exciting experience because it really does broaden your mind – the language and cultural differences between Italy and England were so vast, but so wonderful. It was just incredible to be able to experience that and also to learn a second language. I did not speak any Italian before I arrived, but by the time I left I was working in an Italian office.
I'm looking for internships in marketing, hopefully in Italy because I would like to continue to improve my Italian, but I'm also looking in Spain and Portugal.
At the moment I’m also working as a marketing and communications assistant in the University’s Centre for English and World Languages. I got the job through the work-study scheme Kent offers. I'm promoting the courses the Centre runs, primarily through social media marketing and digital campaigns.
Come to an Open Day or Applicant Day. You can really trust your gut when it comes to these things, and being able to walk around campus and picture what my life would look like here really sold it to me.
