Arabic and Comparative Literature

Arabic is by far the most widely spoken language of the Middle East and North Africa, with hundreds of millions of speakers across a vast and diverse region that spans the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, North Africa, and beyond. It is a language of enormous historical, cultural, and contemporary significance, central to Islamic scholarship and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Combined with comparative literature, the degree extends your linguistic engagement into a rich scholarly field that reads texts from different national and linguistic traditions alongside each other, asking what they share, how they differ, and what those comparisons reveal about human storytelling, culture, and meaning.

At the University of St Andrews, this four-year MA (Hons) programme includes a year abroad, which for an Arabic degree typically involves a period of study or residence in an Arabic-speaking country. Sustained immersion in the language and culture is one of the most valuable experiences a language degree can provide, accelerating linguistic development and building the cultural knowledge that classroom study alone cannot replicate. You will develop your reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in Arabic, engage with Arabic literature and intellectual tradition, and study comparative literature across national and linguistic traditions, developing the analytical frameworks needed to read across cultural and linguistic difference.

You will build skills in language analysis, literary interpretation, critical argument, and research, alongside intercultural awareness and the ability to engage with complex texts and ideas in more than one language.

Graduates from Arabic and comparative literature programmes pursue careers in diplomacy, translation and interpreting, international organisations, journalism, the foreign and civil service, international development, and academic research. The combination of Arabic language competence and literary analytical skills is genuinely distinctive. Postgraduate study in Middle Eastern studies, comparative literature, Arabic linguistics, or international relations is a natural next step.