FTV/ Latin

Film, television, and Latin studies is a degree of unusual span, combining the modern visual media of film and television with one of the foundational languages of Western civilisation. Latin is not a dead language in any meaningful sense: it is the language through which an extraordinary body of literature, history, philosophy, and science has been transmitted, and reading Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, or Livy in the original is a fundamentally different experience from reading them in translation. The film and television element brings a contemporary and theoretical dimension to this classical formation.

This part-time programme at the University of Glasgow includes a year abroad, which is a distinctive feature for a part-time degree and reflects the university's commitment to international experience across its language and arts programmes. The year abroad gives you the opportunity to study at an international partner institution and to encounter classical studies and film scholarship in a different academic tradition. As the current course description notes, you will read major Latin poets including Virgil and Ovid, engage with Roman drama in both its tragic and comic forms, study orators and historians, and explore Roman political and social history, philosophy, religion, and art, all in dialogue with the theoretical and historical study of film and television.

The combination develops close reading skills, the ability to analyse visual and textual narrative, and a broad cultural and historical literacy that is applicable across many professional contexts. Working in both ancient and modern media trains you to think about how stories are told in ways that neither subject alone can fully develop.

Graduates from programmes combining classical studies and film move into careers in academia, education, journalism, publishing, broadcasting, arts administration, and cultural heritage, as well as roles in the creative industries where the analytical and communication skills developed in the humanities are directly applicable.