Modern Languages

Combined Honours degrees

We offer a wide range of Combined Honours degrees and our languages can be studied alongside Arabic, Latin, Classical Studies, English, Film Studies, History, Philosophy, Politics and International Relations or Sociology. Students take the same compulsory modules in each year as Single Honours students and a selection of options. For details of the second subject please refer to the relevant subject’s entry.

BA Modern Languages and Art History and Visual Culture

The BA Modern Languages and Visual Culture is a Combined Honours degree which enables you to divide your time equally between these two related subject areas. You will study half of your modules from the BA Modern Languages and the other half from Visual Culture.

There is a great choice of modules enabling you to focus more towards language skills or to learn about the society in which a language is spoken. These society-based modules cover topics as broad as history, politics, philosophy, literature and cinema.

Visual culture is an exciting area of study which incorporates a number of established subject-areas, including art history and cultural studies. It will be of particular interest if your background is in fine and modern art, the history of art, cinema, literature, cultural history, philosophy, sociology or modern languages.

By studying visual culture, you will learn how to interpret visual images in order to understand contemporary and past societies, and also how these images are a reflection of a society itself and the belief systems to which it adheres. For example, you might explore the emergence of a ‘society of the spectacle’ alongside the rise of reality TV and social media in everyday life, or the idea of ‘virtual war’.

During your second and final years you will be able to follow your interests through a wide range of optional modules: you can choose to study art and material culture in ancient societies; look in detail at the way art history works; or focus on visual culture within a specific society or time period right up to the modern day. You will spend your third year abroad at one of our partner instutions. This is an assessed year and the marks obtained count towards your final degree classification

We offer a great visual culture programme because art and culture are at the heart of the University: Exeter holds internationally-recognised buildings, artworks and collections, including fine art collections, a sculpture walk and one of Britain’s largest public collections of books, prints, artefacts and ephemera relating to the history and prehistory of cinema.

Flexible Combined Honours degrees

French can also be studied under the Flexible Combined Honours scheme.