Research

All research done by students of the Master’s in Literary Studies will be supervised by a researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH) in Nijmegen. The central theme of RICH research is 'Europe in a changing world'.  Researchers from a variety of humanities disciplines collaborate in thematic groups to explore the spaces, cultural practices, beliefs, texts and ideas related to Europe in a changing world.

For additional information on the professors of the RICH Research Master's programme, take a look at their research profiles.

Thematic research groups

There are literary scholars in many of the thematic RICH groups. Although all the groups could be of interest to you, our experience is that the following groups generate a lot of interest among the Literary Studies students:

The Ancient World

This research group brings together scholars of antiquity and its reception. The Ancient World group seeks to disclose, publish and study literary and non-literary texts as well as remains of material culture. It also aims to study the processes of the formation and transmission of culture and perform historiographical analyses and reception studies of the ancient world.

Tourism, Travel and Text

Tourism, Travel and Text is the largest interdisciplinary research group in the field of tourism, travel and culture in the Netherlands, sharing a particular interest in the relation between touristic practices and representations in literary and other texts.

SCARAB: Studying Cultural Infrastructure and Reception across Borders

The researchers of SCARAB focus on literary and cultural reception and infrastructure, both within specific national cultures and across the boundaries of national cultures.

Memory, Materiality and Affect

The research group Memory, Materiality and Affect studies performances of memory by focusing on their material, affective, and transnational dimensions.

Master’s thesis topics in Literary Studies

For their Master’s thesis research, students can work together with researchers from one of the RICH research groups or choose a topic in a related area. A small sample of thesis topics that have been researched in this programme:

• Classicism under Justinian. A study of Justinian's classicising policies in the fields of literature, legislation and military conquest.
• The early transmission of Sappho's songs as reflected in the ancient sources.
• Performing the past, staging the future: memory, modernity, and (inter)nationalist identities at the Dublin Gate Theatre.
• Austen: the next generation. Modern reworkings of Pride and Prejudice and the quest for new audiences.
• Lolita - ethiek, lezer & effect. Een cognitief-narratologische analyse van Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita.