University Website: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk

Directors of Studies in Modern Languages:

Dr Rosemary Clark is overall Director of Studies in MML at the College.

However, students also have Directors of Studies in each one of the languages which they are studying:

Other Fellows in MML at Christ's
Dr Cecil Courtney
Dr Terence Llewellyn

Number of students admitted each year: 6-8

Why do a degree in MML?

A degree in Modern and Medieval Languages is a life-changing experience. By the time you graduate, you will have spent a year abroad and acquired near-native fluency in one, two, or possibly three, foreign languages. You will have made yourself at home in the complex histories and cultures of at least one, but usually two or more, other countries. You will have encountered an array of disciplines, from Linguistics to Literary and Film studies, Critical Theory, Philosophy, and History, transforming your understanding of yourself and the world we live in.

Why do MML at Christ’s?

Every student at Cambridge is a member of one of the 31 Colleges of the University. One great strength of the Modern Languages Tripos is its breadth. No single Cambridge College can provide teaching for all options within its own walls and students may be supervised in several colleges. Nonetheless, with Fellows in French and Spanish, and external Directors of Studies in German, Italian, Russian and Linguistics, Christ’s can offer its MML students a larger proportion of College-based supervisions than average, and our MML community is particularly welcoming to first-years and supportive to all our students. Extracurricular MML activities range from twice-termly critical research seminars, fourth-year talks on their Year Abroad experiences and discussions on topics such as ‘Conflict Resolution’, to drinks parties and dinners, reinforcing bonds between students across the years and  Fellows. Student-led initiatives such as MML formal halls, or the Malcolm Bowie MML Society founded in memory of Professor Malcolm Bowie, former Master of the College and Marshal Foch Professor of French at Oxford, further enhance the life of MML at Christ’s. Contact with graduate students and former alumnae returning to share their experiences of life and work after University open new perspectives on the future. The College also has a number of travel grants, enabling our MML students to explore the countries that they are studying, to develop their language skills, and also to travel more widely. Christ’s has a vibrant culture in Modern and Medieval Languages, and we hope that you will consider joining us!

Who we are

Dr Rosemary Clark specialises in modern Peninsular literature and culture but also lectures on the Golden Age. Her research interests include verbal and visual reworkings of religious doctrine and traditional iconography; militarism and Holy War; Spain in Africa and post-colonial/post-occupation power play; myth, religion and migration in the configuration of community; nation and nationalism. Publications include a critical edition of José Luis Olaizola's La guerra del general Escobar (1993), Catholic Iconography in the novels of Juan Marsé (2003) and Juan Marsé in the Dictionary of Literary Biography volume 322: Twentieth-Century Spanish Fiction Writers (2006).

Dr Cecil Courtney works on French and comparative literature, intellectual history and bibliography, with special emphasis on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Publications include Montesquieu and Burke (1963; reprinted 1975), Benjamin Constant: a bibliography to 1833 (1981) and Isabelle de Charrière (Belle de Zuylen), a biography (1993). … Cecil Courtney is a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a Corresponding Member of the Académie de Bordeaux and a Vice-President of the Société Montesquieu.

Dr Laura Kirkley is a Research Fellow in French whose comparative approach also encompasses English Literature. Special interests include French and English women's writing from the eighteenth century to the present day, feminist theory and literary and cultural translation theory. Laura is editing a new edition of Isabelle de Montolieu's novel 'Caroline de Lichtfield' and writing a monograph entitled 'Soujourner in a Strange Land: the Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism of Mary Wollstonecraft', which redefines Wollstonecraft as a multilingual cosmopolitan influenced by European cultural and literary exchange and French Revolutionary politics.

Dr Mark Darlow (on leave 12-13) is a University Senior Lecturer in the Department of French. He specialises in eighteenth-century French theatre and music (especially opéra comique), Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the culture of the Revolutionary period. He is author of Maîtres et valets en France au XVIIIe siècle (1999), Nicolas-Etienne Framery and lyric theatre in eighteenth-century France (2003), and Cultural Politics and the Opéra de Paris, 1789-1794 (2011) Current projects include a monograph on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a collaborative volume on the concept of chiaroscuro in early-modern France and Italy, and editions of Sedaine's Raoul, Barbe-bleue and Guillaume Tell.

Mrs Natasha Franklin (Sidney Sussex College) graduated from the University of Voronezh, Russia. She is Senior Language Teaching Officer and a Director of Studies for Sidney Sussex, Christ’s, and Wolfson. Her particular interests include Russian grammar, non-standard Russian, ab initio language teaching, and language acquisition through translation into the target language. She served as a special adviser on the set of the film “Onegin” starring Ralph Fiennes.

Dr Heather Webb specializes in medieval literature and culture with a particular interest in Dante, early Italian lyric poetry, Boccaccio, models of female piety (especially Catherine of Siena and Dominican penitents), and the history of concepts. She is the author of The Medieval Heart (Yale University Press, 2010) and a number of articles on Catherine of Siena, Dante, Giovanni da San Gimignano and others. Her book The Medieval Heart was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010 in the Humanities Category and won the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize in 2011.

Dr Joachim Whaley (Gonville and Caius College) works on German history, thought and culture from 1500 to the present. He is the author of Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529-1819 (1985) and the editor of Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death (1981). Germany and the Holy Roman Empire 1493-1806, 2 vols (2012) covers virtually every aspect of German history from the reign of Maximilian I to the dissolution of the Reich. Joachim Whaley has been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 1984.

Details of the University Course    

The degree course in Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge is notable for its flexibility, and the range of linguistic and cultural options it offers. The main languages offered by the Faculty are currently as follows:

·       Dutch

·       French

·       German

·       Italian

·       Modern Greek

·       Portuguese

·       Russian

·       Spanish

In addition, Medieval Latin and Occitan are offered as final-year options, and Catalan may be studied in the second or fourth year. Students may also combine one of the above languages with Linguistics, Classical Latin or Greek, with an Asian or Middle Eastern language (students choosing this combination will enrol in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies but also be considered part of MML at Christ’s), or with Education.

Within the individual language areas, papers are available covering the language, literature, history and culture of the countries in question (including Latin America and the ex-colonies of France and Portugal). These span, in most cases, the whole period from the Middle Ages until the present day. In the final year, comparative papers are offered, giving the opportunity to work across different language areas (current examples are the papers on European film, the Romance Languages, and on representations of the body in European literature, thought and culture). In addition, modern linguists in their final year may 'borrow' given papers from other faculties, including Classics, English, History, Linguistics, and Social and Political Sciences. In their first year, students either study two languages, which are given equal weighting, or one language and Linguistics. Students may choose two languages they have already studied at A-level, or one A-level language and one taken ab initio. After the first year, students who have taken two languages are free to pursue both to an equal standard, or to concentrate their energies on one, with the proviso that a language that has been taken ab initio must be continued until the end of the second year. The course is challenging but very rewarding. It combines advanced language teaching that helps students to achieve near-native competence with the intellectual excitement of meaningful engagement with different cultures and intellectual disciplines.

Apart from the languages studied for the degree course, additional languages may be studied to Certificate (roughly A-level standard) or Diploma (the standard of the first-year language exams on the degree course) level. The languages offered for the Certificate and Diploma vary from year to year. In 2011-2012 the MML Faculty offered Certificate and Diploma courses in Dutch and Modern Greek. It also offers a Certificate in Humanities Computing for Languages (CHUCOL) that provides students in the Faculty with an opportunity to extend their understanding of computing in general and, more specifically, the rapidly evolving field of Digital Humanities. Students on the course acquire valuable transferrable skills whilst also engaging with the intellectual aspects of the changing role of technology in literary and linguistics studies, academia and society as a whole.

Structure of the MML Course

The provision of MML teaching is divided between small group supervisions based at Christ’s  and/or other Colleges, and larger language classes and lectures based in the University Arts buildings on the Sidgwick Site, an easy 5 minute cycle ride from Christ’s . Supervisions are weekly or fortnightly meetings rather like conversations, for each of which you prepare a short essay or other piece of work as a basis for discussion. The lectures and language teaching provided by the MML Faculty on the Sidgwick site in larger groups are an opportunity to meet undergraduates from other Colleges. Grammar and translation classes are conducted in groups of around ten to fifteen students, though numbers are smaller in languages such as Dutch and Modern Greek. The College has a fine library that caters especially for the specific needs of first and second-year undergraduates but has collections reaching back to the time of the Foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort. There is also access to foreign-language media. The Sidgwick Site complements this with a computer-assisted language-learning facility, video viewing facilities, and a modern languages library with a wide range of secondary reading, videos and DVDs. The University Language Centre, which offers excellent on-line, video and text resources and language courses is located at Downing Place.

Assessment is mainly by oral and written examination, although the final year offers a dissertation option. You may also replace one of the Part IB examination papers with a portfolio of the best essays written over the year for that paper. Examinations are held at the end of the first, second, and fourth years of the course.

The third year is spent abroad, in a relevant country or countries. Students work as an English language assistant in a school, under a government-run scheme, attending university, or in employment they have found themselves. Advice on all these and other options is available through the Faculty Year Abroad Office, through individual language departments and, in the case of employment, through the University Careers Office. Students on their year abroad research for a dissertation or a translation project in an area related to their course; the project is submitted early in the final year at Cambridge and it counts for one full Finals paper.

A recent linguist writes: 'I spent the last three months of my Year Abroad brushing up on my Russian in Odessa, the 'St Petersburg of the South' on the shores of the Black Sea. The Year Abroad is definitely a learning process, so perhaps it's not surprising that these final three months were by far the most enjoyable and rewarding of the year! Odessa did wonders for my appreciation of Russian, and of Russian and Ukrainian culture and literature; I also enjoyed having plenty of real-life interpreting practice, and lots of opportunities to travel - celebrating my 21st birthday in a beautiful mountaintop village in Crimea was unforgettable.'

Starting a language ab initio at Cambridge

All the languages on offer in the Faculty, except for French, may be started ab initio, and a substantial proportion of students each year choose to do this. Beginners follow a different course from post A-level students in their first year and, where language papers only are concerned, in their second. The final year course is identical for ex-beginners and post A-level students. Starting a new language is hard work, but most students who choose this option find it very rewarding, and ex-beginners are consistently among the highest achievers of each year.

What we are looking for

We are looking for students who are enthusiastic about foreign languages and cultures and who are intellectually enquiring. Much of what MML is about concerns cultural difference, and we are looking for people who are open to, and curious about, that difference. You do not need to have prior formal experience of studying literary texts, art or film, because our first-year papers are designed to cater both for those who have studied these subjects at A level, and those who may be acquiring analytical and critical skills for the first time. It is, however, essential that you enjoy reading, because an interest in words and how people use them is the backbone of the course as a whole. Whether you decide to immerse yourself in classic texts by Cervantes, Dostoevsky or Proust, works of art by Giotto or Velázquez or contemporary writers and filmmakers such as Houellebecq, Almodovár, Moravia or Zweig, we want you to take your reading beyond set texts, in directions that interest you. Be prepared to discuss your ideas with your interviewers and don’t be afraid of being challenged to develop and refine those ideas. We are not looking for the “right answer”; we are interested in a personal angle that you have thought about and are prepared to back up. It is also good preparation for a degree course in MML to think more generally about how texts function, how languages are structured, and how they evolve and differ from one another, as well as what they have in common.

Christ's admits students in all languages for which the University offers teaching, and arranges supervisions through exchange arrangements with other Colleges. We currently have students studying French, Occitan, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Ukranian and Modern Greek.

Applying to Cambridge

In addition to nominating Cambridge as one of the selected universities on the UCAS application form, it is also a good idea to choose a College of preference (the alternative is to submit an open application and allow a College to be chosen for you by computer). The choice of a College can seem difficult for those without access to advice from current or past Cambridge students, but it is important as different Colleges have different characters. Prospectuses will give you an idea of the location, size, and facilities of the various Colleges, but by far the best way to get a sense of their character and atmosphere is to visit, preferably on a College Open Day.

Christ's College does not have fixed quotas of places for different subjects and the exact numbers admitted in any one year will depend on the strengths of the fields of applicants across subjects. A normal annual intake in Modern Languages is around eight students. Modern Languages applicants to Cambridge are usually expected to be taking at least one foreign language at A-level (or in an equivalent examination course). Interviews are normally held in November or December with two subject interviews of 25 minutes each.

The nature of the subject interviews will vary depending on whether they relate to a language already studied in some depth at school or college, in which case oral and written skills in that language will be tested. One or two pieces of school written work may be requested, a short written test will be set to be completed at interview. Where a candidate is planning to take a language ab initio, the interview will be largely directed at gauging the candidate's level of motivation and commitment in relation to their chosen language, and his or her general linguistic and intellectual aptitude. Two points to bear in mind for potential interviewees are: first, that the Cambridge Modern Languages degree is partly linguistic and partly cultural, and interviewers will be assessing candidates' suitability for both elements in the course. Secondly, Cambridge interviews in general are designed less to assess students' existing knowledge of the subject than their potential.

It is recognized that candidates' school experiences will differ widely, and this is taken into account in the interview process. We look for students who can think on their feet and are not afraid to take risks, even with unfamiliar material. We are not keen on pre-prepared answers on school material. What interests us is you, your ideas, and your capacity to rise to a challenge and come up with thoughtful and creative answers to our questions. In preparation, we advise you to read widely, especially in and around the languages you wish to study. If you have particular interests or favourite authors, develop your understanding of them in your own way outside of school. And always remember to reflect critically on what you have read without being afraid of revising your assumptions as you develop your insights.

For those selected for a conditional offer, the precise target conditions are assessed individually. It is difficult to indicate in advance the precise combinations of AS-level and A-level grades that will be set, but offers will depend on A*AA grades at minimum.

A final point worth making is that we only make offers to candidates that we believe have a realistic chance of achieving. Our aim is to admit the best students regardless of their background.

Further Information

If you are able to come to an Open Day, we will gladly tell you more about the College and the course. If you are not able to come, we will be happy to answer any queries you may have which are not covered by the normal literature. Please address any such enquiries to the Admissions Tutor, Christ's College, Cambridge, CB2 3BU or by e-mail to admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk.