Textual and Visual Studies at Trinity:
Why Here?
There are many good reasons for choosing Ireland, Dublin, and specifically Trinity College , as a starting-point for postgraduate study.
The Irish university education system is particularly well organized, and in Trinity College you will receive carefully designed instruction, a systematic programme of learning, an exceptionally good Library (one of the best in Europe: over 4 million volumes), and decent computer facilities.
English is the teaching language of our course. But even if English is not your first language, the recommended readings may include materials that take account of your language background. The course is taught by an international and multilingual lecturing staff.
We have a long-established tradition of pastoral care, whereby students' interests are protected by personal tutors; this system has recently been extended to include postgraduates, and there is also an active and highly competent Graduate Students' Union to safeguard your interests.
Our campus is a place of great visual beauty and historical interest. Student life is friendly and stimulating, with more than a hundred student societies and sports clubs. Dublin is one of Europe's most engaging capitals, with a broad range of entertainment and culture including world-class theatres, galleries, museums and a good concert hall. Trinity is right in the middle of the city, close to Grafton Street, the river Liffey, and Temple Bar. See the Introduction to Trinity College on the web pages of the Office of International Student Affairs.
History of Textual and Visual Studies at Trinity
The Textual and Visual Studies Master's course was originally run as a joint degree programme by partners in France and Ireland: the French Department at Trinity College Dublin; the UFR Sciences des Textes et Documents and the Centre d'étude de l'écriture et de l'image associated with the CNRS at Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot; and the Département de l'histoire de l'art et de l'archéologie at Université Paris X - Nanterre. The Faculty of Letters (French Department and Word & Image Studies) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the English Department (l'UFR d'Etudes anglophones) at Université Paris 7 were also associated with the course, which was set up in order to provide an introduction to the study of the relationship between the textual and the visual in literature, the arts and other areas of cultural expression. The focus was on 19th and 20th-century France, and the syllabus included an introduction to historical bibliography and book production (setting type by hand and printing).
Following some structural changes, which included on the Trinity College side the creation of a new School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, the MPhil has been redesigned to run entirely in Dublin, to cover a broader range of European languages and cultures, and to make its content, its innovative methodologies and the expertise of its teaching staff available to a wider public. It forms part of a diverse but complementary suite of postgraduate taught courses within Trinity College. The redesign of postgraduate options has continued the School's policy of formulating elements that can be shared by students taking different MPhils, thus favouring the academic and social integration of postgraduate development in the School without losing the specific character of individual degree programmes. We believe that some of the new option modules can enrich the learning experience of those taking European Studies and Comparative Literature as well as the students of Textual & Visual Studies. The result of this opening-out of Textual & Visual Studies will be a further intensification of innovative interdisciplinary research in the School, including new applications for PhD study. This connects with the establishment of our new research institute, the Long Room Hub, and with Trinity's participation in the Texts, Contexts and Cultures initiative, an interdisciplinary PhD research programme in the Arts and Humanities.