The main aim of this course is that students deepen their knowledge of a well-defined and clearly delimited research area, which should be relevant to intercultural literature studies. To accomplish this, they will make an overview of previous academic studies within such an area in the form of a commented bibliography. This should include academic texts of about 1500-2500 pages, to which short but detailed comments are added. Such comments should cover the main aims and conclusions made by the texts, short descriptions of the theories and methods used and of the material studied, notes about the strong points and the weak points, and a description of their role and importance within the chosen research field. The texts included in the bibliography shoud be by established scholars (holding, at least, a PhD degree) within the field. They can be outcomes of concrete research activities or boader critical overviews of academic research, such as articles in academic journals or monographies published by an established academic publisher. They should, however, not be course books, opinion pieces, reviews, or popular science articles. Theses should be at the PhD level.

There are three seminars in the course, in which students present their work. For the first seminar, students should prepare a preliminary bibliography, which may still be incomplete. This will be discussed in the seminar and students will be asked to describe why they chose these texts, how they found them, and what kind of research field they belong to. In the second seminar, students will present a definite bibliography, and they should be able to give some general information about the texts. The deadline for submitting the finished commented bibliography by the end of the week before the last seminar. This bibliography will be discussed in the last seminar, in which students are also expected to give a short overview of the research field they have identified.

The course has three written assignments that are to be submitted before each of the seminars. These are an uncommented preliminary bibliography, an uncommented definite bibliography (which both present the students' work in progress), and the finished commented bibliography, which is the course's main assignment.