Your ability to focus your paper on a single culture's literature will depend on the literature course in which you are enrolled. Topics in this area could include in-depth studies of African-American, Russian, French, English, African or any other culture's literature. To narrow the topic further, consider a culture's literature from a specific era, such as Middle English literature, American Transcendentalist literature, 19th century Russian literature and so on. You could also examine a country's literature from a philosophical perspective, such as reading Russian literature with a Marxist philosophy.
Almost all literature can be categorized into a particular genre. Analyze the conventions of your chosen genre and cite examples from novels on the course syllabus. You can also argue that a specific work should be included in an unconventional genre for which it would not normally be considered, or use examples from literature on your syllabus to define a genre. For example, postmodern literature is difficult to define, because many critics disagree about its scope and conventions. Your research paper's topic could be to clearly define, and argue for, a proper definition of an abstract genre.
The compare and contrast paper is one of the easiest to write and is most likely to be assigned in the early years of undergraduate study. This type of paper requires you simply to compare and contrast two works on a number of levels: character development, themes, genre and so on. This type of paper may even be specifically assigned, in which case your professor may expressly state which elements to analyze and compare in each work.
When studying a nation's literature from a historical time period, it may help your overall understanding of the work to research the social, economic and political influences under which the author operated. Understanding these influences will help place the work in context. You can also compare a sampling of literature from two disparate cultures during the same time period, for example medieval European literature and Chinese literature from approximately the same time, and examine the cultural, societal and political differences that would have influenced each set of works.