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Let $A$ be a ring and $\M_A$ the category of $A$-modules. It is well known in module theory that for any $A $-bimodule $B$, $B$ is an $A$-ring if and only if the functor $-\otimes_A B: \M_A\to \M_A$ is a monad (or triple). Similarly, an $A $-bimodule $\C$ is an $A$-coring provided the functor $-\otimes_A\C:\M_A\to \M_A$ is a comonad (or cotriple). The related categories of modules (or algebras) of $-\otimes_A B$ and comodules (or coalgebras) of $-\otimes_A\C$ are well studied in the literature. On the other hand, the right adjoint endofunctors $\Hom_A(B,-)$ and $\Hom_A(\C,-)$ are a comonad and a monad, respectively, but the corresponding (co)module categories did not find much attention so far. The category of $\Hom_A(B,-)$-comodules is isomorphic to the category of $B$-modules, while the category of $\Hom_A(\C,-)$-modules (called $\C$-contramodules by Eilenberg and Moore) need not be equivalent to the category of $\C$-comodules. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these categories and their relationships based on some observations of the categorical background. This leads to a deeper understanding and characterisations of algebraic structures such as corings, bialgebras and Hopf algebras. For example, it turns out that the categories of $\C$-comodules and $\Hom_A(\C,-)$-modules are equivalent provided $\C$ is a coseparable coring. Furthermore, a bialgebra $H$ over a commutative ring $R$ is a Hopf algebra if and only if $\Hom_R(H-)$ is a Hopf bimonad on $\M_R$ and in this case the categories of $H$-Hopf modules and mixed $\Hom_R(H,-)$-bimodules are both equivalent to $\M_R$., Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX

By a theorem due to Kato and Ohtake, any (not necessarily strict) Morita context induces an equivalence between appropriate subcategories of the module categories of the two rings in the Morita context. These are in fact categories of firm modules for non-unital subrings. We apply this result to various Morita contexts associated to a comodule $\Sigma$ of an $A$-coring $\cC$. This allows to extend (weak and strong) structure theorems in the literature, in particular beyond the cases when any of the coring $\cC$ or the comodule $\Sigma$ is finitely generated and projective as an $A$-module. That is, we obtain relations between the category of $\cC$-comodules and the category of firm modules for a firm ring $R$, which is an ideal of the endomorphism algebra $^\cC(\Sigma)$. For a firmly projective comodule of a coseparable coring we prove a strong structure theorem assuming only surjectivity of the canonical map., Comment: LaTeX, 35 pages. v2: Minor changes including the title, examples added in Section 2