Program Overview

The Graduate Program in Comparative Literature offers opportunities for graduate study leading to the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. Areas of curricular emphasis include theories of literature and interpretation, theory and practice of translation, narrative and discourse theory, theories of literary history, canon and world literature, psychoanalytic theory, film analysis, gender studies, and a range of cross-cultural studies, from Orientalism/Occidentalism to multi-culturalism in the Americas.

Students may pursue the study, and translation, of texts in Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Classical Chinese, Old Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Russian, Hungarian, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese, as well as texts in English.

Courses or seminars are regularly offered in literary theory and criticism, cross-cultural literary relations, theory and practice of translation, translation history, children’s literature, psychoanalysis and literature, science fiction, gender studies, and film and literature. Graduate courses in Comparative Literature are open to all qualified graduate students and may, with prior approval of the other department or program concerned, be taken to meet a foreign language requirement.