With sadness I’ve read the many articles of late claiming the death of Comparative Literature in the U.S. The programs are dying here while they are expanding rapidly in countries on the rise (India and China, for example). The complaint in U.S. against the program usually goes that Comparative Literature teachers often usurp others’ areas of research and that their presentations are limited because the teachers/scholars do not know as much as individual area scholars. Embedded in this complaint is also the idea that Comparative Literature scholars are too concerned with concepts of national literatures. Such scholars are even the butt of jokes, e.g. “We need someone to teach these three totally unrelated things. Let’s get a Comp. Lit. person.” Ironically, these complaints come at a time when the Humanities are being asked to justify their places for academic funding, and, if you’ve heard some of the arguments, they seem to be fumbling in finding justification. To me, the arguments for keeping Comparative Literature, especially in our more global world, are apparent, and unfortunately, the decline in Comparative Literature programs in the U.S. signals to me are more fundamental decline in the U.S. university system.
Comparative Literature came of age in the U.S. in the postwar period. The original stirring for such a field came out of the 19th century desire for a world literature and to explain how we are all connected. In the postwar period, Comparative Literature steadied then grew briefly as a field mostly concerned with European literatures, and it is easy to critique the works from this period as being too highly focused on national literatures. Since then we’ve seen the rise of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature has become a home for theory. On the one hand, the field seems to have deconstructed itself, and on the other hand it seems to have become, at least some would suggest, irrelevant because Cultural Studies has taken over. By the time I took graduate classes, the field seemed wide open as long as one could jump through several language traditions. That was its saving grace for me because I found English departments mired in academic traditions, personalities, and national literatures. I started in a large English department filled with theory classes but with only literature classes from the British, Irish (represented in its entirety by Yeats), and American strains of English. What about the other Englishes? Of the islands? Of down under? Of Africa? What about looking at influences on English speaking writers from other languages? Comparative Literature was the field I turned to that allowed for such exploration.
I understand the complaints against Comparative Literature. Will a Comp. Lit. person know as much Middle English as a Middle English scholar? Probably not, and in a decent-sized department, the Middle English scholar should teach classes in that area. In a large department where there are scholars in other Englishes like Australian, Indian, West African, East African, etc. . ., then such scholars should teach classes in those areas; however, Comp. Lit. scholars definitely have an advantage in a smaller school; plus, they have linguistics training beyond that of most other scholars. In addition, I have heard from many English graduate students how they could complete a minor exam for their language components for a doctorate. That is not true for Comp. Lit. students. Where I went, we had to take classes in three language traditions, and that is the bare minimum for most programs. That meant that we had to work in the different fields, to talk to people really in other disciples, and see the connections between language traditions and literary traditions—also clearly experience the loss of translation.
I’m not suggesting that everyone head to Comp. Lit. I have some brilliant colleagues whose knowledge of their specialty areas is marvelous to explore, but the decline of Comp. Lit. programs seems to me fundamentally tied to a problem in higher education. We are shrinking one of our most diverse and global humanities programs at a time when we should be growing it. Essentially, can global Cultural Studies realistically take place in English departments, i.e. single language tradition departments?
Comparative Literature came of age in the U.S. in the postwar period. The original stirring for such a field came out of the 19th century desire for a world literature and to explain how we are all connected. In the postwar period, Comparative Literature steadied then grew briefly as a field mostly concerned with European literatures, and it is easy to critique the works from this period as being too highly focused on national literatures. Since then we’ve seen the rise of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature has become a home for theory. On the one hand, the field seems to have deconstructed itself, and on the other hand it seems to have become, at least some would suggest, irrelevant because Cultural Studies has taken over. By the time I took graduate classes, the field seemed wide open as long as one could jump through several language traditions. That was its saving grace for me because I found English departments mired in academic traditions, personalities, and national literatures. I started in a large English department filled with theory classes but with only literature classes from the British, Irish (represented in its entirety by Yeats), and American strains of English. What about the other Englishes? Of the islands? Of down under? Of Africa? What about looking at influences on English speaking writers from other languages? Comparative Literature was the field I turned to that allowed for such exploration.
I understand the complaints against Comparative Literature. Will a Comp. Lit. person know as much Middle English as a Middle English scholar? Probably not, and in a decent-sized department, the Middle English scholar should teach classes in that area. In a large department where there are scholars in other Englishes like Australian, Indian, West African, East African, etc. . ., then such scholars should teach classes in those areas; however, Comp. Lit. scholars definitely have an advantage in a smaller school; plus, they have linguistics training beyond that of most other scholars. In addition, I have heard from many English graduate students how they could complete a minor exam for their language components for a doctorate. That is not true for Comp. Lit. students. Where I went, we had to take classes in three language traditions, and that is the bare minimum for most programs. That meant that we had to work in the different fields, to talk to people really in other disciples, and see the connections between language traditions and literary traditions—also clearly experience the loss of translation.
I’m not suggesting that everyone head to Comp. Lit. I have some brilliant colleagues whose knowledge of their specialty areas is marvelous to explore, but the decline of Comp. Lit. programs seems to me fundamentally tied to a problem in higher education. We are shrinking one of our most diverse and global humanities programs at a time when we should be growing it. Essentially, can global Cultural Studies realistically take place in English departments, i.e. single language tradition departments?
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