Comparative Literature and Thought (CLT) immerses students in modern and contemporary literary and intellectual cultures and in the textual and philosophical traditions that animate those cultures.
The curriculum attends to the emergence of a global textual and media culture as well as to the ways in which nations, subcultures, and individuals embrace and resist that global emergence.
While our faculty and students have wide-ranging interests – intellectual history, translation, arts practice, comparative arts, digital humanities, media studies and book history, political and legal thought – we have built our major and minor upon a foundational curriculum for the humanities. That foundational curriculum focuses on a set of themes and problems that have long preoccupied students and scholars: the nature of textual culture, the philosophical and ethical engagements of literature and the arts, the pressure of politics on literature and thought, the reciprocal pressure of literature and thought on politics, the specific bearing of language on intellectual life, and the transformations and excitations produced whenever texts are translated to another language or to another medium.
Many of our students are both scholars and makers. In addition to courses in translation practice, we offer courses in multilingual creative writing and arts journalism. Although some of our students do traditional scholarly work for their capstones in the major, others do creative final projects. Our digital humanities group offers students opportunities to participate in collaborative research projects comparable to those offered to students in the natural and social sciences.
The introductory core of the CLT curriculum engages a major in CLT with literature, intellectual history, social and political thought, and cultural theory. As students progress through the major, they may develop an emphasis in one of those areas, or they may maintain allegiances that blend both literature and thought.
The Department of Comparative Literature and Thought houses two main units: Comparative Literature and Thought and Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Comparative Literature and Thought undergraduate programs include the following:
- Comparative Literature and Thought Major
- Comparative Literature and Thought, Comparative Arts Specialization Major
- Comparative Literature and Thought Minor
- Data Science in the Humanities Minor
- Legal Studies Minor
- Medieval and Renaissance Studies Minor
- Translation Studies Minor
Germanic Languages and Literatures undergraduate programs include the following:
To learn more about CL&T's Program in Germanic Languages and Literatures, click here to visit the program webpage.
