Education

Harvard University: Arts & Sciences: Comparative Literature

Category Art and Social Sciences, English Literature, Harvard University, USA, Undergraduate
Tags Arts, Comparative, Harvard University, Literature, Sciences

Harvard University has offered courses in comparative literature since 1894. The Department of Comparative Literature was established by vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 10, 1906, and was reorganized upon its present basis in 1946. The Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, inaugurated in 1910 by Professor W. H. Schofield with the publication of Three Philosophical Poets by George Santayana, continues to be published from year to year. The Irving Babbitt Professorship of Comparative Literature, commemorating Harvard’s best known teacher in the field, was established in 1960. In 2007 the department’s name was changed to the Department of Literature and Comparative Literature, with graduate degrees still being given in Comparative Literature.

The Department of Literature and Comparative Literature undertakes to promote and facilitate studies in the history, theory, and criticism of literature extending beyond the limits set by national and linguistic boundaries. The work of the department is designed to provide for the needs of students who wish to pursue a unified program of study involving literature in two languages (for the AM) or more than two (for the PhD). Students will take most of their courses in the departments of their elected literary fields, whose offerings those of this department are designed to supplement. Courses in other disciplines may be included when appropriate in individual programs. Every member of the department also participates in one of the other departments of language and literature, and members of those departments are regularly or occasionally engaged in the work of this department, and generally available upon request for consultation by its students. The members of the faculty listed as cooperating in Comp. Lit. 399 will usually be available for direction of dissertations and other counseling of students in this department; members of literary departments not there listed may also be willing to engage themselves for such assistance upon request.

All students in the department are required to take the proseminar (Comp. Lit. 299ar) during their first year of residence; candidates for the doctorate are required also to take at least one further course in theory and method, critical, historical, or linguistic. During the first two years of graduate study, the prospective candidate for the doctorate in comparative literature is expected to fulfill the residence requirements by taking courses offered in this and other departments of the University (thus also discharging the requirements for the master’s degree), and to prepare, by both general and specialized studies, for the Common Essay and reading check at the beginning of the third year. After passing these examinations, candidates may continue to engage in seminars and attend courses, but their primary task thenceforth will be the completion of a dissertation.