The Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, offers exciting and innovative ways to approach comparative literary and cultural studies.

At the undergraduate level, we offer two majors: the major in Comparative Literature centers on placing two or more literary and cultural traditions, studied in the original languages, into dialogue, while the major in World Literature is for students who want to place literature and culture in a comparative context, but without a specific language requirement. At the graduate level, we offer a program of study that provides rigorous competence in multiple languages and literatures, comparative cultural methods, and critical theory. For more information, check a list of sample courses that have been offered recently, take a look at brief profiles of our graduate students, or more detailed profiles of some of our graduate students who are ABD.

Our faculty cover a broad range of approaches and areas of study—over a dozen faculty members participate directly in the program, and many more are affiliated members. Their combined interests cover not only a wide range of literatures and cultures (from Europe and the Americas to Africa and Asia), but fields such as postcolonialism, translation, gender studies, cinema studies, critical theory, psychoanalysis, trauma studies, the history of humanism, Jewish studies, comparative civilizational analysis, and much more.

For some of the many events on campus of interest to those in Comparative Literature, check the following calendars: the Foreign Languages Building calendar, the IPRH calendar, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory calendar. (For more calendars of interest, see the UIUC calendar list.)