Comparative Literature

Field Description

The field of comparative literature at Cornell offers a Ph.D. degree in all major areas of literary study and literary and cultural theory. The field’s size (about 20 students) enables it to offer diverse, innovative, and interdisciplinary programs of study.

Entering students design a program in consultation with the field committee, which is chaired by the director of graduate studies. Areas of concentration and principal advisors (the special committee) should be selected by the end of the first year of residence. Given that coursework is completed within three years, the student should have proficiency in two foreign languages. Those intending to specialize in international literatures are strongly encouraged to acquire fluency in the relevant language. Students should take 12 scholarly courses. As part of their training in the doctoral program, all candidates must fulfill at least one year of classroom teaching.

The first and second-year reviews take place at the end of the first year and in the third term, respectively. They aim to assist students in focusing on the topics and the fields of research that will form the basis of their A exams. The admission to candidacy (A) examination is usually taken in the third year of study and is both written and oral.

The department does not offer a terminal M.A. program (and consequently does not admit students seeking only that degree), but an M.A. degree is granted after satisfactory completion of the A examination. The student then begins work on a dissertation, which, upon completion, is defended at the oral final (B) examination administered by the special committee.

Contact Information

Website: http://complit.cornell.edu/
Email: complit@cornell.edu
Phone: 607 255-2445

240 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201

 

Data and Statistics

Field Manual

Subject and Degrees

Comparative Literature

Concentrations by Subject

Comparative Literature

  • comparative literature

Faculty

Leslie Allen Adelson

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: German literature; critical theories of culture

Andrea Bachner

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Literary and cultural theory; Sinophone cultures: Mainland China and its regional and ethnic differences, Taiwan, Chinese Malaysia, Hong Kong, diasporic Sinophone writing in Europe and the Americas; Latin American cultures (in Spanish and Portuguese); Major European cultures and their (post)colonial legacies (England, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal) and minor European cultures (Catalonia)

Anindita Banerjee

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: literature and film of Russia and South Asia with emphasis on science and technology; the production of space; construction of religious, ethnic, and national identities

Timothy Colin Campbell

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: futurism; biopolitics; Italian political cinema; modernism

Cathy Caruth

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests:

Debra Ann Castillo

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: modern Latin and Latina American and Latino narrative; gender theory; visual studies

Naminata Diabate

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: postcolonial theories, feminist and queer theories, film studies, body and performance theory, African, African-American and Afro-Hispanic literatures

Laurent Dubreuil

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: European philosophy (in Greek, Latin, French, German, English and Italian), especially ethics, metaphysics, politics; literary theory and criticism (Antiquity-present); classical Greek, French and Francophone literature; American poetry; postcolonial studies; theory of language; epistemology and poetics of the discursive disciplines; intersections between the humanities and the sciences; visual studies (cinema, comics, fine arts)

Grant A. Farred

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: African studies, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, philosophy, English literature

Paul Fleming

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: critical theory, constellations of German intellectual history after 1945, the relation between narrative and knowledge

Arnika Fuhrmann

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Southeast Asia; Aesthetic and Political Modernities; Affect, Gender, and Urban studies; Film and media theory; Buddhism

Andrew Scott Galloway

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: literary criticism and history

Peter Gilgen

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: European philosophy and literature; German idealism; aesthetics and ethics; lyric poetry; media theory

Mitchell D Greenberg

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Baroque and Classical periods (1580-1700); psychoanalysis; modern criticism; comparative literature

Ellis Hanson

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Victorian and Modernist literature Decadence and aestheticism Lesbian and gay studies Psychoanalysis Film Aestheticism Cinema Studies Literary Theory Queer Theory Gender and Sexuality Studies

Patricia M. Keller

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: the relationship between film, photography and literature; modern and contemporary Spain, Fascism; literary theory, landscape theory, critical theory, Galician studies, experimental cinema, photography as text

Philip A. Lorenz

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: comparative Renaissance drama, religion and political theology, scholasticism, international law, psychoanalysis

Tracy K McNulty

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: twentieth-century literature; critical theory; psychoanalysis; political theory

Natalie Anne-Marie Melas

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: theories of comparison; colonialism and modernism; modern French and English literature; Anglophone and especially Francophone Caribbean literature and theory; Atlantic and Mediterranean countermodernities; C.P. Cavafy

Jonathan Beck Monroe

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: modern and contemporary poetry in English, French, German, Spanish; philosophy of language; cultural criticism and critical theory

Timothy Conway Murray

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: film, video, and digital art; performance; French/British early modern literature and art; psychoanalysis

Nancy Pollak

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Russian poetry and poetics; Robert Frost; versification

Masha Raskolnikov

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Middle English literature; allegory and medieval rhetorical theory in general; history of subjectivity; feminist and queer studies and contemporary critical theory

Anette Schwarz

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: romanticism; realism; modernism; literary theory; philosophy of language; psychoanalysis

Deborah Ann Starr

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: modern Arabic and Hebrew literature; Middle Eastern cinema; cosmopolitanism

Marie-Claire Vallois

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: eighteenth-century French literature; the Revolution; romanticism; cultural studies; women's studies

Parisa Vaziri

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: comparative media studies, Iranian cinema, critical theory, race theory, Black studies

Geoffrey Carter W Waite

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and philosophy; postmodern art, cinema, and cultural theory

Gavin Walker

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Comparative Literature: comparative literature
  • Research Interests: Critical theory; 19th and 20th century philosophy, literature, criticism, and political thought; Marx and Marxism; nationalism and the national question; globalization and the postcolonial.