Welcome to the Department of Comparative Literature!
Letter from the Chair
We are a thriving community of teachers and scholars working on a wide variety of topics and areas, ranging from literary analysis, media studies, critical theory, and ecocriticism to studies of race and empire in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. We are proud to be the intellectual home of students who have an abiding interest in languages and cultures, media and the arts, and interdisciplinary research.
Comparative literature is a discipline defined by its twin commitments to deep knowledge of specific cultural contexts and interdisciplinary methodologies that enable us to apprehend them in new ways. Our department offers a wide variety of courses on topics such as cultures of Latin America, Southeast Asian literature and film, fictions of Africa, psychoanalysis and the arts, and queer cinema, to name a few. Through coursework, immersive language study, bibliographic and archival research, and fieldwork, students of comparative literature create a unique path of study that prepares them for a wide variety of career paths, including law, journalism, entertainment, and education.
The Department of Comparative Literature also houses the PhD in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, a cutting-edge interdisciplinary program with tracks in Comparative Media and Culture, Comparative Literature, French and Francophone Studies, and Spanish and Latin American Studies. In addition, the department administers the Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies, a rigorous certificate program in translation theory and practice. Our graduate students produce original scholarship on topics ranging from gender and sexuality and animal and plant studies to translational ethics and experimental cinema from the early modern period to the present day across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
It’s a great pleasure and a privilege to chair the Department of Comparative Literature, and I look forward to working with the faculty, staff, and students in this exciting and innovative intellectual hub. I would be happy to meet with new students, whether they are interested in pursuing a major, minor, or PhD in comparative literature, or simply taking courses in the department.
I invite you to explore our website and familiarize yourself with the many opportunities in the Department of Comparative Literature. And I look forward to crossing paths in a classroom or at one of our many events in the near future!
Sincerely,
Olivia C. Harrison
Chair, Department of Comparative Literature
Explore USC’s Comparative Literature Department
- What is Comparative Literature?
- What Does USC COLT do?
Comparative Literature is the home for everything you’re passionate about and more. It’s a rabbit hole of ideas that lead to endless doors holding the deeper meanings behind all of our favorite stories, and where they can go.
Events
To get a better understanding of the Comparative Literature department, its best to look at events we present.
To view more click here.
Queer labor history and the interrupting family
A talk with Sam Solomon, University of Susses, UK:
This talk brings together two different stories about late twentieth century typesetting and print labor between roughly 1965 and 1995, a period during which typesetting was first computerized and then all but abandoned as part of the pre-print process. The talk is an experiment in juxtaposing the different narrative, poetic, and personal forms through which these histories are conveyed, to see how their gaps and overlaps can further illuminate the sexual and class politics of literary labor.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Taper Hall (THH) 309K
3501 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Trans Photography and the Performance of AIDS in Michel Journiac
The USC Visual Studies Research Institute invites you to online event: Trans Photography and the Performance of AIDS in Michel Journiac
Professor Sarah Wilson (Courtauld Institute of Art, London)
“Pink Triangles: Michel Journiac with Guy Hocquenghem and Lionel Soukaz”
Dr. Antoine Idier (Sciences Po, Saint-Germain-en-Laye)
“Michel Journiac, AIDS, and the Politics of Art”
Film Screening of “Atlantics” (2019) by Mati Diop
2023 CSLC Symposium’s closing event, a special screening of Atlantics (2019), French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s ghost love story about djinns, labor migration and the ongoing effects of colonialism in Senegal.
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) Annual Symposium
A two-day Graduate Student Symposium, consisting of a Keynote by Dr. David Marriott, multiple student panels, Film Screening, and Q&A session(s).
Literary Translation as Practice and Profession
Literary Translation as Practice and Profession: A Roundtable with Sarah Booker, Denise Kripper and Jeffrey Zuckerman, moderated by Katie Hammitt
What does literary translation look like from a professional perspective? How does one break into the field of literary translation? What considerations do translators of literature take when choosing texts, approaching editors and authors, and preparing for commercial audiences? This roundtable will engage with the practical side of literary translation, drawing on the experience of three translators.
Autumn Beat Screening and Q&A
Autumn Beat, produced by Amazon Studios and co-produced by Indiana Productions is an exciting and unprecedented story about Black culture in Italy, and the role of music as a means of redemption and search for identity.
Running time: 103 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles.
The Wretched of France book talk with Abdellali Hajjat (Exile and Resistance Lecture)
From October to December 1983, youths from the working-class suburbs of Lyon led the March for Equality and Against Racism, the first national demonstration of its type in France. As Abdellali Hajjat reveals, this historic protest symbolized for many the experience of the children of postcolonial immigrants, marching against racist crimes, for equality before the law and the police, and for basic rights such as the right to work and housing. Translated into English for the first time, The Wretched of France contemplates the protest’s lasting significance in France as well as its impact within the context of larger and comparable movements for civil rights, particularly in the United States.
COLT Programs
Undergraduate Studies
Our undergraduate program is more broadly conceived than at many other universities. While we offer traditional comparative literature courses that cross the boundaries of national literatures and study literary periods, movements, and genres, our courses also allow students to explore literature in its interaction with philosophy, to discover the relation of literature to other arts and media, and to reflect on practices of translation as themselves modes of transcultural exchange and production.
Comparative Studies in Literature & Culture PhD Program
Inaugurated by USC Dornsife in 2011, the Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Doctoral Program is a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary program that cultivates the common ground tying Comparative Literature, Comparative Media and Culture, French and Francophone Studies, and Spanish and Latin American Studies, while carrying out path-breaking research in each of these disciplines.
Translation Studies Graduate Certificate
Translation Studies is a discipline that considers the production and analysis of translation and interpretation. Housed in the Department of Comparative Literature, this certificate offers graduate students the opportunity to supplement their graduate degree with specialized training in the theory and practice of translation.