The following courses make up the core curriculum of the Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture Doctoral Program.  All introductory sequence courses noted below are required.  Ph.D. students are required to take one of the three advanced sequence courses noted below.

 

Introductory sequence (all are required): 

  • Ways of thinking about the differences and relations among different cultural media:  literature, film, video, manga/comics, “new media,” and so forth.

  • Major developments in 20th-century literary criticism, with special attention to theoretical work of the past three decades.

  • Examines culture as an instrument of discursive practice that shapes social formations in Asia, Europe, North and Latin America.

Advanced sequence (one is required): 

  • Intensive comparative study of visual and literary media.

  • Intensive study of a theoretical tradition or critical movement, or of an individual topic or thinker, in literary criticism or theory.

  • Intensive study of intellectual and cultural history, with focus on key literary and theoretical texts.

Professional Development Workshops

Toward the end of your program, you will also take two workshop courses (ungraded and for two credit units each) that will help prepare you for the profession of teaching and research:

  • Preparation of book and article manuscripts for publication and placement in presses and journals; revising dissertations for publication; preparing papers for conferences. Students produce an article manuscript ready for submission to a journal.

  • Methodology of writing a dissertation prospectus; a structured workshop environment for completing a prospectus.