The M.A. and Ph. D. Program in Comparative Literature offers courses in Comparative Literature as well as coordinated courses in English-American literature, French literature, German literature, Hispanic and Luzo-Brazilian literature, Italian literature, Slavic literature, and Ancient Greek and Latin literature. The Program recognizes that students come from a variety of countries and backgrounds and wishes to encourage all to tailor a course of study that reflects their own interests and orientation all the while meeting the basic requirements for a degree. By the end of their training, students will be able to read two modern languages and one classical or medieval language with complete fluency and to demonstrate a solid competence in at least one national literature taught at The Graduate Center. The Program is committed to train students in both literary history and literary theory, and students should master and practice a range of critical approaches.

Because each of the thirty professors on the Comparative Literature doctoral faculty has a joint appointment with another doctoral program at The Graduate Center, seminars and tutorials cover a broad variety of subjects and methodologies ranging from the visual arts, music, and theatre, to history, anthropology, philosophy, and other disciplines. Our students are encouraged to pursue course work in these areas, as well as in the Graduate Center's Ph.D. programs in foreign languages and literatures. Special certificate programs in combination with Comparative Literature are available in Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Women's Studies and Film Studies. Students, moreover, are encouraged to take advantage of the Greater New York inter-university doctoral consortium by registering for specialized courses at such institutions as Columbia, Princeton, NYU, and The New School. Given the consortium and The Graduate Center's six-blocks proximity to the prestigious research branch of The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, students have access to the very best that a campus and urban environments have to offer.

Our students, now numbering about 120, come from over twenty-five countries and are native speakers of as many languages. They bring a range of cultural and intellectual interests and have given the Program an international character that is second to none in the country. While the majority of students tend to emphasize modernism in their coursework and dissertations, a significant number are pursuing studies in other periods, especially in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque literature as well as in Romantic literature and the literatures of the Americas.

As part of their professional training, students in our doctoral Program are encouraged at some point after their first year to teach undergraduate courses at one of the many colleges of The City University of New York (CUNY) or at other New York institutions. As in most universities, this entails teaching a foreign language; but unlike other graduate students, ours are, from very early on, often allowed to create and teach their own literature courses for undergraduates. Our students are also strongly urged to participate in conferences around the country and to publish in scholarly journals; a few are also publishing in mainstream publications.

Every year, students organize The Annual Graduate Student Conference. It meets in November and over the past years has attracted participants from around the world.

In recent years our students have accepted teaching positions at Barnard, Williams, Yale, Hamilton, Mount Holyoke, Vanderbilt, Harvard, UCLA, Penn State, Rutgers, The University of Massachusetts, and at a number of CUNY colleges. They have also found positions in Italy, Germany, and Turkey.

Prospective students are encouraged to contact Professor André Aciman or Professor Giancarlo Lombardi. For further information about the Italian Specialization, please contact Professor Hermann Haller.

CUNY Graduate Center

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