Undergraduate

Comparative Literature is an interdisciplinary program that promotes the comparative study of literatures in different languages as well as of the relationship between literature and other spheres of human activity. It embraces both close attention to language and broader inquiry into the relationship between literature and other disciplines and practices, such as the visual and performing arts, philosophy, history, the social sciences, religion, sciences and mathematics.

The program is devoted to the comparative study of literatures across different time periods and beyond the geo-cultural boundaries of any one country or region. It also fosters critical scrutiny of both western and non-western traditions, and is responsive to the dynamics of canon formation and the shifting definitions of the non-canonical and marginal.

The program provides students with ample opportunity to study literature and culture from a wide array of critical perspectives. Among these are rhetoric and poetics, translation and reception, film theory and media studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, theories of ethnic and national identities, gender and queer theory, and psychoanalysis. Comparative Literature majors are expected to develop competence in at least one language other than their native language, and to work with original texts in more than one language.

Students devise and pursue a rigorous program of study tailored to their particular interests and intellectual strengths in close consultation with one or more faculty mentors.

The Comparative Literature Program at Dartmouth College provides it majors with:

• The ability to work with literary and cultural forms across two or more languages.
• The ability to conduct interdisciplinary research in multiple languages and identify appropriate and secondary sources.
• The ability to work with and interpret primary sources of multiple kinds (prose, poetry, film, music, visual arts, oral literature, theory, criticism, etc.).
• The command of research methodologies relevant to Comparative Literature.
• (only for majors) The ability to present original research to the program faculty in a concise, creative, and effective manner.

The major and minor prerequisite courses COLT 1 and COLT 10 require readings in methods of analysis across two or more languages. Students demonstrate their acquired research skills in their final papers. Minors in translation studies work closely with the translation studies faculty on individual translation projects that demonstrate their ability to understand literary and cultural difference across two or more languages. Graduating majors work closely with the program chair in the winter senior seminar COLT 85 to outline their research methodology and position their work as a contribution to the field. They present their BA thesis in a 15 minute public presentation and receive feedback from their advisors and the audience, which they intergrate into their thesis.

For the year 2025 - 2026:

Chair: Veronika Feuchtner

Administrator: Liz Cassell

Program Steering Committee:
Rebecca Biron, Antonio Gomez, Veronika Feuchtner, Andrea Tarnowski, Miya Xie, Yasserr ElHariry, TBD