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Comparative Literature

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School of Humanities and Sciences

While Comparative Literature seeks to prepare its students for reading and research in the languages and histories of different societies and periods, it is also dedicated to their critical and cultural analysis.

What You'll Study

While it seeks to prepare its students for reading and research in the languages and histories of different societies and periods, it is also dedicated to their critical and cultural analysis. Literary theory in all its forms helps to break down the borders between national literary fields, as well as between literary studies and other disciplines. Indeed, the discipline of Comparative Literature asks, often, just what "literature" is, and how it functions as a product of (and response to) our imaginations, our languages, and our social and economic lives. Students in our courses, majors in the department, and graduate students in the Ph.D. program all interact to shape debates about the place of the verbal arts (and the methods of their study) in past times and our own.

Degrees Offered

  • BA
  • Minor
  • Honors

More Information

Learn more about Comparative Literature in the Stanford Bulletin

Exploratory Courses

COMPLIT 101

What Is Comparative Literature?

COMPLIT 107A

Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science (CLASSICS 47, HUMCORE 121)

COMPLIT 114

Masterpieces: Kafka (GERMAN 150, JEWISHST 145)

COMPLIT 121

Poems, Poetry, Worlds (DLCL 141)

COMPLIT 122

Literature as Performance:

COMPLIT 123

The Novel and the World (DLCL 143)

COMPLIT 127B

The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story (JEWISHST 147B)

COMPLIT 149

The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures (CSRE 149, ILAC 149)

COMPLIT 181

Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

COMPLIT 31

Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150)

COMPLIT 36A

Dangerous Ideas (ARTHIST 36, EALC 36, ENGLISH 71, ETHICSOC 36X, FRENCH 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36, TAPS 36)

COMPLIT 51Q

Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, CSRE 51Q)

COMPLIT 55N

Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (CSRE 55N)