Comparative Literature
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
- Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
- Undergraduate Program in Comparative Literature
- School of Humanities & Sciences
- Explore IntroSems related to this major
Exploratory Courses
COMPLIT 101
What Is Comparative Literature?
COMPLIT 107A
COMPLIT 114
Masterpieces: Kafka (GERMAN 150, JEWISHST 145)
COMPLIT 121
Poems, Poetry, Worlds (DLCL 141)
COMPLIT 122
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
COMPLIT 31
Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150)
COMPLIT 36A
COMPLIT 51Q
Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, CSRE 51Q)
COMPLIT 55N
Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (CSRE 55N)