Faculty Interests
To learn more about the faculty in comparative literature, and whose research interests might make them a good match for you as an advisor, please see below or the Comparative Literature Faculty Directory. If you would like to know about when to schedule a meeting with them, please see Office Hours.
April Alliston
Languages: French, German, Ancient Greek
Areas of Interest:
The novel, its history and theory, from Greek romance to contemporary fiction
18th - century literature
Literary theory, especially feminist and narrative theory
The Gothic, sentimental, and Romantic novel
Enlightenment and romanticism
Women and authorship
History and literature
Life writing
Leonard Barkan
Languages: Italian, Latin, French, German
Areas of Interest:
Shakespeare and English Renaissance Literature
Italian Renaissance Art
Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
Relations between Literature and the Visual Arts
Latin Literature and the Survival of Antiquity
Drama and Theater
Food, Wine, and the Arts
Wendy Laura Belcher
Languages: Ge'ez, Hausa, French
Areas of Interest:
Medieval, early modern, and modern African literature (especially of Ethiopia and Nigeria)
Postcolonial literature, film, drama, and theory
Eighteenth- and twentieth-century British literature (novel, poetry, drama)
Memoir and travel literature
Northeast African language literatures (Ge'ez, Somali, Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Saho)
Creative Writing (esp. creative nonfiction)
David Bellos
Languages: French, German, Russian
Areas of Interest:
Nineteenth-century French fiction and criticism
Modern and contemporary French fiction
The OuLiPo
Translation
Sandra Bermann
Languages: Italian, French, Latin
Areas of Interest:
Italian-English Renaissance relations
Translation and Translation Studies
Literary theory
The Lyric
Linguistics and structural analysis
Women & Gender
Historiography & Literary Theory
Rachel Bowlby
Languages: French, Ancient Greek, Latin
Areas of Interest:
Realism and the novel
Freud
Greek tragedy
Histories and theories of shopping and consumption
Everyday life
Feminist theory and criticism
Claudia Brodsky
Languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
Areas of Interest:
The Enlightenment and Romanticism
Philosophy and literary theory
Aesthetics and Epistemology
Spanish and English baroque
Latin American literature
Peter Brooks
Languages:
French, Italian, Latin
Areas of interest:
The novel, and how to read it
Nineteenth-century French, English, and European literature
French literature of all periods
Psychoanalysis and literature
Law and literature
Marina Brownlee
Languages:
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Modern Greek
Areas of Interest:
Medieval and Early Modern Spanish and Comparative Literature and Culture
Literary Theory, Gender Theory, Issues of Periodization
Ben Conisbee Baer
Languages: Bengali, German, French
Areas of Interest:
Modernism
South Asian Literature
Comparative Literature
Postcolonial Criticism and Theory
Deconstruction
Marxism
Literature and Art History/Visual Culture
Maria DiBattista
Languages: Italian, French, Spanish
Areas of Interest:
19th-and 20th-century English and American literature
Narrative/narrative theory
Susana Draper
Languages : Spanish, French
Areas of Interest :
Contemporary Latin American literatures and visual arts
Dictatorship and Transition in the Southern Cone countries
Prison Writing
Contemporary Critical Thought
Literature and Globalization
Caryl Emerson
Languages: Russian, Czech, German, French
Areas of Interest:
19th-and 20th-century Russian and Central European prose
Russian music
Russian literary theory
History of the novel
Thomas Hare
Languages: Japanese (early, medieval, modern), Classical Chinese, French, German, Middle Egyptian
Areas of Interest:
Early and Medieval Japanese Literature (especially drama and poetics)
Traditional Japanese Music
Buddhism and Literature
Literary Theory
Ancient Egyptian Writing and Representational Styles
Daniel Heller-Roazen
Languages: French, Italian, German, Old French, Old ProvenHal, Latin, Classical Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic
Areas of Interest:
Medieval Poetry & Poetics
The Classical Tradition
History & Theory of the Lyric
Philosophy of Language
Aesthetics
Lital Levy
Languages : Hebrew, Arabic
Areas of Interest :
Hebrew and Arabic literatures and literary histories
Comparative non-Western cultural modernities and enlightment movements
Modern Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic intellectual history
Israeli and Palestinian cultural studies; history and literature/new historicism
Comparative postcolonialisms and diaspora studies
Literary bilingualism; translation theory
Alexander Nehamas
Languages: Greek (ancient & modern); German, French
Areas of Interest:
Plato
Nietzsche
History & practice of aesthetics
Eileen Reeves
Languages: Italian, French, Latin
Areas of Interest:
Renaissance and Baroque Literature
Science and Literature
Michael Wood
Languages: Spanish, French
Areas of Interest:
Theory of the novel
Latin American Literature
Modern & Contemporary Fiction
Film
Literary Theory
Froma Zeitlin
Languages: Ancient Greek, French, Hebrew
Areas of Interest:
Greek tragedy and religious thought
Studies in the Holocaust
