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PrincetonUniversity |
Department of Comparative LiteratureComparative literature offers the student the opportunity to study world literature outside the disciplinary confines of the various national literature departments. While students are expected to read most of the literary works that they study in the original languageand departmental majors must take at least four 300-level literature courses in a national literature departmentthey also have the option to take courses in which they read English literature or literature in translation. Departmental courses often find students reading some works in the original, some in translation. The great advantage, in terms of curriculum, is that the concentrator can choose as departmental courses literature courses (at the 300-level or above) from all the Western and Non-Western literature offerings of the Universityand these may often include courses in the various area programs: East Asian studies, European cultural studies, women's studies, Latin American studies and African studies. Comparative literature also allows and encourages the student's participation in interdisciplinary work (for example, literature and art history, literature and film, literature and linguistics). This freedom places considerable responsibility on the student to shape a coherent program of study. Why study literature in this way? Within the discipline there have been historically two reasons. The first was to avoid the nationalist prejudices and presuppositions of the individual national literary traditionsto study literature as an international phenomenon and to explore the ways in which different traditions influenced and interacted with one another. A second historical aim of the discipline has been to give a theoretical account of literature itself, and this aim has more recently come to the fore. A third has been to explore cross-disciplinary issues, seeking a dialogue between literature and the arts, literature and science, and literature and the social sciences. At Princeton, the Department of Comparative Literature offers courses on historical literary movements (the Renaissance, romanticism, modernism), individual genres (the lyric, the history of the novel, film topics in Chinese, African, Japanese, Egyptian literature), and issues of literary theory and the history of criticism. Again, the student can choose the particular orientation of his or her study. A prospective concentrator should be linguistically prepared to take a 300-level literature course in a national literature department by the fall of junior year. The department encourages concentrators to have a working knowledge of two foreign languages, but the second language may be started during the student's final two years of study. Many concentrators travel and study abroad to broaden their linguistic competence and general culture; this is not, of course, a requirement, but the department is particularly open to the idea of foreign study. Our concentrators have gone on to a number of careers. Many have gone to law and medical schools, and some have used their linguistic skills in the foreign service and international business. We have also sent students to graduate programs in comparative literature, and several are now teaching in the profession. The major in comparative literature is comparable to any liberal arts major at Princeton in opening opportunities in business and professional schools. The student who enters the Department of Comparative Literature should have a love of and commitment to the study of literature and should be open and curious about different approaches to and methods of reading. She or he should be adventurous in choosing from a variety of literary texts and courses and should have an independent mind. At the same time, the student should be capable of using the freedom that the discipline affords to build a personally satisfying and intellectually challenging program of study.
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