MA Comparative Literature

The Comparative Literature Graduate Program (for M.A. or Ph.D.), housed in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University, has affiliated faculty from the School of Languages and Culture, the English Department, History, the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, and Visual and Performing Arts. It draws students interested in multiple languages and in a range of world literatures and cultural studies from Antiquity, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernity, Postcolonial, etc. Research involves different genres, centuries, nationalities, and humanistic, philosophical, or ecocritical topics. Purdue University’s Comparative Literature program prepares graduate students both as scholars and as teachers of world literature. Its materials or the literature at its core consist not only of social documents in their distinct and important historical contexts, but also works of aesthetics, art, and philosophy whose languages, reception, and dissemination -- especially nowadays in our digital era -- depends on a deep understanding of what originality means, as well as what diversity and globalization imply, and how literature interacts aesthetically and ethically with various media.