Welcome to Comparative Literature

The Department of Comparative Literature at Binghamton University offers a distinctive undergraduate major and three avenues of graduate study with M.A. and Ph.D. options. It features, in addition to its primary M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Comparative Literature, an M.A. in Translation Studies, a unique interdisciplinary doctoral program in Philosophy, Literature, and the Theory of Criticism, as well as a Ph.D. in Translation Studies through the internationally recognized Translation Research and Instruction Program. With a long-standing commitment to theory and a progressive understanding of the discipline, it has also embarked on a new effort to define the specific contributions of the humanities to the pressing socio-political and ethical concerns of the contemporary world. It actively embraces new directions for trans-disciplinary research and attempts to determine how such research can help to draw forth and carry forward the fundamental questions that concern the humanities. A strong engagement with the question of literary language and with contemporary work in the arts anchors this effort to rethink the place of the humanities and literary study while respecting the special temporalities and forms of encounter that characterize these domains.