Department of Comparative Literature, University of Oregon

Comparative Literature is trans-national, trans-medial, and trans-cultural. It is a discipline built on pursuing connections between different aesthetic forms, cultural traditions, and ideas.

Comparative Literature is an individualized program of study with a high degree of flexibility and a supportive community of faculty and students with shared interests and values.

Tracing connections wherever they lead is what we mean by “comparison”—whether we are following a theme across national and linguistic borders, studying filmic adaptations of literary texts, or inquiring into the places where disciplines intersect.

But fundamentally the discipline of Comparative Literature is also a practice, a habit of learning, a way of studying literature, film and culture without arbitrarily stopping at national or linguistic borders. We acknowledge that the world is interconnected.

We take steps to read and view cultural texts in their original languages; when we cannot, we pay careful attention to what is gained and lost in translation.