The Department of Comparative Literature at Yale is proud of a long tradition of excellence. For fifty years, it has been a leading graduate program for the study of literature beyond linguistic or national boundaries, for the theory, interpretation, and criticism of literature, and for their interactions with adjacent fields including history, philosophy, film, the visual arts, psychology, and law. The department encourages students to develop their skill at textual analysis while challenging them to reflect theoretically on the acts of writing and reading, as well as on the connections between literature and other realms of human experience. We pride ourselves on the historical, linguistic, and methodological breadth of our faculty and students. Our Phd guidelines help develop that breadth, but they also allow students great flexibility in shaping their course of study and pursuing their individual intellectual interests.
Comparative Literature houses five formal Combined Doctoral programs with other departments and programs at Yale: with the Classics Department and the History of Art Department, and the Early Modern Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Jewish Studies programs. In addition, our students work closely with professors in Yale’s other literature and language departments.
Our graduates have enjoyed excellent success in securing academic positions in Comparative Literature, Arabic, Classics, East Asian, English, French, Italian, German, Romance Languages, Russian, Spanish, Film Studies, Humanities, and other fields. During the last 20 years, our students have found tenure-track positions at universities including Johns Hopkins, Duke, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, NYU, Penn, Northwestern University, Emory, Washington University (St. Louis), Notre Dame, University of Rochester, Tufts, University of Arizona, University of California (Berkeley; Irvine; Santa Cruz), University of Massachusetts (Amherst), University of Colorado (Boulder), University of Texas (Austin), University of Minnesota, University of Oregon, Penn State, Purchase College (SUNY), Purdue University, SUNY-Binghamton, University of Virginia, Long Beach State, Appalachian State University, Susquehanna University, Bucknell, Northeastern, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Texas A&M, Texas State, Sam Huston College, University of Mary Washington, Amherst College, Bard College, Claremont College, Dartmouth College, Davidson College, Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence, Scripps College, Vassar College, McGill University, and equivalent positions at University College and King’s College (University of London), Qatar University, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong, University of Frankfurt, University of Bern, University of Paris VIII, Higher School of Economics, Moscow; Massaryk University (Brno), NYU Abu Dhabi, Bar-Ilan University (Israel), University of Groningen, University of Leiden (Netherlands), University of Koc (Istambul). Since 2010, our graduates have also held post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge, Cornell, University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.