Graduate Liason Committee
The Graduate Liaison Committee serves as a forum for on-going discussions between faculty and graduate students about a variety of issues relating to the Graduate Program. It typically meets once a semester and is convened by the Chairman of the department. These meetings are open to all interested students and faculty but are always attended by the Liaison committee members, the Chairman, the DGS and the DUS of the department. In addition, the DGS usually has a meeting with the committee at least once a semester. The Liaison committee consists of a Chair, a Secretary, the organizers of the Baldwin-Dahl lecture, the organizers of the Annual Graduate Student Conference and the organizers of the department’s Open Forum series. Usually, there are members from all cohorts of students in the program.
The Baldwin-Dahl Lecture
The Baldwin-Dahl lecture series was established in 1989 in memory of two of the Comparative Literature program’s most promising students, Birgit Baldwin and Julia Dahl, who both died, tragically, that same year. The annual endowed speaker series affords graduate students in the Department the privilege of inviting a renowned literary scholar of their own choice for a lecture and seminar. Past speakers have included Stanley Cavell, Slavoj Zizek, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Avital Ronell, Nancy Miller, Neil Hertz, David Damrosch, Cathy Caruth, Wolfgang Iser, W. J. T. Mitchell, Anthony Grafton, Judith Butler, Jonathan Culler, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt, Bruce Robbins, Susan Buck-Morss, Robert Pippin, and, most recently, Claire Colebrook.