 |
 |
 |
Undergraduate Program |
Comparative Literature trains students in the cultural literacy needed to be citizens of a globalized world. It reaches beyond any single national culture to consider relations between various literatures as well as cultural phenomena such as films, comics, urban space, monuments and politics. Comparative Literature students learn about the historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts of texts as they are produced and received across national boundaries and in response to the dynamics of global movements and crises. In order to be critical readers of such phenomena, students learn the analytic terms and models that have been useful to comparatists in our ongoing effort to interpret the world and the texts we read. We draw on philosophy, social science, and the arts in the development of these models and introduce students to critical thinking both through the objects and historical events we interpret and through the great works of philosophy, literature, and the arts. Courses consider a wide range of topics-for example, the impact of colonialism on African novels, the relationships between Asian film and literature, literatures and cultures of the Middle East, global women's writing, comparative queer theories, gender and madness, phenomenology and deconstruction, and images of cannibalism in France and Latin America. The Department of Comparative Literature offers a major with three emphases: Comparative Literature and Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and World Literature. It also offers a minor.Comparative Literature is well suited for students interested in world literature, critical theory, and cultural phenomena from around the globe. Read for yourself what some of our students have to say about the experience of Comparative Literature at UCI. Please click here. Careers for the Comparative Literature Major What kinds of jobs can you expect with a Comparative Literature major? Any professional work that requires critical thinking and communication skills, proficiency in other languages and cultural literacy. Some examples include: preparation for graduate school in any humanities field or for law school, work at corporate communications, court interpretation, the United Nations, and federal, state and local government, teaching at the elementary, high school or college level, administrative, managerial, social service, or non-profit work, nationally or internationally, editorial jobs in magazine and book publishing, TV and film industry, jobs in tourism and other global communications fields. Requirements for the Bachelor's Degree University Requirements: Click here for appropriate Catalog section. A Guide to completing the Comparative Literature Major at UCI is available: Please click here.
UROP and SURP Many of our undergraduate majors take advantage of UROP and SURP to conduct independent research locally or abroad, often leading to honors' theses or presentations at conferences. See the UROP website for more information.
Undergraduate Critical Theory Conference Every year the Critical Theory Emphasis sponsors a one-day conference of theoretical work by UC Irvine undergraduates. The conference is organized by the holder of the Koehn Assistantship in Critical Theory, who solicits recommendations for student presenters from faculty and graduate students and provides student presenters with graduate mentors who help them revise their papers. Comp Lit majors are usually very well represented at this conference. Here are the titles of some recent Comp Lit student presentations:Critical Theory Conference (2011) Pichaya Kositsawat - The University in Crisis: Locating an Educational Philosophy Morgan Arouz Slade - Foucault on Facebook Jamie Noh - Interdependence of Communality and Struggle Earl Foust - Threads of (re)construction: the entangled spatial, temporal and social narratives in Philippine Myth
|
