Program Overview

Graduate students in our program are able to pursue rigorous research in a variety of literary and cultural fields, undertake team‐based projects, participate in discussions about political, aesthetic, and social issues, and develop a nuanced cross‐cultural understanding of historical and social processes.

Many graduate students present and publish scholarly writings in the most prestigious venues, as well as producing translations, literary writings, or works of theater. (Recent graduates have twice won the PEN Center's Translation Prize since 2016.) All our students work closely with leading scholars in their fields in small seminars that coordinate individual and collective work. Students also participate in the Designated Emphasis Programs on campus, including Critical Theory, New Media Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Jewish Studies, Medieval Studies, and Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Students have opportunities to design and team teach courses on topics of interest to them. Comparative Literature students form a well‐integrated community, and also have access to the resources of the entire Berkeley campus, including departments, programs, and faculty; in fact, our program requires that students take seminars in other departments for interdisciplinary training. Our department has one of the most successful placement records of any program in the U.S. or internationally. Our doctoral graduates have become prominent Comparative Literature and national literature faculty across the country and internationally.