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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: WHAT IS IT? Learn a language, study connections, read the world... Comparative Literature is about crossing borders: the way different languages shape the perceptions and thought patterns of the people who speak them, the ways writers in one location read others distant in time or place, the ways cultural movements link up poets and artists from different countries, the ways regional identities play against national unities, the ways people scattered throughout the world celebrate their origins and redefine their culture. Learning languages and looking at cultures on every continent, Comp Lit majors explore images, ideas and aesthetic forms that travel the world. They also come to recognize deep cultural contrasts: to see that birth, love, community, happiness, death are all experienced and represented differently from region to region and era to era. And they start to see their own culture differently in the light of the new ones they encounter.
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