Comparative Literature or Comparative Arts Major
Flexibility to Design Your Program
Because comparatists must make choices about which languages and which national literatures they will study, you will find that the requirements for both majors encourage students to plan individualized programs of study in consultation with their advisors.
Help Making Your Choices
Course programs are planned by you and your faculty advisor, who will help you decide which literature courses to take, whether to start a third language, and where you would like to go if you study abroad. Your advisor will also help make arrangements for study abroad, get you together with other students who have studied abroad or are going to do so in
order to share the experience.
Language Study
At Washington University you can take courses for four years in these languages:
- Arabic
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Greek
- Italian
- Japanese
- Latin
- Modern Hebrew
- Persian
- Russian
- Spanish
You can also take courses in Dutch, Korean, and Swahili.
Study Abroad
All majors in Comparative Literature and Comparative Arts are encouraged to study abroad for periods of time ranging from a summer to a full calendar year. Washington University offers Study Abroad programs in these countries:
- Chile
- China
- Egypt
- England
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Kenya
- Netherlands
- Russia
- Spain
- Taiwan
By special arrangement our students may study in other countries as well (a recent graduate spent a summer in Iran, and study in Korea can be arranged).
Senior Honors
If you choose to work toward Honors, you will have the opportunity during your Senior year to do research and write a long essay on a topic that interests you. You will work under the guidance of a professor whose field of specialization includes your topic. Recent topics that majors have chosen include:
- Audiences of Shakespeare's Globe
- Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller
- Paradox and Dualism in Don Quixote and the Satires of Lucian
- Thema (Omaggio a Joyce): A Reading by Luciano Berio
- Carnival Aspects in Ulysses and De donde son los cantantes