Best Graduate Programs in Comparative Literature - Updated 2021

What do you learn in a Comparative Literature Graduate Program?

A Master’s in Comparative Literature is an interdisciplinary degree, combining the studies of language, literature, and culture. Most students in comparative literature graduate programs know a second language, giving them a larger base through which to read and comprehend various works of fiction. Often, comparative literature is an international discipline, involving works of writers from all around the world. Most comparative literature programs analyze literature in connection to history, philosophy, politics, and linguistics, and study the intersection of literature with other media forms such as film, drama, visual arts, and music.

Graduates of a comparative literature program can go on to work as teachers, publishers, journalists, translators, or authors. Additionally, graduates may go on to pursue a PhD in comparative literature, or another related field.

50 universities offer graduate programs in Comparative Literature. Dartmouth College had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Yale University had the most women graduates in this program.

University of Chicago

Ranked as: #4 in Best National University
Tuition: $57,759
State: IL
Acceptance: 7.26%
One of the country’s earliest comparative literature programs, the Department of Comparative Literature boasts a rich history of global and trans-historical thinking, internationally renowned faculty, and eminent visiting scholars. MAPH students can choose to focus all of their coursework in the Department or complement their research in Comparative Literature with classes in other subject areas, such as Cinema and Media Studies, Classics, Gender and Sexuality, Germanic Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, English Language and Literature, Romance Languages and Literatures, Slavic Languages and Literatures, and South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Comparative Literature

University of Chicago GRE score,GPA for masters degree in Foreign Languages, Cultures, Literature and Linguistics
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Columbia University in the City of New York

Ranked as: #4 in Best National University
Tuition: $46,216
State: NY
Acceptance: 5.91%
Program Category: PhD ProgramsChair: Alan StewartDirector of Graduate Studies: James Eli AdamsAssociate Director of Graduate Studies: Matthew HartWebsite:english.columbia.eduDegree Programs: Full-Time: MA, MPhil, PhD Full-Time Part-Time: Free-Standing MA. The English and Comparative Literature has played a significant role in the history of literary study in the United States and abroad since its inception. Students should not free-standing program if they wish to advance beyond the MA in the English and Comparative Literature department at Columbi the free-standing program is terminal. In the MA year, students take eight courses, which must include the Master’s Seminar and the Colloquium in Theory and Method.

English and Comparative Literature

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Dartmouth College

Ranked as: #11 in Best National University
Tuition: $53,496
State: NH
Acceptance: 8.74%
For over twenty years, Dartmouth Comparative Literature Program has attracted some of the best to the comparative study of literature and culture. Dartmouth is thus uniquely placed to train M.A. candidates in foreign languages, literary theory, and practical scholarship. The aim of Dartmouth one-year Masters Program is to provide the tools necessary for Ph.D. study or for careers in teaching and international studies. The curriculum stresses intensive language study, broad-based theory and methodology courses, research tools, directed independent work, and pedagogical training.

Comparative Literature Program

Dartmouth College GRE score and admission requirements for graduate programs in Foreign Languages, Cultures, Literature and Linguistics
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University of Southern California

Ranked as: #25 in Best National University
Tuition: $44,712
State: CA
Acceptance: 12.96%
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) is an exciting and innovative doctoral program inaugurated by USC Dornsife in 2011. Behind the creation of CSLC was the idea that Ph.D. education in our fields (Comparative Literature, French and Francophone, and Spainish and Latin American Studies) sought to cultivate a common ground in addition to fostering specialized research. We thus wanted to design a program that could remap the boundaries of these fields while carrying on the very best of their traditions and enlarging what each can bring to the study of its discipline. The invention of CSLC marks our commitment to shaping the future of doctoral education in the humanities.

CSLC Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture USC Dana and David Dornsife College of

GRE score required at University of Southern California master's degree programs in Comparative Literature
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University of California-Santa Barbara

Ranked as: #40 in Best National University
Tuition: $11,442
State: CA
Acceptance: 32.2%
MA PhD in Comparative Literature with a German Literary Studies Specialization (CLG). Networking fields in this way enables CLG students to situate their study of the German literary tradition within a broader intellectual and cultural context, thereby optimally qualifying them for academic appointments in a profession in which interdisciplinary and transnational training is essential. The MA requires a minimum of 40 units of graduate-level course work in German literature in an interdisciplinary context and in a second national literature.

Comparative Literature

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University of California-Irvine

Ranked as: #42 in Best National University
Tuition: $11,442
State: CA
Acceptance: 28.76%
Comparative Literature at Irvine focuses on interdisciplinary study beyond traditional canons and genres. The program has sought in turn to question the limits of the postcolonial paradigm through research in black studies, Native American studies, LGBQT studies, feminist studies, and various minority formations--for example, racial, ethnic, gendered, sexed, religious--within national and transnational spaces. The many theoretical accents that have emerged out the debates above also involve reciprocal and mutually transformative relations with other components of critical theory, informed by such well-established modes of thought as Marxism and psychoanalysis.

Comparative Literature Ph.D.

University of California-Irvine GRE score and admission requirements for graduate programs in Foreign Languages, Cultures, Literature and Linguistics
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ranked as: #42 in Best National University
Tuition: $15,068
State: IL
Acceptance: 62.16%
The Ph.D. in Comparative Literature provides rigorous training in multiple languages and literatures, comparative cultural methods, and critical theory, leading to careers in the academy and beyond. Course work in at least three national literatures and related fields provides the basis for work on translation, the history of ideas, gender and women’s studies, cinema and media, Holocaust and genocide studies, multilingualism, postcolonialism, the environmental and medical humanities, globalization, and world literature.

Ph.D. in Comparative Literature

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University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ranked as: #47 in Best National University
Tuition: $10,728
State: WI
Acceptance: 51.73%
Graduate study in the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies (CLFS) emphasizes the active research into and theorizing of the comparative, the literary, the folkloric, and the cultural in a global context. CLFS faculty and students investigate cultures within, across, and beyond linguistic, regional, and national boundaries. The comparative and pluri-lingual nature of CLFS at UW–Madison enables the careful and informed study of new and evolving theories and cultural methodologies as well as of prior, present, and emerging cultural and literary practices and phenomena.

Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies, M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison

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University of Washington-Seattle Campus

Ranked as: #48 in Best National University
Tuition: $15,510
State: WA
Acceptance: 48.69%
This is a joint-doctoral program with ten participating doctoral programs (Asian Languages and Literature Classics Comparative Literature Drama English Germanics Romance Languages and Literature Scandinavian Languages and Literature Slavic Languages and Literature and Communication). The Program combines the doctoral program in one of the participating departments with an additional set of courses in theory and criticism in an integrated course of study. The purpose is to broaden a student’s perspective and to increase awareness of different critical approaches to literary and cultural studies. Study in this program leads to a Ph.D. in the respective field and Theory and Criticism.

Theory and Criticism Graduate Program

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University of Maryland-College Park

Ranked as: #62 in Best National University
Tuition: $12,906
State: MD
Acceptance: 47.16%
MAIT -​ Masters in the Mathematics of Advanced Industrial Tech. SLLC -​ School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. The Ph.D. degree normally entails at least 30 credits of course work (beyond M.A. courses) and 12 credits of dissertation research. Advising will address the depth, breadth, and coherence of each student course plan and, if necessary, coordination among different histories of the early modern and modern.

Comparative Literature, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) University of Maryland

University of Maryland-College Park GRE score,GPA for masters degree in Foreign Languages, Cultures, Literature and Linguistics
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