A Brief History of UGA's Department of Comparative Literature  

In 1972, Calvin S. Brown, Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, transformed a program in comparative literature into an independent department. He took with him several colleagues from the English Department, including Robert L. Harrison, Nan C. Carpenter, and Larry H. Peer, and began a search for young instructors and assistant professors. Over the next decade, the Comparative Literature Department attracted Betty Jean Craige from the University of Washington, Ron Bogue from the University of Oregon, Mihai Spariosu from Stanford University, Katharina Wilson from the University of Illinois, James McGregor from Princeton University, and Joel Black from Stanford University.

Brown, one of the founders of the discipline of comparative literature in the United States , had argued successfully that the University needed a department where literary study would cross national borders and disciplinary boundaries. Besides teaching core courses in Western literature, Brown and his new colleagues developed interdisciplinary courses in literature and music, literature and art, and women's writing, and international courses on European literature from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century.

By the mid-1980s, when other universities were undergoing heated battles between proponents of the traditional West-oriented curriculum in the humanities and proponents of a world-oriented curriculum, UGA's Comparative Literature Department, under the leadership of Frank Warnke, quietly shifted its focus toward world literature. The Department hired faculty with expertise in Chinese language and literature, Japanese language and literature, and African languages and literatures. Now the Department provides language instruction in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Swahili, Yoruba, Manding, and Hindi. It offers literary study in Asian, African, and Indian cultures, as well as European cultures.

Under the present leadership of James McGregor and Gabriel Ruhumbika, the Comparative Literature Department has nineteen faculty whose interests span the globe and encompass literature, music, the visual arts, film, drama, philosophy, religion, politics, history, women's writing, African and Asian studies, and translation.