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Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature

The Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature (ADPCL) is an organization for department heads, committee chairs, graduate officers, curriculum coordinators, and others who are leading a Comparative Literature unit or initiative in their institution. Affiliated with both the American Comparative Literature Association and the Modern Language Association, the ADPCL holds meetings for program administrators and conference sessions on programmatic topics, conducts workshops for job-seekers, and offers other administrative assistance where appropriate. In 2022, we started offering an annual workshop for new chairs or directors of comparative and interdisciplinary as part of the MLA ADE-ALD Summer Seminars.

Membership in ADPCL is free for any program or department of comparative or world literature. Please join here: ADPCL Membership Form | American Comparative Literature Association (acla.org)

As our Constitution indicates, “The purpose of the ADPCL, as an organization of administrators, is to promote the interests of departments, programs, and other academic units of Comparative Literature in colleges and universities located anywhere in the world, in cooperation with the American Comparative Literature Association and the Modern Language Association; to facilitate communication among such departments and programs or their representatives; to provide a forum for discussing issues of the discipline in the context of higher education; and to encourage the development and continued growth of the discipline.”

In its current special emphasis, the ADPCL has studied the characteristics of the undergraduate Comparative Literature major in various types of institutions, first with a national survey undertaken in 2005, followed up by an updated survey conducted in 2014 as part of ACLA’s State of the Discipline Report.  These surveys were led by Corinne Scheiner of Colorado College.  The ADPCL is currently preparing a survey of doctoral programs in Comparative Literature in the U.S. for ACLA’s State of the Discipline Report 2024. The doctoral survey is led by Yodie Prins of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and former president of ACLA. For information on the national survey and the data available thus far, see the Curriculum link in the navigation to the right.

 

Current ADPCL Board of Directors and Officers:

President: Luis Fernando Restrepo (University of Arkansas)

Immediate Past President: Thomas O. Beebee (Penn State, University Park)

Yopie Prins (University of Michigan)

Dane Johnson (San Francisco State University)

Sheera Talpaz (Oberlin College)

Azadeh Yamini-Hamedan (Simon Fraser University)

Ralph Bauer (University of Maryland, College Park)

 

Current ADPCL Members:

Department of Comparative Literature, Binghamton University

Comparative Literature and Culture Program, Brandeis University

Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill

Department of Comparative Literature, Stanford University

Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of South Carolina

Comparative World Literature, California State University, Long Beach

Department of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago

Department of Comparative Literature, University of Michigan

Comparative Literature, University of Texas, Austin

Department of World Languages and Literatures, Simon Fraser University

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Arkansas

Program in Comparative Literature, Oberlin College

Program in Comparative Literature, Louisiana State University

Department of Comparative Literature, Penn State University

Department of Comparative and World Literature, San Francisco State University

Department of Comparative Literature, Languages, and Linguistics, Hofstra University

Program in Comparative Literature, Gustavus Adolphus College

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies Certificate, Portland State University

Global and Comparative Literature Program, Georgetown University