The primary goal of doctoral study in Comparative Literature at USC is to prepare future college or university professors to engage in original literary research and teaching. The core of the discipline is advanced skill in several languages allowing research in the corresponding literary traditions. In the course of their study, students acquire (1) a broadly based knowledge of literature's formal or generic development extending across linguistic boundaries; (2) an understanding of literature's historical development within a number of specific cultural or ideological contexts; and (3) an appreciation of the principles of literary criticism and theory essential to the sophisticated analysis, interpretation and evaluation of individual works.

Graduate students follow individualized programs that combine the study of a major literary tradition in one language with one or more comparative fields. The program has strong faculty resources in the principle literary genres and periods of Western tradition, in selected genres and cultural issues within the East Asian tradition, and in a variety of methodological approaches within contemporary literary criticism and theory.

Please go to Graduate Degrees for more details, and to the Graduate Student Handbook for the most complete description of the graduate program.