April 8, 2014

Institutional Inertia and the State of the Discipline

Eric Hayot

Do we think that ideas only come in a limited number of sizes? Obviously not. And yet… it would be perfectly reasonable for someone from the outside to accuse us of so thinking. These are the constraints of the institution, and we reinforce them constantly: in, for instance, our evaluations of journal articles, including the ways we count them for tenure; but also, say, in the normal length of the normal end-of-term graduate seminar paper, which is merely a proxy for its potential future as a journal article. And so for historical periods, the graduate curriculum,and reports on the state of disciplines: we think very badly about institutions, when we do at all.

Facts & Figures

March 8, 2014

Report on the Undergraduate Comparative Literature Curriculum: Update

Corinne Scheiner

This report on the national (US) state of the Comparative Literature undergraduate curriculum, updates the conclusions of a similar report done in 2005. As author Corinne Scheiner notes, early questions about whether Comparative Literautre should even have undergraduate programs (visible in the 1965 and 1975 reports) now seem to have entirely disappeared. The practical implications of the theoretical questions debated decennially in the reports on the state of the discipline, she suggests, are most evident in the structures of the undergraduate curriculum.

Facts & Figures

March 3, 2014

ACLA Rene Wellek Book Prize Winners, 2004-2014

ACLA Report

In 2013 the Wellek Prize, formerly awarded every two years to the best book in "literary theory," began to be awarded annually to the best book in the field of Comparative Literature. A list of winners and links to award citations for the last decade.

Facts & Figures

January 14, 2014

ACLA Harry Levin Book Prize Winners, 2004-2014

ACLA Report

In 2013 the Levin Prize, formerly awarded every two years to the best book in "literary history or criticism," began to be awarded to the best first book in the field of Comparative Literature. A list of winners and links to award citations for the last decade.

Facts & Figures

January 14, 2014

ACLA Conference Data, 1993-2014

ACLA Report on the Discipline

In the last decade the ACLA conference grew from 525 participants (in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2004) to over 3,000 participants for the 2014 New York conference. A list of conference attendees from 1993 to 2014, with a chart.