Françoise Lionnet, UCLA

Dear President Naylor,

I have just heard the distressing news that the University is considering the disestablishment of the Center for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, and I want to add my voice to the chorus of those that have been reacting to this extremely untimely and shocking proposal. Should it be implemented, it would be the death knoll of research excellence in the humanities at the University.

Let me explain why. I am the incoming President of the American Comparative Literature Association (April 2011), and I can assure you that comparative literature is more needed than ever on the North American continent. Any institution that does not take it seriously risks being left out of the debate on crucial issues that have a significant impact on the quality of the democratic public sphere today.

This is because comparative literature is the main humanities discipline capable of opening the door to the views of our world advanced by writers, thinkers, and critics who themselves make it a priority to see the whole world as one rather than focus on a singular national, linguistic or ethnic cultural milieu.

At a time when national perspectives are declining and global ones are on the rise, comparative literature contributes a crucial “world” perspective to the study of today’s literatures and cultures. It alone provides students with the literary tools to understand these not as isolated or self-enclosed entities, but as intrinsically involved in each other’s pasts and futures. Without the approach of comparative literature, we would all be much the poorer, intellectually, culturally, and ethically.

The study of individual languages and their literatures, as well as “area studies,” has of course an ongoing role in education at both graduate and undergraduate levels. But what I would term the “fundamentalist” view, that is, that these studies can suffice without the wider global perspectives brought by the field of comparative literature, does not. The nineteenth-century view of national-language-based disciplines, to which some would seem to want to return at the University of Toronto, was never accurate except—possibly—during the brief period of European national states, which lasted from approximately 1840 until the end of World War II. The desire to reinforce self-contained cultural-linguistic units (even when together they might become part of a larger School for Languages and Literatures) is like all fundamentalisms, an attempt to return to a past that never was. Without the critical perspective of comparative literature, as the means to understand the intellectual history of such geopolitical formations, a very important educational component of an enlightened polity goes sadly missing.

Going through with the proposal to disestablish the Center would be a huge mistake in our increasingly interrelated societies. It would be like studying the economies of France, Germany, and Great Britain without taking note of the European Economic Community and the interrelated perspectives it enables and furthers.

Canada, where I lived for many years is particularly well suited to be in the forefront of these larger comparative approaches. Its multicultural dynamism is in some respects ahead of its only rivals, the United States and Australia. The many different nationalities and ethnic groups which come to Canada do not just start interacting with each other when they get there: they have been doing it, culturally as well as politically and economically all along; and when settled in Canada, they have an invaluable opportunity to learn about each others’ heritages and about the historical connections among such heritages. Interdisciplinary fields of study like comparative literature offer a unique way to teach a history of inter-relatedness that is too valuable to twenty-first century citizenship to ignore, or to jeopardize by sending the message that it is not currently valued by the University. The ACLA has recognized Canada’s pre-eminence in global multiculturalism by scheduling its next annual meeting for Vancouver.

In Spring 2010, I was invited by Prof. Neil Kortenaar to give the Northrop Frye Lecture at the University of Toronto. I was honored by the invitation, and accepting it gave me an opportunity to interact with the Center’s students and faculty. From what I can see, the Center is thriving; its faculty is distinguished, and its students are motivated. As the premiere institution in Canada, and as the leader among Commonwealth universities, Toronto cannot afford to send the message that the Center for Comparative Literature is slated for disestablishment. The disastrous repercussions of such a decision would be felt across North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, not to mention Australia, the other Commonwealth powerhouse in education.

I urge you to reconsider the proposal to close this Center, and invite you to visit the website of the ACLA, http://www.acla.org and its upcoming conference that will take place in Vancouver next year: http://www.acla.org/acla2011/

We in the discipline, and many outside it, would be most grateful to the University of Toronto for the support of the interdisciplinary pursuit of excellence in the humanities, and for the Center that should remain its guiding beacon.

Most sincerely yours,




Françoise Lionnet
Professor, French & Francophone Studies, Comparative Literature
Vice-President, American Comparative Literature Association
Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France)
Co-Director, with Prof. Shu-mei Shih, UCLA Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows Program
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/mellon/