Irene Marques, OCAD

Toronto, July 12, 2010

Dear President Naylor,

Subject: The Dismantling of the Centre for Comparative Literature

It has come to my attention that the University of Toronto’s is considering the closure of the Centre for Comparative Literature and its amalgamation into a future School of Languages and Literatures.

I would like to express my shock at such ill-thought consideration and to emphasise the importance of the Centre for Comparative Literature. The Centre was founded over 40 years ago by the bright scholar Northrop Frye, who foresaw, with clever insight, how the languages and literatures from around the globe, and the multidisciplinary theories that inform our reading of them ought to be brought together to form a unique Centre for the study of literature in a comparative fashion that unveils the complexities of transnational cultures and literatures. It was such a vision that led him to form the Centre for Comparative Literature.

I hope that you too, all your associates and the Consulting Committee, can see, and I mean truly see, the importance of such a Centre and how it brings unique, multicultural, multidisciplinary and multiperspectival insights that can contribute to a world (a country, a city and a university) that does not just pay lip-service to multiculturalism, diversity and high interdisciplinary scholarship. As a former graduate of the Centre, I remember with awe the many courses that I took during my Masters and Ph D programmes, courses that have taught me how the world is much more complex and beautiful that I had imagined, so different and yet so similar… These courses have made me a richer and wiser person and I could not have taken them anywhere else. I remember the many professors who encouraged me to see beyond one single framework and expand the mind to its “outer” limits so that the mind could become the world and the world could become the mind, and I could see Carl Jung in Zen Buddhism and in African Epistemologies...  And it was this seeing that told me (in more ways than one) that I and you are in fact different, and yet so similar, for even if we tell stories using different metaphors, what we both are after, is the same sense of rooting with self, others and universe.

Leaving epistemological rhetoric aside, I believe that the move to end the Centre for Comparative Literature and several other Centres within the University is not a wise and well-thought out one. The closure of these centres will make The University of Toronto a poorer institution, one that is falling into that “capitalist ogre” mentality, that short-sighted way of seeing, of regarding the humanities as just something of less importance than other disciplines.

I believe that rather than closing the Centre, it could be a good idea to think of other solutions, like merging it with the Centre for Literary Studies. The latter, is in many ways, much less encompassing than the Centre for Comparative Literature, and the merging of both could be advantageous in several ways.

I will end this urgent call to “reconsideration” with the following questions: Can the mind really survive without the varied bread that it craves? Can the University feed only bananas to its pupils and expect them to develop a varied taste for the exquisite fruits of the world? I could, of course, think of other more skilful metaphors but I hope these two will give you an idea of the problems that can arise if the decision to close the Centre for Comparative Literature moves forward. 

Sincerely,

Irene Marques

PhD. (2005) Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto

Scholar and Bilingual Writer (English/Portuguese)

Irene Marques

Ph. D. Comparative Literature

Sessional Faculty

Ontario College of Art and Design

Faculty of Liberal Studies

100 McCaul Street

Toronto, ON

M5T 1W1