Professor Meric Gertler, Dean
Faculty of Arts and Science
July 12, 2010
Dear Meric,
My initial shock at the news of the proposed disestablishment of the Centre for Comparative Literature has become absolute dismay as the meaning of this proposal has become clear to me. The news comes at a time when Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto was being thoroughly reinvigorated and we were looking forward with excitement to our future. Last week I met with the faculty, who are unanimous in their opposition to this proposal.
I feel I must warn you of the ramifications of the disestablishment of the Centre in terms of the serious blow to the university’s reputation and the loss of original and exciting directions of scholarship.
1. Reputation.
At a time when Comparative Literature is increasing in significance throughout Europe and Asia, Toronto is the only place in Canada recognized internationally in the field. The perception, both across North America and overseas, of the move to do away with graduate degrees in Comparative Literature will be very negative. Comparative Literature programs are overwhelmingly concentrated in the best universities. Does the University really want to lose its place in the list of institutions that award degrees in Comparative Literature: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan, Duke, Penn, Brown, UCLA, Berkeley, Princeton, and …Toronto? The University of Toronto will appear to be reverting to the conservative discipline-bound institution that it once was, a time that we had hoped was forgotten.
The university stands to lose not only its fine reputation, but also many excellent faculty and students. There are faculty in the Centre who came to Toronto or who decided to stay at Toronto because of the possibilities for comparative and interdisciplinary work that the Centre offered. Among the students currently in the program, some chose Toronto over Columbia and Rutgers, and they now feel betrayed. And certainly this will have a negative impact on the university's ability to recruit excellent faculty and students across the Humanities.
2. Institutional and intellectual credibility.
If Comparative Literature is reduced to a collaborative program, without its own courses, faculty, and degrees, it will essentially cease to exist. Comparative Literature courses do not just teach German or French or Chinese literature in English translation, or simply present combinations of different literary traditions, nor are they merely courses in twentieth-century theory. Because they have comparativity at their heart, Comparative Literature courses always bring a greater thematic into play. The confrontation between languages, art forms, and disciplines consistently generates new insight and forces a critical reflectiveness that requires an intellectual space of its own.
Your response document argues that the Humanities have changed and have, as it were, caught up to Comparative Literature. But Comparative Literature, too, has changed. It has shed its Eurocentric origins. It both moves beyond and returns to the theory it was once responsible for introducing. It has developed new methodologies for exploring the exchange and cross-border circulation of arts, thoughts, writings and cultural practices. Comparative Literature remains at the forefront of what this university should be all about: knowledge production, cross-cultural exchange, and original inquiry.
Here are some of the consequences of no longer offering graduate degrees in Comparative Literature:
a) Comparative Literature has always been the space for scholarly work that does not fit into any one language department and therefore contributes to more than one intellectual discipline. Amazingly, this is the only place at the university where one can study Canadian literature in both French and English (e.g. former students Winfried Siemerling, now at Waterloo, or Sylvia Söderlind, at Queen’s, are Europeans who came to Toronto to study both Canadas; a current student is looking at Chinese Canadian literature written in English, French, and Chinese.) Comparative Literature is also the only place where one can do a thesis in an aboriginal or indigenous language. It is no accident that the Governor-General’s Medal in Humanities this year went to Keavy Martin (now at Alberta) for her thesis on Inuktitut literature. Only in Comparative Literature can one study literature across the Americas: four years ago the Governor-General’s Medal went to Ian McRae (now at Wilfrid Laurier) for his work on trans-American literature in Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. Comparative Literature is the only home for literary research that crosses East and West, North and South: a current Vanier award winner is examining Russian and American literature and cinema of the 1920s and 1930s together; a recent thesis looks at how war and trauma have been imagined in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Rwanda. And many of our students do work that takes them in fields outside literature altogether—for example, in media studies, or philosophy, or psychoanalysis. Students doing this kind of work would not be admitted to the national language and literature departments. And students doing this kind of work would not apply to such departments. Do we really want to make it impossible for such important and original research to take place at Toronto?
b) Since only 5 of the 15 professors currently teaching Comparative Literature are in the units represented in the School for Languages and Literatures, future students would only be able to work in a very small (and arbitrarily assembled) number of languages and literatures, those in the School. There are current students who work in Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Turkish, French, and English, or whose research involves work in non-literary disciplines, such as cinema, philosophy, or visual art. The University should want to be a place where such research is possible.
c) Students from disciplines around the university, who have been attracted to the specific intellectual offerings of Comparative Literature will now have nowhere to turn. Two-thirds of students in Comparative Literature courses come from other departments. Our courses attract these students because they are genuinely inter (bringing together the different disciplines) and meta (raising questions about how literary and cultural scholarship is practised) Those two valuable perspectives are essential to enable new and original questions even within the traditional disciplines. The closure of the Centre would thus have a destructive impact throughout the university.
d) Faculty from many departments value being able to teach in Comparative Literature because it allows them to teach their research and to teach students from across the university, not just from their home departments, who are interested in their research. Their teaching in Comparative Literature feeds their research, challenges their pedagogy, and helps shape their understanding of themselves as scholars and of the current state of knowledge. Professors from Art, Classics, and History, as well as from literature departments are asking to join the faculty and to teach at the Centre. Professors recently hired at Toronto in other disciplines have Comparative Literature degrees, and they and others were attracted to the university because of the presence of the Centre and the centrality of comparativity and interdisciplinarity that the Centre promised.
Finally I want to correct the mistaken impression of Comparative Literature conveyed by the response to the plan:
1. The rate of admissions and the PhD funded cohort in Comparative Literature have remained steady over the last several years. The total number of students in the PhD program appears to vary and even to decline (before picking up again this year), but that is not reflective of the health of the discipline, but of many factors, including the fact that students are taking fewer years to complete their degrees. Interest is not declining, and the caliber of students certainly is not.
2. It’s true that many units across the Faculty—in English, French, Art,Anthropology, Cinema, Women’s and Gender Studies—now do what is called theory. However, theory has many faces: French poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, German critical theory, media theory, feminism, political theory, critical legal studies, continental philosophy, cultural studies, discourse analysis, postcolonialism. No other unit has more than one or two people teaching theory. Comparative Literature is able to bring people from many units together into something approaching critical mass to give students from across the university access to courses in theory, and to give the professors access to students outside their home departments.
Moreover, in other departments theory is often merely instrumental or functional: an angle from which to write a thesis. Only in Comparative Literature do theories themselves become objects of comparison. The result is a valuable critical reflexivity possible nowhere else.
3. The struggle between the national literature departments and Comparative Literature goes back to the founding of the Centre. The truth, as your own letter acknowledges, is that the national literature departments have benefitted greatly from the presence of Comparative Literature. The very challenge that Comparative Literature poses to the national literature departments (and vice versa) has made for fruitful exchanges. Degree programs in Comparative Literature keep the study of literature and culture alive both inside and outside the discipline of Comparative Literature.
4. The recent job market reflects the centrality of Comparative Literature across the continent. While academic posts in the Humanities have been down across the board in the last two years, Comparative Literature students have had an advantage even when applying to national language departments. This year one of our students landed a position at Indiana at Bloomington. Another is going to CUNY to teach the burgeoning new field of World Literature. New undergraduate programs in World Literature are opening across the continent and in Canada (viz. Simon Fraser started a very successful program three years ago). The academic job market is changing and there are openings in new fields like cross-cultural communication and the critical study of globalization, as well as World Literature. The evolution of the discipline of Comparative Literature and of the Centre itself positions graduates to take advantage of these new directions.
I would like to conclude with a list of a few things that are at stake:
1. A forty-year international reputation for academic excellence and the leadership of the field in Canada. Comparative Literature is the meaning of the University of Toronto in many literary circles.
2. An exciting lineup of some of the biggest names in literary studies and theory who had agreed to come to Toronto as Northrop Frye professors: Carol Mavor from Manchester in 2010-11; Franco Moretti from Stanford to teach a course in 2011-12; Judith Butler from Berkeley in 2013.
3. Cross-cultural research that matters to Toronto, Canada, and to Canada’s place in the world. We have inquiries from students who want to research comparative multiculturalism in Canada and Brazil; Yiddish literature in Canada, the US and Europe; and South Asian literature in English and Indian languages.
4. Research that connects literature to a range of non-literary fields and disciplines, both in the Humanities and Social Sciences, from media studies to history, religion, and philosophy.
5. Some of the most intellectually engaged, creative, and committed students in the university. Witness the graduate student colloquium, the biggest and most prestigious student conference at Toronto and probably in Canada. This past year the conference was SSHRC-funded and entitled “Explosive Past Radiant Futures.” Next year a JHI grant will fund a conference on “Iconoclasm,” featuring as a keynote speaker the anthropologist Michael Taussig from Columbia. The latest issue of Transverse, the annual student journal is available on-line.
6. Original courses and pedagogies being developed here and not offered anywhere else. This was the subject of Eva-Lynn Jagoe’s keynote address at the conference “Explosive Past Radiant Futures” held in March.
7. A reinvigorated faculty and student body, feeding off the excitement that has been built up over the past year and is growing.
I believe that the decision to disestablish the Centre is based on a misunderstanding that might have been averted had we been consulted. I do hope you will be open to discussing the significance of this drastic step for the university.
Sincerely
Neil ten Kortenaar
Director, Centre for Comparative Literature
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