Peter Nesselroth to the Globe and Mail

As a former Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto (1983 to 1998), I am dismayed at the proposed disestablishment of the Centre. Linda Hutcheon rightly points out that the program of the Centre is unique because it is multidisciplinary and multilingual. It has attracted students and faculty

from everywhere and its alumni are teaching, or pursuing other careers, everywhere. Our PhDs are successful in the academic job market because they often provide an economy of scope, i.e. they can teach in more than one national language and literature department.

Comparative literature, as a discipline, was never primarily concerned with the teaching of literary theory. Its main focus has always been the study of literature as a cultural practice, just as linguistics is the discipline which, as opposed to individual language departments, studies language as an intercultural human phenomenon. A consequence of this so-called disestablishment of the Centre will probably be the loss

of the endowment for the Northrop Frye Visiting Professorship. It is a relatively small endowment but the prestige of its name has enabled us to bring a number of academic superstars to teach full semester courses at the University (Paul Ricoeur, Edward Said, Mieke Bal, Julia Kristeva, Derek Walcott, Natalie Zemon Davis, Charles Taylor, among others, and the line-up for the coming years looked just as good: Carol Mavor from

Manchester in 2010-11; Franco Moretti from Stanford in 2011-12; Judith Butler from Berkeley in 2013.

If the University is truly committed to excellence, it should seriously reconsider this ill-advised recommendation before implementing it.

Peter W. Nesselroth

Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature

University of Toronto

Joseph Pivato, Athabasca University

Hello,

I protest in the strongest terms the Faculty of Arts and Science's plans to disestablish the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. The effective closure of the Comparative Literature program will be damaging to all students in the Arts, damaging to  faculty who do interdisciplinary research and damaging to the University of Toronto.

The  great value of degrees in Comparative Literature has never been documented in the careers and lives of countless professionals across Canada. The negative recommendations for your strategic planning committee perpetuates the anti-arts prejudices too often found on campuses.

I urgue you to keep Comparative Literature alive at U.of T.

 Yours sincerely,

Joseph Pivato, Ph.D.

Professor

Centre for Language and Literature

and Centre for Integrated Studies

Athabasca University, CANADA

Noreen Golfman, President, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Russell Kilbourn, Wilfrid Laurier

President David Naylor

University of Toronto

Simcoe Hall, Room 206

27 King’s College Circle

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1

13 July 2010

Dear President Naylor,

To begin with, my credentials: I graduated with my PhD from U of T’s Centre for Comparative Literature in 1999, having received my MA in Comp Lit two years before. In 1990 I was one of the original founders of the graduate colloquium, which (to quote the 2009 Colloquium program) “has since evolved into a multi-day international academic conference that continually transcends and challenges disciplinary rigidity in favour of interdisciplinarity”; an event which has evolved from a day long series of papers by grad students to what Dr. Barbara Havercroft calls “a prestigious annual international conference” still entirely organized by students. The 2009 edition commemorated and celebrated the careers of two of the Centre’s most eminent faculty members, each of whom had a formative impact upon me: Dr. Linda Hutcheon and Dr. Ted Chamberlin,

In my own journey as an academic I have travelled a long road, like Dante’s pilgrim, from the hell of grad school to the purgatory of contractual employment, finally reaching the glorious paradise of a tenured position. In my case this entailed moving from Comparative Literature to three years at U of T Scarborough’s English Department, teaching bona fide literature courses, to three more years teaching multiple Cultural Studies courses at McMaster, finally securing my current position teaching Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier, specializing in film theory, where I received tenure this past fall. I mention all of this because I think my experience offers a good example of what the Centre prepares you to do: my training as a comparatist made me more flexible intellectually, more adaptable as a researcher and teacher, and therefore more employable. Even though it has been a rather long journey, since graduating I have never been unemployed and have never had less than a full-time (albeit temporary) contract at each of the above-named institutions. And it has been a journey in which reading and thinking in a critically reflexive manner came to determine my whole worldview (more on this below). I learned from my time at the Centre to read not just closely and exhaustively but with respect and circumspection – a task all the more necessary in the age of electronic databases, Wikipedia, Google Books and the web as ‘virtual archive.’ At the same time I learned that ‘reading’ encompasses far more than Western notions of ‘literacy’ over against specious models of pre-modern ‘orality’. I am not simply talking about the ‘media-’ or ‘cultural literacy’ that students anyway begin to acquire on their own from an early age, and that is on its own no guarantee against ideological mystification or consumerist interpellation. Rather, I am talking about a kind of ‘post-literate’ literacy that can only be acquired at considerable conscious effort and sheer intellectual work; the literacy that makes one into a fully rounded human being, alive to difference and aware of the complex, messy reality of life in a globalized, multicultural world. The Centre for Comparative Literature, as currently constituted, is the ideal place in which to acquire such critically reflexive cultural literacy. I will try to clarify this point in what follows.

A place like U of T’s Centre for Comparative Literature is uniquely positioned to afford what the Faculty’s letter to you calls at once a truly inter- and meta-perspective – a critical reflexivity – upon the verbal, visual, and other texts and artefacts that humans continue to produce in our ceaseless attempt to represent ourselves to ourselves, even as we strive, perhaps in vain, to comprehend others who resist the received modes of representation (and I use this word in both aesthetic and political senses). In short, what Comparative Literature embodies is an increasingly rare chance to overcome what I warn my students about at every opportunity: the condition of living within a culture that is smarter than you are. And this is where it is necessary to clarify the value of ‘theory’ in terms of the Centre’s legacy in contemporary academic and social life generally. Dean Gertler is indeed correct in observing (in a recent Torontoist article) that “the conditions that were necessary for the Centre’s formation are now changed. At the time, it was not possible to do literary criticism of a particular kind any place but in the Centre. Now, it is widespread across the Humanities units”. Apart from the arrogance and narrow-mindedness of his proclamation that “the closure of the Centre represents a significant moment in the evolution of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science”, it must be pointed out that to ‘do’ theory on its own is not enough; nor is it enough to ‘do’ it within the confines of a specific national literature and language or a specific later 20th-century or 21st century discipline – Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Post-colonial Studies, Global Studies, North American Studies, or (as in Dean Gertler’s case) Cultural Geography. As the Centre’s letter indicates, ‘doing’ theory is okay; the meta- perspective theory affords is important, but on its own this is not enough. Only under the banner of comparative studies proper may students engage in genuinely inter-disciplinary, comparative study of two or more texts (or other objects) from two or more different cultures, while appreciating at the same time the cultural and linguistic and other differences between and among cultures. Only by stepping outside of one’s cultural milieu by virtue of one’s command of other languages and cultural traditions may one achieve a truly critically reflexive perspective upon one’s heretofore taken-for-granted identity and reality, not to speak of those of other people, whose places and times would otherwise remain utterly unknown, and unknowable. In sum, Comparative Literature is a discipline in its own right, founded upon the three pillars of language, literature, and critical theory, and has never been simply another place in which to ‘do’ theory.

It is difficult, moreover, not to take umbrage at the fact that Dean Gertler, a geographer by training, is in charge of the restructuring committee, tactfully explaining in the Chronicle of Higher Education that “it’s time to move around the furniture a bit. A number of departments and units are quite small, so, by restructuring and amalgamating, we can save significantly on overheads”. Again, it is difficult not to hear in these words the attitude of an administrator who deals with technology, industrial practices and the “manufacturing of culture” (to quote the title of one of his books) and who seems intent on turning the proposed School of Languages and Literatures into a Chaplinesque outpost of assembly-line cultural production – an all-too-familiar sign of these (modern) times. I freely admit that I might be completely wrong about the Dean’s intentions, but these sound bites leave little room for a more positive interpretation. 

In Barbara Havercroft’s words: “The proposed disappearance of the Centre will undoubtedly have an extremely negative impact on the future of the discipline in Canada, and it reflects the general depreciation of the humanities and their essential contributions to knowledge and society”. I couldn’t agree more. With all due respect, Dr. Naylor, it is painfully obvious from the available information that the Centre for Comparative Literature, along with the affected national language departments at U of T, is being scape-goated by an administration that needs to cut millions of budgetary dollars but cannot imagine doing so in areas outside of the Arts and Humanities. The tragic fact of the current and ongoing devaluation of the Humanities disciplines – and inter-disciplines – in Canada, North America and, indeed, in much of the developed globalized world, is far too big a problem to address in this space – even though it is clear to me that the climate at U of T is directly symptomatic of this larger backdrop of cultural-moral-ethical degradation. The most painful realization to emerge here is that this administration, like many others across the country, is taking advantage of a (now historical) financial crisis to eviscerate those programs, departments and disciplines it deems trivial or even useless. It would be preferable if the Humanities were seen as dangerous or corrupting, but from what I can tell this administration (and again, it is not alone in this respect), simply does not care about academic areas outside of the hard sciences, business, and IT. The Arts and Humanities do not conform to the received economic model and they never will. This has not been a big problem in the past but it obviously is one now. What is required, however, is not that an entity like Comparative Literature be shut down but rather that University administrations across Canada take the trouble to change their way of seeing things. Do I believe that this will happen anytime soon? No, but there is nothing to be gained by not trying, and a great deal to be lost.

The timing of the announcement, finally, is unavoidably suspicious, coming as it does in the dead of summer, when many people are stupefied by heat and humidity, World Cup soccer or the Tour de France, or are simply not around. It is as if it had been calculated to make as small an impression as possible, but fortunately this strategy (if such it is) is not succeeding. The only question now is whether the efforts of thousands of well-intentioned people – people who, quite frankly, know better than the so-called ‘restructuring committee’ – can make any difference. As far as I know, the decision begins with you, Dr. Naylor. Please don’t make the wrong choice. Please don’t allow these changes to go through. Please reverse the committee’s decision and save the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. By doing so, you will prevent the inevitable loss of many of your best faculty, and many more of your most promising students, whose critically and linguistically informed work would otherwise contribute directly and profoundly to the ways in which we perceive and interpret our world. You will, in short, be saving the University itself.

Sincerely,

R. J. A. Kilbourn

Associate Professor

English and Film Studies

Wilfrid Laurier University

rkilbourn@wlu.ca

Pericles Lewis, Yale University

Dear President Naylor, Provost Misak, and Dean Gertler,

I read with dismay of the plans to disband the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.  My parents are both alumni of the University of Toronto, and I took several courses there as an undergraduate and am a graduate of the University of Toronto Schools.  I received my B.A. in English from McGill and my PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford and have been teaching at Yale since 1998.

As letters you have already received indicate, Comparative Literature is a thriving discipline that is of increasing importance to literary study in the 21st century, as it crosses traditional national boundaries and responds more quickly than other aspects of literary studies to globalization and the need to create an international curriculum.  The Centre at Toronto is very highly regarded in the field.  I understand from press coverage that a major goal of the reorganization of five departments into the School of Languages and Literatures is  to save approximately $1 million, presumably in staff, graduate student, and capital costs.  I would suggest that you could achieve similar savings by creating the School of Languages and Literatures but maintaining the Centre for Comparative Literature in some form within the new School.  Comparatists often provide leadership in departments of national languages and literatures and could in this case help the new School to be responsive to the changing intellectual environment created by globalization.  This would help not only Comparative Literature but all the national languages and literatures at Toronto stay on the cutting edge.  It would likely not cost much more than the current proposal but would help to maintain the University’s high standing as a centre for literary study.  Maintaining some formal structure for Comparative Literature is essential.  If it becomes only a collaborative program with other departments, you are likely to lose the intellectual leadership provided by an autonomous Comparative Literature Centre.  I urge you to reconsider the proposed action and to keep the excellent tradition of Comparative Literature alive at the University of Toronto.

Yours sincerely,

Pericles Lewis

Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature

Yale University

Website: https://webspace.yale.edu/pericleslewis/

Snezana Brajovic, University of Toronto

Dear President Naylor,

I would like to make a plea in favour of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto from a standpoint which sheds some light on the larger social context of comparative literary studies in general. It seems to me that today this standpoint should not be passed over in silence, because of a strong tendency towards ghettoization of cultures and, with it, an overstressing of cultural differences that leave little space for common ground dialogue and understanding.  Rather than diminishing it, the new communication tools and powerful media –such as the Internet—seem to reflect and perpetuate this exclusion game: ghettos thrive on the Net, where many “wes” (whoever the “we” are) are never understood by “them” (who ever “they” may be), and vice versa.

The Centre for Comparative Literature has not simply been a place where literature and theory are studied, it has also been a place where students with different cultural backgrounds have a chance to meet each other and find out that they can situate and discuss their differences within a common theoretical framework which promotes commonalities without denying specificities and particularities.  For me, as a newcomer to Canada, the Centre was a place I could call an intellectual home, not only because of my undergraduate and MA education in comparative literature but also because, as a comparativist, I studied Northrop Frye and read some of Linda Hutcheon’s books. The Centre was an opportunity to renew and expand my knowledge at the very source of North American comparativism, and meet people whose cultural experiences were different than mine. In other words, to merge, without giving up my intellectual identity. Precisely because of its unique approach and role, the Centre is one of competitive advantages for U of T, for it is a space where students learn to overcome limitations rooted in mono-cultural points of view.

At a time when multimedia and technology convergence are transmitting stories and poetry told not only by words but also by means of moving pictures and digitalized music, comparativism seems to have a particularly important role: if we do not compare, we will not understand either the common or the particular. Nor will we appreciate enough the uniqueness of the Canadian culture. Indeed, the Centre for Comparative Literature should expand, and not be dismantled, so that it covers new media. The Centre’s capacity to bringing together students with various cultural backgrounds, after they specialized in only one literature and only one culture, is socially beneficial.

Dear President Naylor, please reconsider the decision and let the Centre thrive. Some ideas are worth perusing, even at a (rather small) cost.

Yours sincerely,

 Dr. Snezana Brajovic

Sylvia Söderlind, Queens' University

13 July 2010

President David Naylor

Simcoe Hall, Room 206

27 King’s College Circle

Toronto, Ontario

Canada M5S 1A1

As an alumna of the Comparative Literature program at the University of Toronto (PhD 1986) I was stunned by the news about its impending “disestablishment.” From the scant information available it seems this was a decision based on “strategic” reasons, which seem related mostly to budgetary concerns. While everyone understands the role played by Realpolitik and economics in the life of an institution, it seems to me that even economy is a matter of more than dollars and cents. How does one put a value on an institution’s international reputation? How does one measure success in terms of student placement and influence? And, above all, how does the most prestigious university in Canada justify closing what may well be the most truly inter-disciplinary humanities graduate program in the country at the moment when other universities are scrambling to establish programs that will reflect the need for trans-national, trans-cultural, and trans-linguistic research in an increasingly globalizing world?

The Centre for Comparative Literature has not only a well established reputation and a well functioning structure, one that would be cumbersome to re-establish in the future, when renewed calls for interdisciplinarity and cross-departmental programs will inevitably be heard. Only a year ago the Centre appointed a new dynamic director; it continues to attract elite faculty from across the university, to invite prominent scholars in the field, and to attract the top of the crop of emerging literary scholars from around the globe. It is a centre for internationalization and a lifeline for exactly the type of student who will feel at home in a global world order, who will contribute to the extension of disciplinary boundaries, and who will spread the good news about the quality of learning and scholarship at the University of Toronto to the rest of the world.

The Strategic Planning Committee, in whose eyes Comparative Literature is “no longer necessary,” did not include any representative of the Centre and no consultations have been held with its members or with scholars in the discipline. I believe it was only a year or two ago that the Centre underwent an OCGS review. I am, of course, not privy to the results of that review, but if it indicated that there were grounds for such drastic action, I believe this should be made known. The rationale offered in Dean Gertler’s interview with The Torontoist is scant. He argues that Comparative Literature has made itself redundant by its early success in spreading the teaching of theory to other departments. This odd logic assumes 1) that theory is the sole raison d’être of Comparative Literature, 2) that theory is a static thing and will no longer need a Centre with access to emerging theoretical thought in many languages, and 3) that Comparative Literature is a static discipline and therefore will have nothing further to offer others in the future. All of these are faulty assumptions. Theory is indeed the foundation of the discipline, but nowhere else is theory a cornerstone for studies in multiple languages and of multiple literary traditions. (It is also rarely a field in its own right in individual language departments, where it more often becomes incorporated in the, cognate but different, field of literary criticism.) Theory is a constantly evolving field or, rather an evolving practice of reflection, perhaps the most constantly evolving field in the humanities, and only in a multilingual and multicultural intellectual environment can all of its tenets and trends be made accessible as they emerge before eventually finding their way to translation and accessibility to other fields. What was cutting edge in theory when I graduated has long been superseded and the discipline has changed. Eurocentrism has given place to a global multiculturalism and a truly transnational comparatism. The student body and the faculty now reflect a more inclusive world. Even so, Comparative Literature is still, as it was when I arrived in 1978, the only place where the study of Canadian literature in more than one language can take place. I was fortunate to be able to work in French and English. Now I notice that a recent graduate (encouraged to apply to the Centre from Queen’s) was awarded last year’s Governor General’s Gold Medal for a thesis on Inuktitut literature. Where else could she have accomplished this?

If the Centre closes, the kind of student who now competes for admission will not choose another department at the University of Toronto. She will not choose a non-degree-granting collaborative program such as the one proposed within the framework of the School of Languages and Literatures. As many of the Centre’s alumni can attest, a Comparative Literature degree is a precious commodity which gives students an edge in an increasingly tough job market. Without degree-granting powers Comparative Literature does not exist. Students will simply choose another university, most likely an American one, or possibly one of the emerging transnational fields at other Canadian universities (at Queen’s the recently established Cultural Studies program has attracted students with interdisciplinary backgrounds, a large proportion of whom are aboriginal and minority students). Comparative Literature not only attracts the cream of the crop of students with language degrees. It attracts independent thinkers who are forward-looking and who are set to change not only the discipline of Comparative Literature but to extend the boundaries of the various fields in which they will go on to work. Disciplinary boundaries are always in flux, and comparatists are uniquely placed to contend with and extend such boundaries. Comparatists are exactly the kind of change agents that are needed in a rapidly shifting academic environment.

The caliber of students attracted to the Centre is demonstrated not only by their success in job placement but also by their energetic participation in intellectual life. I have attended several of the annual international conferences organized by the students over the years and have been constantly amazed both by the quality of scholarship presented and the caliber of scholars the students manage to attract. Where else do students organize large meetings of scholars of international reputation? More to the point, perhaps, in what other venues organized by students are international scholars eager to participate? All of this speaks to the unique and valuable role played by the Centre in the world of Comparative Literature, which is, by definition, a world that extends across the globe. It also speaks to the extent of the consternation that will be felt and expressed at its loss.

Financial constraints are experienced everywhere at this moment and how they are dealt with reflects the prevailing culture in each institution. It is a crucial time of tough choices, but it would be a very sad thing if those choices were made on the basis of a balance sheet consisting only of bottom lines and short-term planning. Programs such as Comparative Literature are where the future is made. It is a discipline that, by definition, has to keep abreast of developments in the world. The university can ill stand to lose the most open and exciting window to the world that the humanities has to offer.

One of the expressed reasons for the closing is the size of the program. The rigourous requirements of a Comparative Literature degree are not available to a large number of students, and those who make it in thus constitute an elite. Elite disciplines belong in elite institutions (as a perusal of the locations of Comparative Literature programs in the US clearly shows). When a university’s decisions are based on the inverse of what should be its mission—to preserve and promote excellence—it stands in danger of losing its soul.

I firmly hope the recommendations of the Strategic Planning Committee in this matter will be reconsidered and that long-term academic considerations will prevail over short-term financial ones.

Sincerely,

Sylvia Söderlind

Professor

Robert Denham, Roanoke College, Emeritus

Dear President Naylor,

The discussion about the fate of comparative literature at the U of T might gain some measure of clarity from what Northrop Frye always emphasized, that cultural movements flourish when they are decentralized, unlike political and economic movements, which tend to centralize.  When the study of culture is centralized, such as will occur if comparative literature is amalgamated into a unite‑and‑conquer proposal that brings the study of all languages and literatures together under one administrative umbrella.  While the centralizing tendency may work in such social sciences as, say, Geography & Planning, it never works in the humanities.  The centralizing movement erases identity.  Dean Gertler has written about how the centralizing movement we call globalization should not trump the decentralized nation ‑state, which remains a key space for organized labor (“Labour in ‘Lean’ Times: Geography, Scale, and National Trajectories of Workplace Change”).   While the parallels between internationalism and an amorphous department of languages and literature, on the one hand, and local autonomy and a separate identity of comparative literature, on the other, are not exact, to pay tribute to the former in what Gertler calls “lean” economic times is surely short‑sighted.

As Frye has written, “to distinguish what is creative in a minority from what attempts to dominate, we have to distinguish between cultural issues, which are inherently decentralizing ones, and political and economic issues, which tend to centralization and hierarchy” (“National Consciousness and Canadian Culture”).

This past year I was an external reviewer for a dissertation by a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at the U of T.   It was an exceptional piece of work, combining a number of disciplines––language, game theory, mathematics, critical theory, music, painting––into a genuine contribution to humanistic learning.  It will be a depressing state of affairs if such extraordinary and mature scholarship is no longer permitted to flourish at the U of T.  Everyone in the field, even those of us at a distance, knows what a distinguished program Comparative Literature at the U of T is.  To consign to the dustbin an exemplary program founded by Canada’s greatest man of letters would be a travesty of the highest order, and it would cause those of us who see the U of T as a flagship university in both Canada and the rest of the world to lose faith.

Yours truly,

Robert Denham

John P. Fishwick Professor of English, Emeritus, Roanoke College

Barbara Havercroft's Letter to Alumni asking for Support

Dear Alumni of the Centre for Comparative Literature,

As a fellow alumna of the Centre, I am writing to inform you of some very distressing news and to solicit your support.  The University of Toronto has recently and unexpectedly announced the “disestablishment” of the Centre for Comparative Literature as of 2011.  The Centre, founded in 1969 by Northrop Frye and the premier site for the study of Comparative Literature in Canada, will no longer be able to admit students to the PhD or MA degrees.  It will be reduced to a collaborative, non-degree-granting program in a future School for Languages and Literatures, a proposed new unit that will be formed by the fusion of all current language and literature departments except French and English.  For all intents and purposes, the Centre will cease to exist: all core faculty will lose their cross-appointments, no Comparative Literature courses will be offered, we will no longer have our offices, our space, our director and graduate coordinator, or our identity.  The proposed disappearance of the Centre will undoubtedly have an extremely negative impact on the future of the discipline in Canada and it reflects the general depreciation of the humanities and their essential contributions to knowledge and society.  I should add that the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is presently flourishing, with a cohort of excellent, motivated students, an innovative curriculum, a prestigious annual international conference organized by our students, and a number of exciting initiatives, such as the journal Transverse www.chass.utoronto.ca/complit for details).  The decision to close the Centre thus has absolutely nothing to do with the current state of the unit and everything to do with budgetary concerns and an ignorance of the discipline.

This disastrous course must be averted for the sake of literary and interdisciplinary studies in Canada.  On behalf of all faculty and students in the Centre, I am writing to ask if you would be willing to send a letter to President David Naylor of the University of Toronto, registering your concern at these proposed events.

If you write, we would be grateful if you could discuss the importance and relevance of Comparative Literature in today’s globalized, multicultural world.  In its crossing of cultural, disciplinary, and linguistic borders, in its self-reflexive and critical modes of thinking about literature and culture, the research nurtured by the Centre’s faculty and students is crucial for a full engagement with the complexities of a multipolar, multinational world, and is a model for the practice of the humanities in other disciplines.

If you do send a letter, please send a hard copy as well as an e-mail.  The hard copy should go to:

President David Naylor
University of Toronto
Simcoe Hall, Room 206
27 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1

The e-mail message should go to:  president@utoronto.ca

Please copy the e-mail to the Provost Cheryl Misak (provost@utoronto.ca), the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Meric Gertler (officeofthedean@artsci.utoronto.ca), and the Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature, Neil ten Kortenaar (neil.kortenaar@utoronto.ca).

I thank you kindly for your prompt attention to this request and for the time you will spend in composing your letter.  It is our sincere hope that if enough of us express our outrage at this decision, it will be reversed.

Yours sincerely,

Barbara Havercroft
Graduate Coordinator, Centre for Comparative Literature
(PhD 1989 from the Centre)