August 3, 2010
Dear President Naylor,
I am writing as an incoming PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature this fall to express my deep disappointment and distress at the recent news of the proposed closure of the program I am about to commence.
To begin with, I must say that this announcement has come at a very difficult moment in the academic year for me: at a time when I am supposed to be searching for a place to live, preparing to move to Toronto for the next four years and writing SSHRC and OGS grant applications, I am now having to reconsider my decision to attend the University of Toronto and giving serious thought to applying to other programs; the announcement of the recommended changes is surely most ill-timed for new graduate students.
My proposed area of specialization is in contemporary women's literature in Britain, Spain and France; my background is in French language, literature and translation. During the application process for my doctoral studies, I chose the University of Toronto and the Centre for Comparative Literature not only over other universities and other Comparative Literature programs but also over programs in national language departments; I made this choice precisely because of the opportunity of working with cross-appointed English, French, and Spanish professors using a comparative approach to the literature and cultures which interest me. The U of T's Centre for Comparative Literature with its interdisciplinary mandate and its ties to national language departments such as English, French, and Spanish & Portuguese as well as the Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies seemed to me to offer the most exciting intellectual space in which to pursue my research. In fact, it was the only school in North America at which I found, among the cross-appointed professors, a suitable potential supervisor in my area of research. On top of this, the U of T was strongly recommended to me by my professors as the best place in Canada to study Comparative Literature, with an excellent reputation and a thriving group of professors and graduate students.
For me (and likely for many of my colleagues), the proposed new School of Languages and Literatures is not a logical place to do my research in Comparative Literature as it excludes two of the three cultures and languages that I will examine: British and French. Furthermore, with the elimination of cross-appointed faculty, my course options would be greatly reduced and my supervisor no longer part of my program. There may be solutions to these issues for me as an incoming student in 2010, but in the future, Comparative Literature at U of T would not interest a student like myself. In addition, I do not see how a collaborative program within a school of languages and literature can offer the space for the exchange of ideas between comparatists which students like myself are keen to explore; I am very concerned that the proposed collaborative program will not attract the quality of students with whom I have been so looking forward to work. In any case, the structure and operation of the new School of Language and Literature and the place of Comparative Literature within it is currently so unclear as to suggest that this will be an extremely unstable time to begin my studies at U of T. Essentially, with the closure of the Centre for Comparative Literature in 2011, my primary reasons for attending the University of Toronto would disappear.
To conclude, it seems to me that the University of Toronto administration's proposed closure of the Centre and creation of a collaborative program in Comparative Literature reflects a short-sightedness focussed solely on financial considerations, a misunderstanding of the role and the contributions of the discipline of Comparative Literature within literary studies today and a step backwards in the U of T's commitment to the Humanities, not to mention a troubling disregard for the incoming graduate cohort who, by the time of the announcement, had already given up opportunities to study elsewhere.
I certainly hope that during the upcoming consultation process, a less drastic, more logical solution can be found to address the University's financial concerns with respect to the future of its world-renowned Centre for Comparative Literature.
Yours truly,
Sita Monsef-Rao
Incoming PhD Candidate
Centre for Comparative Literature
Cc: Cheryl Misak; Meric Gertler; the Save CompLit campaign.
