News

Samantha Pious's début poetry collection, Sappho Is Dead, published by Headmistress Press.

May 08, 2024

Headmistress Press is proud to present the debut collection of Samantha Pious SAPPHO IS DEAD

This collection is about queer women’s literary tradition and experimentation—in other words, building a canon of our own.

Please see link:  (https://www.amazon.com/Sappho-Dead-Samantha-Pious/dp/B0D29SYTXB)

COMP Lit students honored as Dean's Scholars for 2024

May 03, 2024

The School of Arts and Sciences has bestowed the honor of Dean's Scholar to:

Liam Phillips (Russian and East European Studies and Comparative Literature), the College of Arts and Sciences

Timmy Straw (Comparative Literature and Literary Theory), the Graduate Division- Doctoral Programs

Comparative Literature Undergraduates Inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa 2024

April 09, 2024

One hundred and thirty-one students will be initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa, including nine juniors, eighty-six seniors, and thirty-six 2023 graduates.  Among these are three Comparative Literature majors.  Two graduating seniors, Liam Phillips and Arthur Wei, and junior, Tovah Tachau.  

Congratulations and best wishes to all three from the Comparative Literature Undergraduate Program!

 

REMEMBERING DANIEL DEWISPELARE (1983-2024), ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND GRADUATE OF THE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND LITERARY THEORY PROGRAM

January 29, 2024

The University of Pennsylvania Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory and its communities join many others in mourning the untimely passing of our alumnus, Daniel DeWispelare (1983-2024). Daniel was Associate Professor at the George Washington University. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado before coming to Penn to complete his Ph.D. He was Visiting Assistant Professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Türkiye, before joining the GW Department of English.

Joan DeJean, Professor of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory died December 2, 2023

December 07, 2023

Joan DeJean, Trustee Professor Emerita of Romance Languages in the School of Arts & Sciences and the Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Program, renowned scholar of 17th- and 18th-century French literature,  died on December 2 of ALS.   She was 75 years old.

The Thomas Salto, Timmy Straw's latest poetry book

November 29, 2023

Picked by the Washington Post as one of The Best Poetry Selections for 2023, Timmy Straw's The Thomas Salto takes its name from a difficult and dangerous move in gymnastics, a leaping triple flip popularized during the last years of the Cold War. Both in its Reagan-grained historicity, and in the human body that bears the leap’s flight and risk, the Thomas salto is a kinetic figure for these poems’ action in time and space.

In Conversation with the 2023 PEN Translates Awards Translators: Deanna Cachoian-Schanz on the Mania of Translation

November 28, 2023

Translator Deanna Cachoian-Schanz was awarded one of the prestigious PEN Translates grants earlier this year for her work on Shushan Avagyan’s Girq-anvernakira rich, experimental novel that speaks to repressions, literary legacy, and the expansive collisions between disparate writings, voices, times, and lives.

Words Without Borders on Deanna Cachoian-Schanz's translation of A Book, Untitled by Shushan Avagyan

November 28, 2023

From Tilted Axis Press | A Book, Untitled by Shushan Avagyan, translated from the Armenian by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz.

Words Without Borders

How Emily Wilson Made Homer Modern

September 11, 2023

See Judith Thurman's article in the New Yorker magazine, September 11, 2023, on how Emily Wilson's "vitally urgent translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey strip away the “tarnish of centuries.” "

Link and audio at: 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/emily-wilson-profile