News
Ash Maria a finalist for the 2025 Penn Grad Talks
February 15, 2025
PhD Student Ash Maria is a finalist in the Humanities division for the 2025 Penn Grad Talks for "How I’ll Study My 12th Language (and Why Duolingo Isn’t It)." The Humanities category will take place between 1-2 p.m. on Friday, February 21 in Widener Lecture Hall at the Penn Museum (3260 South Street).
Samantha Pious publishes Cactus Flowers: Selected Poems of Judith Teixeira
February 15, 2025
COML PhD Samantha Pious has a new book coming out this June! Cactus Flowers offers verse translations from the Portuguese of Judith Teixeira, perhaps the only bisexual woman poet to publish openly in 1920s Lisbon. Published by Headmistress Press.
Faculty Member Huda Fakhreddine Elected to ACLA Board
January 27, 2025
Huda Fakhreddine has been elected 2nd Vice President of the American Comparative Literature Association's Board. Congratulations, Huda!
PhD Candidate Deanna Cachoian-Schanz Wins Modernist Studies Association Translation Award
October 30, 2024
WINNER: Shushan Avagyan, A Book, Untitled, translated from Armenian by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz (AWST Press, 2023)
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.