University of South Carolina Columbia
Act 629 - Summary Reports on Institutional Effectiveness
Fiscal Year 2001 - 2002

Comparative Literature, M.A., Ph.D.

Comparative Literature is in the second year of its current strategic plan. After a period of crisis, which included a two-year moratorium on the admission of new students, the program is under new leadership and has been provided with fresh resources. A program that had been on life support now boasts a reinvigorated faculty, student body, and curriculum as testified to by the glowing evaluation we recently received from the CHE. This marks the normalization and reintegration of Comparative Literature into the College of Liberal Arts as one of the largest and most productive graduate programs at the University of South Carolina.

If anything program faculty are victims of our own success. The program currently face a shortage of GA positions necessary to support a quality Ph.D. program. Faculty are in the process of reviewing policies on graduate support to insure they are making the most efficient use of our resources. Program faculty have also sought to raise money through the College of Liberal Arts Development Office. The latter has promised to help the program raise as much as $15,000, but has taken no action. The problem is critical since in these times of heightened budgetary pressures there are increased demands for higher student to faculty FTE ratios, but these cannot be achieved in a program that is emerging from an admissions moratorium unless it is able to support an expanding student body.

If Comparative Literature is not only to survive but to thrive, if it is to fulfill its potential to aid the university in becoming a member of the American Association of Universities, it will require continuing an ambitious program of curricular revision and expansion, student and faculty recruiting, and national and regional advertising. The goal is to become one of the top Comparative Literature Programs in the region. Faculty will do that by having a clearly defined student and research profile centered on the history of literary theory. Faculty will publicize that core definition through publications, conferences, direct mailings, and electronic media. If provided the resources necessary to insure sufficient faculty to cover major student areas of interest and to recruit a steady number of quality graduate students, the program now has the curriculum and professoriate in place to become a nationally recognized program.