The Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University is the oldest Comparative Literature department in India. It was founded in 1956 by Buddhadeva Bose, poet, scholar and critic. It offers BA, MA, MPhil and PhD degrees.
The Department has been recognized as a Centre for Advanced Study by the UGC and attracts students from various parts of India as well as from abroad. Faculty, research scholars and students of the department are currently involved in a number of research projects.
The Department publishes the Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, one of Asia’s oldest journals on Comparative Literature. It is also home to the Kolkata chapter of the Comparative Literature Association of India (CLAI), the national body of comparatists in India.
What is Comparative Literature?
Comparative Literature is a holistic study of literature that defies boundaries of nation or language. It tries to look at world literature in terms of similarities, dissimilarities, and historical relations and map the interactions between them. The discipline embodies a spirit of inclusion and tries to effect a broadening of horizons with regard to objects of study. It is, at the same time, a way of reading, predicated as it is on a sense of location and relevance.
Welcome to the Department of Comparative Literature
The Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University is the oldest Comparative Literature department in India. It was, till recently, the only full-fledged department of Comparative Literature in the country. It offers BA, MA, MPhil and PhD degrees and attracts students from various parts of India as well as from abroad.
The Department was founded in 1956 by Buddhadeva Bose, poet, scholar and critic, and has been at the forefront of Comparative Literature pedagogy for the last several decades. Past and present faculty include some of the brightest luminaries of the Indian intellectual world. Sudhindranath Datta, Naresh Guha, Robert Antoine, David McCutcheon, Amiya Dev, Swapan Majumdar, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Manabendra Bandyopadhyay have all taught at the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University.