Overview
With a renowned literature faculty, a national leadership role in intensive language education, and impressive media collections, Dartmouth College offers a rigorous and exciting Masters degree for those interested in comparative studies. In an increasingly complex and interrelated world, the Comparative Literature Program provides a valuable opportunity to study literature from a variety of perspectives. It explores literature in an international framework and investigates literature’s point of contact with other spheres of human expression. The comparative study of literature will appeal to students interested in languages and literatures, who enjoy approaches that bridge traditional academic disciplines, and who wish to apply the skills of literary analysis to the study of culture.

The aim of Dartmouth's one-year Masters Program is to provide the tools necessary for Ph.D. study or for careers in teaching and international studies. The curriculum is designed to consolidate and deepen students’ undergraduate research and to provide the necessary background for advanced scholarly work. Each student's program of study is individually designed in consultation with a faculty advisor. More than forty faculty members from different departments participate actively in the Program.

The Comparative Literature program encourages applications from international students. In recent years the program has included students from Germany, Lebanon, China, Peru, Morocco, the Netherlands, and other countries.

Recent recipient of the Masters degree have moved directly into Ph.D. programs at schools such as Duke, NYU, Columbia, and Yale. Many have entered careers in high school and college teaching.

About the College
Dartmouth College, a member of the Ivy League, is a private, four-year, coeducational liberal arts institution with graduate schools of business, engineering and medicine and 16 graduate programs in the arts and sciences.

Dartmouth is the nation's ninth-oldest college, founded in 1769. Dartmouth became coeducational in 1972.

Famous alumni of the college include Daniel Webster (1801), poet Robert Frost (1896), Kanichi Asakawa, the founder of Asian Studies in the United States (1899), pioneering biologist E.E. Just (1907), Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel (1925), Vice President Nelson Rockefeller (1930), former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop M.D. (1937), former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich (1968), and writer Louise Erdrich (1976).

Dartmouth's unique blending of university resources with a college's focus on quality teaching offers small classes, top-flight facilities, and an outstanding faculty. Professors here are among the leaders in their fields yet remain committed to teaching. Students have the opportunity to take advantage of faculty accessibility throughout their Dartmouth careers.

Facilities
At the heart of the college is one of the oldest research libraries in the United States -- Baker Library. Today the Library offers local access to about 2 million printed volumes; over 21,000 journal subscriptions; over 2.3 million microforms; more than 67,000 audiovisual titles; and over 164,000 maps. In addition to local holdings, the Library offers access to the holdings of other libraries around the world through cooperative interlibrary loan agreements and electronic networks

Dartmouth is also at the forefront of educational computing; Dartmouth's high-speed computer network links all dormitory rooms, administrative and academic buildings, and mainframe computers on- and off-campus. More than 9,000 PCs are in use campuswide.

The arts at Dartmouth flourish in the two excellent facilities designed to make artistic expression a vital part of community life: the Hood Museum of Art and the Hopkins Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

The Community
Hanover, New Hampshire is located on the western side of the state in the scenic upper Connecticut River valley. The river forms the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. The Upper Valley is readily accessible in any season by train, plane, bus and automobile on well maintained roads and interstate. Hanover is 2 hours from Boston, 3 hours from Montreal, and 5 hours from New York City. Some visitors actually hike here via the Appalachian Trail (Maine to Georgia) which meanders through Hanover, up and down Main Street (business district) and crosses the Connecticut River into Norwich. Commercial air service is available to and from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and beyond. A regional bus transportation system serves the area as well.

Degree Requirements
Requirements for the M.A. degree include completion of a minimum number courses, as well as two research projects.
Coursework:
Nine courses fulfill the degree requirement. Students take 3 courses per term for 3 quarters.

CL 100 Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory
CL 101 Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory
CL 102 Tutorial: intensive work with a faculty mentor on a project in comparative studies
CL 103 Workshop in Critical Writing
CL 105 Graduate Seminar in Research and Methodology

In 2002–03 the topic of CL 100 will be “Literary and Cultural Theory” and the topic of CL 101 is “Feminist Theories, Queer Theories.”

Four elective courses in relevant Dartmouth language and literature departments. Classes are small, with most limited to graduate students.

Research projects:
Major Text Presentation: Students will study one major text or group of texts in their field of specialization from a variety of different perspectives-- critical, theoretical, historical, comparative –and at the end of winter term will prepare a lecture on that text for faculty and peers.

The M.A. Essay: During the spring term students are required to produce an article of professional standard demonstrating scholarly command of the tools of comparative study.

Financial Aid
All students receive a full tuition waiver and many are awarded a nine-month fellowship to cover living expenses. In 2002–2003, the fellowship amount is $11,250. Health insurance is included in the fellowship. Students are required to work as a condition of receiving the degree. The Comparative Literature Program assists students in finding positions as teaching assistants, language apprentice teachers, writing assistants, or research assistants within relevant Dartmouth departments.

How to Apply
Admission Requirements:
•A strong undergraduate record in a major in any humanities field
•Fluent reading, writing, and speaking knowledge of one foreign language
•Beginning training in a second foreign language
•The successful completion of an independent writing project or honors thesis
•A writing sample
•Submission of GRE scores optional
•Three letters of recommendation
•Language proficiency forms for each language

Who to Contact:
Ms. Wanda Bachmann, Administrator
Comparative Literature Program
HB 6051
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-2912
Wanda.Bachmann@Dartmouth.edu
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~complit/masters/index.html


THE FACULTY AND THEIR RESEARCH

Jonathan Crewe (English)
Renaissance literature, critical theory, contemporary literature and culture

Laurence Davies (English)
Millenarianism, Anglophone literatures especially West African and Celtic, literatures of the fantastic and the uncanny, speculative fiction (utopian/dystopian and science fiction), modernist fiction

Gerd Gemünden (German Studies)
Contemporary German and European film and literature; cinema of the Third Reich, literary theory and cultural studies; special interests include travel literature, tourism, and vampirism

Mary Jean Green (French and Italian)
Literature and culture of twentieth-century France, as well as writing in French from the Francophone regions of Quebec, Africa and the Caribbean; writings by women from a variety of different cultures

Lynn Higgins (French and Italian)
French 20th and 21st century prose fiction and film, fiction and history, literary theory and criticism, women filmmakers and feminist criticism

Marianne Hirsch (French and Italian)
Twentieth century fiction, feminist theory, cultural memory, psychoanalysis, photography, the Holocaust

Irene Kacandes (German Studies)
Twentieth century prose fiction, especially the novel; modern German literature (1750-present); modern Greek literature; Holocaust studies; cultural studies; feminist theory; discourse analysis; orality and literacy

John Kopper (Russian)
Modernist prose, literature and science, Russian novel, symbolism, genre theory, classical roots of European literature

Lawrence D. Kritzman (French and Italian)
Literature of the European Renaissance; psychoanalysis and literature; critical theory; cultural studies; contemporary European intellectual thought; Jewish studies

David LaGuardia (French and Italian)
Sixteenth century nouvelle in French, material culture of the Renaissance, international cultural studies, popular culture

Monika Otter (English)
Medieval literature (English, Latin, French, German), especially 11th-13th centuries, romances, historiography and pseudo-historiography, saints' lives, literature and art history, literature and music

Beatriz Pastor (Spanish)
Contemporary Latin American Literature and the Literature of the Conquest

Ulrike Rainer (German Studies)
Eighteenth century prose and poetry, women's studies, the uncanny, film and literature

Steven Scher (German Studies)
18th-20th century German literature, European Romanticism, interrelations of literature and music, comparative literature, literary theory

Silvia Spitta (Spanish and Portuguese)
Contemporary and colonial Latina/o American writers, theories of transculturation, narratives of mestizaje or miscegenation

Dennis Washburn (Asian Studies)
Late 19th and 20th century literature and the relationship between the visual arts (especially film), modern Japanese prose fiction in the early decades of this century

Margaret Williamson (Classics)
Archaic and classical Greek literature (especially lyric and drama), gender theory, the classical tradition

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