The aim of the program is to encourage students to study a varied and illustrative range of literary topics rather than the total development of a single literary tradition.

Concentrators in Comparative Literature should be willing to try different approaches to literature and to examine literary and aesthetic problems with sustained curiosity. Comparative Literature differs from other literature concentrations largely through its international focus and its broad-gauged view of art and culture in which the study of languages is combined with the analysis of literature and literary theory.