Post Graduate Program in Comparative Studies: Cultures, Languages and Literatures, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University

The Cultures, Languages and Literatures Program at Florida Atlantic University is designed as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary course of study that enables doctoral students to develop expertise within traditional disciplines and across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. At the heart of our program is the recognition that cultures, languages and literatures are most fruitfully understood through comparative modes of analysis that include an ever-changing landscape of theory and methodologies.

This program will be both interdisciplinary (the integration of different fields) and multidisciplinary (the comparative analyses of different fields). Primary areas of strength for this broadly based program include studies of literature and migration, rhetoric and composition, U.S. multiethnic literatures, early modern literatures, gender, sexuality and embodiment, modernity and postmodernity in literature, space and place in literature, and postcolonial literature and culture. The curriculum also draws from such disciplines as Anthropology; Art History; Communication; History; Peace Studies; Philosophy and Religion; Political Science; Sociology; and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

This program promotes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work through a cohesive course of study. All students follow an interdisciplinary core curriculum before developing, in consultation with their advisory committees, areas of specialization that might themselves be multidisciplinary. We encourage students to address issues in cultures, languages and literatures from multiple perspectives and to seek the convergence of these perspectives through the insights of interdisciplinary approaches.