Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS):
Prof. Joseph R. Slaughter
Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
212.854.3215
Office Hours for Spring 2012:
Wednesdays 4:30pm-6:30pm or by appointment, 511A Philosophy Hall
The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society offers two tracks within its undergraduate Major program: Comparative Literature and Society (CLS); and Medicine, Literature, and Society (MLS). ICLS also offers an undergraduate Concentration. Both Major tracks and the Concentration require an application due by January 31st of the student’s sophomore year.
Descriptions of the two Major tracks and Concentration:
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND SOCIETY (CLS)
The Major Track in Comparative Literature and Society (CLS) allows qualified students to pursue the study of literature, culture, and society with reference to material from several national traditions, or in a combination of literary study with comparative study in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Under the guidance of the director of undergraduate studies, students select courses offered by the various participating departments.
The major is innovatively designed for students whose interest and expertise in languages other than English permit them to work comparatively in several national or regional cultures. The course of study differs from that of traditional comparative literature programs both in its cross-disciplinary nature and in its expanded geographic range, including not just European, but also Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American cultures. The program includes course work in the social sciences, and several of the program’s core courses are jointly taught by faculty from different disciplines. Students will thus explore a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches to cultural and literary artifacts in the broadest sense. The cross-disciplinary range of the program includes visual and media studies; the law and the humanities; and studies of space, cities, and architecture. As a major, the program in comparative literature and society can be said to flow naturally from Columbia’s Core Curriculum, and invariably attracts some of Columbia’s most ambitious and cosmopolitan students. Our ICLS students consistently graduate in the top 25% of Columbia College.
Given the wide variety of geographic and disciplinary specializations possible within the major, students construct their course sequence in close collaboration with the director of undergraduate studies. But all students share the experience of the "Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society" seminar in their sophomore year as well as that of the required senior seminar. The major is designed for students interested in the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural study of texts, traditions, media, and discourses in an increasingly transnational world.
MEDICINE, LITERATURE, AND SOCIETY (MLS)
The Major Track in Medicine, Literature, and Society (MLS) constitutes a course of study that examines the social and cultural dimensions of illness and health. While engaging an array of perspectives offered by the social sciences and the humanities, this track seeks to produce a new domain of learning across disciplinary bounds that brings in humanistic aspects of the life sciences in a range of cultural contexts.
Understanding how disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, religion, and literary study contribute to our knowledge of medicine and health is crucial in learning how to better address the political, socioeconomic, and human rights challenges we face in a world of rapid globalization and increasingly heterogeneous localities. While the humanities and arts provide insight into the experience of suffering, selfhood, and mutual obligation, historical study discloses how such ethical issues have been addressed differently over time by different regional, ethnic, and religious communities. How culture interacts with the individual experience of illness and how health is understood by individuals, societies, and cultures affect not only the ways in which medicine is practiced and health care is delivered—and to whom—but how we make sense of our world.
Our notions of wellness, illness, disability, and quality of life are intertwined with those of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity and impact political and economic decision-making on every level. Drawing as it does upon the intellectual strengths and insights of both the social sciences and the humanities, this program of study educates students to recognize the methodological complexity and the ethical, technological, and historical contexts of understanding the world as constituted not metaphorically by individual consciousnesses but literally by embodied beings and communities of bodies.
The MLS track was established in 2012 and affords students the opportunity to take courses taught by faculty across the Arts & Sciences as well as the Columbia Medical School, focusing in one of the following areas: Literature and Medicine; Medical Anthropology; and History of Medicine/Public Health.
The MLS major track addresses the ever-growing concern on the part of medical schools, graduate programs in public health, social work and clinical psychology, as well as other health service professionals, NGOs, and non-profit service agencies, that graduates entering the field be educated more fully in the humanities and its disciplinary skills (its ways of thinking and knowing) than is currently the norm.
UNDERGRADUATE CONCENTRATION AT ICLS
The Institute for Comparative Literature and Society also offers a concentration in Comparative Literature and Society that allows qualified students to complement their work in other majors with the study of literature, culture, and society. Like the CLS major track, the concentration is designed for students whose interest and expertise in languages other than English enable them to work comparatively in several national or regional cultures. The concentration is also interdisciplinary, affording students the opportunity to explore a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches to the study of cultural and literary artifacts. Students pursuing a concentration share with students in the major the experience of the Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society seminar in their sophomore year.
If you have questions or are interested in finding out more about a major or concentration in Comparative Literature and Society please contact Prof. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), Director of Undergraduate Studies, at (212) 854-3215.