Several students sit around a table while another student writes on a chalk board

Academics

The Department of Comparative Literature provides a broad range of courses in European as well as non-European literatures. Courses variously stress significant authors, themes, problems, styles, genres, historical periods, and theoretical perspectives. In cooperation with related departments in the humanities, the departmental offerings reflect current interdisciplinary approaches to literary study: hermeneutics, semiotics, deconstruction, cultural criticism, Marxism, reception aesthetics, feminism, psychoanalysis.

— Tracy McNulty, Professor

In my own teaching, I’m always coming back to clinical examples. Freud is not just an important theoretical reference to know. I like teaching undergraduates because they really want to understand their own unconscious and that’s a lot of fun.