The Program in Comparative Literature invites you to Crossroads VIII: Alterity and the Comparative Imagination, an in-person graduate conference to be held on April 10–11, 2026. Centered on the question of alterity, the conference explores how comparative literature, as both method and discipline, engages with forms of difference (social, cultural, geopolitical, and so on). Bringing together emerging scholars, the conference examines how texts stage encounters with the “other,” and how comparative reading practices can illuminate the ethical, political, and epistemological stakes of such encounters. Panels will address themes such as phenomenology and aesthetics, memory and knowledge, folklore, and formal comparison. The conference will feature a keynote address by Professor Leela Gandhi (Brown University), titled “Nonviolent Action in a Comparative Framework,” which examines global intellectual histories alongside materials from Indic antiquity. Open to the university community, Crossroads offers a space for interdisciplinary conversations at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and critical theory.
All sessions will take place in Herter 301, beginning at 2:00 on Friday, April 10 and concluding at 6:00 on Saturday, April 11.