On April 12 Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (2010) and I Am Radar: A Novel (2015), visited Comp Lit graduate student Shastri Akella's classroom to meet and discuss his writing. Later in the evening, the author gave a talk at Amherst Books about the adaptation of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet into the film The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013) directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. 

Professor Moira Inghilleri, Ph.D. will spend two weeks in March at the University of Graz in Austria as a Fulbright Specialist in Migration. She will be lecturing on interpreting for refugee and asylum seekers, running a workshop on translation ethics, and participating in various activities related to a two-year 'Refugee Aid Program' sponsored by the University of Graz. Continue to full News story.

Combining theory and practice and taking advantage of the UMass New York Professional Outreach Program, NYPOP, Cristiano Mazzei, director of translator and interpreter training, took his students for a visit to the United Nations. As part of their Comp-Lit 582 course, Interpreting and Translation Research and Practice II. Students toured the organization and had a private briefing with Mr. Sergei Kochetkov, Chief of the Russian Interpretation Section who discussed the day-to-day activities of interpreters, their challenges and more.

Career opportunities with a degree in Comparative Literature are diverse and may include Advertising, Branding, Business, Copy Editing, Corporate Communications, Consulting, Education, the Film and Television Industry, Graduate School, Human Resources, Interpreter, IT Journalism, Law Librarian, Literary Agent, Marketing, Medicine, Multi-media Production, Online Market Research, Proofreader, Paralegal, Publishing, Public Health, Translator, Theater, Freelance Writing, or Speech.

The study of literary texts (writing judged by a culture to be important for its aesthetic, content or contextual qualities) is an ancient discipline practiced for more than a millennium in cultures around the globe. By collaborating with other departments and institutions, employing media and communications technologies, and thinking beyond the bounds of the conventional classroom, Comparative Literature is continuously developing and improving this study through creativity and innovation.

Since 1991, Film (as a concentration) has become a dynamic center fo interdepartmental and interdisciplinary activity with participation from a solid core of faculty members representing fifteen departments from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the School of Education. The Program offers both an Undergraduate and Graduate Certificate in the Film Concentration.

The Comparative Literature faculty have strengths in film and digital media, translation and interpreting, colonial and post-colonial, and medieval and modern. With them, students explore, compare, and contrast different languages, a variety of cultural traditions, in multiple forms of media.

Faculty pictured are, from left to right, back row: Bill Moebius, Cathy Portuges, Chris Couch, Jessica Barr, Edwin Gentzler, and Jim Hicks;  front row: Don Levine, Marisol Barbón, Maria Tymoczko, Moira Inghilleri, Annette Damayanti Lienau, and Kathryn Lachman.