News

The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 has ranked UMass's modern languages department--that is, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures--in the top 20 of such departments in the US. Overall, UMass ranked globally in 36 areas, including Linguistics, Hospitality Management, and Agriculture and Forestry.

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Emeritus Professor of Polish and Comparative Literature Robert A. Rothstein is publishing a new book, A Final Dose of Words to the Wise, to be released on May 15, 2026.

Since 2004, Professor Rothstein has been writing about Polish language, literature, and folklore for the Boston-based biweekly Biały Orzeł/White Eagle. Inspired by the calendar, by items in the Polish press, by his experience learning and teaching the Polish language, by new acquisitions for his home library, by questions from readers, and by serendipity, he has explored, among other things, the origins of words and expressions

This was the first time that students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Russian, Eurasian and Polish Studies (REPS) program took part in Harvard University’s Annual Spoken Russian Language Olympiada—an event that draws top language students from across the region. Held on Sunday, April 6, 2025, at Harvard’s

Comparative Literature major Kylie Chamberlin (class of 2028) is one of UMass's two winners of the 2026 Five College Poetry & Prose Award. This juried award is presented annually to two students from six institutions: the Five Colleges and the Care Center at Bard Microcollege Holyoke.

Kylie and the other UMass winner, English major Sebastian Fuentes-Roberts ('27), were honored at a reading and reception in the Old Chapel on April 14. Congratulations, Kylie!

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

We are delighted to announce that Professor of German Ela Gezen is the Recipient of the 2025-2026 Joye Bowman Social Justice Award!

Named in honor of Joye Bowman, Professor of History, former Chair of the History Department, and Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, this award celebrates Dr. Bowman's enduring legacy of leadership, integrity, and dedication to social justice.

The Joye Bowman Social Justice Award recognizes Professor Gezen for her outstanding work that reflects her exceptional commitment to advancing equity, justice, and service within the College. Her selection honors

In her new book, Medieval Holy Women and the Desire for Death, Professor Jessica Barr questions the hagiographic commonplace that devout Christian women yearned for death as the quickest way of reaching their beloved, Christ. Placing medieval women’s religious writings (spiritual treatises, visionary narratives, autobiographical reflections) in dialogue with theology and hagiography, Barr seeks to elucidate the ways in which medieval people anticipated or experienced biological death on a personal level. In narrating their spiritual lives within the framework of deeply held Christian beliefs