CCL, University of Hyderabad

The Centre was established in 1988 at the School of Humanities, Central University of Hyderabad. Nestling among single literature departments of the School, the aim is to encourage linguistic diversity and enable traffic among languages and literatures, accommodate the interactions and cross-cultural inter-changes, and encourage interdisciplinarity and border-crossings.

Centre offers three programmes: M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D., each with rigorous coursework followed by project work / dissertation.

Centre draws faculty and students from different fields and diverse backgrounds placing Comparative Literature at the intersection of literature with other cultural forms such as film, theatre, visual arts, music and dance, and new media, as well as other disciplines such as gender studies, translation studies and others. Comparative Literature helps students and scholars to explore the global diversity of literary forms, genres, styles while acquainting them with modes and methods of comparative study. Theoretical, formal, and interpretive issues on literary and cultural texts and traditions from various parts of the country and the world provide a broad range of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives to the Courses on offer. The subject matter and scholarship of Comparative Literature have always ranged outside the boundaries of one country, language, society and culture as the fundamental project of Comparative Literature is to cultivate reading across linguistic and social boundaries in order to highlight and include everything that the exclusive focus on a national literature tends to obscure. Special interest of CCL is Looking East.

Programmes are designed for students whose interest in literature and culture embraces works in multiple languages, who are eager to trace the transformations and travels of genres, themes and texts across time and space, explore the way literature connects with history, philosophy, politics, sociology, media, and literary theory, generate new discourses with contemporary focus. The Courses promote multidisciplinary, historically self-reflexive and cross-cultural study of texts, traditions, and discourses and encourage students to pursue a wide variety of interests while gaining rigorous training in reading, writing, speaking, and thinking critically in multiple languages and literary traditions. After or in tandem with the introductory courses, research scholars meet their advisors to prepare a course of study that best suits their research proposal and aim. At the same time the students have the opportunity to take courses listed or cross-listed under the Comparative Literature rubric with other Centres and Departments in the University which may assist their particular research interest. The most attractive aspect of the Comparative Literature at CCL is its flexibility and freedom to choose courses from other disciplines that may be helpful for extending their knowledge.