At the moment, IU Comparative Literature has evolved into a period of unparalleled success appropriate for an RI institution. Five books by core members have been published in the academic year 2023-24. They research topics range from the interdisciplinary nature of literature and media in modern Africa, to Russian and European literature, to interconnections of early Christianity in Egypt and Europe, to an examination of epic literature in the west ranging over more than a 1,000 years, to recent theories of interpretation. Hats off to Akin Adesokan (Everything is Sampled: Digital and Print Mediations in African Arts and Letters), Sonia Velázquez (Promiscuous Grace: Imagining Beauty and Holiness with Saint Mary of Egypt), Jacob Emery (The Vortex that Unites Us: Versions of Totality in Russian Literature), and Michel Chaouli (Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins)! A fifth book, The Choice of Odysseus: Homeric Ethics in Renaissance Epic and Opera, was published by Professor Sarah Van der Laan, who has left IU for the University of Kansas at Lawrence. I asked four of our authors to comment on the experience of writing their books in this special issue of Encompass. I found their comments to be fascinating and revealing.
The scholarly book remains one of the benchmark achievements in the humanities. IU Comparative Literature has contributed to the visibility of the university, as our scholarly writings are in research libraries around the world and turning up in google searches everywhere.
As a humanist, I am more impressed by actual humanities research—books, articles, literary translation-- than abstract numbers that may or may not accurately describe the impact of scholarly writing. Nevertheless, data assembled for our recent outside review corroborates these impressive achievements. If we look at the range of IU Comparative Literature articles, books and awards from 2012 to 2021, our unit emerged in the top 5 of all national Comparative Literature departments and programs in “citations per publication” (no. 3); “citations per faculty” rises to the top 5 as well (no. 4). If we incorporate our core and affiliated faculty (including adjuncts) into the measurement, we are ranked no. 1 out of 43 programs in terms of “articles per author.”
This is not too shabby!
As our outside reviewers observed, the intellectual atmosphere in Comp Lit at the current time is open-minded and non-dogmatic. A picture from the recent College Book Party (we thank the College for organizing this) gives a sense of the atmosphere. Each scholar is holding the other scholar’s book. This is the type of understanding and appreciation we want to encourage both within our field and around the university.
International perspective, deeply appreciative of the cultures of the world as they interrelate, interdisciplinarity, preserving a place for the study of literary culture as it fits in context with the other arts and culture at large, the highest scholarly standards—these are the sorts of things we want to encourage and which we use to gauge our success. IU Comparative Literature, with its longstanding traditions of tolerance and intellectual curiosity, remains one of the best institutional models that stand as an antidote to the xenophobia and narrow-mindedness we see in the world today.
New ventures for undergraduate development intended to aid both Comparative Literature and the College have already begun. The first one is the Aleph Project, headed by Professor Eyal Peretz. It is receiving new funding as of 2024 and thereafter. It us one of our initiatives that seek to get some of the excellence of the faculty and the graduate program refocused anew in our undergraduate program. The Aleph Project brings our research scholars in contact with our undergraduates. One of thing of great importance is to bring our undergraduate students into more direct contact with our many fine research professors, to actually talk to them about their research interests, and in in this way to help them learn more about what it means to actually do research in the humanities. We have a world-class faculty. Enabling IU students to work with them on a one-on-one tutorial basis and even get a small scholarship for doing it creates new ways to make this happen.
Thanks to the flexibility afforded by recent private donations, new funding has been earmarked for undergraduate education. Encompass readers can learn more about it here, and other new initiatives here.
These days we are able to help our graduate students with far more assistance than we could in the past. It is a wonderful thing. But we are also turning our attention to undergraduate education in the humanities. The Pasko Scholarship is a new award for students may wish to attend Indiana University and declare a major in Comparative Literature or for students already at the university who wish to declare a double major in Comparative Literature and an outside field.
I will list just a few of the recent awards and scholarships for outstanding graduate students:
Our professors emeriti remain vital and active in their areas of research, long after their salaried teaching years ended. This is a real proof of enduring commitment to research and creative activity. One case in point is Distinguished Professor Emeritus Willis Barnstone, now 96, who is publishing three books this fall! Details are to be found elsewhere in this issue.
Finally, one of our most remarkable alumni, Professor Xiaomei Chen, returned to Indiana University to give our annual Wertheim Lecture in drama in early 2024. Professor Chen has had a magnificent career at the University of California (at Davis), rising to the rank of Distinguished Professor there. It all began with a dissertation she defended back in 1989. On her committee were Eugene Eoyang (co-director); Irving Lo (co-director), C. Clifford Flanigan, and Brian Caraher. She comments on her career and the experience of revisiting Bloomington elsewhere in the newsletter.
Congratulations to all of our outstanding professors, students and alumni for your achievements this year! It is an honor to write about all the excellent work you are are doing.
If you are an IU Comparative Literature graduate please send us your news. We would love to hear from you.
David Michael Hertz
Chair and Professor of Comparative Literature
The College of Arts