Research

Internationally recognized scholarship

Comparative literature scholarship encompasses the world, since literary expression is to be found all over the globe, in countries large and small, rich and poor. It reaches from 21st century writing all the way back to the first instances of language in literary forms. Many critical debates on how books are written and how interpretation takes place have been centered in comparative literature departments around the world.

Researchers in our department have been exploring the international and interdisciplinary nature of literature at Indiana University for seventy-five years. Our faculty and students have translated important literary texts and written interdisciplinary and theoretical works. Some of the most significant research in the field has been conducted by Indiana University professors throughout the long history of the department and continues to this day.

Particular areas of strength at IU have been traditionally in:

  • Bible as literature
  • Literature and the other arts
  • Theory
  • Translation
  • African Studies and Comparative Literature
  • Asian Studies and Comparative Literature

New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa (NEMLIA)

Professor Akin Adesokan is involved in a faculty-led initiative affiliated with Indiana University’s African Studies Program. Known as New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa, NEMLIA is a project dedicated to exploring the important-but-little-understood relationships between the different modes of literary and media production in literature, film, photography, art, and music and issues of intellectual property, copyright, piracy and access.