::  The Department of Comparative Literature has a rich academic life, which includes a lecture series that has been running for more than twenty years, bringing internationally renowned scholars to our department to complement the program of seminars. There is also a Philosophical Reading Group, which gives faculty and students the chance to read challenging work by philosophers, such as Hegel, Kant, and Husserl. The Reading Group can be taken for credit.

Graduate student groups also play an important role in academic life. In the past, students have brought lecturers and held film showings, discussions, and reading groups. In recent years, student groups have included the Marxist Reading Group, the Freudian Field, the Research Group in the History of Ideas, Renaissance Studies, and the Graduate Americanist Group. All of these groups are organized across disciplines, including graduate students from many different departments in the humanities.