An Historical Overview
By Henry H.H. Remack, Professor Emeritus
The Indiana University Comparative Literature Department is one of the oldest in the United States. It is also one of the most comprehensive and integrated. From its initial stages onwards, it has inaugurated and implemented principles and policies that give it, more than fifty years later, a very particular stamp.
It has, from the very beginning, unlike most comparative literature programs in the country, included a complete, undergraduate degree-granting structure.
From the outset, it has stood, on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, on a sturdy basis in the foreign (including the classical) languages and literatures that provide a strong foundation for faculty research and teaching, and solid competence of its graduates.
With the generous cooperation of other departments and programs, it has included, in its instructional staff and course offerings, a variety of scholars from other departments and schools. On the other hand, it has the budgetary independence of controlling its own nuclear courses and seminars taught by faculty with official appointments and responsibilities in Comparative Literature.
Indiana University has enjoyed, for nearly half a century, the exceptional advantages of interdisciplinary, interdepartmental programs (medieval studies, cultural studies, film studies, India studies, Jewish studies, etc.) with close ties to Comparative Literature.
The curriculum, intercultural as well as inter-disciplinary, is adjusted from time to time to accommodate the legitimate evolution of scholarship and the needs of our students.
While most of the literature we have studied and taught over the years is European in origin, the department has pioneered, since the early 1950's and long before the trend spread, in the area of Oriental-Occidental literary and cultural relations through periodic conferences, exchanges, visits, lectures and, most importantly, course and seminar offerings.
Taking advantage of the university's outstanding strengths in the visual arts and music, the department has also been a leader in inter-arts teaching and research.
The Department is recognized throughout the world as a pioneer in the integration of interdisciplinary studies into the field of comparative literature. Very early in its existence, it included other humanistic areas (philosophy, folklore, religious studies) in its purview, followed by systematically comparative examination of the relationship of literature film, history, society, politics, law, science, etc.
The unique, inter-national as well as inter-disciplinary profile of the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University crystallized in 1961 in a collaborative book written exclusively by (then) current and former members of the department's faculty: Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective, edited by Newton P. Stallknecht and Horst Frenz, (revised in 1971, which remained in print for no less than thirty years and was influential in defining the discipline nationally and internationally.
In 1961, the editorial office of the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, moved to Indiana University, where it has remained ever since. It is one of the principal organs of our discipline throughout the world.
In sum, the Indiana University Department of Comparative Literature has maintained, over more than half a century, a balance of continuity and change, of coherence and individualism that has given it a distinct and enduring place in American and World comparatism.
