The undergraduate minor in Comparative Thought and Literature (CTL) will be offered beginning in Fall 2025. Inquiries about the major may be addressed to Prof. Yi-Ping Ong.
The undergraduate minor in Comparative Thought and Literature is designed for students who wish to examine and practice humanistic thinking in order to tackle complex contemporary problems, which no single civilization or discipline alone can solve. How do we read, write, create, and live well across languages and cultures?
Courses for the minor
- explore the transformative power of literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and aesthetic cultural forms
- examine how different traditions form different concepts of personhood, freedom, collective life, and nature
- develop the habits of attention, close reading, and imagination that prepare students to think intelligently about questions at the heart of the human (and more-than-human) condition
- prepare students to play an effective and creative role in their respective fields by testing their assumptions and critically examining humans as ethical agents
The minor in CTL (see below for course requirements) provides a rich introduction to the documents and thought of modern culture for all students, from those interested in a general liberal arts preparation to those in one of the university’s pre-professional programs. In these courses, we develop ways to talk in and through philosophy, intellectual history, film, literature, music, and art.
To do so, we research and teach both national and trans-national literatures, media, and intellectual history from across the globe in conversation and debate with other forms of thought, including those of underrepresented groups and new areas of research on Indigenous peoples.
Structure of the minor
- Six courses are required for the minor, plus an Introductory session for new CTL minors consisting in a faculty-led roundtable exploring the questions “what is a concept?” and “what is a text?”
- Of the six courses, three must be lower-level (100-200), three must be at the 300-level
- At least one of the lower-level courses must be “text-based”: such courses study one or more core texts from different methodological perspectives.
- At least one of the lower-level courses must be “concept-based”: such courses examine one or more concepts from different disciplinary perspectives (literary, philosophical, historical, legal etc.)
- Elective courses counting for the minor can be either text-based, concept-based, or other, and must be offered by Comparative Thought and Literature faculty.
- Students near the completion of the minor will be invited to participate in a student-designed capstone experience. This could be a practicum, a symposium, or special event.
The CTL minor supports the core “Foundational Abilities” of the General Education Model. Small, writing-intensive seminars enable students to engage in close study and intense discussion of critical texts and verbal works of art from a range of traditions around the world (Foundational Abilities #1 and #3).
Many CTL classes also explore ethical foundations in local, national, and global traditions in a profound way (Foundational Abilities #4 and #5). The capstone option, as well as CTL’s Honors Program, supports Foundational Ability #6, enabling a senior to “independently conceptualize and complete a large-scale, consequential project.”