The Comparative Literature Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies is a pioneering program in the region, aiming uniquely to engage with the emergent approaches of the
New Comparative Literature and key recent debates in the discipline. In this respect, the Program focuses on recent crucial reflections on the discipline's historical formations, and the methodological challenges of working across languages and traditions. Expertise and perspectives from non-European literary, aesthetic and critical traditions are integral to this approach.
With its critical humanist and interdisciplinary thrust, and through its uniquely designed core and elective courses, the Program aims to train a new generation of comparative literature scholars, who will be able to situate themselves in the discipline at large as a new type of Arabist and comparative literary theorist.
The course offerings are conceived and designed at an advanced level to offer training in comparative literary theories and interpretive modes of reading, while offering new modalities for crossing linguistic, cultural, literary and historical borders. They also seek to re-conceptualize the current debates, introducing specially designed courses on Arabic literature as an exemplary to approaches to non-European literatures. Other offerings will focus on the questions of production, reception and circulation as textual phenomena, and on close reading as necessary tool for analytic engaging with texts.
All these components contribute to the Program's distinctiveness as an ambitious project, combining cutting edge theoretical explorations and engagement with current international debates, with a unique Arab and regional perspective on comparative literature.
Comparative Literature Program Learning Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate critical engagement with the formation, histories and practices of the traditional discipline of Comparative Literature, while drawing on the interdisciplinary impulses and theoretical debates of the New Comparative Literature.
2. Critically examine current debates in approaches to World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies and Translation Studies.
3. Demonstrate critical sensibility and competency in the performance of close reading and textual analysis as the requisite skills for the comparatist and critical humanist.
4. Demonstrate a deep understanding of key theoretical concepts and current debate in the humanities and the ethical positioning of critical humanism.
5. Critically analyze conceptions of the literary from within Arabic, European and non European traditions.
6. Deploy original approaches with the aim of contributing to the range conceptual languages that define the discipline by drawing on Arabic aesthetic, critical and intellectual traditions.
7. Design and lead research projects; participate in intellectual debates in group settings; and present professionally before expert academic and professional assemblies.
8. Demonstrate ethical awareness and critical sensibilities in rethinking linguistic, cultural and national borders.
