Comp. Lit. Complaint

Comparative Literature is a field that stresses types and selected authors, and generally ignores dates and boundaries. Since the war this field has become increasingly popular, especially among students concentrating in non-liberty fields, but undergraduate offerings in Comp. Lit. have not kept up with the increased, demand.

Last week, 180 out of a prospective 200 students were turned away from a Comp. Lit. course because the instructor wanted to teach a small class. A year age, the opposite extreme was reached when a Comp. Lit. course was given in Emerson D with standing room only. The obvious solution would be to offer more Comp. Lit. courses, and to have the ones that are on the catalogue given more often. In that way more students interested in Comp. Lit. could be satisfied, and there would be less chance of classes becoming unwieldly.

Normally the expansion of a department's offerings is an expansive proposition. But under the system which governs Comp. Lit. in the University, all other listings in the division of Modern Languages are filled first, and whenever a qualified professor has room on his schedule, he is loaned to Comp. Lit. The one professorship in the department is divided between two men, each of whom has one foot in another department. Consequently Comparative Literature sputters along., with one or at most two middle group courses given each term.

If the French, German, Slavic, and particularly to English Department would realize that the training of assistant professors is not their only function, and if they would modify their policy of "an annual half course for every half century," a lot more faculty talent would be available for Comp. Lit. Specialists could still find their kind of course given every other year, and the general students would have more opportunity to approach literature in the way he seems to like best.