students engaged in comp lit event.

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Meet Our Students

Our exceptional students enliven the department with their erudition and fresh ideas

Meet Our Faculty

Our innovative faculty continue to garner international recognition

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The Department of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo is a relatively small, yet independent program. It combines a tradition of scholarly rigor with openness to fresh currents in literary studies. While rooted in an intense ongoing inquiry into the nature of literature, its conceptual and philosophical underpinnings, and its critical methods, the department sustains a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches and projects. In the past, students have incorporated into their work concerns and methods deriving from philosophy, psychoanalysis, legal studies, political theory, and anthropology.

Department Statement on Diversity

The Department of Comparative Literature is committed to the study of cultural and linguistic diversity and cherishes the diversity of students and faculty. We support members of our community across differences of race and ethnicity, religion, politics, ability and disability, gender, sexuality, and immigration status. Respect for those differences is an essential and shared intellectual value.

We affirm our commitment to protecting the most vulnerable, to the imaginative work of understanding one another, and to the power of languages as a force for social justice and a vehicle of bridging differences.

Haudenosaunee Land Acknowledgement Statement:

We would like to acknowledge the land on which the University at Buffalo operates, which is the territory of the Seneca Nation, a member of the Haudenosaunee/Six Nations Confederacy. This territory is covered by The Dish with One Spoon Treaty of Peace and Friendship, a pledge to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. It is also covered by the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, between the United States Government and the Six Nations Confederacy, which further affirmed Haudenosaunee land rights and sovereignty in the State of New York. Today, this region is still the home to the Haudenosaunee people, and we are grateful for the opportunity to live, work, and share ideas in this territory.

Why Choose Comp Lit?

Aerial view of students forming interlocking UB.

It is interdisciplinary: incorporating knowledge from philosophy, film studies, languages and literatures, gender studies, and more.

It connects humanity: exploring how cultures interact but also how each culture understands their experience of the world.

It develops essential skills: reading, writing, analyzing and critical thinking.

Meet Our Students

Josh Dawson, PhD Candidate.

"The Comp Lit department at UB has been a great fit for me academically and personally. The faculty and staff create an environment that encourages students' growth and development, and my fellow graduate students have been an immeasurably positive influence on my thinking and research"

-Josh Dawson, PhD Candidate

Meet Our Faculty

  • Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
    8/8/19
    Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature. Specialist in feminist political theory, modernism, continental philosophy, ethics, and critical theory
  • Rodolphe Gasché
    8/8/19
    Specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, critical theory, and its relation to continental philosophy since early romanticism. Translating major works by Derrida and Lacan into German.
  • Andrea Pitts
    10/19/23
  • Krzysztof Ziarek
    8/8/19
    Named as one of the 100 “most daring cross-disciplinary thinkers in the world.” Specialist in 20th and 21st-century comparative literature, especially contemporary poetry and poetics, aesthetics, philosophy and literature, and literary theory
  • Elisabeth Paquette
    10/19/23
  • Donald Cross
    5/18/23
    Specialist in Continental Philosophy, Literary Theory, Global Modernisms and Latin American Studies
  • Shaun Irlam
    8/8/19
    Specialist in 18th-century cultural studies and aesthetics in England and France, current critical theory with an emphasis on deconstruction, postcolonial literature and theory with emphasis on Caribbean and African literatures
  • David E. Johnson
    8/8/19
    Specialist in continental and Latin American philosophy, and Latin American narrative. Co-editor of CR: The New Centennial Review as well as the SUNY book series, “Literature . . . in Theory.”
  • Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
    8/20/19
    Specialist in modernist thought and literature of Greek antiquity, the relation of ancients and moderns–particularly on the impact of Platonic philosophy and tragedy on modern thought
  • Devonya N. Havis
    10/20/22
    Named as one of the 100 “most daring cross-disciplinary thinkers in the world.” Specialist in 20th and 21st-century comparative literature, especially contemporary poetry and poetics, aesthetics, philosophy and literature, and literary theory
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Just Theory Lecture Series

Faculty and students after a lecture.

The Just Theory Lectures Series is an annual series of presentations hosted by and held within the Comparative Literature Department. These lectures bring some of the most well-known and influential thinkers working in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy to the department to present new research