The Department of Comparative Literature is the only full-fledged department of Comparative Literature in India. It offers BA, MA, MPhil and PhD programmes. It was one of the departments that came into existence as soon as the university was established. Buddhadeva Bose, one of the most important literary scholars, poets and fiction writers of the post-Rabindranath era of Bangla literature, played an important role in setting up the Department.
The Department has had some of the most significant scholars from the realm of Indian literature and culture. Among those who have taught here in its early years are Robert Antoine, David McCutchion, and Sudhindranath Datta. Among its first generation of students who later taught here are Amiya Dev, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Swapan Majumdar, Pranabendu Dasgupta and Manabendra Bandyopadhyay. The department has boasted not only many important literary scholars but also a number of creative writers among its faculty.
The Department has a focus on Indian literatures while at the same time dealing extensively with literatures from the rest of the world, including Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the rest of Asia. Other thrusts of the Department include translation and literary transactions across world literature. Students pursuing BA in Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also have the opportunity to learn one Indian language apart from their first language.
The Department publishes India’s oldest journal of Comparative Literature, the Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature. It also houses the office of the Kolkata chapter of the Comparative Literature Association of India (CLAI). It also houses the Centre for Studies in Latin American Literatures and Cultures, the Centre for Canadian Studies and the Centre for Translation of Indian Literatures (CENTIL). The latter also offers a standalone UGC-sponsored certificate course on ‘Translation as a Skill’ in keeping with the Department’s stress on translation.
Students completing their education from JUCL are seen to be equipped with a rare sensitivity towards cultural differences; no wonder, then, that many of our former students have been absorbed in industries that look at this broadness of approach as an essential skill–the media, creative arts industries, universities and colleges, and companies that deal with foreign clients, for instance.
The Department was accorded the status of a Centre of Advanced Study by the UGC for three consecutive terms totaling 15 years, and held the status of a UGC Department of Special Assistance for many years before that. It also received the ASIHSS grant. JUCL counts among its collaborators many foreign and Indian institutions such as the University of East Anglia, Cornell University, Exeter University, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Charles University, University of Glasgow, St. Mary’s University and Rutgers University. It has also worked in collaboration with the Sahitya Akademi, the national body of letters, for many years now in the fields of Indian literature and translation. It has also been involved with the UKEIRI, the Fulbright Nehru Fellowship, the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, the Charles Wallace India Trust, and the Bhartiya Bhasha Parishad in many fields. The Department has served as a nodal centre for many institutions offering Comparative Literature programmes in different parts of India.
