The Graduate Program in Comparative Literature offers opportunities for talented and independent students to explore a variety of questions about the nature and history of global expressive forms. Transcending national and linguistic boundaries, and drawing on a richly diverse faculty, the program helps students analyze the complex field of relations underlying concepts such as genre, medium, movement, and canon. In this respect, areas of particular importance for the program include literary theory, the social history of cultural production, and the relationship of literature with other fields. Beyond the provinces of academic specialization, however, it is the very distinction between literary and nonliterary discourses that Comparative Literature ultimately puts in question, and thus redefines, through a curriculum which, while carefully constructed, allows students to follow their own interests.