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Sections and Areas of Concentration

Prospective students apply to one of the department’s four sections:

Comparative Literature
Cultural Studies
Literatures in English
Literatures in Spanish

Each section differs slightly in its seminar distribution and language requirements, but all students throughout the department may take graduate seminars in any section, and may work with any faculty members who best fit their interests.

The department supports a wide range of specializations across multiple languages, fields, geographic regions, and historical periods of literary and cultural production. Regardless of students’ chosen specialization, we emphasize comparative, multilingual, and interdisciplinary approaches, and so our program is a particularly good fit for prospective students who wish to approach their field of study from this vantage point.

To learn more about the specializations and methodologies represented by our faculty, please see the list of Faculty By Areas of Specialization.

There is also a Critical Gender Studies PhD specialization (in Literature) coordinated through the Critical Gender Studies Program. For more information, visit their website: http://cgs.ucsd.edu/graduate-specialization/index.html