Comparative literature is a field of literary study that explores the relationship between the literatures of different cultures. Western Michigan University could greatly benefit from starting a specialized center for comparative literature studies.
It is also concerned with studying the similarities and differences between two literary works focusing on certain themes. Additionally, the comparative literature field is a multidisciplinary one, in which there is a lot of focus on the study of the cultural and ideological perspectives that shape the similarities and differences between two literary works.
Based on the cultural dimension of studying comparative literature, we find that conducting research in the field of comparative literature might be fruitful to broaden our cultural scopes and backgrounds.
Comparative literature might open the cultural dialogue that we are in need of these days. Peoples of the world must be given the chance to unify culturally and to interact together through dialogue and studies.
Comparative literature studies can make the peoples of the world discover the lost mutual cultural respect in the moral meanings of art.
Western Michigan University has several resources available to achieve this idea successfully.
The first resource of success is the existence of the English department, which is one of the most distinguished departments in the universities of the United States.
Additionally, English department faculty members have a great potential to conduct the comparative literature studies in cooperation with the international graduate students who represent different cultures and ideologies.
The foreign languages department, Medieval Institute and sociology department can share in making this idea successful.
In the foreign languages department, we have professors and instructors from Egypt, Japan, China, Russia, France and Germany. All these faculty members could enrich the center with their native literatures and cultures.
They might participate altogether in conducting comparative literature studies. These studies can be published in a specialized journal belonging to this center.
A journal could encourage all the researchers in the world to write their own research in this fruitful field, and it could create a good reputation for WMU among international universities.
In fact, this idea came to mind when I presented a poem from Arabic literature in one of my classes this semester. I was exploring the reaction of my classmates towards presenting a literary work from a different culture.
The reaction was very interesting, in which my classmates loved the idea because of its focus on exploring a different and unknown literature to them.
They were in a cultural dialogue of which we are in need of these days. The most important point of the discussion was that we found a common ground among all of us; we exchanged admiration towards our cultures and literatures.
I think that is what we need to do as students and as founders of future generations. We need to love and respect the ideologies of each other. We need to focus on our literary productions in order to get closer to each other, not to increase hatred and separation.
I hope that this idea will become a reality at WMU one day. I do believe in the power of literature and cultural dialogue in unifying the peoples of the world and making them look at the beauties of human productions.
This is the essence of real humanity, and it is my dream that it will be implemented at WMU.
Hassan Al-Momani, a Western Herald opinion columnist, is a graduate student majoring in English and can be reached via e-mail at hassan76us@yahoo.com.
About Carman
In my personal opinion that literary research and instruction must be international in character, and students must study a generous range of literary works – from Western cultures, both ancient and modern, to Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic – to develop a focused critical understanding of how cultures differ from one another.
special thanks to Dr. Hassan Al-Momania for these article .