English and Comparative Literature - Columbia University in the City of New York

English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in the City of New York is a Campus Bachelor Literature degree that prepares you for a Liberal Arts career. Why should I major in this subject? Faculty find the discipline of English and Comparative Literature fascinating for remarkably diverse reasons, often originating in the particular pleasures afforded by literary texts, where the resources of a shared native language and the energies of idiosyncratic imaginations transform the familiar world into something rare and strange. As readers, Kenneth Koch observes, we "should put [a] work down puzzled, / Distressed, and illuminated, ready to believe / It is curious to be alive." This curiosity, stimulated by a perplexed perception, may return us to its source, the text, where we may seek through formal analysis to understand more precisely the effects it achieves, the perspectives it implies. And such study is more than mere aesthetic indulgence: "Poetry, story, and speculation," Mark Van Doren wrote, "are more than pleasant to encounter; they are indispensable if we would know ourselves .[and] be wiser than experience can make us . To live with [the works of our literary tradition] is indeed experience of the essential kind, since it takes us beyond the local and the accidental, at the same moment that it lets us know how uniquely valuable a place and time can be." Curiosity may also make an appeal to some other context to help us comprehend the text ("to mingle," as Van Doren put it, "its stream with such other streams of knowledge as flow under our thought"). To reckon with the world beyond the literary work is to recognize, as Edward Said has emphasized, that "texts are worldly, to some degree they are events, a part of the social world, human life, and of course the historical moments in which they are located and interpreted." What career opportunities follow upon study in this field? Some English majors continue in literary study at the graduate level, while others enter graduate programs that lead to careers in law, medicine, business, and journalism, to name but four among many. Other majors pursue directly upon graduation careers in advertising, publishing, teaching, public relations, consulting, marketing, television, and many other fields. You will find that the opportunities open to you are wide and various, for the skills you will have acquired through literary study will have equipped you for any undertaking that requires cogent, clear, and nuanced expression; incisive analysis, and a more supple and adventurous imagination. View more details on Columbia University in the City of New York . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Literature courses.