Dear friends,
This year we are celebrating the 90th anniversary of Comparative Literature! The milestone has made us even more grateful for the many members of the community who have helped to make our work relevant. Will you invest in our efforts by donating to the Comparative Literature Strategic Fund? Donor support has been even more important this past year. Thanks to gifts from alumni and friends, we were able to revive the Canon Translation Journal and celebrate with a very fun reading at the annual Undergraduate Showcase. We also organized our own homegrown Ann Arbor version of the Sant Jordi Festival of books and roses that takes place each year in Barcelona. The gathering turned into a fun, moving tribute to what brings us together: “In CompLit we love books every day!”
We started the academic year in fall 2025 excited to debut the new translation major and the newly revised major in Comparative Literature, Arts and Media. More students enrolled in courses that fulfill the first-year writing requirement than ever before, and we were able to return to a normal cohort size in our Ph.D. program. On May 1, we ended the year with the biggest graduation ceremony to date. In between the promising start and exciting finish of the past academic year, we found ourselves banding together to face a number of challenges including the rise of AI and changes to immigration law, not to mention the federal cuts to university funding that have resulted in austerity measures across U‑M. I felt grateful that between judicious reorganizing and extra help from donations we were able to continue our ongoing priorities, and even grow in new, unexpected ways. Now more than ever, it would mean a lot if you could support our efforts to continue to grow in the face of these challenges.
I was especially proud of the response to the austerity measures from all members of the community: grad student leaders helped organize a decidedly low-cost, high-impact picnic potluck at Gallup Park to welcome everyone back in August where the focus was on playing games we had brought from home; the staff and I worked to secure free, inspiring venues on campus for annual gatherings like the Absinthe reading in December and the undergraduate showcase in April; grad student leaders planned the annual CompLit Intra-Student Faculty Forum (CLIFF) in mid-February so that it cost less than the last several conferences and, in the process, they made the planning less stressful and the whole thing more fun. To learn more about our work, I invite you to follow our news and events page or subscribe to the department magazine by writing to [email protected]. You are welcome to use the same e-mail to send us updates. We are grateful for whatever amount you can give to the Comparative Literature Strategic Fund, and for your continued support and interest in Comparative Literature at Michigan.
Sincerely,
Christi Merrill
Chair, Department of Comparative Literature
