Abstract: In his article “Comparative Literature in the United States” Gerald Gillespie outlines the repertory of comparative literary and cultural studies in the United States and points to relevant factors leading up to the effective merger of older literary criticism and sociological approaches. Gillespie argues that the fragmentation of comparative literature into a plethora of subfields is natural and corresponds to the complexity of the U.S.-American situation of scholarship. Further, Gillespie argues that the educational institutions hosting comparative studies have become stymied and have failed, thus far, to boost such studies to the level of current international awareness.

Introduction

Academic life in the USA has long been marked by a considerable participation of immigrants and occasional visiting scholars from a host of nations. This cultural resource was especially important in the discipline of comparative literature following World War II and continued to play a significant role. The enormous size and complexity of the U.S.-American system of higher education has contributed to what are the two primary characteristics of comparative literary and cultural studies in their entry into the new millennium in the USA: a) their extraordinary, probably unavoidable and irremediable fragmentation and b) the tendency to generate new waves on a fairly regular basis, originating from various sectors of the humanities and social sciences (on an earlier outline of comparative literature in the U.S., see Mourão). In hindsight, we can perceive something like a ten-year pattern or rhythm of overlapping generations.