Brown University Library

Developing and Managing the Brown University Library Collections
Collection Policies by Subject: Comparative Literature

Library Liaison:
Dominique_Coulombe @brown.edu
Departmental Library Representative (DLR):
Kenneth_Haynes @brown.edu
Description of the Academic Program | COMPARATIVE LITERATURE Departmental Home Page
“Comparative Literature is the study of literature and other cultural forms across linguistic and cultural boundaries.” The study of such forms, both in translation and in the languages in which they were written, enables us to see beyond our own horizons and helps us to bridge the distance between different societies, cultures, and eras. Comparative literature also studies the relations between literature and other arts and disciplines. As a multidisciplinary and international program, it draws on a variety of fields, including art, aesthetics, film studies, history, music, and philosophy, as well as the different literatures of the world.

The Department of Comparative Literature includes 12 full-time faculty and 18 collaborating with joint appointments in other departments. It grew out of an honors program for undergraduates initiated in 1961, added a master of arts program in 1963 and the Ph.D. component in 1965.

The undergraduate concentration in Comparative Literature introduces students to the reading and analysis of a range of literary works and cultural and linguistic traditions. The aim of the program is to encourage students to study a varied and illustrative range of literary topics; they are encouraged to read widely from different literatures and to develop a focused critical understanding of important and cultural questions. The undergraduate program offers three concentrations including an honors track: in English and one foreign language, in English and two foreign languages, and in literary translation. The Departmental Undergraduate Group (DUG) provides a forum for concentrators to discuss broad literary questions and gain a “better … understanding of Comparative Literature both inside and outside of Brown.”

The graduate program “aims at an understanding of individual authors, influences, literary movements, forms and genres in a comparative critical context.” It accommodates a wide range of individual emphases in literature and culture, periods, genres, history, criticism, and theory. A thorough knowledge of one major literature and two additional literatures in the original is required. The curriculum includes not only ancient and modern western cultures but also Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese.

Research and teaching interests of departmental and collaborating faculty are interdisciplinary and range across periods, geographic areas, genres, and media. Areas of study and research include literary theory, literary relations,. drama, poetry, narrative and film.

Database of Honors, Masters, and Ph.D Theses
Overview of the Collection
The Library collections for Comparative Literature include an estimated 18,200 titles, of which about 265 are currently-received serials, with over 100 available online. This count includes only resources which directly support the comparative study of literature and are classed in the Library of Congress classification of PN. Students and researchers in comparative literature benefit from resources acquired in support of individual Language and Literature programs. Titles acquired for the fields of American Civilization, Classics, History, Judaic Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and Theatre Arts also offer a wealth of additional resources. Traditionally the collecting has focused on English language materials and selected translations. Funding limitations have restricted a systematic approach to collecting for the wide range of teaching and research interests, thus creating collections of uneven breadth and depth. The program would greatly benefit from additional resources, particularly in non-English languages and in non-print formats. Comparative Literature students and faculty often rely on strengths and weaknesses of related areas. Areas in which the Library has been collecting in depth such as English literature, Classics and History are strong; others are longstanding and research level collections with some strengths and weaknesses such as Hispanic, French or German Studies; others yet are emerging collections which are being developed and are expanding; this holds true especially for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
See Library support statement for Graduate Program Review for Comparative Literature
See Library support for External Cluster Review for Comparative Literature
General Collecting Guidelines
The desired coverage is generally at the research or study level to support undergraduate and graduate instruction and research to the Ph.D, as well as most faculty research. Collecting is in the broad areas outlined in the description of the Department’s mission, objectives, and goals;
- study and comparison of literatures, in the original languages and in translation
- study and comparison of cultures of the modern period of all nations
- overlap and intersection of literary study and other disciplines
- critical and cultural theories and their application
- literary influences, movements, forms, and genres.
Specific Collecting Guidelines
- Language:Primarily English and major European languages
- Chronological Span: From the medieval period to the present
- Imprint Date: Current imprints, with an occasional purchase of retrospective materials in support of research needs.
- Geographical Range:Primarily English-speaking countries and Europe, with increasing interest in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
- Types of Material Included: Primarily print monographs including facsimiles and journals; microforms for out-of-print backfiles of journals or of materials needed for research. Networked electronic resources are becoming the format of choice for journals and indexing abstracts, some purchased at the institution level, others through consortial agreements. Stand-alone electronic resources on CD-ROM and DVD are less popular due to technical limitations. . Over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest for using films in the classroom, in research projects and screening events. Audio-visual materials are purchased on video, in DVD or VHS; if the DVD is not available, NTSC is the system of choice. English language films are housed at Media Services in the Sciences Library while non-English language films are housed in the Language Resource Center.
- Excluded: Textbooks and other instruction-based introductory works. 8 mm films.
Areas of Distinction
Through the collecting efforts on behalf of many longstanding departments of literature, the comparative literature holdings are extensive, even though the department itself was not created until 1967. Consequently, there are numerous very strong individual literary collections along with the critical, analytical, and theoretical literature, as well as relevant reference materials. More recently, the Library has acquired access to a variety of electronic sources pertinent to comparative literary studies. Full-text databases of major works of early English and American literature are covered by Early English Books Online purchased in 2003 and its companion product , Early English Books Online: Text Creation Partnership, Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans (1639-1800), and Early American Imprints. Series II. Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819). Many other databases cover prominent genres and time periods such as ARTFL, Editions and adaptations of Shakespeare, Nineteenth century fiction or Twentieth century African American poetry. Access to full-text of secondary literature varies depending on the features of the subscription services; while full-text is not always available directly, the SFX link service programmed by the library guides the researcher to the print or microform format available in situ or interlibrary loan services. The Literary Resource Center provides cross-text searching of biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis for over 90,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists and other writers listed in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Authors. The MLA Bibliography, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature , and Dissertation Abstracts provide excellent general search engines. Students and faculty interested in translations have access to Index Translationum which contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in about a hundred of UNESCO's Member States totaling some 1,300,000 notices in all disciplines, including literature, social and human sciences, natural and exact sciences, art, and history. A good number of databases specialized in national or area studies literature are also available.
Special Collections
Various literary collections of interest to comparative literature studies are housed at the John Hay Library:
- Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays:
  The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays is composed of approximately 250,000 volumes of American and Canadian poetry, plays, and vocal music dating from 1609 to the present day. It is perhaps the largest and most comprehensive collection of it s kind in any research library. The works of most well-known (and many thousands of little-known) American and Canadian poets and playwrights, from the 18th century to the present day, are held comprehensively. There are significant holdings of early American literature, hymnals, songsters, little magazines, contemporary fine printing, extensive collections on Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, women's writings, gay and lesbian literature, modern first editions, Yiddish-American literature, and French-Canadian literature.
- Harry Lyman Koopman Collection:
  Harry Lyman Koopman (1860-1937 ) was librarian from 1893 to 1930. In honor of Koopman at his retirement, Philip D. Sherman, class of 1902, who had been his student, presented his collection of literature, book arts, and the history of the book to the Library. "This collection contains over 5,000 first editions and rare books, manuscripts and association items, plus prints, drawings, and broadsides. It is a rich source for the study of English literature and the growth of fine printing from the works of Caxton and Chaucer in the 15th century to William Morris and William Butler Yeats in the 19th and 20th centuries." The Koopman Collection is notable for its prose fiction by Cooper, Irving, Holmes, and Melville, and for the collection of the works of Thackeray and Dickens issued in parts. Intended as a laboratory collection for the study of the art and history of the book, it includes the production of many late 19th century private presses, books issued in parts, and literary relics. Prints, Photographs, Museum objects, Specimen leaves listed in Koopman Accession book (in Archives).
- Brown-Ives Shakespeare:
  350 volumes of Shakespeariana, acquired in 1845 with fund provided by Moses Brown Ives. Rich in 18th century studies of textual controversies and the Ireland forgeries, it was one of the earliest university collections devoted to the study of Shakespeare. Supplemented by a gift from John Carter Brown of numerous 18th and 19th century editions of the plays in English, French and German.
- Chambers Dante Collection:
  The Chambers Dante Collection of approximately 1,700 volumes was formed by the English Scholar William F. Chambers during a long residence in Florence. The collection was donated to Brown by Henry D. Sharpe, Class of 1894, through the intercession of Brown Prof. Courtney Langdon. The collection's strengths are in scholarly editions of the 15th through the 19th centuries of Dante's works, in particular the Divine Comedy, commentaries (chiefly in Italian), translations, and other reference, biographical and historical works. Prof. Langdon's literary and critical manuscripts have been added to the collection.
- Hammond Lamont Library:
  In 1911, the personal library of the late Hammond Lamont, Professor of Rhetoric from 1895 to 1900, was donated to the University as a memorial from his students in the Classes of 1899 and 1900.The principal focus of the collection is 18th and 19th century English literature with an emphasis on prose. These 2,700 volumes of 17th-18th century English literature include many works by Daniel DeFoe and William Prynne, including the latter's Histrio-Mastix (London, 1633). Includes many novels published between 1760-1840, particularly those by women writers, and over 100 17th and 18th century tracts by Jeremy Collier and William Prynne, among others, exhorting against the pernicious moral influence of the stage. This collection also includes holdings of "triple-decker" subscription and popular fiction of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including a fine selection of gothic novels.
- James Laughlin Collection:
  Bequest of James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions Press, and the gifts of his widow. It is composed of approximately 5,000 volumes from his personal library, and focuses on editions of William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Merton, Jean Cocteau and other major 20th century literary figures.
- Kimball Collection:
  2,200 volumes of finely bound 18th and 19th century English literature assembled by Walter H. Kimball, Class of 1894, arrived from his estate in 1923. The collection includes many fine complete author sets and represents a typical turn-of-the-century scholarly gentleman's library.
- Mel B. Yoken Collection:
  Personal collection of the Brown alumnus which consists primarily of 20th century pieces of correspondence and literary works by American, British, French and Québécois authors, artists and public figures. Numerous letters written by significant figures of the 18th and 19th century enhance the historical, literary and political interest of the collection. Notes, typescripts, photographs and personal papers complement the archive, as well as the many inscriptions, annotations and signatures in the book collection.
- Sidney P. Albert - George Bernard Shaw Collection:
  In 1991 the Brown University Library acquired a collection of George Bernard Shaw material formed by Sidney P. Albert, professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University-Los Angeles. The collection is rich in manuscript material and includes more than 2,000 books by and about Shaw, a strong collection of ephemera, and more than 200 periodicals containing pieces by or about Shaw. The Brown University Library also holds the correspondence between Shaw and his American publisher, Dodd, Mead & Company.
- Starred Book Collection:
  The general rare book collection of Brown University Library. Many "named" collections of printed books are subsumed in it, including the H. P. Lovecraft collection, and the Damon Collection of Fantasy and Imaginative Literature.
- Wandering Jew Collection:
  The gift of W. Easton Louttit, Jr., Class of 1925, this collection includes plays, poems, novels, and stories, and prints, as well as critical, philosophical, and scholarly studies of the archetypical story of the men shut out from the human community and doomed to wander eternally. Possibly the finest accumulation of books on this theme to be found outside the Bibliotheque Nationale. It contains over 1,500 volumes featuring works by Goethe, Schiller, Shelley, Feuchtwanger, Edwin Arlington Robinson and especially Eugene Sue.
- Richard G. Katzoff Collection:
  The collection, named in honor of Richard G. Katzoff and housed in the John Hay Library at Brown University, consists primarily of literary works published in the U.S. relating to gays and lesbians. The core of the Collection is the gift of books, primarily novels dating from the 1970s and 1980s, received in 1991 from the estate of Richard Katzoff, supplemented by the library and personal writings of John Preston, journalist, author and editor of gay literature (the Library also houses Preston's papers). In addition, the Collection includes the publications of Larry Townsend (sadomasochistic fiction and pictorial erotica), many books from the library of Edmund White, an extensive collection of contemporary lesbian fiction, and many other smaller donations of gay and lesbian writings. Materials continue to be added to the Collection by gift and purchase; an endowment has been established for that purpose by the Katzoff family. The more recent acquisitions include a 30,000-item collection of gay pulp fiction dating primarily from the 1950s and 1960s.
- Gay Pulp Fiction:
  The Gay Pulp Fiction A growing collection of over 4,600 volumes of gay men's pulp fiction. A small number of lesbian-interest titles are included.The collection began with the acquisition of a large private collection and has been supplemented by works from two other collections of gay literature, the Scott O'Hara Papers, and the James Jackson bequest. A database is available for searching.
- James Jackson Bequest:
  Approximately 1,900 titles in the area of gay/lesbian literature, much of it dating from the pre-Stonewall era. There are a quite a few lesbian-related titles which fills in a gap in our existing holdings and quite a few gay-related science fiction and fantasy titles which complement one of existing collection strengths.
- Pillar Collection:
  The Pillar Collection contains a number of contemporary children's books in English and European languages. The Dr. Arlene Pillar Collection of Children's Literature consists of over 3,000 volumes of children's literature primarily form the 1970s and 1980s, including many illustrated works and fiction for young adults.
Breakdown of Subjects and Collecting Levels
Library Resource Guide for Comparative Literature
New Titles Cataloged
Related Collections and Other Resources

The The John Carter Brown Library is an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in the history and humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. Housed within the Library’s walls is an internationally renowned, constantly growing collection of primary historical sources pertaining to the Americas, both North and South, before ca. 1825." Its extensive holdings in the literature of European exploration and travel in the Western Hemisphere includes (45,000 rare books (pre-1825 imprints), early maps and prints; manuscripts;, and 16,000 specialized reference books includes contemporary narratives of discovery and exploration of the New World.

The Language Resource Center (LRC) houses a variety of materials such as audio, video, laserdiscs, DVDs, computer software and television news broadcasts and develops electronic resources in support of the learning and teaching of languages. LRC is affiliated with the Center for Language Studies which "aims to promote the teaching and learning of languages at Brown University."

The Virginia Baldwin Orwig Music Library located at in the eastern part of the Brown University campus supports a Ph.D. program in ethnomusicology and is especially strong in the American vernacular styles, the music of Ireland and the Irish diaspora, Indonesia, Africa and the African diaspora, India and China.

The Brown Library participates in three services which allow Brown students, faculty and staff to place online requests to borrow books from partner libraries for expedited delivery to Brown: HELIN, a consortium of ten academic libraries, and fifteen health sciences libraries located in Rhode Island, the Virtual Catalog sponsored by the Boston Library Consortium and BorrowDirect, composed of Ivy League Schools.

The Brown Library is a member of the Center for Research Libraries, a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. CRL holds global newspapers, international dissertations, and sponsors microform collecting projects of copies of unique, scarce, rare and expensive research material for six area studies: Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), Middle Eastern Microform Project (MEMP), Slavic and Eastern European Microform Project (SEEMP), South Asia Microform Project (SAMP), and Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAM).

Illustration by Frederick William Gookin on title page of: Chicago Literary Club year book for 1904-1905 Starred Books, John Hay Library.

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Developing and Managing the Brown University Library CollectionsCollection Policies by Subject: Comparative Literature

Developing and Managing the Brown University Library Collections
Collection Policies by Subject: Comparative Literature