Comparative Literature

Honors Program

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Honors Program

Honors in Comparative Literature

Students may earn honors in the concentration by successfully presenting a thesis, for the preparation of which they will normally enroll in COLT 1990 in either or both semesters of their senior year.  These courses may not be used to satisfy the standard requirements for a concentration. Honors candidates must also normally earn more A's than B's in courses taken as part of the Comparative Literature concentration (or receive the equivalent faculty evaluation on a Course Performance Report for courses taken S/NC).

The Honors Thesis

Students should generally begin thinking about an Honors Thesis in their third year of course work. Students who plan to go abroad in the junior year are advised to give some thought to these matters before leaving; they may also want to write to certain professors from abroad, indicating their potential thesis interests. Optimally, it may be possible to devise a summer reading list for thesis research, so that the project already has some momentum when senior year starts.

The Department expects students to have two readers for the honors thesis, and one of them should normally have some connection with the Comparative Literature department. In addition to discussing possible topics and directions for the thesis, students will want to discuss with the faculty person(s) procedural and technical matters as well. In particular, it is necessary to agree on deadlines for completing readings and submitting drafts, on the amount of consultation that is expected, etc. It is important that all parties have a clear sense of these matters.

Three semesters are required to plan and complete an honors thesis in Comparative Literature. Students will submit a proposal toward the end of their junior year, which must be approved and signed by both the advisor and second reader. A substantial portion of writing on the thesis must be completed and submitted to the advisor(s) during the penultimate semester. The final semester is devoted to completing and revising the thesis prior to submission.

Students will submit one copy to each faculty reader, as well as one electronic and one hard copy of the thesis to the Department. Honors in Comparative Literature is granted upon positive recommendation by the thesis advisors. Please see the two documents entitled “Honors Calendar” and “Honors Guidelines” below for a detailed list of deadlines and other important information.

The honors thesis is usually between 50 and 100 pages long. It is anticipated that a significant amount of research will go into this project. Students are expected normally to choose a topic that involves work in each of the foreign literatures they have presented for their degree; such foreign materials are to be dealt with (i.e., read and cited) in the original language, even though the thesis itself is generally written in English. It is also anticipated that the project itself is to be of a comparative nature. In some cases, it may be possible for a student to devise a thesis project that meshes the thesis investigation with creative writing.

Honors Thesis Proposal Form

Helpful Documents

Departmental Documents:

Other Helpful Tools:

Rosalie Colie Prize

The Rosalie Colie Prize is awarded annually to recognize the most outstanding honors theses in research and translation in Comparative Literature at Brown University. Professor Rosalie Colie (1924-1972) earned a Ph.D. in English and History from Columbia University in 1950 and came to Brown in 1969. She was the first scholar to hold the Nancy Duke Lewis Professorship, the first chair at Brown endowed for women. In 1972, she became the first woman to be appointed chair of an academic department at Brown, the Department of Comparative Literature. Professor Colie was a scholar of Renaissance English literature and a poet. 

Recent Winners

Spring 2024
  • Jenna Cooley: “Mad Times: Reading Madness as ‘Narrative Prosthesis’ in Historical Novels by Han, Doctorow, and Rivera Garza”
  • Wenjing Yap: “Translation of Gregory Khezrejat's Kaikonchi”
Spring 2023
  • Chong Jing Gan: “Strange Emigrations: Affective Movements and Alterities of Belonging in the Margins of Singaporean Literature”
Spring 2022
  • Michael Wang: “Life is But a Dream: Cross-Cultural Conceptions of Dreaming and Maturity in Late 18th-Century Literature through Cao Xueqin’s 红楼梦, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel, and Denis Diderot’s Le Rêve de d’Alembert"
  • Amelia Wyckoff: “Geryon Variations and Queenplay: Recrafting the Fragmented Poetry of Stesichorus’ Geryoneis and Thebais"