Social & Intellectual Life

Research and Conferences

We encourage our majors to be independent thinkers, to ask new questions and conduct their own research. Many of our undergraduate majors take advantage of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to conduct independent research locally or abroad, often leading to honors theses or presentations at conferences. See the UROP website for more information.

Comparative Literature Student Research Fund

When funding is available, a call will go out in Spring and/or Fall to support the supplemental research costs of undergraduate and graduate students in Comparative Literature that are not otherwise reimbursable by UCI. It supports costs e.g., travel to conferences, field work, job interviews, or travel to take up a fellowship elsewhere; it may also help to pay for language training and other research-related expenses.

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Conference in Critical Theory

In addition, we will be holding an undergraduate comparative literature theory conference on May 15, 2025 and hope to make it an annual event.

Faculty Mentors

All undergraduate Comparative Literature students are invited to select a faculty mentor in the department who can assist them with any questions they may have regarding courses offered, research opportunities, career paths, etc. Students are welcome to select any professor they have taken a course from or feel they would like to continue working with. There is a limit to how many students each faculty can mentor, but otherwise you are free to choose how you like!

Once you have chosen a mentor, please fill out this form notifying the department of your choice.

As always, you are also welcome to reach out to the Undergraduate Director, Adriana Johnson (adriana.johnson@uci.edu), with any questions.

Social Events

The department sponsors meetings so majors can get to know one another. Joining our Facebook (@ucicomplit) and Instagram (@uci.complit) pages is one way to keep up with these and other events.

Coffee Hour

Join us for Comp Lit Coffee Hour! Stop by for pastries and coffee in HIB 243. Coffee hour dates are announced on Instagram and over email.

Student Work Spotlight

Check out some of the essays written by current students.

"The Spectral and The Figure of the Lesbian in Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963)" by Fei Yang

I argue that the film uses the spectral to make a defense against non-normative female desire as an unseen supernatural threat while at the same time articulating it in a mode that exceeds normative understanding. I begin by analyzing how the film reproduces Cold War fears of lesbianism and non-normative constructions of womanhood by establishing an association between its two female leads and the pathologized house. I then take a closer look at the film's cinematic language, applying Dennis Giles' concept of figural categories to read its deployment of the spectral in connection with the period's understanding of lesbianism, particularly the figure of the femme, as an invisible threat. Finally, I propose that the film also opens up space for the expression of lesbianism in an alternative mode that is irreducible to patriarchal forms of understanding queerness. My research has important implications as it illuminates the important role that Hollywood, particularly horror cinema, has served in moral panics as an ambivalent ideological apparatus which simultaneously reproduces and challenges cultural anxieties. My reading emphasizes historical specificity to reveal ideological contradictions within a single era, highlighting the unstable construction of gender and sexuality categories as they are shaped by political regimes.

Read the essay.