Statement of Departmental Values

As a department that is invested in an intersectional approach to literatures and languages, we, the faculty in Comparative Literature, are staunchly committed to social justice. We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in condemning the police murders of Black people that extend the long legacy of enslavement in the US, as well as with other initiatives that combat ongoing legacies of imperialism, colonialism, hatred, and prejudice in the US and worldwide. As educators, mentors, scholars, researchers, and university workers, we are dedicated to making the structural changes necessary for bringing about lasting freedom, equity, dignity, and respect for difference. We understand that there is no region or period within our fields of expertise in which these questions do not resonate in some way. In our commitment to cultural understanding and humanistic inquiry, we recognize the urgency of practicing antiracism at the individual, institutional, and structural levels. We thus pledge ourselves to taking concrete steps toward dismantling the structures of racism and settler colonialism, the ideologies of white supremacy, and all forms of structural injustice, whether they exist within our department, the university, or the Humanities at large, as well as re-examining our individual practices as teachers, colleagues, mentors, and scholars.

Date: October 7, 2020