Comparative Literature Studies publishes comparative critical essays that range across the rich traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and that examine the literary relations between East and West, North and South. Articles may also explore movements, themes, forms, the history of ideas, relations between authors, the foundations of criticism and theory, and issues of language and translation. Each issue of CLS also contains book reviews of the most important comparative literature monographs and essay collections.

CLS is an affiliated journal of the American Comparative Literature Association. With the ACLA, it sponsors the annual A. Owen Aldridge Prize for the Best Essay by a Comparative Literature Graduate Student, and subsequently publishes a revised version of the winning essay.

Recent special-issue topics of CLS have included “Poetry Games,” “The Gender and Queer Politics of Translation,” and “Sustaining Ecocriticism: Comparative Perspectives.” One of its issues every two years concerns East-West literary and cultural relations and is edited in conjunction with faculty members of Shanghai Jiaotong University.

An advanced graduate student in Comparative Literature serves as the editorial assistant for CLS, on an annual rotating basis.