E Pluribus Unum?

Extract

Forty years ago, when my department was established as one of the first departments of the new San Diego campus of the University of California (UCSD), its founders had a free hand to construct a new model for literary study by recasting the institutional infrastructure that traditionally divided the field by language or language group. The initial vision, as summarized in the introduction to an early graduate program review, was relatively abstract:

The Department of Literature was founded […] on the uncommon but quite logical assumption that there are habits of mind and methods of inquiry peculiar to literary study, whatever the language, and that the literatures of the world have more in common than the usual departmental divisions acknowledge. […] From the standpoint of research and teaching interests, [its structure] runs counter to the provincialism that afflicts many departments of single national literatures.

(“Graduate Program Review”)