Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [English Literature] From University of New Mexico

• How do language, literature, film and other media operate What allows us to understand (or misunderstand) meaning Where do stories come from and what purposes do they serve How do racial, sexual, national and class identities come to seem "normal" What happens when different cultural traditions collide or collaborate.
• Are we born or do we become women or men Where does taste come from Does the medium in which an idea is expressed matter Is literature merely a reflection of society or is it an agent of change The Program in provides students with a framework for responding to these kinds of questions.
• Students in the program have defined a wide variety of fields of study, including, images of motherhood in Greek tragedy, the migration of Flamenco to New Mexico, theories of monsters, sites of Memory in Haitian women's writing, postmodernity in Chinese architecture, environmental justice and the silicon chip industry, and the cultural politics of the debate on capital punishment.
• Both the undergraduate and graduate programs offer students an exceptional opportunity to devise their own program of study and to work in close collaboration with faculty advisors. B.A. students may choose from two concentrations, the cultural studies concentration and the comparative literature concentration. M.A. students may choose a concentration in cultural studies, comparative literature or classics.

The English Literature Concentration

• Comparative Literature asks that we look at the intersections of cultural traditions as well as the forces that create a sense of their difference. Comparatists generally work in two or more languages and have a knowledge of the literature, film, visual art and other media produced in a particular period by multiple cultures. 
• Comparatists are frequently concerned with theoretical questions about how meaning works and how texts are constructed and have an effect on readers or viewers. Increasingly, comparatists have focused on how to approach the study of world literature. 
• B.A. and M.A. students choosing the comparative literature concentration divide their course work beyond core requirements evenly between literatures written in two different languages or cultural works associated with two different linguistic traditions.