By The comparative world literature department will reduce its unit requirements starting next fall in order to attract more students to the major, according to department Chair Carl Fisher.
There are three emphases a student can choose from when declaring the major: language and literature, world literature and cultural studies. According to Fisher, the cultural studies emphasis will decrease from 42 to 36 units, and the language and literature emphasis will be reduced from 48 to 42 units. He said the world literature emphasis, which requires 36 units, will stay the same.
“The changes were intended to help students in charting a path through the major, just to make the process easier to understand,” assistant professor of comparative literature Jordan Smith said via email.
Fisher said the changes’ goal is to make the road maps to graduation clearer and more accessible to students. Fisher said he thinks that the changes will make the major advising process easier for students to understand and declare the major.
With these changes, the department hopes to see an increase in the students enrolled in the comparative world literature major. Fisher said that there are currently about 80 undergraduate students enrolled in the major but that the number is expected to increase as more students declare their majors in the upcoming semesters.
“We have the capacity to increase major density, and we hope that when the catalog changes go into effect next year, that both current and incoming students will be interested,” he said.
Students have mixed reviews of the changes.
Andrea Alcazar, a sophomore comparative world literature major, said she does not like the changes because she believes they will make it more difficult for her to graduate.
“Comparative world [literature] is already a short major as it is,” she said. “That would just mean less classes to take.”
Senior comparative world literature major Juan Carlos Cardenas said he thinks the changes will have to depend on the emphasis chosen.
“You can go for the specialization with the lower units, but what makes up for that is that you take units outside of the major as well, so it’s kind of taking into account the fact that you need to find these units,” he said.
