Created in the Spring of 2000 by the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Graduate School at Rutgers (New Brunswick), Transliteratures is a project aimed at strengthening the study of foreign literatures and cultures at the University.
The Transliteratures Project consists of a series of initiatives whose main objective is to help students in individual graduate programs in foreign literature profit from the scholarly and pedagogical resources found in neighboring foreign literature programs at Rutgers. Such emphasis is not meant to replace or exclude other interdisciplinary or interprogrammatic activities. Transliteratures is not a program, leads to no certificate, and in no way replaces any existing course of studies. Also, at the heart of the project is a respect, indeed a need, for the absolute intellectual and administrative autonomy of every existing program.
The philosophical rationale for the project lies in the need for any serious approach to a given foreign literature, or culture, to involve some degree of awareness of the contrast between this and other foreign literatures and cultures. While this methodological necessity is not new, it has become more pressing in recent years, particularly because of increasing cultural interaction among the world's various cultures. Intellectually speaking, the traditional approach to a foreign literature that contrasts it with our own only has become untenable. A relation to foreignness can no longer be thought of in simple dual terms.
The Transliteratures Project, with the participation of all existing graduate programs in foreign literature at Rutgers (Classics, Comparative Literature, French, German, Italian, and Spanish & Portuguese), provides funding, incentives, activities, as well as a curricular frame for the development of a new type of interaction with foreign literatures and cultures. The ultimate objective is to help students anchor their specific research in a wider, more complete context, and, therefore, one that reflects historical conditions more accurately.
The initiatives currently implemented by the Transliteratures Project, at the graduate level, include:
* Special graduate FellowshipsThe Transliteratures Project also plans new initiatives, and is receptive to suggestions in this respect, from faculty and students alike.
The Transliteratures Project is headed by a Director and two co-Directors, who report to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Graduate School. Also, participating graduate programs are consulted periodically. The activities of the Transliteratures Project are overseen by a Board whose members are Rutgers scholars in various literary fields. The Director, the co-Directors, and the Board members are named by the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and of the Graduate School.