'University of Wisconsin graduate Mary Gilbertson is outraged by the prospect that the tiny Department of Comparative Literature will be closed, despite strong protests from faculty, students and alumni.

Gilbertson, a New York City resident who graduated in 1962, described herself as "an enraged alumnus" speaking for some in the department who are afraid to speak out. [Why be afraid to speak out?]

"As a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, this is disgusting. It has been one of the most famous departments, with a tremendous reputation," she said in a phone interview. [Weak argument. What matters is what it's been in the last twenty years or so.]

"I have some sense of how much the university is raising. What is happening to that money that they have to treat people this way?" [Again, badly argued. Emotionality and personalizing -- she's disgusted; they're treating people badly -- are non-starters. As long as defenders of the program sputter like this, the university has nothing to worry about.]

Gary Sandefur, dean of the College of Letters and Science, said there are no plans to close the 90-year-old department at this time, but he added that no new money will be invested in it. After current faculty members leave or retire, the department will come to an end, though the major will not, he said.

Comparative literature is the study of literature in its original languages from a cross-cultural perspective. [The writer might have mentioned that the field is imperiled everywhere, as interdisciplinary work comes to characterize virtually all literary study.]

Budget constraints mean that the university cannot afford to rebuild the department, Sandefur said. Comparative Literature has lost faculty for various reasons, including the dismissal of Professor Keith Cohen by the Board of Regents last year after he was convicted of a felony count of exposing a child to harmful materials. He admitted to sending naked pictures of himself and others to a 14-year-old boy he had communicated with in an Internet chatroom. [Perishing field + perv dept chair = problems.]

Though set procedures including a self-study, a review and recommendations to two planning councils must be followed before a department closes, Sandefur said Comparative Literature has been troubled for some time....


[A] former department chairwoman who is now on sabbatical conducted a spirited campaign to maintain the department after Sandefur asked her in April 2006 to voluntarily close it down over the next year or two. She declined, publicized the proposal on the department Web site and notified faculty, students and alumni.

About a dozen alumni responded with letters to Sandefur in support of the department, and faculty and students attended meetings of the Academic Planning Council, which advises the dean, to express support. The council recommended that Sandefur work with Saiz to get faculty from other departments involved in teaching courses in comparative literature, an effort that so far has not met much success, the dean said.

"The number of full-time faculty has decreased and workload has increased. Trying to keep the department afloat by drawing from diminished faculty numbers in other departments is a Promethean endeavor, pushing the stone up the hill," [the former chairwoman] said in an interview, adding that other short-staffed departments would not likely be willing to share staff. [Confusing Sisyphus and Prometheus wouldn't be that big a deal if this woman weren't former chair of a Comp Lit department.]

[She] said comparative literature is especially important considering the world situation at this time.

"We work to train people to work fluently in other languages and know other cultures and histories and then engage in comparative analysis," Layoun said. "Given the fiasco of some of our international policies, this is crucial training. Kuwait is supporting comparative literature, but Wisconsin isn't."' [Huh?]