ABSTRACT
The bylaws of the American Comparative Literature Association mandate a report on the state of the discipline every ten years, but what this report should look like and who should write it has changed considerably over the last five decades. Poststructuralist philosophies, which departments of comparative literature played a crucial role in introducing to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, have in years helped to shape new areas of study, such as object-oriented ontology, affect theory, and human-animal studies. The 2017 report continues the American Comparative Literature Association’s efforts to include the voices of an increasingly diverse array of contributors from different types of academic institutions, home departments, and career stages in its reflections on the development of comparative literature. Comparative literature will no doubt continue to have an institutional presence and trajectory of its own, as it has over the last sixty years of disciplinary crisis rhetoric.
