Research Guides: Comparative Literature: Journals

Comparative Literature Journals

One of the best methods of staying current with your field is by browsing the journal literature. Comparative Literature journals will keep you abreast of the latest scholarship and help stimulate your own research. The numerous online databases will allow you to search through the contents of these journals (and many others), but browsing through an individual journal will allow you the opportunity for more specific topic research. Here is a small sampling of Comparative Literature journals:

Comparative Literature
The oldest journal in its field in the United States, Comparative Literature explores issues in literary history and theory. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and critical approaches, the journal represents a wide-ranging look at the intersections of national literatures, global literary trends, and theoretical discourse.
Comparative literature studies
Comparative Literature Studies publishes comparative articles in literature and culture, critical theory, and cultural and literary relations within and beyond the Western tradition. It brings you the work of eminent critics, scholars, theorists, and literary historians, whose essays range across the rich traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
The Comparatist
The Comparatist has traditionally published comparative work involving literary and cultural movements, literature and the arts, relations between European and non-European literatures, and inter-American literary exchanges. More recently the journal has also focused on the third world, Afro-Caribbean, and Central European literary phenomena.
Comparative American studies
Comparative American Studies is an international journal that extends scholarly debates about American Studies beyond the geographical boundaries of the United States, repositioning discussions about American culture within an international, comparative framework.
Critical Inquiry
In CI new ideas and reconsideration of those traditional in criticism and culture are granted a voice. The wide interdisciplinary focus creates surprising juxtapositions and linkages of concepts, offering new grounds for theoretical debate. In CI, authors entertain and challenge while illuminating such issues as improvisations, the life of things, Flaubert, and early modern women's writing. CI comes full circle with the electrically charged debates between contributors and their critics.

Using the MLA Directory of Periodicals to Find Literature Journals

If you want to look at a list of journals for any topic within literary studies, try the MLA Directory of Periodicals (DOP). Each entry in the DOP provides information about the journal's scope, subject matter, publication schedule, editors, submission guidelines, peer review status, and more. You can access the DoP from within the MLA International Bibliography database, or directly through its own link (below and in the library's Articles & Databases portal).

The video below, from the Modern Language Association, explains the basics of using the DoP.

MLA Directory of Periodicals This link opens in a new window
The MLA Directory of Periodicals provides detailed information on journals and book series that cover literature, literary theory, dramatic arts, folklore, language, linguistics, pedagogy, rhetoric and composition, and the history of printing and publishing. Articles published in works listed in the directory are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography. The directory is a valuable resource for scholars seeking outlets to publish their work

Closed captioning is available through the Vimeo platform. No transcript is available.

This video is one of many MLA International Bibliography tutorials available on the MLA's own website.

Need to find out if a journal is peer-reviewed? Use Ulrichs

Ulrichsweb This link opens in a new window
Ulrichsweb is an authoritative source of detailed information on periodicals of all types -- academic and scholarly journals, Open Access publications, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and more from around the world.