OVERVIEW & RATIONALE Comparative Literature has ultimately survived the crises which predicted its demise. It has successfully overcome the challenges and constraints of globalization thanks to the discipline’s self-revision and its reassessment of tools and methods. The expansion of Comparative Literary Studies across geographic and linguistic borders has allowed the discipline to open up on and engage dialogue with other humanist disciplines which have been perceived as rival or substitute fields: Ethnic Studies, Area Studies, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Gender Studies. Such cross-national and interdisciplinary openness contributed not only to a revitalization of the epistemological dimension and the political engagements of Comparative Literature, but also to a renewal of the meaning of literary comparisons. Comparative Literature has proved able to address the questions that engage different systems of knowledge and different forms of artistic productions in...