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Internationally renowned for leadership in the field of continental literary theory, Comparative Literature at UCI today is a place of openness and risk—a spacious department, good for thinking, collectivity, and contestation. Our current interests include the possibilities for engaging in politics broadly speaking, for rethinking the present and unmapping a world that seems to be already mapped through disciplinary structures such as area studies, and for interanimating scholarship, teaching, and activism. Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work together in our department to push vocabularies, to create new conceptual frames of reference, and to construct different genealogies. Psychoanalysis, phenomenology, subaltern studies, feminism and queer studies, materialism, critical race theory, de/post/neo/and X-coloniality, globalectics: these are a few of the analytic frames that inform our work. Translation broadly applied enables us to make moves: across languages, media, geographic borders, and political visions. While various faculty work with site-specific literatures and film--from Argentina and other Latin American nations, China and Hong Kong, Europe, Iran, Japan, Kenya, the U.S., and other locations--we don't offer these materials as geopolitically fixed archives. Rather, we place cultural practices within dynamic global exchanges, both historical and contemporary. Through courses, conferences, collaborative projects, and digital media, Comparative Literature at UCI advances critical cosmopolitanism—a kind of worldliness cultivated by creative engagements with power, peoples, and their symbolic practices. We invite you to explore our projects and programs, and hope you will find ways to join us in our ventures.

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The Ph.D. program in English at UCI is the #1 department for literary and critical theory nationally (US News and World Report). The research and teaching of department faculty represents and cuts across a range of fields, historical periods, and methodological approaches. Our graduates have gone on to faculty positions at a range of nationally ranked colleges and universities, including, in recent years, the University of Michigan, Tulane, Rice, Clemson, BYU, and Connecticut College.

Many of our PhD faculty and students participate jointly in collaborative, interdisciplinary research clusters and reading groups. Some groups currently active include The Center for Early Cultures, the Culture and Capital Center, Medieval Devysings, Poetics | History | Theory, the Queer Theory Reading Group, and the Rhetoric Reading Group. Our Ph.D. program allows students to customize their study and research around their own intellectual interests. Students can also take seminars in other programs and departments, and can receive interdisciplinary certificates in Asian American studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Critical Theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Latin American Studies, Medical Humanities, Rhetoric and Composition, and Visual Studies.

All admitted students receive a multi-year funding package, including a range of teaching opportunities. Students may enter the graduate program in English with either a B.A. or an M.A. degree. In either case, the first two years are spent taking courses, completing the language requirement, and writing the M.A. paper. In the third year, students select two or three fields of study for their qualifying exams--exam lists are developed by the student in consultation with their advisor and are intended to help the student build expertise and confidence toward a future dissertation. After successfully completing the qualifying examination, students write a dissertation under the supervision of a three-person dissertation committee, which they select.

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The UCI Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center provides a wide range of education and advocacy services supporting intersectional identity development. We foster community, wellness, an open and inclusive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, transgender, queer, asexual, ally, and questioning students, faculty, staff, and the larger campus community. We strive to develop an atmosphere of acceptance and wellbeing in which the campus community can support the academic mission of the university.

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The mission of Merage Out for Business is to create and foster a diverse community at UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. O4B serves future business leaders who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allies (LGBTQ+) by creating a forum that addresses professional concerns of LGBTQ+ students and a community that provides opportunities for professional development and social networking.

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OutLaw at UCI Law facilitates civic and social activities by and for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) community at UCI Law through education, community empowerment, and activism. Education and Scholarship: OutLaw at UCI Law promotes discussions about the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, and the law. LGBTQIA+ communities experience unique challenges to attaining access to justice and inclusion in the legal industry. Many LGBTQIA+ clients lack access to competent representation. They face unfriendly legal precedent, attacks from legislatures, and disparate enforcement. We seek to highlight local and national conversations about these issues and to provide opportunities for related scholarship at UCI Law. Recently, OutLaw was awarded funding for a multi-day symposium on legal issues that affect transgender communities. Community Empowerment: OutLaw provides networking, social, and leadership opportunities for LGBTQIA+ students, faculty, staff, and alumni. We support and empower each other to become stronger advocates and legal professionals by holding space for LGBTQIA+ members of the UCI Law community. Please contact receive updates about upcoming events. Activism: OutLaw connects UCI Law community members with opportunities to advocate for the safety, inclusion, and equality of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. We encourage all OutLaw members to participate in pro bono projects that serve local LGBTQIA+ communities, such as the Transgender Legal Assistance Clinic at the LGBT Center OC in Santa Ana. Become a Member: All currently enrolled J.D. and LLM students at UCI Law are eligible to be members, including joint degree program participants, faculty, and staff.

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The PhD program in Visual Studies draws from a number of disciplines to explore the meanings, practices, and processes of looking and imaging across historical periods and diverse cultures. Visual Studies is inclusive and broad-ranging in its methods and approaches as well as its objects of inquiry, which include African American and African Diasporic visual cultures; the art and archeology of the ancient and medieval Persian/Iranian worlds including Islamic Central and South Asia; Asian and Asian American art, photography, and cinema; Latin American and Latino/a/x visual cultures; contemporary art and exhibition histories; and film, television, and digital media.

UCI offers one of the premier graduate programs in Visual Studies, with core faculty drawn from the departments of Art History and Film & Media Studies. Our particular theoretical strengths include archaeological, architectural and environmental theory, cultural studies, critical race theory, feminist and queer studies, museum studies, postcolonial theory, and digital technologies. In addition, our graduate students may choose to supplement their Visual Studies degrees with interdisciplinary graduate certificates in Ancient Iran and the Premodern Persianate World, Asian American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies, Critical Theory, Feminist Studies, or Latin American Studies, among others. Visual Studies is also proud to be one of the founding members of the School of the Humanities' Black Studies Cluster, which offers additional programmatic and funding support for VS students working in this area.

Our location near Los Angeles gives students access to the rich cultural offerings and research institutions of southern California, such as the Getty Center and Getty Villa, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, UCLA's Film & Television Archive, and the Huntington Library, among other institutions.

We admit all students, with BAs or MAs, directly into the PhD program in small cohorts with multi-year funding packages. We encourage prospective students to review our faculty profiles and contact the faculty members who work in their potential areas of interest before applying to learn more about their teaching and advising.

The annual admissions deadline is December 1.

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PRISM Outreach serves to foster a positive, inclusive, and intersectional community for queer students of all identities, providing both social and material support in the campus community. PRISM strives to create a safe space for every individual to explore their identity and learn from the experiences of others.

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QT STEM is an organization at UCI for queer and/or trans people who are part of the STEM fields. With this group, we hope to create a more visible LGBTQ+ community in what can be an underrepresented area of academia. We also encourage allies to join! However, LGBTQ+ voices and experiences will be centered. As a campus organization, we work to build support systems and connections to resources for LGBTQ+ people at the all levels of the campus community (undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, technicians, staff, faculty) in STEM fields. We organize weekly meetings to share and discuss topics related to the intersection of our identities and our areas of study. We also seek involvement from LGBTQ+ members of the professional community who would like to share their stories with us.

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We hope to provide members with a sense of community and solidarity with other people who identify as a gender, sexual, or romantic minority, and study STEM fields.

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Queer & Asian at UCI (Q&A) is an organization focused on the intersections of LGBTQ+, Asian, and Pacific Islander (API) identities. This group exists to engender a space, where Q&A identified individuals can share resources, find community, and peer support.

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