To "compare" is to think relationally (Felski and Friedman 2). But who thinks thus, and from what epistemological vantage point does she do so? Is she indifferent to or implicated in her relational thinking? If the latter, how might she think "the human," understood as a universal category rather than as a being defined by sets of distinguishing particularities? How might a comparative analysis of works of art that is based on relational thinking address scepticism about the universality of the human that is now endemic in discourses of difference ("the English working class," etc.)? Would it enhance or impair the efforts of scholars and artists who, three centuries after the French and Haitian revolutions, still conspire for a universal "'human race'" (Buck–Morss 107)? To answer these questions, we will engage the instability of comparison they convey as the very condition of possibility of comparative literary scholarship today. Readings will include the volumes referenced above and selected writings by Glissant, Melville, Lloyd, Morton, Camus, Ishiguro, Menchu, Allende, Alloula, Said, Forster, and Rushdie. Classes will consist of weekly two-hour seminars, and evaluation will be based on presentations and a research essay.