The graduate Program is linked to the Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature in the College of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at USP. It began as a subdivision founded in 1960, through the initiative of Prof. Antonio Candido, becoming a graduate course in 1971. In the past decades the Program housed many essential names in Brazilian literary criticism such as Davi Arrigucci Jr., Walnice Nogueira Galvão, João Alexandre Barbosa, Marlyse Meyer, João Luiz Lafetá among others.
In its present form the Program contains five areas of research (Literature and Society, Comparative Studies in Literature, Literary Forms and Genres, Literary History and Criticism, and Literature and Psychoanalysis) and is widely recognized for its vast scientific production in the form of books and articles, often included in the bibliographies of courses in the discipline and for the edition of the journals Literatura e Sociedade and Magma.
The program includes 26 professors (20 permanent faculty, 6 associated faculty) and frequently receives local and international visiting faculty from partner universities. With continued support from the agencies CAPES, CNPq, FAPESP, the Program has awarded close to 160 Master's and 170 Doctoral degrees contributing considerably to the expansion and consolidation of the fields of Literary Theory, Comparative Literature in Brazil and Latin America
