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Bowdoin College · English & Comparative Literature

19.7% of Bowdoin College's English & Comparative Literature course descriptions are framed from the left. Across all 100 schools' English & Comparative Literature departments, it is 6.3%.

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0%35%

Bowdoin College: 19.7% English & Comparative Literature at all 100 schools: 6.3% each other school in the comparison

Where English & Comparative Literature courses fall

0%Far left92–100

53%Left75–91

42%Center-left59–74

3%Center42–58

0%Center-right26–41

0%Right9–25

3%Far right0–8

38 plotted courses (the ones with a political subject). 100 = far left, 50 = the average American, 0 = far right. Subject places what a course studies, not the side it takes.

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Framing Subject

Subject places what a course studies, not the side it takes. A course on slavery or the Holocaust lands far right and a course on Marx or the Soviet Union lands far left, whether the course praises, criticizes or simply describes it.

Furthest-left subjects

ENGL 1008 · (c) Unhappy Queers83

English & Comparative Literature

Unhappiness has been pivotal in shaping queer cultural productions and in mobilizing the visibility of queer life in literature and media. In representing the difficulties of coming out, the social ramifications of HIV and AIDS, or the…

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ENGL 1200 · (c) Introduction to Creative Nonfiction: The Personal (Essay) Is Political83

English & Comparative Literature

This course takes Carol Hanisch's canonical 1970 essay, "The Personal Is Political," as inspiration to consider how memoir and personal essay has been, and still might be, used to illuminate broader societal inequities and galvanize social…

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ENGL 2650 · (c) African American Fiction: (Re) Writing Black Masculinities83

English & Comparative Literature

In 1845, Frederick Douglass told his white readers: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." This simple statement effectively describes the enduring paradox of African American male identity:…

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Furthest-right subjects

ENGL 2903 · (c, DPI) A History of Anti-Semitism8

English & Comparative Literature

Introduces students to a history of anti-Semitism (and its antecedent, anti-Judaism) as discursive operations in the world. Its title reflects the approach to this topic- rather than trace a linear narrative of the history of anti-Semitism,…

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Why this number, in plain words

Share of courses described from the left. Percent of all courses in the group whose Framing reading is leftward: the description frames its subject one-sidedly to the left.

Counted: all courses in the group, including N and I. No interval is published for this number.

Readings are of catalog description text, not of teaching, syllabi or individual professors.

Details: exact rows, definitions and method

Name	Metric	Value	95% interval	n	scored
Bowdoin College · English & Comparative Literature	bias_left_share	19.7	—	117	—
English & Comparative Literature	bias_left_share	6.3	6.0 – 6.7	19,071	—

Formula: 100 * count(bias_cat = 'L') / n
Interval: Wilson score 95% (wilson_interval)
Model / prompt / snapshot: gpt-5.6-sol · r12 (2026-10-16-le49-r12) · 6df50b10
Metric caveats: Right-framed courses are almost absent (33 of 124,290); this run cannot tell catalog reality from model sensitivity. Compare schools with adjusted_ratio, not this raw share, because department mix differs.

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