Theory of literature, literary criticism and interpretation, literary and cultural history, semiotics of culture, linguistics, rhetoric and communications, cultural anthropology, cognitive studies, translation theory:... the common denominator of all this diversity is the ambition to understand literary and cultural texts both in their own right and in the context of other... systems; to develop advanced theories of literature, communication, and culture, and advanced methods of research; and to integrate the study of literature within the evolving larger field of the human sciences and ultimately that of the sciences at large.