The American Comparative Literature Association, founded in 1960, is the principal learned society in the United States for scholars whose work involves several literatures and cultures as well as the premises of cross-cultural literary study itself.

In its largest sense, comparative literature promotes the study of intercultural relations that cross national boundaries, multicultural relations within a particular society, and the interactions between literature and other forms of human activity, including the arts, the sciences, philosophy, and cultural artifacts of all kinds.

The members of the ACLA are thus joined not by a national, linguistic, or methodological investment held in common, but by the shared condition of teaching and writing across nations, languages, and cultures--and hence by their lively interest in comparison as both a theoretical and a practical matter.

The ACLA is affiliated with the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature, the International Comparative Literature Association, the Modern Language Association, and the National Humanities Alliance. The membership of the ACLA currently stands at twelve hundred.