Chair: Graziella Parati
Professors W. W. Cook (English), K. Conley (French and Italian), J. V. Crewe (English, Comparative Literature), A. T. Gaylord (English, Emeritus), G. Gemünden (German, Comparative Literature), L. H. Glinert (AMELL), M. J. Green (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), J. A. W. Heffernan (English, Emeritus), L. A. Higgins (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), K. J. Jewell (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), J. M. Kopper (Russian, Comparative Literature), L. D. Kritzman (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), A. LaValley (Film and Television Studies, Emeritus), A. Lawrence (Film and Television Studies), G. Parati (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), B. Pastor (Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature), D. E. Pease (English), B. P. Scherr (Russian), V. Swain (French and Italian), J. H. Tatum (Classics), K. L. Walker (French and Italian), M. F. Zeiger (English); Associate Professors N. L. Canepa (French and Italian), M. Desjardins (Film and Television Studies), I. Kacandes (German, Comparative Literature), V. Kogan (French and Italian), D. P. LaGuardia (French and Italian, Comparative Literature), A. Martín (Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature), M. Otter (English, Comparative Literature), U. Rainer (German, Comparative Literature), I. Reyes (Spanish and Portuguese), I. T. Schweitzer (English), S. D. Spitta (Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature), M. Swislocki (Spanish and Portuguese), R. Verona (French and Italian), D. Washburn (AMELL, Comparative Literature), M. Williamson (Classics, Comparative Literature), J. K. Wine (French and Italian); Assistant Professors P. Armstrong (Spanish and Portuguese), A. A. Coly (AAAS, Comparative Literature), K. Mladek (German Studies), A. Sokol (Spanish and Portuguese); Research Associate Professor L. J. Davies (English, Comparative Literature); Visiting Professors W-P. Chin (English), C. Schoell-Glass (Art History, Comparative Literature), A. Winograd (Theater); Senior Lecturer A. C. Cone (French and Italian); Visiting Lecturer K. Milich (Jewish Studies).
Courses in Comparative Literature are designed to meet the needs of students whose literary interests are broader than those that can be met by the curriculum of any single department.
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MAJOR IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
The major seeks to provide an opportunity for selective and varied study of two or more literatures in their relation to each other, or for the study of a foreign literature in its relationship to an extraliterary discipline, such as film, music, or history (see the three options below). Each student’s major plan is designed individually around a particular focus of interest. Students planning to major in Comparative Literature will normally enroll in an Honors Program, which entails a thesis (60 to 80 pages) during their senior year. Some students may choose to write two senior essays (about 25 pages each) in lieu of the thesis. Students pursuing the two-paper option will substitute another Comparative Literature course for CL 87. One senior essay will be written in Comparative Literature 85. The second will be written in a course taken senior year that is relevant to the student’s course of study. The two-paper option does not carry honors credit.
The major is administered by the Comparative Literature Steering Committee. Students design their major plan in consultation with an advisor and the Chair. All applications to the major must be approved by the Steering Committee. Major cards can be signed only by the Chair. Students interested in becoming majors should consult the Chair well in advance of their intended declaration of a major.
Prerequisite for the major: Comparative Literature 10.
Required courses: Comparative Literature 72, 85, and, for honors majors only, 87.
Comparative Literature 85 (Senior Seminar) is required to fulfill the culminating experience requirement for students who do not meet the honor requirements, and Comparative Literature 85 and Comparative Literature 87 (Thesis Tutorial) for students meeting honors requirements.
Major options
A. Two foreign literatures.
We require fluency in the primary language and competence in the secondary language. Fluency and competence are determined by the chair in consultation with the chair of the relevant foreign language department. Competence is ordinarily defined as completion of the fourth quarter of language study, and fluency as three courses beyond the fourth quarter of study. One course from an LSA+ or FSP may be counted toward work in a language, as long as the course content is primarily literary. This major consists of 10 courses: Comparative Literature 72, 85, 87; at least 2 additional Comparative Literature courses; 3-4 courses in the primary literature; and 1-2 courses in the secondary literature.
Students interested in graduate study in Comparative Literature are strongly encouraged to choose Major option A.
B. Two literatures (one of which is a literature in English).
We require fluency in the non-anglophone language. Fluency is determined by the chair in consultation with the chair of the relevant foreign language department. One course from an LSA+ or FSP may be counted toward work in a language, as long as the course content in primarily literary. This major consists of 12 courses: Comparative Literature 72, 85, 87; at least 2 additional Comparative Literature courses; 3-4 courses in the non-anglophone literature; and at least 3 courses in the anglophone literature.
C. A foreign literature and a nonliterary discipline (e.g. literature and music; literature and film; literature and history, etc.).
We require fluency in the foreign language. Fluency is determined by the chair in consultation with the chair of the relevant foreign language department. One course from an LSA+ or FSP may be counted toward work in a language, as long as the course content in primarily literary. This major consists of 12 courses: Comparative Literature 72, 85, 87; at least 2 additional Comparative Literature courses; 3-4 courses in the foreign literature; and at least 3 courses in the nonliterary discipline.
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTER OF ARTS IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Each graduate student must receive credit for at least nine courses for the one-year Master of Arts degree and complete a major text presentation and prepare a paper of professional quality.
To receive the Masters degree in Comparative Literature a candidate must satisfactorily:
1. Complete nine courses as described below:
CL 72/100, Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory (required)
05F: 10A. Laguardia
CL73/101, Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory (required)
06W: M 3-6. Martin
CL102, Tutorial (required)
Arrange with advisor.
CL103, Workshop in Critical Writing (required)
06S: Arrange. Washburn
CL105, Graduate Seminar (required)
Arrange with graduate advisor.
Four elective courses in relevant Dartmouth language and literature departments including one upper level course in the candidate’s first foreign language.
2. A major text presentation. In conjunction with CL101 and the Tutorial (CL102) and in consultation with an advisor, each candidate will study one major text and prepare a lecture on that text for public presentation. The text must be read in the original foreign language.
3. An M.A. essay. During spring term, in conjunction with CL103 (Workshop in Writing), the candidate will prepare a paper of professional quality which will be reviewed by a subcommittee of the Graduate Committee.
Courses
INTRODUCTORY
7. First-Year Seminars
Consult special listings
10. What is Comparative Literature?
05F, 06W: 1006S: 11 06F:10A 07W: 1007S: Arrange
Particular offerings of this course seek to introduce the student to the aims, assumptions and methodologies of reading and the study of literature. This course is designed as an introductory course to the Comparative Literature major and other literature and humanities majors. It is recommended that students complete English/Writing 5 before enrolling in Comparative Literature 10.
In 05F, The Author, the Reader, the Text: Everybody Dead? Roland Barthes’s 1977 claim that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” has greatly influenced contemporary approaches to literature. Are there grounds for no longer viewing the text as the product of collaboration between the reader and the author? Through a close reading of works from various genres, periods, and regions, we will explore concepts and techniques of literary analysis, paying special attention to the triad “author, reader, text.” Readings will be drawn from Sor Juana, Sophocles, Lafayette, Keats, Baudelaire, Hamsun, Kharms, Chekhov, Woolf, and Borges among others. Sokol.
In 06W, The Odyssey and Odyssean Spin-Offs. This course is organized around the subject of traveling and homecoming. We will read the epic attributed to “Homer” in its entirety; a series of poems by Tennyson, Cavafy, Pound, and Seferis; James Joyce’s Ulysses; excerpts from Kazantzakis’s Odyssey: A Modern Sequel; Christa Wolf’s Cassandra; Derek Walcott’s Omeros; and Botho Strauss’s drama Ithaka. Is there such a thing as a universal theme? How might genre, author’s gender, culture, or historical period inflect a similar theme? What criteria have been used in specific periods to label a literary work a “classic”? What criteria are used by our culture and by us individually to evaluate the worth of a piece of literature? Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Kacandes.
In 06S, This course will introduce the strategies of close reading of literary and visual texts which focus on the perception of the poet’s, writer’s and film director’s role in different societies and periods of literary and film history. Texts will include poetry by Goethe, Blake, Mallarmé, Dickinson, Rich, Mandelstam and Auden; fiction by Hoffmann, Poe, Woolf, Achebe and Wolf; films by Cocteau, Bergman and Fellini. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Rainer.
In 06F, Ghostwriters and Artistic Haunts: The Weird, Uncanny, and Supernatural in Japanese Fiction and Film.The Japanese tradition of stories about ghosts, spirit possession, demonic visitations and other strange phenomena has a rich, complex history. Beginning with a consideration of theories of the uncanny, the gothic, and the fantastic, the course will explore the techniques Japanese artists have used to represent the supernatural (and freak out their audiences) over the centuries. We will also examine the ideological significance of tales of the supernatural - what they tell us about moral values or about concepts of identity, social and political power, and gender. Critical readings will include selections from Freud, Todorov, Kristeva, Abraham and Torok. Primary classical readings may include selections from The Tale of Genji, Tales of Times Now Past, Tales of Rain and the Moon, and from the Noh and Kabuki theatres. Primary readings from modern literature may be drawn from the stories of Izumi Kyoka, Akutagawa, Tanizaki, Enchi Fumiko, Edogawa Ranpo. Films may include Kwaidan, My Neighbor Totoro, and Ringu. Washburn.
In 07W, The Other in the Text: ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in European Literature. How did the Greeks, Romans and later European colonisers represent differences between themselves and those they regarded as in some way other? How did perceived or imagined differences of ethnicity or gender arise from and help constitute the colonisers’ own sense of cultural and national identity? We will explore these questions in literature and travel writings by authors such as: Herodotus, Euripides, Tacitus, Equiano, Rider Haggard, Conrad, Rhys, Friel, Szymborska. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: CI. Williamson.
In 07S, to be announced.
19. Translation: Theory and Practice
07W: 11
Translation is at once the most basic and the most complicated aspect of what we call “comparative literature.” Whether we are engaged in translation ourselves or studying literature already translated from other languages, we often take it for granted; yet the idea of meanings “lost in translation” is also a commonplace. This course examines both some practical aspects of translation and the theoretical questions to which it gives rise.
In 07W; This course has a theoretical and a practical component. We will analyze translations of literary works and sample the diverse field of translation theory. At the same time, each student will work on a translation project and participate in workshops on student translations. Reading knowledge of a foreign language is required: at least intermediate competence is recommended. Interested students who are unsure of their language preparation should contact the instructor. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Otter.
PERIODS OF EUROPEAN CULTURE
20. The Middle Ages
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
An introduction to the literary cultures of the Middle Ages based on detailed examination of selected works. The texts will vary from year to year, but will normally include classics of drama and poetry, epic and romance. The course will explore medieval dependence on earlier authority while stressing the development of themes, attitudes, and modes of expression that were characteristic of the period.
21. Topics in Medieval Literatures
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will focus on a specific topic, theme, or literary genre in the medieval period.
22. Renaissance
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This period in European history, from the 15th to the 17th centuries, is often considered the founding moment of the modern university, with its emphasis on the liberal arts, modern science and Humanism. It also marks the early phases of European national consolidation and expansion to Africa and the Americas, and thus sets the stage for many modern geopolitical struggles. This course will study the texts and contexts - literary, artistic, historical - of the period from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives.
23. Topics in Early Modern Literatures
06S: 10
This course will focus on a specific topic, theme, or literary genre in the period from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Western Europe (primarily Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, and the Netherlands).
In 06S, Inescapable Romance: From Late Antiquity to Early Modernity. In reading long narrative works (or excerpts) by Heliodorus, Longus, Ariosto, Tasso, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, we will pose the question “what is romance?” We will consider the history and some incarnations of the genre from late antiquity through the early modern period. Critical topics to be covered will include those of cultural function, readership, narrative pleasure, desire and subjectivity; they will also include the central tension in romance between “endlessness” and the plotting of closure. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Crewe.
25. The Enlightenment
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
The Enlightenment, which stretches from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the French Revolution of 1789, was a truly international movement. A time of great intellectual and artistic ferment, it produced the political, philosophic and literary models that shaped our contemporary ideas of individual freedom and civic responsibility, scientific and economic progress, religious tolerance, gender roles, the life of the body and the mysteries of the soul. This course will be offered periodically with varying content.
26. Romanticism
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S.
Romanticism came into being in Germany, England and France in response to the political and emotional upheaval that culminated in the French Revolution. Many works of literature, music and art reflect the period’s uncertainty and complexity, treating the conflicting issues of utopia and dystopia, excess and economy, nationalist tradition and universalist ethics, the appeal to reason and the eruption of the unconscious. The course will explore these divergent tendencies.
27. Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literatures
06X: 10
This course will concentrate on major nineteenth-century movements and genres in the context of the period’s historical upheavals. Topics covered might be realism, naturalism, symbolism, the fantastic, the notion of Bildung, and the influence of such figures as Marx, Nietzsche or Darwin on literary developments.
In 06X, The Gothic Novel. Often set in medieval “old worlds” thought distant from the modern one, Gothic novels tell stories of supernatural incursions into human affairs - often in castles, crypts, and dungeons where demons, hobgoblins, and vampires abound. This course studies how Gothic fiction favors anti-conventional narrative forms while contributing to notions of “transgression” in nineteenth-century Europe. The emergence of this popular literary genre is studied in authors such as Matthew Lewis, Mary Shelley, E.A. Poe, E.T.A. Hoffman, and I. Tarchetti. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Jewell.
28. Modernism
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Modernism is the term given to the extraordinary renewal and experimentation in all the arts occurring from roughly the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. Concurrent with the writings of psychoanalysis and existentialism, modernism, as it reaches its culmination during the social upheavals of the interwar years, continues to assert, even while questioning, humanity’s artistic and moral potential. Offered periodically with varying content.
29. Postmodernism
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Reacting to the horrors of World War II and the period of decolonization, postmodernism has been questioning the humanistic assumptions of modernism while extending and sometimes transforming the earlier period’s avant-garde techniques through such currents as the new novel, absurdism, minimalism, magic realism, etc. Each offering of this course will study postmodern literature and culture from a specific perspective.
LITERARY GENRES
31. Topics in Poetry
06S: 2A
Poetry was the first form of literary expression and is the most enduring. This course will explore the power of poetic expression through such topics as poetry and song, love and nature as poetic themes, theories of poetry, women poets from Sappho to Plath, poetry and graphic art, and political poetry.
In 06S, Postcolonial Poets. A study of poetic responses to colonialism, paying special attention to modes of resistance and decolonization in shaping language and form. We will look at how poets “write back” to dominant European traditions, claim authenticity and negotiate identity in the process of creating distinctive voices. Poets studied may include Grace Nichols, Edwin Thumboo, Edward Brathwaite, W.S. Rendra, Aimé Césaire, Jose Rizal and others. Dist: LIT. Chin.
33. Modern Drama
05F, 07W: 10A
In 05F, identical to Theater 18. The international classics of modern drama. The course begins with the revolutionary playwrights who defined the realistic drama and theatre of modern times - Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov. It then considers the developments out of and reactions against this conventional twentieth-century theatre - Pirandello’s staging of life as theatre, the theatrical and philosophical explorations of O’Neill, Eliot’s effort to recreate poetic drama, the minimalist theatre of Beckett, Brecht’s expansive dialectical drama, and the total theatre of Peter Weiss. Lectures augmented by viewings of productions via videotape and film; optional sessions for discussion and readings of scenes. Dist: ART or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Winograd.
34. Topics in Drama
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will study a particular theme, sub-genre or period of dramatic literature.
35. History of Narrative
06W, 07W: 2
Individual offerings of this course might concentrate on the historical development of narrative, oral and written traditions, medieval epic, romance, and the early novel. In each case the relation between narrative forms and history will be foregrounded.
In 06 and 07W, The Arabian Nights East and West (Identical to Arabic 62). An introduction to Arabo-Islamic culture through its most accessible and popular exponent, The Thousand and One Nights. The course will take this masterpiece of world literature as the focal point for a multidisciplinary literary study. It will cover the genesis of the text from Indian and Mediterranean antecedents, its Arabic recensions, its reception in the West, and its influence on European literature. The course will be taught in English in its entirety. No prerequisites. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: NW. Kadhim.
36. The Novel I: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will examine the rise of the novel as genre and its evolution in the context of bourgeois individualism. Some of the great social and psychological novels of the 18th and 19th centuries will be studied in relation to conventions such as the picaresque, the confessional, the epistolary, the Bildungsroman, realism and naturalism.
37. The Novel II: The Modern Novel
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Prose writers in the twentieth century set out to create a new kind of novel. Exploding traditional fictional conventions, they created avant-garde forms that drastically challenged our reading habits and expectations. Transformation and experimentation continue to inform the development of the modern novel. Each offering of this course will study the fiction of the twentieth century in a specific manner.
38. Forms of Short Fiction
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Through the ages, from The Arabian Nights and the Old Testament to Thomas Mann and Alice Walker, short fiction in its many different shapes has been one of the most enduring and most adaptable genres of literary art. This course will be a study of various forms of short fiction such as novella, tale and short story. Offered periodically with varying historical content, the course will correlate literary texts with their social and cultural contexts.
39. Topics in Narrative
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will approach the study of narrative from the perspective of a specific technique or theme; it might explore narrative genres such as autobiography, memoir, letters, epistolary fiction, oral narrative traditions.
40. Special Topics: Genres
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will study texts from a generic perspective, concentrating on a particular genre or subgenre that stands outside the broad categories of poetry, drama and narrative.
41. The Comic Tradition
06F: 2A
This course will study aspects of the comic: satire, parody, comic theater or shorter forms, such as the anecdote, the joke or the caricature. Examples may be literary or pictorial.
In 06F, Rabbis, Rogues and Schlemiels: Jewish Humor and its Roots (Identical to Hebrew 63 and Jewish Studies 20). What is Jewish humor, what are its roots, and what can it begin to tell us about Jewish society, its values and its self-image? This course mines the long and rich tradition of Hebrew comic and satirical folklore and fine literature, and their relationship to Yiddish, Israeli and Anglo-American Jewish humor. We will also compare the joke, popular song, film and the cartoon, asking how genre impacts on theme. A valuable and unique resource for this course is the new Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive, with its wealth of online recordings.Taught in English translation. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Glinert.
42. Topics in Popular Culture
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Applying critical literary theories to the study of popular culture, this course will examine how popular culture is produced, disseminated, and consumed. Dist: Varies.
THEMATIC APPROACHES
45. The Quest for Utopia
06S: 10A
Oscar Wilde said it: “A map of the world that did not show the land of Utopia would be leaving out the one country at which we are always landing.” In this course we will try to answer questions like: What is Utopia? What is the relationship between utopia and fantasy, utopia and history, utopia and revolution? What are the utopias of our time and how do they shape our perceptions, our political options, our work, and our daily lives? Materials for discussion will include fiction, travel accounts, maps, city plans, letters, political manifestoes, journalistic articles, and films. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU or NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Pastor.
46. Psychology, Society and Literature: The Family
05F: 2A
This course will explore the intersections of literary and familial structures in social and psychological contexts. It will study ideologies which both support and contest the family’s cultural hegemony. Individual offerings might concentrate on mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, family romances, marriage, family and society. Readings will range from myth and fairy tale to some of the great family novels or dramas. Dist: Varies.
In 05F, The Jewish Family (Identical to Jewish Studies 60). This course will explore the various narrative forms - novel, short story, essay, self-portraiture, drama - in which the Jewish family is represented. We will examine how the rhetorical configurations of texts describe the varieties of Jewishness and the significance of Jewish cultural identity in a cross-cultural context. Authors to be studied include Aleichem, Bellow, Finkelkraut, Freud, Ginzburg, Kafka, Kushner, Paley, Perec, Roth, and Singer. Dist: LIT. Kritzman.
47. Myths and Transformations
06S: 3A
Myth has inspired literature from ancient times to the present. This course examines original mythic material and how that material has been transformed in later versions. Possible topics include: the legend of Troy, Odysseus through the ages, the Faust theme, the trickster figure, Antigone and Medea, the legend of Don Juan. Dist: Varies.
In 06S, Don Juan: Eros, Power, and the Demonic. This course examines configurations of the Don Juan legend in literature, music, and film, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, through texts by Tirso de Molina and Zorrilla, Molière, Laclos, Casanova, Mozart, Byron, Hoffmann, Shaw, Frisch, and others. Topics for discussion include: Don Juan and psychoanalysis; feminist perspectives on Don Juan; the rhetoric of seduction and conquest. A knowledge of Spanish and/or French is desirable, but is not required. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Swislocki.
49. Special Topics: Themes
06S: 2
In 06S, From Plato to Platonov: Utopia and Dystopia in Russia and the West (Identical to Russian 38, pending faculty approval). According to Walter Benjamin, the Russian revolution drew on the creative potential of the utopian mind. Utopia in Russia was both a literary genre and a large-scale social project. This course studies utopian and dystopian themes from Plato and Aristophanes to the works of Dostoevsky, the social fantasies of the Russian avant-garde, and Huxley’s and Platonov’s perverse visions of the future. All readings are in English. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Nazyrova.
REGIONAL APPROACHES
50. Europe and its Cultural Others
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Literatures of the world cannot be compared without regard for the relations of domination that exist among the cultures that produced them. Colonialism and imperialism constitute important aspects of European history and self-perception from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. This course will focus on the cultural impact of domination on colonizer and colonized. Offered periodically with varying content.
51. African Literatures
06W, 06F: 2A
This course will survey the texts and contexts of literatures, theories and criticisms from the distinctive cultures of East, Central, North, South and West Africa as well as the Caribbean. It will examine the evolution of literary forms as well as shifts of emphasis in issues and consciousness. Offered periodically, it will focus on genres, periods, authors, or geolinguistic categories such as anglophone, francophone, hispanophone, or lusophone.
In 06W and 06F, Masterpieces of Literatures from Africa (Identical to African and African American Studies 51). This course is designed to provide students with a specific and global view of the diversity of literatures from the African continent. We will read texts written in English or translated from French, Portuguese, Arabic and African languages. Through novels, short stories, poetry, and drama, we will explore such topics as the colonial encounter, the conflict between tradition and modernity, the negotiation of African identities, post-independence disillusion, gender issues, apartheid and post-apartheid. In discussing this variety of literatures from a comparative context, we will assess the similarities and the differences apparent in the cultures and historical contexts from which they emerge. Readings include Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley, Calixthe Beyala’s The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me, Camara Laye’s The African Child, and Luandino Vieira’s Luanda. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: NW. Coly.
52. Latin American Literatures
07W: 10
Some of the most fascinating literary works of this century have been written by Latin American authors such as Neruda, García Márquez, Fuentes, Allende, etc. This course will analyze modern Latin American literature, its connection to or rejection of European traditions, the ways in which individual works illuminate third world realities and challenge accepted Western views of the world. Offered periodically with varying content.
In 07W, The Borderlands: Latina/o Writers in the United States (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 40). In this course we will focus on the writings of US Latina/o writers. We will analyze how writers (Anzaldúa, Alvarez, Cisneros, Castillo and others) negotiate a path between the two cultures (the US and Latin America) and the two languages that inform their literary production and shape their identity. This in-between status translates into an experimentation with genres and a questioning of traditional gender divisions as well as the construction of transcultural icons and objects. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Spitta.
53. Middle Eastern Literature
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course, offered periodically, will examine texts from the cultures of the Middle East originally in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Hebrew. The issue of comparative focus will vary.
54. Jewish Literatures
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
From Biblical times to the present, Jewish literary production has ranged over numerous countries and languages and thus needs to be studied from a comparative perspective. This course will explore Jewish literature from generic, thematic or cultural perspectives.
55. Asian Literatures
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
The literatures of Asia are so rich and diverse that they defy the simplistic categorization implied by the notion of national traditions. The forms and conventions of literary works in India, China, or Japan have been shaped over a long period of time by a shared sense that literary culture is continuous and by an awareness of difference inherent to particular cultural epochs. This course will examine Asian literatures within their specific historical contexts in order to illuminate the cultural ground of literary practices and to provide a basis for comparison with the literary traditions of the West.
56. Eastern European Literatures
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
Courses taught under this rubric offer regional or thematic approaches to the literature of Eastern Europe, its many diverse cultures, traditions, and prospects - from the Baltic to the Balkans, from Islam to Russian Orthodoxy, from the Ottoman Empire to Communism and beyond, from Mikhail Bulgakov to Eugene Ionesco and Vaclav Havel.
57. Special Topics: Regions
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
LITERATURE AND OTHER DISCIPLINES
60. Literature and Music
07S: 2A
The affinities between literature and music have always held a special fascination for poets, writers, musicians, and critics. By studying the two arts as comparable media of expression, this course will test the legitimacy of interart parallels.
In 07S, an introduction to the major aspects, aesthetic implications, and interpretive methods comparing the two arts. Topics for lectures and discussion will include: musical structures as literary form; verbal music, word music, and program music; word-tone synthesis in the Lied; music and drama in opera; music in fiction; and the writer as music critic. Music-related poetry and prose examples, complemented by musical illustrations and ranging from the German and English Romantics through the French symbolists and the Dadaists to contemporary writing, will be selected from texts by Goethe, Brentano, Hoffmann, DeQuincey, Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Proust, Thomas Mann, Joyce, Eliot, Huxley, Shaw, and Pound. No particular musical background or technical knowledge of music required. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Kopper.
61. Literature and the Visual Arts
05F, 06F: 11
Cultural history and criticism has returned repeatedly to the affinities, dissimilarities, and tensions between words and images. This course addresses the fundamental dialogue between these forms of communication and notation.
In 05F, Art and Artists in Fiction (Identical to Art History 16). This course will examine literary representations of art works, artists, and the art world in fictional texts of the 19th and 20th century. A set of underlying themes and structures will be developed within different national literary traditions. These include the role of art and the artist in changing societies; the nature of the work of art; literary discourses of the visible (description, ekphrasis); the artist as the shadow of the writer; and the role of women in institutional structures. Dist: LIT. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Schoell-Glass.
In 06F, Ink Writing/Light Writing: Photography and Surrealism. Centered in Paris between the world wars, surrealism - the 20th-century’s premier avant-garde movement - attracted photographers of many nationalities, both European and American. This course examines photography’s 19th-century origins, its artistic, documentary, archival, and political status within surrealism, and how it enacts both Bretonian automatic “convulsive beauty” and Bataillian “formlessness.” Artists, critics and theorists include Atget, Brassaï, Breton, Gernsheim, Batchen, Walker, Roberts, Krauss, Jay, Crary, and Ades. Conley.
62. Literature and Film
05F: 2A06X, 07W: 10A07S: M 3-6
A study of selected major film traditions from a literary perspective. By examining themes, structures, montage, and other literary and filmic elements, students will become familiar with important concepts in film analysis. Individual offerings of the course may focus on filmmakers, movements, periods, or themes. The goal will be to appreciate the aesthetic and social significance of film as a twentieth-century medium and to explore various intersections of film and literature.
In 05F, Film as Poetry: The Avant Garde (Identical to Film and Television Studies 41, pending faculty approval).The cinematic avant garde is to film what poetry is to prose, a demand that we read differently, an attempt to bring a density and weight to images more conventionally used to convey narrative information. In poetic film, the form, shape, repetition, resonance, rhythm, tempo and quality of the image become subjects worthy of exploration in themselves. The course will cover the history of avant garde film from French silents to contemporary video art, and techniques such as the use of found footage, animation, looping, optical printing, and manipulations of color and black and white. Topics to be examined include the relationship between film and language, female and male sexuality, and the relationship of poetry and film to history. Dist: ART. A. Lawrence.
In 06X, Through Foreign Eyes: European and American Writers and Filmmakers in Mexico, 1920 to the Present. Since the 1920’s major American and European artists, writers, and filmmakers have lived and worked in Mexico, attracted by its ancient Indian culture as a corrective to modern industrialism, as well as by its contemporary mix of ancient and modern. Exploring Mexico, they explored themselves, altered their art, and left a vital legacy. We will look at such exiles as Lawrence, Artaud, Traven, Porter, Brenner, Lowry, Steinbeck, Williams, Doerr, and LeClezio. Dist: LIT or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. LaValley.
In 07W, Twice-Told Tales: Studies in Adaptation. Using theoretical readings and case studies, we will explore various types of adaptations, asking: what are the inherent characteristics of media? What are the implications of being a reader or spectator? How - and why - do artists transform narrative, cultural, historical, and material givens of a story? And what do stories reveal about the context of their creation? Examples will include mostly adaptations from literary works to the cinema, but we will also consider screenplays, paintings, games, songs, and other forms. Authors/filmmakers may include G. B. Shaw, Hitchcock, Alice Walker, Jim Thompson, Tolkien, Bertrand Tavernier, Kurosawa, Ousmane Sembene, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Beatles. Higgins.
In 07S, The Cinematic City. The urban metaphor, the city in its cultural, political, and social complexities, has been either a working political utopia of diversity, freedom, and change or a manifestation of dystopia, commodification, social inequities, and dehumanization since the origins of filmmaking. Beginning with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) and ending with Pedro Almodóvar’s All About my Mother (1999), this course will provide a historical overview of the different kinds of political, cultural, and sexual metaphors the cinematic city articulates. Screenings of German, U.S., Italian, Japanese, British, Spanish, French, and Cuban films. Martín.
63. Literature and Politics
07S: 2
This course will be offered periodically and with varying content. It will explore the rich relations that exist between literature and politics, focusing on literature both as an instrument of political interest and as a product of political contexts.
In 07S, Fascist Italy: Fascism in Literature and Film. This course focuses on the history of the rise and fall of fascism and on the cultural forces that validated its power. Special attention will be given to literature and film in propaganda. Students will watch films such as Cabiria, Black Shirt, The White Squadron, and A Very Special Day and read novels and short stories by Alberto Moravia, Fausta Cailente, F.T. Marinetti, and Elsa Morante and critical texts by Spackman, Pickering-Iazzi, de Grazia, and Ben-Ghiat. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Parati.
64. Literature and History
07S: 10A
The course will explore the relationship between literature and history, focusing both upon the interplay of historiographical and fictional discourses and upon conceptualization and representation of history in some major literary texts. Dist. Varies.
In 07S, Metaphors in the Making.What did Henry James mean by “it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature”? This course will examine the complex and often competing notions of literature and history in their constant interaction. We will focus on such issues as truth and fiction, rewriting and reinterpretation, myth, chronicle, and memoir, as well as the device “based on a true story.” Readings will be drawn from such authors as Plato, Tacitus, Columbus, Bodin, Mme de Lafayette, Pushkin, Michelet, Carpentier, Mayakovski, and Zweig. Sokol.
65. Literature and Science
07W: 10
This course will consider the intertwining of literature, science, and technology. We shall investigate the literary representation of scientific activity and the variety of ways in which literary and scientific modes of thought have diverged or come together.
In 07W, A Matter of Time (Identical to Mathematics 5). Everybody knows about time. Our everyday language bears witness to the centrality of time with scores of words and expressions that refer to it as a measure, a frame of reference, or an ordering factor for our lives, feelings, dreams, and histories. Playing with time has been a favorite game in works of high culture - from the Greek sophists to cubism - and in popular culture - from H.G. Wells to Monty Python. And time is at the center of one of the most revolutionary scientific theories of all time: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In this course we will use mathematics, literature, and the arts to travel through history, to explore and understand Time as a key concept and reality in the development of Western culture and in our own twentieth -century view of ourselves and the world. Dist: QDS. Satisfies the Interdisciplinary Requirement (Class of 2004 and earlier). Lahr, Pastor.
66. Literature and Psychoanalysis
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course aims to explore the relationship between literature and the theoretical and clinical writings of psychoanalysis. Through readings representing a range of psychoanalytic and literary traditions, we will examine the connections that can be made between psychic structures and literary structures, between the language of the mind and the emotions and the language of the literary, cultural or cinematic text.
67. Literature and Women’s/Gender Studies
05F: 2A 06S: 1206F: 3B
This course will focus on the cultural construction of gender as it is manifested in various texts and traditions. Topics may include one or more aspects of gendered literary study: writing (male/female authorship), reading, literary form, masculine and feminine subjectivity, representation, or feminist literary and cultural criticism.
In 05F, From Hand to Mouth: Writing, Eating and the Construction of Gender (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 43). This course will explore the role that food plays in the processes of gender and identity formation. We will consider the representation of food in literature and film as a complex intersection of production, consumption, and signification that can act as a creative extension of the Self as well as an ingestion of Otherness. Readings will include texts by Petronius, Robert Burns, Isak Dinesen, Clarice Lispector, Laura Esquivel, Margaret Atwood, and Marguerite Duras. Dist: SOC or INT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU or NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Reyes.
In 06S, Women’s Identities in Migration (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 40). Writings by immigrant women in the United States probe complications in representation and self-definition; to migrate or to inherit an immigrant context is to be conceptually as well as physically displaced. We will examine literary and cinematic texts and the growing body of cultural and literary theory about immigration and second-generation women. The syllabus will focus on Latina and Asian American literature and theory, but will include a broad range of immigrant texts. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: CI. Satisfies the Interdisciplinary Requirement (Class of 2004 and earlier). Spitta, Zeiger.
In 06F, Colonial and Postcolonial Masculinities. In this course, we will develop an understanding of masculinity as a construct which varies in time and space, and is constantly (re)shaped by such factors as race, class, and sexuality. The contexts of the colonial encounter and its postcolonial aftermath will set the stage for our examination of the ways in which social, political, economic, and cultural factors foster the production of specific masculinities. Texts include Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Lafferiere’s How to Make Love to a Negro, and additional writings by Irish, Indian, and Australian authors. Our study will be organized around the questions of the production of hegemonic and subaltern masculinities, the representation of the colonial and postcolonial male body, the militarization of masculinity, and the relation between masculinity and nationalism. Theoretical material on masculinities will frame our readings. Coly.
70. Special Topics: Literature and Other Disciplines
06W, 06F: 2A
In 06W, Midrash: How the Rabbis Interpreted the Bible (Identical to Hebrew 62 and Jewish Studies 20). Two millennia ago, the Rabbis created Midrash, an imaginative method of interpretation probing the existential issues in the Bible and the basic values of Judaism. This mode of thought is a key to the traditional Jewish ‘mindset’ - and has now been ‘discovered’ by postmodernists as a radical ‘new’ way of reading text. We focus on such elemental motifs as the Creation, the Flood, the Akedah, and Jacob and the Angel. No Hebrew required. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Glinert.
In 06F, European Jewish Intellectuals (Identical to Jewish Studies 60). The course will examine the role of the Jewish intellectual in 20th-century Europe. We shall focus on several paradigmatic figures (Adorno, Arendt, Benjamin, Levinas, Derrida) who confront the redefinition of politics and civil society in modern times. Some attempt will be made to deal with these changes through a critical reflection on the concepts of democracy and ethics and on how justice can be practiced either within or outside the geographical and spiritual boundaries of the modern nation state. Particular attention will be paid to topics such as the challenges of Eurocentric Christian humanism and universalism to Jewish assimilation; the promises of totalitarianism, Marxism and messianism; the politics of biblical exegesis; history and Jewish mysticism; Zionism, anti-Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Kritzman.
Refer also to Philosophy 20.
LITERARY CRITICISM/THEORY
71. History of Literary Criticism: The Western Tradition to 1900
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
This course will focus on three periods in particular - antiquity, the Renaissance and the Romantic period - and on topics and issues which link these periods, such as theories of representation, the functions of poetry, the relationship of poetry to truth, the privileging of particular genres at different times, the sublime, theories of the self. We will pay particular attention to texts that are still generating debate and critique today, including some from a feminist perspective, and will end with a brief consideration of some of the nineteenth-century thinkers whose work has been influential in this century. Readings may include the following authors: Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Lucian, Horace, Longinus, Jonson, Sidney, Burke, Kant, Wordsworth, J.S. Mill, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud.
For a related course, see English 63.
72. Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory
05F, 06F: 10A
Covering some of the major theoretical movements of the second half of the twentieth century, this course focuses on the issues and questions motivating theoretical debate in literary and cultural studies. Movements studied may include New Criticism, structuralism, semiotics, poststructuralism and deconstruction, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis, narratology, reader-response theory, feminist criticism, African American criticism, film criticism, and the new historicism.
In 05F, What is Theory? Since the beginnings of the 20th Century, critical theory has slowly transformed the study of literature. Although most scholars who study literary texts now use theory in one way or another, few would be able to define the discipline. This course will examine some of the major texts in the field, including the roots of contemporary critical practices in philosophy, linguistics, and semiotics, as well as some of the latest, “cutting edge” applications of theory to all kinds of cultural “objects”: texts, films, clothes, bodies, genders, identities, buildings, cities, nations, etc. Works by Saussure, Jakobson, Foucault, Lacan, Benjamin, Derrida, Hegel, Butler, Venturi, Kohlhaas and others. LaGuardia.
In 06F, Literary Criticism and Theory. The course provides an overview of current literary theory. After considering competing definitions of “literature,” “theory,” and “reading,” we examine texts that represent the New Criticism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, African American criticism, and the new historicism. We also question our activities, reviewing the arguments that challenge the relevance of “theory.” In order to make things more concrete, we also read studies that concern specific texts. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Carrard.
73. Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory
06W: Wednesdays 3-607W: 3B
This course will focus on a specific preoccupation of contemporary theory or on a particular theoretical movement.
In 06W, Cultural Studies: Resisting Theory? This course will introduce students to contemporary debates on the notion of culture and its different theorizations as well as address the institutionalization of Cultural Studies as a field of inquiry. Starting with a theoretical exploration of the concepts of “culture” and “theory” and their linkage to the political contestation of institutions of power (academic and otherwise), this course will examine how Cultural Studies is both a practice and a theorization of what to “do” with high, mass, and popular culture. What kinds of epistemological rethinking needs to take place when established disciplines (history, literature, architecture, etc.) lose their “text” to Cultural Studies? Why has Cultural Studies become the theoretical forerunner in the age of globalization? Texts will be architectural, filmic, musical, literary, and theoretical. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU or NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Martín.
In 07W, Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective. Why did postmodernity become a cultural dominant in the United States but not in Europe, and why did poststructuralism become more prominent in the American academy than in the French? Exploring the meanings of modernity, postmodernity, or the avant-garde in the works of Arnold, Huxley, Adorno, Marcuse, Trilling, Howe, Sontag, Fiedler, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Barthes, Jameson, and others, we shall discuss how these and other ostensibly universal terms inflect concepts of culture on both sides of the Atlantic, and accrue specific meanings in the society in which they appear. Dist: LIT. Class of 2007 and earlier: WCult: EU or NA. Class of 2008 and later: WCult: W. Milich.
79. Independent Study
05F, 06W, 06S: Arrange
A tutorial course designed by the student with the assistance of a member of the Comparative Literature faculty who is willing to supervise it. Offers the student an opportunity to pursue a subject of special interest through a distinctive program of readings and reports. During the term prior to the course, applicants must submit a course outline to the Chair for written approval.
80. Advanced Seminar: Special Topics
Not offered in the period from 05F through 07S
85. Senior Seminar in Research and Methodology
06W: Arrange. Parati.
87. Thesis Tutorial
06S: Arrange.
Permission of the Chair is required.
100. Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory
05F: 10A
See description under Comparative Literature 72. Laguardia.
101. Topics in Literary Criticism and Theory
06W: Monday 3-6
See description under Comparative Literature 73. Martín.
102. Tutorial
Arrange with advisor. This course is open to M.A. candidates only.
103. Workshop in Critical Writing
06S: Arrange
Critical thinking and concise, persuasive writing are prerequisites for any professional career. In fact, both go hand in hand. The Workshop in Critical Writing introduces graduate students to advanced research techniques, to the conventions of scholarly discourse, and to the various kinds of writing practiced in literary studies. We will analyze scholarly articles as examples of research methods, argument development, rhetorical technique, and stylistic presentation; we will test a variety of practical approaches to the interpretation of literary texts; and we will explore how we might use theory in critical argument. Students will be asked to prepare and submit a scholarly article using previous written work of their own (senior thesis, independent study project) as a basis. The workshop format of the course will permit students to read and critique each other’s work and to sharpen their editorial skills. Washburn.
This course is open to M.A. candidates only.
105. Graduate Seminar
06W: Arrange
This course is open to M.A. candidates only.
106. Graduate Research
05F, 06W, 06S: Arrange