Fall
2008
L16 213 From Romanticism to Modernism: Literature and the Arts in 19th-Century Europe
The idea of genius finds expression, in the 19th century, in painting and music as well as in stories, poems, and plays. We will follow the evolution, from Romanticism into the modern period, of a new interest in the individual perceptions of the "genius" and others, along with a simultaneous breakdown of faith in objectivity. Beginning with Goethe's Werther (1774), we will move through the 19th century, focusing on movements including Symbolism and Impressionism, and conclude with the Futurist Manifesto of 1909. Texts, slides, tapes. Three essays, a report, one creative project, attendance at concerts and plays. No prerequisites; freshmen are welcome.
TuTh
2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
E. Kafalenos
L16 215c Introduction to Comparative Practice: Death, Decadence, and Femininity
Exploring notions of the fallen woman prevalent since Eve, this course will study how 19th- and 20th-century authors and visual artists link the female body to indulgence, wrong-doing, and weakness. We will consider how the idealized 19th-century woman stands in opposition to woman as a symbol of moral decay. The class will examine conventional gender roles along with family dynamics, focusing on how authors, artists, and filmmakers associate the woman's role with death, decadence, and moral decay. Works to include Schnitzler's Ronde, Reuter's From a Good Family, Fontane's Effi Briest, Zola's Thérèse Raquin, and James's Portrait of a Lady; paintings by Klimt; and also Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut.
MWF
1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
S. Marcu
L16 338c Genres: Textravel: Postmodern Fiction
An introduction to Postmodern texts, mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, along with selected 19th-century fiction, to illustrate the guideposts and passageways of the process of reading. Approaching a "story" as a place to be explored and an itinerary to be chosen, we will learn to find paths even through works with several entrances and multiple routes. Emphasis on experiencing and visualizing Postmodern constructs, and considering how they mirror the world in which we live. Texts by Borges, Nabokov, Calvino, Federman, Fuentes, Robbe-Grillet, and Barthes. Essays, diagrams, projects. Sophomore standing; no other prerequisites, although a penchant for paintings or puzzles may be of use.
TuTh
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
E. Kafalenos
L16 390 Lyrics of Mystical Love, East and West
How can mystical experience be put into words? How did the mystic poets, from various world traditions, attempt to express the inexpressible? How should we "read" and "interpret" these poetic images? This course deals with these and similar questions while examining key mystical/poetic concepts such as silence, union with the divine, or human versus mystical love. The lyrics of the world-renowned mystic Rumi will be used as the main text with frequent comparisons to the writings of other prominent figures such as St. John of the Cross, Yunus Emre, John Donne, Kabir, and Meister Eckhart. All poems will be read in English.
TBA
F. Keshavarz
L16 4901 Topics: Around Paris: Captial Lives
This course will construct a cultural map of literature and the visual arts through century-by-century comparisons linking Paris with different Western capitals. We will study Rabelais's ideals of a humanist education along with the flourishing of art in Renaissance Florence; the court culture of Lafayette's Princesse de Clèves and the art of Vermeer and his contemporaries in Delft and Amsterdam; the libertinism of Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons in conjunction with the London exploits of Richardson's Pamela; and middle class desire as it radiates from Paris through Vienna in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Vuillard's paintings, and Freud's Dora. These comparisons will enable us to define a context for literature that engages political, religious, and social concerns. A study of Butor's Parisian hero's return to Rome in Change of Heart (La Modification) along with Paul Auster's New York Trilogy will focus on how, by experimenting with narrative structure, some modern literature defines a culture rooted less in sociopolitical concerns than in the writer's own ability to relate the impact of city life on the consciousness of his hero. Photographs of Paris and New York by Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Stieglitz, Strand, Hine, and others will offer additional perspectives for considering how, over time and over borders, Paris remains central to our sense of culture.
TuTh
2:30-4:00 p.m.
H. Stone
L16 494 Seminar: Truth or Fiction? Autobiographical Fiction and Fictional Autobiography
Examining how, in the last decade, literary and popular media have focused on several scandals involving fraudulent autobiographies (including the fake Holocaust memoir Fragments, by Benjamin Wilkomirski, and James Frey’s fabricated account of drug addiction, A Million Little Pieces), this course raises important questions about the borders of the literary genre of autobiography. We will examine a variety of 20th-century narratives and films that self-consciously transgress the boundary between fiction and autobiography and violate the conventions of the “autobiographical pact.” We will consider the how these issues relate to the construction of the self through writing, the reliability of memory, and notions of authenticity in self-representation. Works to include modernist and postmodernist texts by Roland Barthes (Roland Barthes), Raymond Federman (The Voice in the Closet), Franz Kafka (Letter to the Father), Imre Kertész (Fatelessness), Maxine Hong Kingston (The Woman Warrior), Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way), Henry Roth (Mercy of a Rude Stream), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Gertrude Stein (The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas), and Benjamin Wilkomirski (Fragments); and films Europa Europa and I’m Not There.
MW
2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
E. McGlothlin
L16 495 Seminar: The 19th Century European Novel
Our investigation of the classic European novel of the 19th century begins with the assumption that the novel is the preeminent literary form of middle-class, urbanized, economic modernity. Through a detailed critical reading of seven representative novels, we will be exploring such topics as the pressure of social and geographical mobility and of larger historical forces on the exposed modern individual. Our readings will also engage questions of form, in particular the rise of realism as the primary mode of expression of the novels of this period. We will be reading novels by Goethe, Stendhal, Sand, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Conrad.
MW
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
M. Bailin
L16 511 Seminar: Walter Benjamin & Co.
This course will explore the seminal work of Walter Benjamin, one of the major figures of early 20th-century theory and cultural criticism. Our discussions will focus on how his thought reflected and inspired contemporary conversations about the role of art in society; the cultural logic of capitalism; the specificity of older and newer media; the tasks and limits of literary translation; the relation of history, memory, and theology; and the historical transformations of sensory perception. This seminar engages with some of the most important texts and critical interventions of Benjamin from the 1920s to 1940, including "Goethe’s Elective Affinities," “The Task of the Translator,” One-Way Street, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," and The Arcades Project. We will read these contributions against the backdrop of the texts, authors, traditions, sites, and conceptual constellations that were at the center of Benjamin’s intellectual pursuits, looking at works by Adorno, Baudelaire, Breton, Eisenstein, Goethe, Kafka, Klee, Kracauer, Lukacs, Marinetti, Marx, Proust, Riegl, Valery, and Weber will help us to illuminate Benjamin’s thought, highlight the interconnectedness and interdisciplinary vibrancy of his work, and probe the continued actuality of his writing about the dialectic of the aesthetic and the political, of history and redemption, of modernity and myth, of progress and catastrophe.
W
4:00 - 6:30 p.m.
L. Koepnick
L16 5521 Translation Module 1
The first of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
L16 5522 Translation Module 2
The second of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
L16 5523 Translation Module 3
The third of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
Spring
2008
L16 115 Freshman Seminar: Science Fictions
Exploring how science fiction plays with reality through artful distortions of time and place, we will study how authors and filmmakers further amplify the effects of their speculative worlds by referring to each other's speculative worlds. Stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Edmundo Paz Soldán’s Turing’s Delirium present a complex web of allusions and cross-references that heighten the effects of a world that is at once recognizable and fantastic, part of another reality that oddly resonates with our own. By exploding the various realities that we attempt to inhabit, these works challenge us to reconsider the relations between what might be, what could be, and what we perceive to be.
MWF
1:00-2:00 p.m.
A. Brown
L16 204 Crossing Borders: An Intro to Comparative Literature
An introduction to some of the ideas and practices of literary studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This course is designed for majors and prospective majors in Comparative Literature and Comparative Arts--and other students interested in reading literature from many parts of the world and exploring issues in literary studies, including questions of epistemology and representation, the cultural biases of readers, semiotics, translation theory, and Orientalism. Plays, novels, and poems by writers including Euripides, Vergil, Racine, Rilke, Henry James, Borges, Mellah, and Puig, and closely related short excerpts by theorists from Aristotle to Bhabha. Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor required.Excellent reading skills and curiosity about literature as a professional discipline useful. Four essays.
TuTh
2:30-4:00 p.m.
E. Kafalenos
L16 215c Intro to Comparative Practice - Glimpses of Africa: Exoticism, Negritude, Post-Colonialism
Presenting major British, French, African, and American writers and painters of the late 19th and of the 20th centuries, this course focuses on works whose settings in African locales raise issues about European colonialism and its aftermath. We will examine how literature and art contributed to perpetuating or critiquing assumptions about the superiority of European civilization over the African continent. Discussions will address issues of race, class, and gender, as well as questions of progress, religion, freedom and democracy. Texts to include novels by Conrad, Gide, Waugh, Bowle, Naipaul, and Fanon; poems by Baudelaire, Senghor, and Césaire; and Isabelle Eberhardt's travelogue, The Oblivion Seekers. Visual art to include Orientalist paintings by Delacroix and Ingres and African-influenced Cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque; Pollack's film Out of Africa; and Julien's documentary Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask.
MWF
10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
E. Pourroy-Braud
L16 2140 Cross-Currents I
This course revisits the cultural and intellectual terrain of Classical to Renaissance Literature (Hum 201) and Early Political Thought (Hum 203), purposefully mixing a different set of texts of very different kinds. We'll delve into how works belonging to the same cultural moment but different genres can reflect upon one another, and we'll address how works issuing from different periods can speak to one another. Along the way we'll work on refining our talents as close readers and careful writers, and we'll think carefully about the critic's role in creating canons and inventing intertextual dialogues. Authors studied include Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, Seneca, Boethius, Dante, and Petrarch. No prerequisite required. 3 units. Same as home course L93 Hum 214.
MW
1:00-2:30 p.m.
M. Sherberg
L16 227c Theatre Culture Studies II
Addressing theater history (mainly through primary documents), political/cultural history, and dramatic text, this course examines theater produced and written between 1500 and 1800 from transnational points of view. We'll consider international influences and encounters, both within Europe (the pressure of Italian drama on Shakespeare, for example) and without (e.g., representations of the Turk in early modern drama, drama produced in the New World, etc.). Some attention will also be paid to the language of Shakespeare and his English contemporaries (e.g., metaphor, style, prosody, rhetoric) and to formal dramatic elements that can be conveyed in translation (e.g., the construction of character, time, place, plots and plotting, etc.). We'll read plays by such authors as Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster, Calderón, Racine and Molière. 3 units. Same as home course L15 Drama 229C.
TuTh
2:30-4:00 p.m.
R. Henke
L16 364 Literature and Ethics: The Art of War
Focusing on accounts of war in novels, poetry, and film, we will study the critical contribution of the arts to our understanding of historic conflict. We will examine ethical questions raised in authors' depictions of wars that occurred during their lifetimes, including some in which they were involved directly as fighters or witnesses. The construction of heroes and the flourishing of national identity are two issues that will engage us as we consider epics such as Homer's Iliad. The epic will serve as a model for our interpretations of depictions of the Battle of Waterloo by Stendhal in The Charterhouse of Parma and Hugo in Les Miserables. We will also examine Voltaire's critique in Candide of the ideological mechanisms that justify war, comparing his depiction of "heroic butchery" with praises of war in Apollinaire's Calligrams and Marinetti's Futurist Manifestos. Novels and films offering different perspectives on WWI will allow us to measure the shared human toll of war as colored by particular national interests. We will study the moral dilemmas that war imposes on individuals in Remarque's All's Quiet on the Western Front, Jünger's Storms of Steel, Barbusse's Fire, Grance's Wheel, Renoir's Grand Illusion, and Morris's Fog of War. In addition, Malraux's Man's Fate will engage us in discussions of what differentiates a terrorist from a soldier. We will evaluate how Malraux's depiction of the hero's experiences during the Chinese Revolution—a fictional account of history—offers interesting parallels with war today, notably the Iraq war as mediated in real time by journalists, scholars and soldiers.
MWF
2:00-3:00 p.m.
L. Cuillé
L16 393 Literary Theory: Unwrapping Psychoanalysis
From its classical beginnings in the late nineteenth century through the present, psychoanalysis has played a major role in science and medicine, in the academy, and in our everyday lives. We will study the broader social and cultural implications of psychoanalytic theory through an examination of the influence of Freud's ideas on a century-long interrogation of the unconscious that includes Lacan, who reworked Freud's ideas; feminists such as Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler, who challenged them, and, more recently, Slavoj Žižek, who engages them in a critical analysis of culture. Students will consider not only the importance of dreams and desires but also how the unconscious is shaping gender relations, cultural productions, and even politics. The class will read Freud's Ego and the Id, Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization And Its Discontents, and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality As Well As Lacan's Écrits, Kristeva's Tales of Love, Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One, Butler's Gender Trouble, and Žižek's Enjoy Your Symptom! and Plague of Fantasies. Same as L14 E Lit 393, L21 German 329.
TuTh
10:00-11:30 a.m.
S. Schindler
L16 411 - The Price of Culture: Economics and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
This seminar will explore the various ways in which economic concerns inform the literature of nineteenth-century Europe and the United States. Focusing on the profound economic transformations occurring in the period, we will consider how the nineteenth-century novel is shaped by industrialization, globalization, and the rise of the corporation, as well as by the spread of consumer culture and mass entertainment. In addition, we will explore how economic concepts and assumptions penetrate and structure literary works and how authors reflect on their status as commodity producers in the literary marketplace. Four novels, by Goethe (Elective Affinities), Dickens (Hard Times), Zola (The Ladies’ Paradise), and Norris (The Octopus), will provide a foundation for our discussions. Primary readings will be supplemented with theoretical texts by Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, Georg Simmel, Marcel Mauss, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and others. Same as L08 Classics 456.
MW
2:30-4:00 p.m.
M. Erlin
L16 419 - Feminist Literary Theory
This course is intended to acquaint students with basic ideas and issues raised by a diversity of voices in contemporary feminist criticism and theory. Readings will cover a wide range of approaches and tendencies within feminism, among them: French feminism, Foucauldian analyses of gender and sexuality, lesbian and queer theories, Third World/postcolonial feminism, and feminism by women of color. Given that feminist literary theories developed in response to and in dialogue with wider sociopolitical, cultural, and philosophical currents, the course will include application of theory to literature, but also will explore feminist literary theory in an interdisciplinary context. NOTE: This course is in the core curriculum for the Women and Gender Studies graduate certificate. Prereq: Advanced course work in WGS or in literary theory (300-level and above) or permission of the instructor required. 3 units. Same as home course L77 WGS 419.
TuTh
10:00-11:30 a.m.
A. Tsuchiya
L16 449 - Between Image and Text: Telling Stories
Images generally tell stories most precisely when accompanied by language--whether caption, title, or balloon. Stories told in words, in contrast, may be enhanced by but do not require illustration. Although this hierarchy of meaning in which language restricts the message that an image conveys usually prevails, some works positioned on the border between image and language introduce strategies that reverse the hierarchy. We will examine two types of borderline works that tell stories: 1) hybrid forms in which image and language combine (including a graphic novel) and 2) media that re-represent other media (films based on novels and novels that re-represent visual artworks in words, through ekphrasis). Hybrids by Barthes, Calvino, Robbe-Grillet/Magritte, Satrapi, Sebald, and Vargas Llosa. Films by Kieslowski and Kurosawa. Fiction that includes ekphrasis by Balzac, Borges, Cortázar, Henry James, Robbe-Grillet. Theory by Barthes, Kibédi Varga, Hagberg, Heffernan, Lessing, McCloud, Reid, Ryan, Spence, Steiner, Sternberg, Yacobi.
TuTh
11:30-1:00 p.m.
E. Kafalenos
L16 551 Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation
This course combines a review of translation theories with a study of translation practices. We will investigate how translations reflect changing literary and cultural values and tastes. In addition, we will examine how the nuances of language and culture (source and target) influence the translator's choice of whom and what kind of text to translate. Guest translators will occasionally discuss their work.
M
4:00-6:00 p.m.
G. Williams
L16 5521 Translation Module 1
The first of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
L16 5522 Translation Module 2
The second of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
L16 5523 Translation Module 3
The third of a series of three 1-unit courses devoted to the
practice of translation. The student will translate a published
text of 20-30 pages (or, exceptionally, an unpublished text)
from either literature, literary criticism, or literary theory
related to the course material, pre-approved by the faculty
member teaching the class, due at the end of the semester in
which the class is taught.
