Literature and Comparative Cultures (B.A.)

First-Year Seminar

* LITR 022a, Music and Literature  Candace Skorupa

This seminar explores the rivalry between music and literature, the attraction and repulsion between these two art forms, and the dialogue between writers and composers. In select fiction and poetry spanning a variety of cultures and times, we look at the aesthetic challenges of conveying music in words; in select music from the same periods, we study the use of literary themes and narrative. How does music inhabit literature, and literature influence music? We read fiction describing music and borrowing musical forms; we study symphonies and opera inspired by literature; we look at films that bring together these two arts. Students examine theoretical approaches and learn comparative methods useful for literature and culture courses. Though not required, musical experience and/or interest is welcomed for the seminar, which may be taken simultaneously with gateway courses in the humanities. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm

* LITR 023a / ENGL 025a / SAST 059a, Modern South Asian Literature, 1857-2017  Priyasha Mukhopadhyay

Exploration of literary texts from South Asia, 1857 to the present. Close reading of literary texts from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, alongside political speeches, autobiographies, and oral narratives. Topics include colonialism, history writing, migration, language, caste, gender and desire, translation, politics and the novel. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration is required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR, HU
MW 9am-10:15am

* LITR 024b / GMAN 051b, Game of Thrones and the Theory of Sovereignty  Kirk Wetters

Introduction to the classical and modern theory of sovereignty in the context of G.R.R. Martin’s popular Game of Thrones series (primarily the books, which are formally more complex and narratively more sophisticated than the television series). Although The Game of Thrones is obviously not a work of German literature, it addresses theoretical and literary-historical discourses that are prominently represented in the German context. Emphasis on strategies of literary and theoretical analysis; literature as a testing ground for theoretical models; theory as an analytic framework for evaluating literary and cultural depictions. Questioning the basis of the contemporary relevance and popularity of this material in light of questions of tragedy, individual agency, myth (vs. history), realism (vs. fantasy), environmental catastrophe and geopolitics. Enrollment limited to first-year students. Preregistration required; see under First-Year Seminar Program.  WR
TTh 9am-10:15am

* LITR 130a / HUMS 130a, How to Read  Ayesha Ramachandran

Introduction to techniques, strategies, and practices of reading through study of lyric poems, narrative texts, plays and performances, films, new and old, from a range of times and places. Emphasis on practical strategies of discerning and making meaning, as well as theories of literature, and contextualizing particular readings. Topics include form and genre, literary voice and the book as a material object, evaluating translations, and how literary strategies can be extended to read film, mass media, and popular culture. Junior seminar; preference given to juniors and majors.  HU
HTBA

* LITR 154a / ENGL 395a, The Bible as a Literature  Leslie Brisman

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness. The course should not be taken concurrently with RLST 145 and is not open to first-year students; but it is open to non-majors who have taken a prior WR course or others who are eager to profit from the progress possible from one to another of the five writing assignments.  WR, HU  RP
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm

* LITR 168a / ENGL 129a, Tragedy in the European Literary Tradition  Staff

The genre of tragedy from its origins in ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance to the present day. Themes of justice, religion, free will, family, gender, race, and dramaturgy. Works include Homer's Iliad and plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett, and Soyinka. Focus on textual analysis and on developing the craft of persuasive argument through writing.  WR, HU
HTBA

* LITR 169b / ENGL 130b, Epic in the European Literary Tradition  Staff

The epic tradition traced from its foundations in ancient Greece and Rome to the modern novel. The creation of cultural values and identities; exile and homecoming; the heroic in times of war and of peace; the role of the individual within society; memory and history; politics of gender, race, and religion. Works include Homer's Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, Cervantes's Don Quixote, and Joyce's Ulysses. Focus on textual analysis and on developing the craft of persuasive argument through writing.  WR, HU
HTBA

LITR 174a / EALL 211a / EAST 241a / WGSS 405a, Women and Literature in Traditional China  Kang-i Sun Chang

A study of major women writers in traditional China, as well as representations of women by male authors. The power of women's writing; women and material culture; women in exile; courtesans; Taoist and Buddhist nuns; widow poets; cross-dressing women; the female body and its metaphors; footbinding; notions of love and death; the aesthetics of illness; women and revolution; poetry clubs; the function of memory in women's literature; problems of gender and genre. All readings in translation; no knowledge of Chinese required. Some Chinese texts provided for students who read Chinese. Formerly CHNS 201.  HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

LITR 183a / HUMS 180a / ITAL 310a, Dante in Translation  Christiana Purdy Moudarres

A critical reading of Dante's Divine Comedy and selections from the minor works, with an attempt to place Dante's work in the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages by relating literature to philosophical, theological, and political concerns. No knowledge of Italian required. Course conducted in English.  HU  Tr
MW 1pm-2:15pm

LITR 194a / ENGL 154a / FREN 216a / HUMS 134a, The Multicultural Middle Ages  Ardis Butterfield

Introduction to medieval English literature and culture in its European and Mediterranean context, before it became monolingual, canonical, or author-bound. Genres include travel writing, epic, dream visions, mysticism, the lyric, and autobiography, from the Crusades to the Hundred Years War, from the troubadours to Dante, from the Chanson de Roland to Chaucer.  HU
MW 9:25am-10:15am

* LITR 201b / GMAN 247b, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister  Kirk Wetters

A detailed study of Goethe’s 1795/96 Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship – the first novel of the nineteenth century and the prototypical novel of education (Bildungsroman); engagement with critical and scholarly reception starting with Schiller and Schlegel, theories of the novel and transformations of modern society. Readings and discussion in English.  HU  Tr
HTBA

LITR 202b / RUSS 260b, Nabokov and World Literature  Marijeta Bozovic

Vladimir Nabokov's writings explored in the context of his life story and of the structures and institutions of literary life in Russian émigré circles. Themes of exile, memory, and nostalgia; hybrid cultural identities and cosmopolitan elites; language and bilingualism; the aims and aesthetics of émigré and diasporic modernism in novels and other media. Additional readings from works of world literature inspired and influenced by Nabokov. Readings and discussion in English.  WR, HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:20pm

LITR 214b / FREN 240b / HUMS 201b, The Modern French Novel  Maurice Samuels and Alice Kaplan

A survey of major French novels, considering style and story, literary and intellectual movements, and historical contexts. Writers include Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Camus, and Sartre. Readings in translation. One section conducted in French.  HU  Tr
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* LITR 218a / GMAN 226a, The Faust Tradition  Jan Hagens

The development of the Faust motif through time, from the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the twentieth century. Readings from the English adaptation of the original German chapbook and from works by Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Goethe, Wilde, Bulgakov, and Thomas Mann. Screenings of films with a Faustian theme.  HU
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* LITR 220b / CZEC 301b / RSEE 300b, Milan Kundera: The Czech Novelist and French Thinker  Karen von Kunes

Close reading of Kundera's novels, with analysis of his aesthetics and artistic development. Relationships to French, German, and Spanish literatures and to history, philosophy, music, and art. Topics include paradoxes of public and private life, the irrational in erotic behavior, the duality of body and soul, the interplay of imagination and reality, the function of literary metaphor, and the art of composition. Readings and discussion in English.  HU  Tr
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* LITR 239a / CLCV 216a / MGRK 216a / WGSS 209a, Dionysus in Modernity  George Syrimis

Modernity's fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.  HU  Tr
F 1:30pm-3:20pm

LITR 245a / RSEE 254a / RUSS 254a, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky  Molly Brunson

Close reading of major novels by two of Russia's greatest authors. Focus on the interrelations of theme, form, and literary-cultural context. Readings and discussion in English.  HU
TTh 1:30pm-2:20pm

* LITR 302b / FREN 307b, France by Rail: Trains in French Literature, Film, and History  Morgane Cadieu

Exploration of the aesthetics of trains in French and Francophone literature and culture, from the end of the nineteenth-century and the first locomotives, to the automatically driven subway in twenty-first century Paris. Focus on the role of trains in industrialization, colonization, deportation, decolonization, and immigration. Corpus includes novels, poems, plays, films, paintings, graphic novels, as well as theoretical excerpts on urban spaces and public transportation. Activities include: building a train at the CEID and visiting the Beinecke collections and the Art Gallery. May not be taken after FREN 306.  WR, HU
F 1:30pm-3:20pm

* LITR 252a / PORT 350a, Machado de Assis  K. David Jackson

The place of Machado de Assis in world literature explored through close reading of his nine novels and selected stories in translation. Machado's hybrid literary world, skeptical critique of empire in Brazil, and narrative constructions. Readings and discussion in English; reading of texts in Portuguese for Portuguese majors.  WR, HU  Tr
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

* LITR 285a / EALL 286a / EAST 261a / HUMS 290a / PORT 360a, The Modern Novel in Brazil and Japan  Seth Jacobowitz

Brazilian and Japanese novels from the late nineteenth century to the present. Representative texts from major authors are read in pairs to explore their commonalities and divergences. Topics include nineteenth-century realism and naturalism, the rise of mass culture and the avant-garde, and existentialism and postmodernism. No knowledge of Portuguese or Japanese required.  HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* LITR 294a / LAST 394a / PORT 394a, World Cities and Narratives  K. David Jackson

Study of world cities and selected narratives that describe, belong to, or represent them. Topics range from the rise of the urban novel in European capitals to the postcolonial fictional worlds of major Portuguese, Brazilian, and Spanish American cities. Conducted in English.  WR, HU  Tr
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* LITR 179a / ENGL 219a / HUMS 149a / ITAL 309a / WGSS 179a, Gender and Genre in Renaissance Love Poetry  Ayesha Ramachandran

Introduction to the poetic genres of lyric, epic, and pastoral in the European Renaissance. Focus on questions of desire, love, and gendered subjectivity. The historical contexts and political uses of discourses of eroticism and pleasure in Italy, Spain, France, and England. Written exercises include poetic imitations of Renaissance texts.  HU
HTBA

* LITR 306a / FILM 409a / RSEE 327a / RUSS 327a, The Danube in Literature and Film  Marijeta Bozovic

The Danube River in the film, art, and literature of various Danubian cultural traditions, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Geography and history of the region that includes the river's shores and watershed; physical, historical, and metaphoric uses of the Danube; the region as a contested multilingual, multicultural, and multinational space, and as a quintessential site of cross-cultural engagement. Readings and discussion in English.  WR, HU  Tr
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* LITR 317a / JDST 326a, Marxist Theory of Literature  Hannan Hever

The role of Marxist thought in understanding literary institutions and texts in the twentieth century. Marx's theory of ideology; Lukacs's theory of literature as the basis for development of Marxist literary theory; the Frankfurt and materialistic schools. Readings include works by Raymond Williams, Catherine Belsey, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Macherey, and Frederic Jameson.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

LITR 318a / ENGL 191a / NELC 201a, The Arabian Nights, Then and Now  Shawkat Toorawa

Exploration of Arabian Nights, a classic of world literature. Topics include antecedents, themes and later prose, and graphic and film adaptations.  HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* LITR 324b / HUMS 320 / THST 330b, Representations of the Underworld  Toni Dorfman

What is the underworld? What questions have different ideas about the underworld posed about mortality, freedom, and goodness? Topics include dreams, hell, ghosts, the unconscious, and string theory. Sophomore standing required.  HU
M 9:25am-11:15am

* LITR 327a / ITAL 367a, Saying Goodbye: Meditations on Art, Death and Afterlives, the Bible through Shakespeare and Sor Juan  Jane Tylus

How do we take leave of the people, places, and work that we love? Our course objectives are to strive to understand the important role that leavetakings play in life and artistic expression, especially between 1300-1700; to probe the differences between religious faiths of early modernity with respect to rituals of saying goodbye and the afterlife; to sharpen our skills as readers, spectators, and listeners of works that engage with complex questions regarding the meaning of life and one’s lifework; and to contextualize our readings within more contemporary conversations by theologians and theorists about dying, grief, and letting go. We also examines rites of passage and departure, even as our main focus is figures such as Dante, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, whose differing faiths during a period of religious crisis produced various kinds of finished—and unfinished—works. Our class is held in the Beinecke library, where we regularly consult first editions and in some cases (Donne’s letters and poems) autograph copies, as well as evaluate the material evidence for ways that manuscripts and books reveal how authors parted with their works (dedications, envois), and how readers comment on their own encounters with leavetakings.  WR, HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

LITR 329a / AFAM 180a / LAST 398a / SPAN 398a, Caribbean Baseball: A Cultural History  Roberto González Echevarría

A study of the origins and evolution of baseball in the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) in the context of the region's political and cultural history and its relationship with the United States. The course begins with a consideration of the nature of games and the development and dissemination of sports by imperial powers since the nineteenth century: soccer, rugby, and tennis by the UK and basketball and baseball by the U.S. Topics to be considered: nationalism, the role of race, popular culture, the development of the media, the rise of stars and famous teams, the importance of the Negro Leagues, access of Caribbean players to the Major Leagues, the situation in the present.  WR, HU  Tr
TTh 1pm-2:15pm