Spring 2010 Course Offerings
CL115 Freshman Seminar: Laughing Matters
This course will explore the multifarious purposes of laughter and humor as well as the diverse content that incites laughter. We will identify national styles of humor and their individual characteristics, studying various techniques involved in the provocation and comprehension of laughter, and examining how these techniques are used in specific ways by specific cultures. Our course will consider humor in different genres, including comedy, farce, and the novel, as well as authorless jokes. Works studied will include Plautus's Pseudolus, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and a comparison of Carl Sternheim's German version of The Underpants with the adaptation by Steve Martin, among others. Our analysis will be informed by celebrated theories of humor by Freud, Hobbes, and Bergson. Students will also try to write humorous texts.
Russo, Eva
MWF
10 - 11 a.m.
CL204 Crossing Borders: 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 for other students interested in reading literature from many parts of the world and in exploring issues such as translation theory, the cultural biases of readers, epistemology and representation, semiotics, and Orientalism. We will read plays, novels, and poems from the classical period through the present by Euripides (Medea), Vergil (Aeneid excerpts), Racine (Phaedra), Rilke ("Unicorn" sonnet), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw), Borges ("Pierre Menard"), Mellah (Elissa), and Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and closely related short excerpts by theorists from Aristotle to Bhabha. Excellent reading skills and curiosity about literature as a professional discipline will be useful. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or permission of the instructor.
Kafalenos, Emma
TuTh
2:30 - 4 p.m.
CL260 Cityscapes: Love at Court and in the City; (Il)licit Pleasures
We will examine how, from 17th-century theater through the modern novel, and from Dutch Golden Age paintings through contemporary films, the court and the city not only serve as backdrops to private affairs but also directly shape those relations. Detailing affairs of the heart both licit and illicit, authors and visual artists connect the power to rule with the power to seduce. The class will consider whether it is possible for lovers in illicit relations to contribute positively to society by thwarting existing codes of behavior, or whether their actions threaten the social fabric. Works of theater by Pierre Corneille (The Cid), Molière (The Would-be Gentleman [Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme]), Jean Racine (Phaedra); paintings by Pieter de Hooch, Johannes Vermeer, Emanuel de Witte; novels about London (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist), Moscow (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina [excerpts]), Paris (Emile Zola, Therese Raquin), and Dakar (Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song), and films set in Los Angeles (Paul Haggis, Crash) and Mexico City (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Amores Perros [Love's a Bitch]) will allow us to trace the tensions of love relations as they play out across history and across the globe.
Stone, Harriet
TuTh
10 - 11:30 a.m.
CL313E Introduction to Comparative Arts: The Twentieth Century
Our focus is Postmodern literature, visual art, architecture, dance, music, and cinema, produced in the second half of the twentieth century, and their roots in Modernist and avant-garde experiments in the first decades of the century. We will study avant-garde poets and artists (Tzara, Marinetti, Breton, Schwitters, Arp, Duchamp, Malevich, Kandinsky) who tested the limits of language and representation and Modernists (Gide, Joyce, Rilke, Eliot, Monet, Mondrian, Schoenberg, Stravinsky) who found ways to expand and enrich established genres and media. Then we will turn to Postmodern descendants to see which traces of the earlier two movements survive. Our readings will include avant-garde texts by Futurist, dada, and Surrealist poets; a Modernist novel (Gide's Counterfeiters), play (Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author), and poetry sequence (Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus); and Postmodern fiction by writers as varied as Robbe-Grillet and Nicole Krauss. Images of artworks and films by Kurosawa (Rashomon), Fellini (La Dolce Vita), and Kieslowski (The Double Life of Veronique) will be complemented by gallery visits and concerts. Prerequisite: Comp Lit 213 or sophomore standing.
Kafalenos, Emma
TuTh
11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m.
CL364 Literature and Ethics: Truth, Law, and Fiction [Section 4]
This course will examine narratives in texts beyond the realm of literature, to focus on the role of storytelling in legal decisions in both fiction and historical judicial records. We will explore the interactions between literature and law in East Asia, the US, and elsewhere, focusing our attention on the art of narrative construction in the establishment of truth claims and the creation of persuasive arguments. Readings to include crime reports from 18th-century China and "crime case" (gong'an) fiction from that period; films such as Rashōmon and contemporary crime fiction from Japan; legal musings by Judge Richard Posner; Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; narratives of extra-judicial torture in Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden; and reports from truth and reconciliation projects in several countries. Our critical and theoretical readings will range from Peter Brooks's Troubling Confessions to selected articles from the Critical Legal Studies debates, sections from Michael Riffaterre's Fictional Truth, and others.
Hegel, Robert
MW
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
CL402 Introduction to Comparative Literature: Theory and Methods
An introduction to the discipline and practice of Comparative Literature, this course explores the concepts most frequently discussed and the methods most successfully practiced. We will study what texts reveal when they are examined cross-culturally. Students will consider the various differences that emerge between texts when themes and genres are followed across more than one national literature. The course includes a short history of the discipline and recent debates about the nature and scope of the field. Topics to be discussed include genres and forms, influence and intertextuality, translation, world literature, exile, and cross-cultural encounter.
Henke, Robert
TuTh
1 - 2:30 p.m.
CL449 Topics: Early Modern Masculinities; Text and Context (1500-1750)
This course will explore what it meant to be a man in the early modern Western world. We will examine how gender, sexuality, race, and class shaped masculine identities in texts authored by men from England, Spain, France, Italy, and the colonial Americas. The class will address the ways in which religion, politics, war, education, love, and friendship influenced ideas about men's roles in society. Students will analyze masculinity not as a fixed and consistent concept, but rather as an evolving and contested idea which challenged Western notions of idealized manhood and revealed the anxiety behind society's need to maintain this ideal. Readings include literary and non-literary works, including conduct manuals, poetry, plays, chronicles, and essays by Montaigne (selections from The Complete Essays), Philip Sidney ("The New Arcadia"), Castligione (The Book of the Courtier), Machiavelli (The Prince), Lope de Vega (Fuenteovejuna), Calderón de la Barca (The Surgeon of his Honor), and Cabeza de Vaca (Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition).
Kirk, Stephanie
TuTh
10:00 - 11:30 a.m.
CL4252 Transatlantic Poetics
This seminar will explore how the flow and circulation of artistic forms between Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the 20th century results in the creation and dissemination of radically innovative modes of artistic expression. We will focus on the way key 20th-century artists negotiate and translate cultural, linguistic, and racial differences on both sides of the Atlantic, overcoming old boundaries and creating new traditions. Our primary focus on poetry will include the study of groundbreaking works by key modern poets and dramatists, including Ezra Pound (Poems and Translations), Vicente Huidobro (Altazor), Federico García Lorca (Poet in New York), Bertold Brecht ("Hollywood Elegies") and Kamau Brathwaite, (Ancestors). Our study of 20th-century Transatlantic poetics will also be informed through modern dance and performance (the work of Josephine Baker), fiction (Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"), and jazz (Miles Davis, "Sketches of Spain"), as well as various theoretical works including Elizabeth Povinelli and D. P. Gaonkar, "Technologies of Public Forms," James Clifford, Routes, Emily Apter, The Translation Zone, and Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, among others.
Infante, Ignacio
MW
10:00 - 11:30 a.m.
CL453 History of Literary Criticism I: The European Avant-Gardes
Our focus is the emergence during the first half of the twentieth century of artistic movements characterized by a revolt against tradition, an emphasis on radical experimentation, and a redefinition of the art work. This course will familiarize students with the avant-garde's main currents: Italian Futurism, English Vorticism, Russian Constructivism, Dadaism, and French Surrealism. Studying literature, art, and film, as well as artistic manifestos, we will consider how the avant-garde promoted social change and also fostered artistic experimentation. Taking as a model the relationship of the avant-garde to modernity, as defined by Baudelaire, we will explore how to reconcile the movement's credo of originality, which emphasizes the artist as individual, with its submission to the logic of groups. We will consider such issues as whether the avant-garde aesthetic is necessarily political; the implications of art in which violence is perceived to be a virtue; and the role of women as artists and/or models for experimental art. Texts include Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," Futurist manifestos, Cendrars's "Trans-Siberian Prose," Stein's Tender Buttons, and Breton's Nadja. We will also examine artworks (including Duchamp, Large Glass) and film (Buñuel, An Andalusian Dog).
Cuillé, Lionel
MW
2:30 - 4 p.m.
Fall 2009 Course Offerings
CL115 Freshman Seminar: The Birth of Venus--Inside Renaissance Florence, Venice, and Rome
This course will examine the art, politics, and history of Renaissance Florence, Venice, and Rome. We will study how love, beauty, religion, and politics were intertwined in these cities. We will consider how the flourishing of the arts occurred along with the oppressive rule of the Church; marriages that were arranged or otherwise "forced"; and the rise of courtesan culture and pornography. Prof. Wallace will present the art of these capital cities, including works by Donatello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Vasari. Prof. Stone will examine two recent best-selling historical novels by Sarah Dunant: The Birth of Venus, set in Florence, and In the Company of the Courtesan, set in Venice. Ms. Dunant, who will be a visitor to the University during part of the semester, will introduce the class to historical documents that she used in creating her novels, including her new one, Sacred Hearts, which is set against the backdrop of the Counter-Reformation. Guest lecturer Prof. Monson (Music Dept.) will explore connections between nuns who make both music and magic. The class will also study Galileo's trial in Rome for suspicion of heresy, as revealed through his daughter's letters and accounts of the Inquisition. Open to freshmen and sophomores only.
Stone (course coordinator), Wallace
TuTh
2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
CL211 World Literature: A Comparatist's Atlas
This course focuses on the ways in which literature invites us into new spaces, including new countries, new languages, new identities, and new ideas. We will follow the histories of individuals who cross boundaries, examining what they take with them, what they leave behind, and what they encounter. Points of conflict and points of convergence will mark our examination of the consequences for the characters, for the texts themselves, and for the authors, when they and their stories cross into different experiences as they navigate within Western and Eastern traditions. Texts drawn from: Aeschylus,The Oresteia; Dante, Inferno; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Goethe, Italian Journey; Stendhal, Love; Tanizaki, The Key; Borges, Labyrinths; Kafka, The Complete Stories; Sebald, Vertigo; Brathwaite, Black and Blues; and Farah, Links.
Infante
MWF
1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
CL213E 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.
Kafalenos
TuTh
11:30 - 1:00 p.m.
CL215C Introduction to Comparative Practice: Adaptation; From Pen to Celluloid
We will examine different types of adaptation that include film remakes, graphic novels, short fiction, and the novel, noting how film fuses, assimilates, and synthesizes narratives from other media. The class will consider what alterations need to be made in order to bring a story to life on the screen and also what (style, technique, nuances) of the original narrative is modified and/or compromised through that process. We will thus focus both on what makes a film a film and also on how the narrative, the way in which the story is related in print, is adapted on screen. Works will include Lynch's and Gifford's Wild at Heart, Welles's and Kafka's Trial, Olivier's and Shakespeare's Henry V, Scorsese's Departed and Lau's Infernal Affairs, The Wachowski Brothers' and Lloyd's V for Vendetta, and Kubrick's and Burgess's Clockwork Orange. Screening times to be announced.
C. Boehm
MWF
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
CL306 Modern Jewish Writers
This course will consider modern Jewish writers from across an international, generational, and gendered spectrum. We will pay particular attention to the way their writing is self-consciously aware of being part of a textual tradition/heritage that includes sacred texts, yizkor bucher (memorial books), the graphic novel, and other literary precedents. We will examine this international tradition, reading works from Egypt, Australia, and Argentina, as well as America and Europe. Reading recent texts by Michael Chabon (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), Joann Sfar (The Rabbi's Cat), Terri-ann White (Finding Theodore and Brina), Andre Aciman (Out of Egypt), and others, we will explore questions of language, memory as a Jewish obligation, and the meaning of place against the central trope of exile and return.
Berg
MW
2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
CL390 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.
Keshavarz
TuTh
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
CL430 Narrative Theory: An Introduction
Sequential representation, which is a feature of narratives, can be found in novels and stories and also in historical records, films, television dramas, cartoons, graphic novels, and even (when ordered sequentially) paintings or photographs. We will consider focalization, temporal relations, speech representation, gaps, and the implied author, and the effect of these and other elements of narrative analysis on readers' and viewers' experience. Exemplary narratives include Flaubert's Madame Bovary, James's Ambassadors, Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, and Robbe-Grillet's Maison de Rendez-vous; stories by Hoffmann, Borges, and Cortázar, along with a film or a photo-novel. We will read theory by major narratologists Barthes, Chatman, Cohn, Doležel, Genette, McHale, Nünning, Phelan, Prince, Rimmon-Kenan, Ryan, Sternberg, others. Open to students of history, the visual arts, and film, as well as literature. 3 units.
Kafalenos
TuTh
2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
CL4690 Europe, An Imagined Community: Essays on Identity since 1750; Literature, Thought, Art, Politics
Nation states and their cultures have been changed by globalization. Within this process, continentalisation has played an important role. The European Union is only half a century old, but continental unity has been discussed and demanded by European writers and thinkers for hundreds of years. We will read essays on Europe (its identity, its cultural diversity and its cultural roots, contemporary problems, and future goals) by writers like Coleridge, Madame de Staël, Novalis, Chateaubriand, Heine, Nerval, Hugo, Thomas Mann, Ernst Jünger, T. S. Eliot, Klaus Mann, de Madariaga, Kundera, Enzensberger, Frischmuth, and Drakulic; we will discuss studies re-inventing Europe by philosophers like the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Ortega y Gasset; we will deal with the mythological figure of Europa and her resurrections in the world of art; we will study the Nazarene painters of the early 19th century in Rome and will discuss portraits of Bonaparte by French painters of the time. For undergraduate students only. Comp. Lit. students will meet with the instructor for an additional two hours per month. Same as L97 422.
Lützeler
Tu
4:00 - 6:30 p.m.
CL494 Seminar: Diverse Topics in Literature: Visual Poetics
Our class will focus on the visual quality of poetry; we will study how poets attempt do with words what painters do with paint, as in the famous aesthetic dictum, "Ut pictura poesis" [As is painting, so is poetry]. We will examine the ways in which poets let their readers see, and not merely understand, what they are saying. Major theoretical statements concerning such poetics from Antiquity to the present will orient our discussions. Students will examine comparative examples of visually striking imagery from the 18th century through the 20th century, including imagery found in "concrete poetry," where the actual shape of the words and stanzas on the page reflects the meaning of the text itself, and also in verbal transpositions (ekphrasis) of art works. We will read critics Horace, Lessing, Hugo, W. J. T. Mitchell and David Scott, and a wide range of poets such as the Grands Rhétoriqueurs in France, Blake, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Hopkins, Whitman, Stein, Pound, Apollinaire, Huidobro, Césaire and Zukovsky.
Metzidakis
TuTh
1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
CL551 Methods of Literary Study: The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation
This course combines a historical 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. The professor will schedule one additional class hour per week for group work.
Williams
M
4:00 - 6:00 p.m.