Fall 2011 Course Offerings
1511 The Birth of Venus 
This course will examine the art, politics, and history of Renaissance Florence, Venice, Ferrara, 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; why, for one out of two women in upperclass families, the choice was the convent rather than marriage; the rise of courtesan culture and pornography; conspicuous consumption; healing as a matter of faith and a matter of science. Prof. Wallace will present the great artists who worked in these cities, including works by Donatello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Vasari. Prof. Stone will examine Sarah Dunant's trilogy of best-selling historical novels: The Birth of Venus, set in Florence; In the Company of the Courtesan, set in Venice; and Sacred Hearts, set in Ferrara. 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 Dunant, who will be a visitor to the University during part of the semester, will introduce the class to historical documents that she used in creating her novels. Guest lecturer Prof. Monson (Music Dept.) will explore connections between nuns who make both music and magic. Open to freshmen and sophomores only.
Harriet Stone and William Wallace
Tu/Th 2:30-4 p.m.
151C Freshman Seminar: Immigrants and Exiles
Literature has traditionally been a welcoming space for people who, by choice or history, do not fit easily in the mainstream of community life. The widespread changes and upheavals of the last century have vastly expanded the ranks of such people, accelerating the processes of immigration and exile while fundamentally altering traditional notions of home and belonging. This course will examine fiction by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Albert Camus, Willa Cather, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and V.S. Naipaul, who write from and about the position of "outsider," exploring what such texts have to say about living in an unsettled, diasporic modern world - a world in which real belonging seems an increasingly elusive goal. In reading these texts, we will investigate how their authors have portrayed the journeys, hopes, and hardships of dislocation and alienation, as well as the role literature might play in creating a sense of community for immigrants, refugees, and people living in various forms of exile.
J. Dillon Brown
Tu/Th 10-11:30 a.m.
211 World Literature 
This course is an introduction to World Literature in which we will read some of the most influential classics of Western and Eastern traditions. We will study literary texts and films from different parts of the world (Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, Latin America) while providing an introduction to the concept and practice of comparative literature across historical periods, cultures, and genres. Some of the texts we will read are Dante, Inferno; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Stendhal, Love; Tanizaki, The Key; Borges, Labyrinths; Lispector, The Hour of the Star; Brathwaite, The Arrivants; and Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building. We will also watch Kurosawa, Rashomon, Antonioni’s Blow-Up; and Nolan’s Memento. No prerequisites; freshmen are welcome.
Ignacio Infante
M/W 11:30a.m-1 p.m.
213E 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.
Emma Kafalenos
Tu/Th 11:30a.m-1 p.m.
3071 Caribbean Literature 
Rum! Fun! Beaches! Sun! This is the image of the Caribbean in America today. This course will survey literature and culture from these islands, looking both at and beyond this tourists' paradise. It will aim to introduce students to the region's unmistakably vibrant tradition of multicultural mixture, while keeping an eye on the long history of slavery and rebellion out of which the islands' contemporary situation formed. Along the way we will encounter a wide variety of texts, from the earliest writing focused on life in urban slums, to the first novel ever to have a Rastafarian as its hero, to more contemporary considerations of the region's uncertain place in a U.S.-dominated world. Toward the end of the course, we will also look at important films like The Harder They Come as well as discussing the most globally famous cultural product of the contemporary Caribbean: reggae music. The course will involve readings from multiple genres, and will cover authors such as C.L.R. James, Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Jamaica Kincaid, and Caryl Phillips.
J. Dillon Brown
Tu/Th 1-2:30 p.m.
338 Postmodern Fiction and Graphic Novels
Postmodern stories and novels, mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, and recent graphic novels that require similar reading strategies. Approaching a “story” as a place to be explored and an itinerary to be chosen, we will discover ways to find paths even through works with several entrances and multiple routes. Fiction by Borges, Nabokov, Calvino, Federman, Fuentes, and Robbe-Grillet and graphic novels by Shaun Tan and Chris Ware. Essays, diagrams, projects. Sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. No other prerequisites, although a penchant for paintings and puzzles may be of use.
Emma Kafalenos
Tu/Th 2:30-4 p.m.
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.
Fatemeh Keshavarz
M/W 2:30-4 p.m.
402 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.
Robert Henke
Tu/Th 1-2:30 p.m.
409C Beyond Geography: The Meaning of Place in the Near East 
This course considers the importance of place in the Middle East with particular reference to Jewish and Islamic traditions. Topics to cover include the creation of holy sites, the concept of sacred space, the practice of pilgrimages, and the tropes of exile and return. Texts will range from analytical essays to novels, memoirs, and films by authors such as Edward Said, Naguib Mahfouz, Taher Ben Jelloun, Elif Shafak, A. B. Yehoshua, Shulamit Hareven, and Hanan Al-Shaykh. Requirements include participation, short assignments, and a seminar paper. This course fulfills the capstone requirement for students majoring in Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, but is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Prerequisites: coursework in JINES and senior standing or permission of instructor.
Nancy Berg
M 2:30-5:30 p.m.
438 Aesthetic Negativity: Adorno, Benjamin, and Kracauer on Literature, Art, and Media
The writings of German philosophers and critics Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer questioned, not only the canon of traditional literature and art, but the entire existence of the aesthetic in modern society. Highly attuned to the formal registers of individual works, these critics at the same time were eager to explore the broader social, political, and psychological implications of artistic practice in modernity. Their work has remained essential for any critical and theoretically informed engagement with the role of cultural expressions and aesthetic media through today. The task of this seminar is to explore their seminal essays, untangle their not always user-friendly arguments, and compare their various positions and interventions. Special attention will be given to their contributions to the development of literary theory, but also to their approaches to music, film, photography, exhibition practice, and aesthetic theory in general. Additional readings by Anglo-American theorists such as Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Raymond Williams will be used to place the work of German Critical Theory in a larger historical and critical context. All readings in English. Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students.
Lutz Koepnick
W 4-6:30 p.m.
495 Seminar: The 19th-Century European Novel: Ambition & Desire 
Our investigation of the classic European novel of the 19th century begins with the assumption that the novel is the preeminent literary form of urbanized, economic modernity. Through a detailed critical reading of six representative novels, we will be exploring such topics as the pressure that social and geographical mobility and larger historical forces exert 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. Supplementary reading will be provided for historical and theoretical context. Our texts for the course are: Goethe´s Elective Affinities, Balzac´s Pere Goriot, Stendhal´s Red And The Black, Tolstoy´s Anna Karenina, Turgenev's Fathers And Sons, and Verga's House By The Medlar Tree.
Miriam Bailin
Tu/Th 10-11:30 a.m.
513C The Renaissance of Doubt
The seminar will address one of the most vigorous and unsettling Early Modern revivals of antiquity, the renaissance of skepticism. Early in the term we'll consider the recovery of Ciceronian and Pyrrhonian skepticism so that we can later track its influence on Montaigne, Bacon, and Descartes. We'll also attend to the skeptical strain in philological and religious thought, giving special attention to Valla and Erasmus. But we'll also attend to non-erudite (or anti-erudite) contributions to the efflorescence of doubt, to the imaginative but undisciplined activities of mockery and exposure. Above all, we'll consider the theater -- and especially Shakespeare's theater -- as a laboratory of doubt. Besides those authors already mentioned, we'll read Rabelais, Harsnett, Dekker, Middleton, and Donne. We may also make time for Cervantes, Davies, and Milton.
Joe Loewenstein
M 4-6:30 p.m.