Comparative Literary Studies Program Course Descriptions 2012-2013
Fall 2012
CLS 201: Reading World Literature Un/Belonging
Lectures: MW 10:00-10:50, 555 Clark 00B03 Discussion Sections: F 10:00-10:50 Instructor: Firat Oruc Expected Enrollment: 50
An introduction to the study of world literature, this course will bring together literary works from various times and spaces around the theme of un/belonging. Our readings will lead us to explore the following questions: How does world literature represent forms and mechanisms of exclusion, dispossession and displacement? In what ways do narratives enable us to imagine other worlds of belonging? How do individuals and communities think about their relationship and conformity to a homeland, a state, a nation, and a world? What are the ethical conundrums of being an outsider, feeling at odds, unsettled, ambivalent, or conflicted? We will read literature as an imaginative and creative mode of negotiating and performing the circumstances of un/belonging in the world. We will attend closely to fictional treatments of the problematic of cultural alienation and assimilation and the changing conceptions of self and identity as a result of migration, travel and crossing. While doing so, we will stress that un/belonging always calls for a deeper acknowledgement of inter-connectedness, relationality, hospitality and heterogeneity. Ultimately, the pivotal theme of our course will also give us the occasion to question conventional assumptions about which texts fit into the category of world literature. What, after all, belongs to world literature?
The reading list will include classical texts such as Antigone, The Book of Ruth, and The Merchant of Venice as well as a diverse body of modern works by exilic and immigrant writers such as James Joyce, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Jumpa Lahiri, Jamaica Kincaid and Mahmoud Darwish.
CLS 207 / PHIL 220: Introduction to Critical Theory
Lectures: MW 3:00-3:50pm, Swift 107 Discussion Sections: F 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50, 2:00-2:50, 3:00- 3:50 Instructor: Mark Alznauer ([email protected]) Expected Enrollment: 100
Course Description: In this class, we will focus on the foundations of critical theory in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Weber and Freud, paying particular attention paid to methods they devise and deploy in their treatment of moral and religious phenomena. Lectures will primarily involve a close analysis and discussion of the readings.
Evaluation Method: Assessment will be based on section participation, a quiz, two papers, and a take home assignment. Section attendance and participation: 20% Midterm: 20% First paper (3-5pp.): 15% Take-home assignment: 15% Second paper (5-8pp.): 30%
Reading List: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition, edited by Richard Tucker (Norton, 1978) ISBN-10: 9780393090406 Friedrich Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) [STUDENT EDITION] ISBN-10: 052169163X/ ISBN-13: 978-0521691635. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Routledge, 2007) ISBN: 978-0415436663 (Note: The older, Oxford edition (1946) is perfectly fine though out of print.) Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader, edited by Peter Gay (Norton, 1995) ISBN: 0-393-31403-0
ENG 211 Introduction to Poetry: The Experience and Logic of Poetry
Class Meetings: MWF 11-11:50, Harris 107
Instructor: Susannah Gottlieb
Course Description: The experience of poetry can be understood in it at least two radically different ways: as a raw encounter with something unfamiliar or as a methodically constructed mode of access to the unknown. The experience of poetry includes both of these models, and theories of poetry from antiquity to the present day have grappled with these two dimensions of the poetic experience. In order to understand a poem, a reader must, in some sense, enter into its unique and complex logic, while nevertheless remaining open to the sometimes unsettling ways it can surprise us. In this class, we will read some of the greatest lyric poems written in English, as we systematically develop an understanding of the formal techniques of poetic composition, including diction, syntax, image, trope, and rhythm. Students should come prepared to encounter poems as new and unfamiliar terrain (even if you've read a particular poem before), as we methodically work through the formal elements of the poetic process. Teaching Method: Lectures and weekly discussion groups. Evaluation Method: Three papers (5-7 pages), weekly exercises, active participation in section discussions, and a final exam. Texts Include: The Norton Anthology of Poetry.
CLS 274/AMES 274-1: Chinese Lit in Translation Early and Medieval
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Parkes 212 Instructor: Bruce Knickerbocker Expected enrollment: 30
Course Description: As an introduction to the outlines of Chinese literature from its ancient roots to its "modern" flowering in the Song dynasty (A.D. 960), this course aims to provide insight into the humanistic Chinese tradition. We will work through masterpieces of prose and poetry in a roughly chronological manner. These include lyrical masterworks in the various poetic modes, fiction from early strange and supernatural Daoist-inspired stories to adventurous and sensual medieval tales, as well as exemplary essays, parables and jokes, vivid historical writings, and profound philosophical pieces. Close readings of texts will enable you to gain intimacy and familiarity with this long and rich literary tradition and, more importantly, will also equip you with the skills to interpret and reconstruct traditions though reading texts, composing papers and designing presentations. Although it is impossible to cover all ancient, early and medieval Chinese literature in one quarter, you will leave the course with an enhanced sense of the richness and the wonder of this literature, a basic blueprint of China's literary development, and hopefully an interest in roaming through it further. Conducted in English.
Evaluation Method: Evaluation: Weekly short essays, final paper, class participation, oral presentations.
Reading List: Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings To 1911; a variety of handouts.
CLS 278: Modern Hebrew Lit in Translation: The European Period: Loneliness and Solitude in Modern Hebrew Literature Class Meetings: TTh 12:00-1:20, Kresge 4-416 Instructor: Marcus Moseley Expected Enrollment: 25
Course Description: This course traces the emergence of a Modern Hebrew literature in Europe. Tracing this literature to its origins, we consider the writings of the Hasidic leader, Nahman of Bratslav, and the writings of Hebrew Enlightenment figures in late 18th Century Berlin. We then trace the flowering of this literature in 19th and early 20th century Eastern Europe. The course includes analyses of various genres: the essay, poetry, short story, novel and autobiography. No prior knowledge of Jewish history or literature is required. All texts are in English translation.
Evaluation Method: Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion (25% of the course grade), to write a midterm essay (25%) and a longer essay at the end of term (50%).
CLS 279 / JWSH_ST 279: Modern Jewish Lit in Translation: An Introduction
Class Meetings: MWF 10:00-10:50, University 101 Instructor: Marcia Gealy Expected Enrollment: 25
Course Description: The purpose of this course is to study selected works of modern Jewish literature in their historical context. We will focus on certain themes and stories in the Bible and in Jewish folklore as well as on particular events and movements in European, American, and Israeli history as a way of better understanding this literature. Though most of this literature dates from the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a study of eighteenth and nineteenth century intellectual and religious currents such as the Enlightenment, Jewish Mysticism, Zionism, and Socialism will help us to understand the literature in its changing historical and social context. Thus while some writers saw modern Jewish literature as a means of educating the masses to modern secular needs, others saw it as a means of reshaping older forms and religious values, while still others saw it as a means of reflecting timeless humanistic concerns. Among the writers we will read are Sholom Aleichem, I.B. Singer, B. Malamud, Primo Levi, Ida Fink Cynthia Ozick, Loew Segal, Philip Roth,and Amos Oz.
Evaluation Method: Short paper + response papers + class participation = 50%. Long paper = 50%. Late papers penalized except for emergency.
Readings include: 1. Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, ed. Stavans 2. Singer, I.B. Collected Stories 3. Levi, P. Survival in Auschwitz 4. Fink, A Scrap of Time I. 5. Schieber, Ava, Soundless Roar 6. Roth, P. Goodbye Columbus (and five short stories), Oz, Amos, Panther in the Basement.
CLS 302 / AMES 391-21: The Modern Chinese Novel (late Qing-1949)
Class Meetings: MW 2:00-3:20, University 101 Instructor: Peter Zhiwei Shen ([email protected])
Expected Enrollment: 30 Prerequisite: Course in the humanities or permission of advisor or instructor. All reading material, discussion, and written assignments will be in English.
Course Description: This course offers a critical survey of the Chinese novel from the last decade of the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era. Divided into four distinct historical periods, we will explore the question of how Chinese writers have turned to the novel to respond to the radical sociopolitical, linguistic, and cultural changes in the past century. In the first half of our study, we will focus on two masterpieces of the late Qing period—Han Banqing’s The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai and Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can— and seek to understand the sociopolitical and cultural conditions that gave rise to these two distinct works. In the second part of our study, we turn to the period from 1917 to 1949 and examine a set of terms critical to the engendering of the modern Chinese novel: the vernacular, realism, modernity, revolution, and nationalism. We explore these terms in the novels of Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen, and Qian Zhongshu. In the third part of the course, we turn to Zhang Ailing and Wang Wenxing, two writers directly impacted by the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and examine how they used the novel to explore the condition of exile and relocation. Finally, we conclude by turning to works in the post-Mao era and examine how acclaimed writers such as Mo Yan and Wang Anyi have redefined the boundaries of the Chinese novel in a climate marked by intense historical reflection, sociopolitical reform, urbanization, and globalization. Evaluation Method: Attendance and class discussion: 25%; In-class Presentation: 10%; First paper: 20% (5-7 pp.); Final paper: 30% (10-12 pp.); Oral Interview: 15%
CLS 304 / ENG 369: Studies in African Literature: Intersections of Film and Fiction
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, University 121 Instructor: Evan Mwangi Expected Enrollment: 30
Course Description: The course will examine the synergy between film and fiction in African writing and writing about Africa. We will not only consider cinematic techniques in fiction, but we will also examine the adaptation of various novels into film and the shifts and continuities in the adaptation techniques used. We will trace the parallels between the growth of the novel and the development of film. We will put these developments in the context of perennial debates in African literatures, such as whether texts in European languages are African or if African and foreign artists and critics based in the West should authoritatively comment on African materials. Considering adaptation as a form of translation, we will read and critique adaptation and translation theories by such critics as Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Spivak, Kamilla Elliot, and Thomas Leitch in the context of African theories of literature. Teaching Method: Interactive lectures, debates, role-play, and small group discussions.
Evaluation Method: Two 6-page papers, weekly Blackboard postings, regular self-evaluation, peer critiques, class participation, take-home exam, pop quizzes (ungraded), and 1-minute papers (ungraded). Texts include: Primary texts will include novels and films by Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton, Athol Fugard, Francesca Marciano, J.M. Coetzee, Sembene Ousmane, John le Carré.
Theoretical materials will include excerpts from work by Lindiwe Dovey, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Simon Gikandi, and Susan Z. Andrade, Robert Stam, Ruth Mayer, Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Spivak, Kamilla Elliot, and Thomas Leitch
CLS 311 /ENG 306: Theory and Practice of Poetry Translation
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Reginald Gibbons Expected Enrollment: 30
Course Description: A combination of seminar and workshop. Together we will translate several short poems and study theoretical approaches to literary translation and practical accounts by literary translators. We will approach language, poems, poetics, culture and theoretical issues and problems in relation to each other. Your written work will be due in different forms during the course. In your final portfolio, you will present revised versions of your translations and a research paper on translation. Prerequisite: A reading knowledge of a second language, and experience reading literature in that language. If you are uncertain about your qualifications, please e-mail the instructor at
Teaching Method: Discussion; group critique of draft translations; oral presentations by students.
Evaluation Method: Written work ("blackboard" responses to reading, draft translations, revised translations, and final papers) as well as class participation should demonstrate students¹ growing understanding of translation as a practice and as a way of reading poetry and engaging with larger theoretical ideas about literature.
Texts include: Essays on translation by a number of critics, scholars and translators, in two published volumes and on the Course Management web site ("blackboard").
CLS 314/ PORT 380: Approaches to Transnational Cinemas: Contemporary Brazil: Literature and Film
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Annenberg G30 Instructor: Cesar Braga-Pinto Expected Enrollment: 20
Course Description: This course will explore selected themes and aesthetic trends in Brazilian literature and film produced in the 21st century. We will be particularly interested in discussing how in the last decade both literature and film have blurred the boundaries between fiction and documentary, with an increasing emphasis on social and historical issues. Although we will pay some attention to film techniques, our major concern will be with narrative strategies and ideological content. We will also discuss some recent trends in Brazilian poetry and will have guest lectures with Brazilian writers and poets.
Class meetings will rely heavily on class discussion in a seminar format.
Requirements: two exam, and one tem paper. No final exam, Students will have the opportunity to do some of their readings and write their papers in English or Portuguese.
CLS 383: Special Topics in Theory: Nihilism in Contemporary Fiction: New Perspectives
Class Meetings: TTh 12:30-1:50, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Alessia Ricciardi Expected Enrollment: 25
Course Description: Nietzsche once defined nihilism as a “disquieting guest.” Traditionally associated with a crisis of reason, decadence, loss of belief in values and religion, and political anarchism, nihilism is being redefined by contemporary writers along the lines of forms of life that are dedicated to self-destructive and unbridled sexuality, ethical snobbery, and an obsessive relation to consumer culture and technology.
To what extent can we define a new genealogy of fictional nihilism by expanding beyond the classical parameters of the ideology established in different but congruent ways by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky? Is the new nihilism more passive or more active in its ability to disrupt the foundations of contemporary society, gender roles, and popular culture?
Taught seminar-style in English. Reading List: - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Vintage: 1989) - J. G. Ballard, Crash: A Novel (Picador: 2001) - Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles, trans. Fran Wynne (Vintage International: 2000) - Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher, trans. Joachim Neugroshel (Serpent’s Tail: 1989) - Course reader of material including David Foster Wallace’s “Mister Squishy” and “The Suffering Channel” from Oblivion (Little Brown: 2004) as well as essays by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Agamben
Evaluation Method: participation (30%); 3 short essays of 5 pages each (50%); oral presentation (20%).
CLS 398: Senior Seminar
Class Meetings: W 3:00-5:20, WCS 232 Instructor: Nasrin Qader Expected Enrollment: 15
Course Description: This seminar is designed as a forum for the independent development and completion of a substantive scholarly paper in the field of Comparative Literature. The paper must involve either the study of literary texts from different literary traditions or the study of literature in relation to other media, other arts, or other disciplines. To this end, a number of short written assignments will be required, including an abstract, an annotated bibliography (to be completed using EndNote software), and a formal project outline. The bulk of the coursework will comprise the senior paper itself (12-15 pages) and an oral presentation of the project to the class. The latter assignment will serve as a dress-rehearsal for the Senior CLS Colloquium, which will be held at the end of the quarter. The colloquium allows (and requires) all students to present their projects to the entire CLS community, including faculty and graduate students who will be in attendance.
Winter 2013 CLS 205/GS 231Feminism as Cultural Critique: The Second Wave Lectures: M/W/F 11:00-11:50, Swift 107 Discussion Sections: F 9:00-9:50, 12:00-12:50, 1:00-1:50 Instructor: Helen Thompson ([email protected]) Expected Enrollment: 90
Course Description: In GSS 231/ CLS 205, we will consider the origins and ongoing force of feminism as a critique of culture. From the 1790s until the middle of the twentieth century, Western feminism fought on two fronts, condemning women’s legal and political disenfranchisement as well as practices, like the wearing of corsets, that subordinated women at the level of everyday life. GSS 231/ CLS 205 will explore feminism in America after the legal and political battle has, to some extent, been won. We’ll examine the so-called second wave of feminism, from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. This radical, widespread, and intimately critical phase of the feminist movement attacked inequity that persisted beyond women’s nominal political and legal enfranchisement. The second wave locates oppression in personal life—in intercourse, domestic labor, fashion, representation, art, family, and love—to assert that mainstream norms, habits, and assumptions operate just as powerfully as repressive laws. Because much second-wave feminist argument exists in the forms of physical activism, cultural interventions, and artistic production, we will encounter a variety of media: academic prose, but also manifestos, journalism, film, visual art, video art, novels, and performances. At the same time that we track the historical roots and articulations of this feminist movement, an ongoing goal of the class will be to investigate the critical methods pioneered by the second wave. What analytic tools does second-wave feminism use to criticize culture? What conceptual, aesthetic, and concrete resources does second-wave feminism deploy to project equitable, revolutionary, and even utopian reconfigurations of gendered power? Teaching Method: Lecture with some discussion; Friday discussion sections Evaluation Method: One essay; one library feminist artifact project; one final exam
Reading List: The class is heavily course-pack dependent
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-32257-2 Hooks, Bell. Ain’t I A Woman. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-129-1 Jong, Erica. Fear of Flying. Signet (Penguin Group). ISBN 0-451-18556-0 Levin, Ira. The Stepford Wives. Perennial/ HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-008084-1 Woodiwiss, Kathleen E. The Flame and the Flower. Avon/ HarperCollins. ISBN 0-380-00525-5
CLS 206: Literature and Media
Lectures: MW 12:00-12:50, Clark B03 Discussion Sections: F 1:00 or 2:00, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Domietta Torlasco
This course will explore the question of the “medium” from the viewpoint of the relation between words and images, reading and seeing, language and perception. However, rather than taking for granted this distinction and the oppositions it traditionally entails (mind vs. body, time vs. space, depth vs. surface), we will consider theoretical, literary, and audiovisual works that challenge and redefine it. What does it mean to see what is there as a trace or a sign—a ghost, a photograph, a film? How does our culture inform both our desire and our capacity to see? In what sense can we speak of a visual “language”? Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to issues of translation, gender, and technology and read works from the fields of psychoanalysis, literary theory, feminist theory, and visual studies.
Required Texts: 1. Sigmund Freud, Studies On Hysteria 2. Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics 3. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction 4. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography 5. Laura Mulvey, Death 24X Second: Stillness and the Moving Image 6. Julio Cortazar, Blow-Up: And Other Stories 7. Course Reader All books are available at the Norris Center Bookstore (NU Evanston campus). The reader can be purchased at Quartet Copies, 825 Clark St., Evanston. Unless otherwise noted, all films and videos will be available on Blackboard.
CLS 271-1 Japanese Literature In Translation: Classical Lectures: T/TH 11:00-12:20, Kresge 2-380 Instructor: Phyllis Lyons ([email protected]) Expected Enrollment: 35 Course Description: Between 300 and 1000 A.D. Japan developed from a pre-literate tribal society into one of the world’s high aristocratic cultures. This course explores some of the monuments of the classical literary tradition, in which women as well as men emerged as literary masters. The course’s major focus is on the rich record of writing of the 10th through early 14th centuries. Of special note are the 11th c. Tale of Genji (which has been called the world’s first novel) and The Tale of the Heike, a tragic war chronicle recording an actual conflict between two great clans in the 12th century as over four hundred years of peace broke down irrevocably. The unifying topic of the course is human desire. Teaching Method: Lecture/Discussion Evaluation Method: 3 short papers (3-4 pp.), 1 long paper (8-10 pp.), talking point sets on readings, discussion participation Reading List: Tale of Genji (abridged); Kagero Diary; Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon; Ten Foot Square Hut & Tales of the Heike; Essays in Idleness; course packet
CLS 271-3 Japanese Literature In Translation: Modern
Lectures: T/TH 2:00-3:20, Kresge 2-410 Instructor: Phyllis Lyons ([email protected]) Expected Enrollment: 35 Course Description: The tumultuous cultural and political history of modern Japan (post-1868) has entailed enormous social, political, economic and aesthetic change. The paradigm shift has been described variously: feudal to modern; East-centered to West-influenced; class-determined to individualistic. This course explores some of the masterly short stories and novels manifesting the cultural, psychological and spiritual responses to the challenges of Japan's struggle to emerge from insularity into a cosmopolitan world culture. The writings reflect society from the end of the 19th century to the present. Teaching Method: Lecture/discussion Evaluation Method: 3 short papers (3-4 pp.), 1 long paper (8-10 pp.), talking point sets on readings, discussion participation Reading List: Natsume, Kokoro; Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles; Dazai, The Setting Sun; Oe, A Personal Matter; course packet
CLS 274-2/AMES 274-2 Late Imperial Chinese Fiction & Literature in Translation Lectures: T/Th 2:00-3:20, Kresge 2-415 Instructor: Bruce Knickerbocker ([email protected])
Course Description: As a continuation of the journey through the vast literary horizons that inform the Chinese cultural heritage, in this course we will start with the rise of Neo-classical prose in the Tang and Song dynasties and explore a number of the "masterworks" found in the major genres of traditional Chinese poetry, fiction, and drama. These range from strange and supernatural Daoist-inspired tales to the adventurous and sensual Ming and Qing novels and dramas, as well as exemplary essays, vivid historical writings, and profound philosophical pieces. Close reading of the texts is strongly encouraged as students are expected not only to learn about this long and rich literary tradition, but, more importantly, to reconstruct it though the texts we read and the papers and presentations you produce. We will also examine the intertextuality between these genres -- how poetry blends into narrative, how fiction becomes drama, and drama inspires fiction. Through reading these selected works of traditional Chinese literature, we will examine some of the major features of traditional Chinese society: religious and philosophical beliefs, the imperial system and dynastic change, gender relations, notions of class and ethnicity, family, romance and sexuality. All works are read in translation; no language background is necessary. EvaluationMethod: Weekly short essays, final paper, class participation, oral presentations Reading List:Stephen Owen, An Anthology Of Chinese Literature: Beginnings To 1911; a variety of handouts
CLS 302-20 Major Periods in World Literature: The Global Novel
Lectures: T/TH 12:30-1:50, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Firat Oruc ([email protected])
Course Description: How does globalization affect the production and reception of literature? What are the prospects and challenges of reading and thinking literature globally? How do “world fictions” that seem to cut loose from any particular national literary tradition or framework map their themes and characters onto a space of constant and often troubling transnational contact? This course will offer a critical examination of how literature interprets, represents and subverts the discourses and experiences of globalization. We will focus on literary texts that assert, test, qualify, or respond to the proposition that culture has now expanded beyond the scale of the nation-state. Evaluation Method: Written work will consist of two 5-page midterm essays and one 10-page final paper. Reading List: David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies Alberto Fuguet, The Movies of My Life Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel A course packet of essays on literature and globalization.
CLS 302-21 Major Periods in World Literature: Tales of Love & Darkness
Lectures: M/W 12:30-1:50, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Marcus Moseley ([email protected]) Tamar Merin ([email protected])
Course Description: Few literatures can have been more isolated and isolating than Modern Hebrew Literature in its formative years in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Young Jewish men are afforded a glimpse of the intellectual vistas lying beyond the stifling confines of the traditional Jewish shtetl. Reviled in these traditional communities as “heretics” they sought refuge from ostracism, persecution, in the tenements and boarding-houses of the metropolises of Europe. Umbilically attached to an unspoken language these outsiders wrote in full awareness that their potential audience consisted largely of each other. This “imagined community” was an exclusively male domain; the handful of female Hebrew writers in the Europe constituted an absolute anomaly. It was in the erotic realm that this isolation reached its fullest literary summation, especially in the figure of the “Talush” (“the uprooted man”) which placed center stage effeminate, masochistic Jewish men often subordinated by ruthless gentile women. This literature breathed of sexual anxiety: masturbation, homo- erotic ideation, traumatic encounters with prostitutes, narcissism, sado-masochism are openly addressed. The course aims to explore the poetic, the ideological and the gender implementations of the tension between eros and isolation in turn-of-the century Hebrew literature. At the same time, we would investigate the manners in which themes of eros and isolation later pervaded Modern Hebrew literature after the move to the land of Israel and the establishment of the state of Israel. Has the rebuilding of the national “Home” brought the uprooted man his long lost masculinity? And how did the female writer incorporate/become incorporated by the “Talush” narrative? Teaching Method: The Course offers an excellent introduction to Modern Hebrew Literature per se: We shall read classic texts by M.Y Berdichevsky, Y.H Brenner and S.Y Agnon alongside excerpts from contemporary bestselling novels by Amos Oz, Zeruya Shalev and others. A further advantage of this course is that both professors are intimately acquainted with the texts in the original Hebrew and may thus critique and correct the English translations. Evaluation Method: Course requirements: attendance is mandatory; active participation in class discussion plus student presentations: 33 1/3%, two 2-3 page papers: 33.1/3%, one 5-7 page final paper 33 1/3%
CLS 304/ENG 311/SPAN 397-21 The Raw & Cooked:Poetry in the Cold War Americas
Lectures: T/TH 11:00-12:20, Parkes 223 Instructor: Harris Feinsod ([email protected])
Course Description: At the height of the Cold War, Robert Lowell suggested that "two kinds of poetry are now competing, a raw and a cooked." Lowell was speaking for the divisions in the U.S. between the counterculture and the academy, but his phrase also suggested new structural relations between the "developed" and the "developing" worlds--in particular the U.S. and Latin America. This course surveys cross-cultural exchanges and dramatic conflicts between U.S. and Latin American poets in the "Global Cold War" (1945-1989). We often describe the Cold War as a political conflict between the competing universals of American democracy and Soviet communism, but the Cold War also re-oriented cultural relations between the U.S. and Latin America. How did poets from the U.S. and Cuba diverge in their reactions to (and participation in) the Cuban Revolution? How do Elizabeth Bishop's formalist poems of life in Brazil compare to those of her Brazilian contemporaries? Why did Beat poetry find a strong reception in Mexico City? How did Chilean poets write about the traumas of U.S.-backed interventions? Why did U.S. countercultures style themselves after "revolutionary" poets of Peru and El Salvador? Why did Borges, Paz and Neruda become sudden, global stars? We trace these questions through the history of "late modernist" poetry, Beat poetry, the Black Arts Movement, confessionalism, and formalism, putting these movements in dialogue with their cross-cultural doubles, such as conversacionalismo, concrete poetry, anti-poetry, "guerilla" poetry and negritude. All materials will be furnished in English or with translations, but knowledge of Spanish is especially welcome. Teaching Method: Lectures and discussion. Participation is crucial. Evaluation Method: Short blog posts, short essays and annotations building toward a final research paper of 12 pages. Texts include: Poems, letters and essays by Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Kenneth Koch in conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Nicolás Guillén, Heberto Padilla, Nicanor Parra, Pablo Neruda, Alejandra Pizarnik, Roque Dalton, Cecilia Vicuña, Raúl Zurita. We will also read a novella, such as Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas or Distant Star, and view a few films. Texts available at: Beck’s
CLS 375-20 / ENG 385: Literature and Its Others: Legal Fictions
Lectures:M/W 2:00-3:20, Univ 101 Instructor: Christina Froula ([email protected])
Course Description: In this course we’ll explore selected treatments of legal themes in literature and film as part of a broader consideration of the interrelationships of literature and law. We’ll study depictions of: transgressions, trials, testimony and juries; contracts written and unwritten; questions of evidence, burdens of proof, reasonable doubt, verdicts rational and irrational; and the question of differential social positions, whether given by gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, religion, imperial or colonial status, before the law. We’ll consider how literature and the law addresses common concerns including morality, justice, equality and agency, under different disciplinary and formal constraints; the relationships of legal to other issues in each text; and the different kinds of influences legal and literary or aesthetic works may have upon social conscience and policy. Teaching Method: Lecture and discussion. Evaluation Method: Attendance, participation, weekly exercises, two short and one long paper. Text Include: Readings (some excerpts) will be chosen from: Homer’s Iliad, Genesis (Creation and Fall), Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Sophocles’s Antigone, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, Dickens’s Bleak House and Pickwick Papers, Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Melville’s Billy Budd, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Kafka’s The Trial (parable “Before the Law”), Shiga Naoya’s “Han’s Crime,” Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” and Trifles, Forster’s A Passage to India, Bizet’s Carmen, Miller’s The Crucible, Durrenmatt’s The Visit, Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Nabokov’s Lolita, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” Porter’s “Noon Wine,” Richard Wright’s Native Son, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, LeGuin’s “Omelas,” Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight LA 1992, Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution,” Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Rose/Friedkin’s Twelve Angry Men, Lumet’s The Verdict; with supplementary readings by Richard Posner, Robin West, and other legal writers and literary critics.
CLS 383/AMES 391-21 Special Topics in Theory: Writing Chineseness
Lectures: M/W 2:00-3:20, Harris L06 Instructor: Peter Shen ([email protected])
Course Description: This course seeks to introduce students to a collection of literary works and theoretical debates that have shaped and continues to shape our understanding of the modern Chinese identity. The questions we seek to answer are the following: What does it mean to be Chinese in the modern era? Is the experience of Chineseness defined in terms of Han ethnicity, citizenship, cultural and linguistic consent, or is it a matter of a shared collective experience? Moreover, how have sociopolitical forces within and outside of mainland China impacted the writing of Chinesness? As we tackle these questions, we will study works by canonical writers of the pre-1949 era such as Lu Xun and Lao She as well as contemporary mainland Chinese masters such as Mo Yan, Han Shaogong and Yu Hua. In addition, we will supplement our reading by reading writings by ethnic Chinese writers residing in Taiwan as well as those who have sojourned or settled permanently outside of traditional Chinese territories. In the process we will examine the writing of Chineseness beyond the familiar frameworks and instead seek to negotiate competing claims and alternative forms of identification. Finally, our study will include readings from contemporary historians and cultural theorists who have articulated a vision of Chineseness that reposition and re-imagine the very structural understanding of identity politics.
Books for Purchase: Nieh, hualing Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China ISBN-10: 1558611827 Wu, Zhuoliu Orphan of Asia (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) ISBN-10: 0231137265 The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today Language: English ISBN-10: 0804721378 Mr. Ma & Son: A Sojourn in London (English and Chinese Edition) Language: English, Chinese ISBN-10: 7119028979 Chu T'ien-hsin, The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei ISBN-10: 0231141122
Spring 2012 CLS 104: Freshman Seminar: Human Rights Literature
Class Meetings: MWF 12:00-12:50, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Firat Oruc
Course Description: In this course, we will reflect on the challenges as well as the prospects presented to the modern world by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognized the “inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.” To this end, we will study world literature as an ethical-political concept, one that raises enduring questions about the uniqueness of the human being, the relation of the self to the other and the possibility of human understanding across cultural, ethnic, racial and national boundaries. Each selected text will provide us with a frame to interrogate a specific human rights issue (such as slavery, state oppression, and dispossession) in a particular space and time. By the end of this course, we will gain a deeper insight into how literary imagination actively participates in establishing the meaning of human rights and of enriching our understanding of what it means to be a human being entitled to freedom, life and liberty.
Evaluation Method:
Class participation 10%
Short essays 45% (15% each)
Final paper 30%
Oral Presentation and peer review 15%
Reading List:
Death and the Maiden (Ariel Dorfman)
Fatelessness (Imre Kertesz)
Anil's Ghost (Michael Ondaatje)
Gifts (Nuruddin Farah)
CLS 210 / ENG 220: The Bible as Literature
Class Meetings: MWF 9:00-9:50pm Harris 107
Instructor: Barbara Newman
Expected Enrollment: 100
Course Description: This course is intended to familiarize literary students with the most influential text in Western culture. No previous acquaintance with the Bible is presupposed. We will consider such questions as the variety of literary genres and strategies in the Bible; the historical situation of its writers; the representation of God as a literary character; recurrent images and themes; the Bible as a national epic; the New Testament as a radical reinterpretation of the “Old Testament” (or Hebrew Bible); and the overall narrative as a plot with beginning, middle, and end. Since time will not permit a complete reading of the Bible, we will concentrate on those books that display the greatest literary interest or influence, including Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Ruth, Job, Daniel, and Isaiah; the Gospels according to Luke and John, and the Book of Revelation. We will look more briefly at issues of translation; traditional strategies of interpretation (such as midrash, typology, and harmonization); and the historical processes involved in constructing the Biblical canon.
Evaluation Method: Two midterms and final exam, each worth 25% of grade; participation in sections; occasional response papers; some interactive discussion during lectures.
Reading List: Bible, New Revised Standard Version
(NRSV) with apocrypha (Oxford U. Press).
CLS 211-20: Topics in Genre:
Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy in Ancient Greece
Lectures: TTh 9:30-10:50, Kresge 4-425
Discussion Sections: F 10:00-10:50, 11:00-11:50
Instructor: Marianne Hopman
Course Description: The tripartite division of epic, lyric, and drama which, from Boileau through Schlegel to G. Genette, has shaped and defined much of Western literary criticism, ultimately goes back to Plato and Aristotle. Yet the theories of Plato and Aristotle originally emerged in response to a body of works – the poetry of Archaic and Classical Greece – that fundamentally differed from modern poetry in content, form, and methods of presentation. Until the fourth century B.C.E., Greek poetry was sung in public and transmitted orally. The form and content of ancient Greek songs were largely shaped by the pragmatics and dynamics of oral performance.
The course will explore ancient Greek representatives of the genres later defined as epic, lyric, and tragedy, in their original performative context. We will analyze formal and thematic features of the Iliad against the practices of bardic performance, the notion of divine inspiration, the heroic valorization of immortal glory, and practices of hero-cult. The poetry of Alcman, Sappho, Pindar and other “lyric” poets will be tied to pragmatics of praise and blame, education, and love. Tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides will be discussed in relation to Athenian democratic and religious practices, with special emphasis on the role of the chorus and the representation of women in drama.
Evaluation Method: Attendance, class participation, quizzes, final paper
Reading List:
Lattimore, R. and R. Martin (2011). The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 9780226470498
West, M. L. (1993). Greek Lyric Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199540396
Bowra, C. M. (1964). Pindar: The Odes. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0140442090
Shapiro, A. and P. Burian (2004). Aeschylus: The Oresteia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0195135923
Fagles, R. and B. M. W. Knox (1984). Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays. New York: Penguin. ISBN
978-0140444254
Svarlien, D. A. and R. Mitchell-Boyask (2008). Euripides: Medea. Indianapolis: Hackett. ISBN 978-
0872209237.
Gibbons, R. and C. Segal (2001). Euripides: Bakkhai. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-
0195125986
CLS 211-21: Topics in Genre: The Novel
Lectures: MW 12:00-12:50, Kresge 4-385
Discussion Sections: F 12-12:50
Instructor: Michal Ginsburg
Course Description: Beginning in the 18th century, the novel becomes the dominant form of narrative in European literature; by the 19th century, it is the most widely read form of literature. As such, the novel exercises considerable power not only to express but also to shape readers’ understanding of themselves, their desires, their relation to others and to the social world. At the same time, the novel also, and quite as often, questions many of the assumptions that subtend such understanding. In this course we will read novels produced in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century by English, French, and Israeli authors. We will analyze the relation between these novels and the social world in which they were produced, the ideological work they perform, and the way they question some of the beliefs they also seem to promote. We will pay attention both to the thematic concerns of these novels and to their form, being particularly interested in the relation between the two.
Evaluation Method: A mid-term paper and a final exam.
Reading List:
Prévost, Manon Lescaut
Austen, Persuasion
Dickens, Oliver Twist
Balzac, Old Goriot
Modiano, Missing Person
Yehoshua, Mr. Mani
CLS 274-3 / AMES 274-3: Modern Chinese Literature
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Fisk B17
Instructor: Bruce Knickerbocker
Expected Enrollment:
Course Description: As a survey introduction to the literature of twentieth century China, we will study selected examples of 20th-century Chinese literature, a literature that was produced during a period of unprecedented upheaval and that itself has been a battleground for political, cultural, and aesthetic issues. Since it is arguably the most important genre of modern Chinese literature and is convenient to work with in class, emphasis is placed on the short story, though we will also consider modern poetry and each student will select two novels to read. Brief class lectures will present important historical and literary background to the period under scrutiny: from the 1910s, through the May Fourth Movement, the radicalization of the 30s, the Anti-Japanese War, the period of socialist construction, the Cultural Revolution, and the liberalization of the post-Mao era. The chronological arrangement of the course will give the student a sense of literary development. Great importance is placed on class discussion and on creating a dialogue of interpretations of the texts we read. Close reading of the texts is strongly encouraged as students are expected not only to learn about this fruitful and rich literary tradition, but, more importantly, to reconstruct it though the texts we read and the papers and presentations you produce. It is hoped that students come away from this course having not only learned something about modern Chinese literature, but also about how literary texts work and the different ways readers may approach and appreciate these texts. All works are read in translation; no language background is necessary.
CLS 301 / ITALIAN 350: Advanced Topics in Italian Culture & Literature: Details and Fetishes in Literature and Visual Media
Class Meetings: TTh 11:00-12:20, Kresge 2-420
Instructor: Massimo Fusillo
Expected Enrollment:
Course Description: This course will explore two important and interrelated categories, detail and fetishism, exemplifying them in a spectrum of literary texts, works of art and various media. Starting from anthropological, Marxian and Freudian interpretations of fetishism, and from Schor’s feminist reading of the detail, we will question the negative connotations that still affect the two categories, often considered secondary and ornamental products, and will discuss different new theoretical approaches coming from cultural and fashion studies. Our analysis will deal first with Flaubert’s stylistic revolution, that deconstructed the classical hierarchy between narration and description, and will move on to D’Annunzio’s aestheticism, Woolf’s modernism, DeLillo’s postmodernism; finally we will compare literary representations with crucial moments in visual art: Joseph von Sternberg’s camp and fetishist cinema, Marco Ferreri’s experimentation, Louise Bourgeois’ installations, and Italian arte povera.
Evaluation Method:
Attendance and participation to lectures and discussion (25% of the final grade)
One short midterm paper (15%)
One oral presentation (25%)
One final 10 pages paper (35%)
Reading List:
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Gabriele D’Annunzio, The Child of Pleasure
Virginia Woolf, Solid objects (short story)
Don DeLillo, Underworld (selected passages)
Naomi Schor, Reading the Detail
Joseph von Sternberg, Scarlett Empress
Marco Ferreri, Dillinger è morto
Books will be available at the Norris Bookstore. Films will be available on the Blackboard. CLS 302 / AMES 391-21: Islamicate Literature in Translation, 1000-1500 A.D.: Heroes, Lovers, Saints, and Clowns
Class Meetings: MWF 11:00-11:50, Kresge 1-375
Instructor: Judith Wilks
Expected Enrollment: 20
Course Description: Using major works from the 3 most important languages of Islamicate culture (Persian, Turkish, and Arabic), the interrelationships among them will be explored. The works are grouped along 4 main themes: heroism, romantic love, mystical love, and humor, with Islam sometimes in the foreground, but more often in the background. The different societal features of the various works will appear in sharp contrast, giving students an understanding of the rich and varied textures of the societies of medieval Islam. The readings comprise both prose and poetry, high literature and popular literature, grand epic and delicate love poems, religious and irreligious views. Texts to be discussed will include: the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi; The Book of Dede Korkut; the Sirat ‘Antar; the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, as well as some of his other poems; The Conference of the Birds by Farid al-Din ‘Attar; and popular stories of Nasreddin Hodja / Molla Nasreddin, as well as humorous works of a more literary nature. Some readings in the original languages will be supplied for interested students.
Teaching Method: Lecture / discussion
Evaluation Method: 4 short papers, one longer final paper. There will be a short quiz at the start of every class on the content of the assigned readings to ensure comprehension and facilitate discussion. Class participation and attendance will be important factors in the grade.
Readings List: Some of the readings for the course will be supplied in the form of a course packet (from Quartet Copies, 825 Clark Street, Evanston) and/or documents on Blackboard, but all students should purchase the following books as well: Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, tr. Dick Davis, Penguin Books, 2006; ISBN 978-0-1-310493-3); Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (by Franklin D. Lewis, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2008, ISBN 978-1-8516 8-549-3); and Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz (tr. Dick Davis, Mage Publishers, 2012; ISBN 978-193382348-5).
CLS 304 / HUM 302: Studies in Theme: Visualizing Radicalism: Ideological Paradigms of the 20’s
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Kresge 2-370
Instructor: Nina Gourianova
Expected Enrollment:
Course Description: This course focuses on the most innovative and experimental forms of modernism and avant-garde visual and literary narratives (from prose and poetry to political posters and commercial advertisements) forged in a crucible of intense political and cultural interaction in Russia and Europe in 1920-1930-s. We focus on the ways the images and metaphors have been used as carriers of cultural value and ideological meaning, exploring such issues as word and image, gender and nationality, aesthetics and psychology, politics and propaganda. This framework brings together the most visually arresting works and the most influential narratives to come out of Russia in the wide-ranging context of European and American cultural developments between the two world wars. Since course topic involves such disciplines as visual art, literature, cultural theory, and philosophy, readings include modern and contemporary aesthetic theories (Shklovsky, Bakhtin, Adorno, Rancier) and twentieth-century political and ethical philosophy (Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin et al.), and psychology (Freud, Edward Bernays, Vygotsky).
Teaching Method: lecture and discussion
Evaluation Method: class participation and contribution to discussion; midterm written exam: final paper.
CLS 311 / ENG 306-20: Advanced Poetry Writing: Theory and Practice of Poetry Translation
Class Meetings: MW 2:00-3:20, Crowe 1-125
Instructor: Reginald Gibbons
Expected Enrollment: 30
Course Description: A combination of seminar and workshop. Together we will translate several short poems and study theoretical approaches to literary translation and practical accounts by literary translators. We will approach language, poems, poetics, culture and theoretical issues and problems in relation to each other. Your written work will be due in different forms during the course. In your final portfolio, you will present revised versions of your translations and a research paper on translation.
Prerequisite: A reading knowledge of a second language, and experience reading literature in that language. If you are uncertain about your qualifications, please e-mail the instructor at
Teaching Method: Discussion; group critique of draft translations; oral presentations by students.
Evaluation Method: Written work ("blackboard" responses to reading, draft translations, revised translations, and final papers) as well as class participation should demonstrate students’ growing understanding of translation as a practice and as a way of reading poetry and engaging with larger theoretical ideas about literature.
Texts include: Essays on translation by a number of critics, scholars and translators, in two published volumes and on the Course Management web site ("blackboard").
CLS 312-20 / SPAN 344: Authors and Their Readers: Jorge Luis Borges
Class Meetings: TTh 11:00-12:20, Crowe 1-125 Instructor: Alejandra Uslenghi
Expected Enrollment: 25
Course Description: In this course we will focus on the poetry, essays and short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. We will explore the connections to the Latin American literary tradition that saw his figure emerged and also to the many debates that his literature helped define: What constitutes a literary text? What is an author/authority? How to read/write literature in the age of mass media? How does literary translation inform cultural translation? What kind of cultural tradition can the Latin American writer claim as his/her own? The bibliography on Borges is vast and rich, so we will accompany our reading of Borges’ fiction with secondary readings that focus on providing a historical, cultural, and specifically literary context. Other readings will be suggested during the course and for the final paper.
Reading List: We will read from his Collected Fictions, Selected Poems and Selected Non-Fictions (Penguin editions). Students with knowledge of Spanish are encouraged to do the reading in the original language, following Obras Completas (Ediciones Emecé).
CLS 312-21 / ENG 313: Authors and Their Readers: Arabian Nights
Class Meetings: MW 9:30-10:50, Kresge 2-380
Instructor: Rebecca Johnson
Course Description: In this course we will study the collection of stories known in English as The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights. While in the contemporary popular imagination The Nights is often reduced to a few well-known stories, this course will take a wider approach, reading the earliest stories as well as following the collection’s history as an archetypical example of world literature – from its earliest Indian and Persian sources to its evolution in Arabic oral and manuscript traditions and its eighteenth- century “discovery” and translation into European languages.
We will study The Nights, then, as the product of an ongoing process of circulation and cultural exchange. The last third of the course will therefore be devoted to the modern interpretation of the collection in novels, film, and art. We will consider how The Nights has been used in these works as a vehicle for deeply considered investigations into narrative form but also clichéd images of the Middle East. Reading and watching these works next to the original Arabic versions, we will encounter the vast variety of ways that The Nights has been used as a source of narrative techniques, literary themes, political allegories, and feminist debates across literary traditions.
Teaching Method: This course will be conducted as a combination of lecture and seminar, where active and frequent participation is expected. One film-viewing session will also be required.
Evaluation Method: Class participation, periodic reading quizzes, short and long writing assignments.
Reading List: We will be relying on an edition of the earliest source manuscript (trans. Husain Haddawy), and students are expected to read the stories exclusively from this text. When necessary, excerpts from other translations and later compilations will be available in a course packet. Other authors include Imru’ al- Qays, al-Jahiz, Denis Diderot, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Leila Sebbar. Note: This course will be conducted in English, though readers of French, Spanish, and Arabic are welcome to read in the original language
CLS 375 / MUSICAL 345: Literature and Its Others: From Literature to Opera to Film
Class Meetings: MW 11:00-12:20, MAB 125
Instructor: Linda Austern
Expected Enrollment:
Course Description: This course will consider narratives re-told in multiple media for different audiences by studying literary works that served as the basis of operas and were subsequently turned into films. We will explore several examples by beginning with a short story, novella, play or poem from between the High Middle Ages and the early twentieth century (students who can read the original in French, German, Italian, or Spanish will be encouraged to do so, and others may read the featured works in English translation). Then we will look at how the work was transformed into an opera or play with music, sometimes for a different culture and set to a different language, and from there we will consider cinematic works that sometimes revisit the literary original and sometimes build directly on the operatic version, often moving across cultures and intending to engage very different audiences.
Prerequisites: Junior, senior, or graduate standing, and he ability to read either one modern non-English language, read musical notation, or previous coursework in film criticism.
CLS 383 / ENG 383: Studies in Theory and Criticism: Theories of Tragedy
Class Meetings: MWF 2:00-2:50, Kresge 2-380
Instructor: Vivasvan Soni
Course Description: Tragedy is one of the oldest literary genres, with its roots in the democratic experiments of ancient Greece. Yet it also remains one of the most important literary genres today. Not only does it inform aesthetic production of all kinds, from movies to theater to novels, but it also shapes the way we perceive our world. We speak of a tragic life or a tragic event just as we speak of a tragic film, and the way in which we interpret “tragic” in each case transforms our perception of lived reality. At its most basic, tragedy wrestles with some of the fundamental problems of human existence: the meaning of suffering, our ethical response to suffering, our possibilities for happiness. In addition, tragedy is one of the most explicitly politicized literary genres, both formally and in terms of its thematic content. Thematically, tragedies themselves are often concerned with the relation between the individual and the community and the reciprocal responsibilities of that relationship. Formally, since tragedy is a communal ritual, the very experience of watching tragedy is a political one. Yet theories of tragedy have conceived the political possibilities of tragedy very differently, from those who find in it a nascent democratic sensibility, to those who see it as the expression of an aristocratic high culture. In this class, we will read both classical and contemporary theories of tragedy, paying close attention to the changing ways in which theorists have understood the ethical and political value of tragedy. Not only will we develop a more sophisticated understanding of an important literary genre, but we will also acquire a familiarity with a variety of critical approaches to literature and learn how each one addresses literary problems differently. We will read some of the most important texts in the history of literary criticism (Plato’s (continued)
Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy), and explore a variety of contemporary theories, such as Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, postcolonial theory.
Here are some of the questions we will seek to answer by examining theories of tragedy: How does ancient tragedy differ from modern tragedy, and how is individual subjectivity conceived differently as a result? Why does tragedy come to serve as a model for modern psychological subjectivity? What is the political function of Greek tragedy, and how does this change in the modern state? Why does the tragic hero function as a model of political resistance to established norms? What are the different ways in which tragedies place ethical demands on us? Why is tragedy so much better suited to understanding complex ethical situations than moral philosophy is? It is my hope that through this class we will become attuned to the political and social relevance of literary texts, and we will learn to be attentive to the subtle ways in which literary paradigms determine our own ethical and political responses to our world.
Teaching Method: The course will be conducted as a seminar in which all members of the class are expected to participate actively.
Evaluation Method: Class participation (25%), midterm paper 6-8pp (25%), final paper 7-9pp (25%), final exam (25% each)
Reading List: The texts will be available in a coursepack, and will include selections from the following: Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Poetics; Rousseau, Letter to D’Alembert; Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments; Hegel, Phenomenology; Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy; Kierkegaard, Either/ Or; Freud, Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, Ethics of Psychoanalysis; Benjamin, Origins of German Tragic Drama; Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Soyinka, Fourth Stage; Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory; Butler, Antigone’s Claim; Eagleton, Sweet Violence.
NOTE: This course fulfills the English Literature major Theory requirement.
CLS 390-20 / AMES 391-20: The City and the Urban Experience in Modern Chinese Fiction and Cinema
Class Meetings: MW 12:30-1:50, Kresge 2-380
Instructor: Peter Shen
Expected Enrollment:
Course Description: The course seeks to introduce students to the various representational strategies contemporary writers and directors in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have adopted to articulate the complex set of themes and aesthetic concerns central to the urban experience in the post 1949 era. By analyzing a wide range of formal and contextual elements in various literary and visual texts, we will examine how major writers and directors have expanded our understanding of three urban sites – Shanghai , Nanjing, and Taipei – by way of ruminating on subjects as diverse as the relationship between aesthetics practice and politics, the interplay between cultural and historical memory, the function of popular culture to the everyday experience, and the shifting boundaries between the local and the global. Among the questions we will ask are the following: Why, or instance, are contemporary mainland Chinese writers such as Wang Anyi and Ye Zhaoyan so invested in the aesthetic of inter-texuality as they seek to simultaneously recover and re-imagine the history of Shanghai and Nanjing in their respective narratives? What do the recent cinematic exploration of Jia Zhangke’s documentary on Shanghai (I Wish I Knew) and Lu Chuan’s drama about the Nanjing Massacre in City of Life and Death tell us about the efficacy of cinema as a form of visual historiography? And what do these recent iterations tell us about postsocialist modern Chinese identity? In the Taipei portion of our study, we will examine the city’s transformation from a ‘provisional capital’ to a generative site of postmodern practice and communal reinvention. Here, we will tackle issues ranging from nostalgia and migration and examine works such as Bai (continued)
Xianyong’s seminal collection of stories (Taipei Ren). In addition, we will also study works that have re- imagined Taipei as a palimpsest, a site continuously being refashioned visually, economically, and politically by way of uncovering the city’s past as a Japanese colony and wrestling with its status as a major global city. Works we will study include Chu Tien-hsin’s Old Capital, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mombo, and Edward Yang’s the Terrorizers.
CLS 390-21 / FRENCH 374: Proust
Class Meetings: TTh 2:00-3:20, Kresge 2-420
Instructor: Michal Ginsburg
Course Description: This course will be devoted to an intense engagement with one of the major figures in the history of European literature, Marcel Proust, and to his In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, usually translated as Remembrance of Things Past), which remains a crucial text in the development of modern thought. Proust’s novel is notoriously long and difficult and most readers stop at the end of the first volume, Swann’s Way. In this course, by contrast, we will read parts of all seven volumes in order to get a sense of the novel’s scope and variety (while keeping the amount of reading within reasonable limit). We will explore a number of Proustian problems and themes: his analyses of desire, perversion and sexuality, of otherness and exclusion; his reflections on the nature of time and memory, of knowledge and language; his relation to Jewishness and to homosexuality; his exploration of the relationship of art to life. We will also consider some of Proust’s most prominent critics (Barthes, Deleuze, de Man, Girard).
Registration Requirements: Taught in English, with all readings in English. Students who have knowledge of French will be encouraged to consult the French text.
Reading List: Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Vintage edition of the revised translation.