News for Alumni & Friends of the Comparative Literature Program

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News for Alumni & Friends of the Comparative Literature Program News for Alumni & Friends of the Comparative Literature Program Fall 2014–Summer 2015 UC Santa Barbara Chair of the Program Undergraduate Advisor Newsletter Co-Editors Comparative Literature Program Catherine Nesci Genesis Herrera Dustin Lovett 4206 Phelps Hall [email protected] [email protected] John Schranck Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4130 Vice Chair Graduate Program Assistant Design & Layout Information: (805) 893-3161 Elisabeth Weber Briana Munoz-Flores UCSB Artworks, Fax: (805) 893-8341 [email protected] [email protected] Instructional Development IN THIS ISSUE 3 From the Chairs 3 2014–15 in Perspective: Reading Together 3 A Preview from Germanic and Slavic Studies 4 French and Italian Highlights 4 The Graduate Center for Literary Research 4 From Dominique Jullien, GCLR Director 5 From Michael Grafals, 2014–15 GCLR Graduate Student Coordinator 6 Translation Studies at UCSB 7 Newly Affiliated Faculty 8 Staff Updates 8 Staff Migrations 8 New Faces in PASC 8 Affiliated Faculty Publications & Presentations 11 Affiliated Faculty Awards 12 Our Alumni in Comparative & World Literature 12 From Medieval Persia to Media Art & Digital Cultures 13 Classics in Comparative Literature: From Alumnus Randall Pogorzelski 14 New Doctors 14 New Doctoral Candidates 14 Welcoming New Graduate Students 15 Graduate Student Updates 16 Graduate Study Abroad & Summer Language Study 17 Placement & Professionalization 17 Job Market Preparation 17 From Prof. Sara Pankenier Weld, Director of Placement 18 Undergraduate Study Abroad: Jackson Hranek in Chile 19 Honors Reception history of the field, expose its current directions, methods, and From the Chair questions, and think about the status of literary disciplines in the academy (see our list of seminars) http://www.complit.ucsb. 2014-2015 in Perspective: Reading Together edu/courses/graduate-seminars-2015-16. From the Comparative Literature Chair Among all our affiliate professors who taught wonderful courses for many years including Lusophone and Francophone CATHERINE NESCI (Professor, French literatures and films, we give special thanks to writer and scholar and Italian): In a growing intellectual JOÃO CAMILO DOS SANTOS, who retired this year from and sociopolitical climate of violence and his position as Professor in the Department of Spanish and intolerant ideologies, we are reminded that Portuguese and Director of the Portuguese Studies Center. first and foremost, the joy of Comparative and World Literature comes from the art In addition to adding two new doctoral emphases in Applied of reading together, beyond linguistic and Linguistics and in Writing Studies, we are currently working on disciplinary borders as well as across historical periods and creating a new minor in Translation Studies and on developing cultural divides. To the long-lasting crisis and ontological more initiatives pertaining to Translation Studies. Our French uncertainty of the discipline diagnosed by scholars from René and German graduate tracks in Comparative Literature continue Wellek to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak or Djelal Kadir, to name to grow, with increasingly competitive applications in both a few major scholars, our interdepartmental program offers the tracks, and we hope to build our cohort in these two tracks in evidence of fruitful and inspiring collaborations. Our gratitude the years to come. goes to all our affiliate professors, graduate students, and Board Finally, to all interested in signing up as a member of members. Thanks to their mentoring of our graduate students, to the UCSB digital-humanities listserv started by Prof. Alan Liu, their teaching outside of their home department and dedication go to: https://lists.lsit.ucsb.edu/listinfo/digital-humanities. to comparative and world literary studies, we have been able to lsmail. Alumni are welcome! The address for posting messages develop the program in new directions; our graduate students to the list once you are a member is: digital-humanities@ have also contributed greatly to this effort, especially by teaching lsmail.ucsb.edu sections of our popular lower-division courses with great Along with Co-Editors Dustin Lovett and John Schranck dedication and creativity and organizing various scholarly events. with whom I had the great pleasure of working on this project, I wish to thank Jeffrey Bellomi and Earl Perez-Foust, who were I invite you to enjoy updates from all the partners involved our 2014–15 Co-Lead Teaching Assistants and have supported in making Comparative Literature a strong intellectual and our program in so many ways. interdisciplinary endeavor. Colleagues from departments throughout the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Sciences have been teaching courses that open up a wide range of world literatures and cultures for A Preview from Germanic and Slavic Studies our undergraduates across the whole campus (for a full list of From the Chair of Germanic and Slavic Studies scholars affiliated in Comparative Literature, check our website). To give a few examples, a large-enrollment lower-division course ELISABETH WEBER (Chair, Germanic, on memory bridging the humanities and neurosciences, co- Slavic and Semitic Studies): The connection taught by a literary scholar and a scientist, and upper-division between the Department of Germanic courses such as Comparative Black Literature, Fantasy and the and Slavic Studies and the Comparative Fantastic, Science Fiction from Eastern Europe, Postcolonial Literature Program continues to be deep and Cultures, Sexuality and Globalization, and Mediatechnology. We strong, given the unwavering commitment also offered a course dedicated to Victor Hugo’s masterpiece of all of our ladder faculty and some of Les Misérables, and a new course on The Cultures of Medieval our lecturers to contribute to the Program’s interdisciplinary Muslim Spain. And these upper-division offerings complement course offerings. This current year’s special events included an equally wide ranging lower-division courses on literature and international conference in December 2015, organized by Wolf neuroscience, Asian literature, literature of the Americas, and Kittler, Julie Carlson and Elisabeth Weber with a grant from the global humanities. Undergraduates enrolled in our courses the UC Humanities Research Center and with the support of had an intellectually enriching year! The year ahead will present the Program of Comparative Literature for the occasion of the more opportunities to learn about Western, African, and Middle 100th anniversary of the publication of Franz Kafka’s famous Eastern literatures, as well as literature and media, and other text The Metamorphosis: “Metamorphosis. Human, Animal, comparisons between literature and other spheres of artistic Armor.” In addition to featuring major Kafka scholars—among expression, from diverse viewpoints of world cultures as well as whom were Judith Butler and our own Wolf Kittler—the western literature. conference proposed reading Kafka’s text as an exploration of metamorphoses that problematize borders between species In fall 2015, the guest lecture of Danish scholar MADS and between living organisms and machines. Keeping in mind ROSENDAHL THOMSEN, co-organized with the Graduate that Kafka’s text was written during the intense militarization Center for Literary Research, was a great highlight of Comparative of European countries prior to World War I, the conference Literature 210, our graduate proseminar that aims to delineate a UC SANTA BARBARA | COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 3 thematized pressing questions in such fields as recent We are also celebrating the success of our most recent doctoral transformations in the technology of warfare, including the graduate, Aria dal Molin, who has taken a tenure-track position mimicry of insects in developments in drone warfare, bionics at the University of South Carolina, where she is teaching in (exoskeletons), prostheses, and nano-technology. both French and Italian. As always, we encourage Comparative Literature graduate students to do whatever they can to develop The 2015–16 academic year’s contributions by GSS faculty their facility in their second and third languages, to get as much to the Comparative Literature curriculum include a graduate language-teaching experience as possible, and to take advantage seminar offered in the fall by Professor Kittler on Franz Kafka, of research and study opportunities abroad, as our current a seminar in the winter quarter on literary and critical theory PhD candidates Tegan Raleigh (French track in Comparative by Elisabeth Weber featuring guest lectures by Susan Buck- Literature) and Eliza Smith (French) are doing. This kind of Morss (on Walter Benjamin) and Cathy Caruth (on Freud and multi-faceted preparation was invaluable for Aria and has proven trauma), and in the spring, a graduate seminar by our Visiting to be increasingly vital for success on the current job market. Kade Professor, Dr. Armin Schäfer of the Ruhr Universität in Here is to continued success, and continued interaction between Bochum, Germany, on “Literature, Madness, Psychiatry (1850- our programs, in the coming year. 1930).” One of the leading scholars on German poetry and on 18th- to 20th-century German literature and history of science, Professor Schäfer will also teach an undergraduate lecture course The Graduate Center for Literary Research on “Representations of the Holocaust” that will discuss literary texts, film and theater. Other contribution to the undergraduate Professor Dominique Jullien, the Director of the
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