Program in Comparative Literature
Course numbers, sections, times, and campus locations are listed below in the left margin. See online schedule of classes for more information. Web Site: http://complit.rutgers.edu/
COURSE OFFERINGS – SPRING 2018
195:101 Introduction to World Literature – Study of outstanding works of fiction, plays, and poems from European, 90 & 91 North and South American, African, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Middle-Eastern parts of the world through a Online different theme every semester. Focus on questions of culture, class, gender, colonialism, and on the role of TBA translation. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp.
195:135: 01 Short Fiction – Study of various genres of short fiction, in English translation, by some of the most important TTh6 writers in world literature. Course themes focus on the city, the nation, migration and exile, colonialism, science 4:30-5:50pm fiction, the fantastic, magical realism, horror, mystery, among others. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp. TBA CAC
195:135: 90 Short Fiction – This introductory comparative literature course looks at the form, function and history of short Online fiction in modern Western literature. We’ll consider how the novella, the short story, and flash fiction work with Bishop an eye to identifying the literary devices and narrative structures that make for good storytelling in a short CAC amount of space. In addition to investigating how authors construct their short fiction, we’ll ask what short narrative achieves that longer forms do not and what kind of fictional worlds these condensed genres give us access to. We will situate the works we read within their corresponding historical moments and literary traditions, so that students will leave the class able to recognize the fundamental components of fiction and analyze how they work, as well as knowledgeable in the preoccupations and cultural contexts that shape the history of Western literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism. Please note: this will be a hybrid course whose online work will be supplemented by periodic in-person class and individual meeting times. Face-to-face meeting times TBA in advance of the semester. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp.
Required Texts Please purchase the noted editions of the novellas; the rest of the works will be available in a coursepack on sale at the Rutgers University bookstore. Novellas: Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Russia; 1886) New York: Bantam Books, 1981. ISBN: 0553210351 Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties (France; 1965) Boston: D. Godine, 2010. (Verba Mundi) ISBN: 1567921574 Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Colombia; 1981) New York: Vintage Press, 2003. ISBN: 140003471X
Grading and Requirements Participation (online and in person): 10% Weekly blog posts: 10% Midterm exam: 25% 3-pp short textual analysis: 15%
6-pp final paper: 40%
Extra credit assignment: an original work of flash fiction (750 words or less)
195:135:91 Short Fiction – Study of various genres of short fiction, in English translation, by some of the most important Online writers in world literature. Course themes focus on the city, the nation, migration and exile, colonialism, science TBA fiction, the fantastic, magical realism, horror, mystery, among others. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp.
195:150:01 World Mythology – Story, structure, and meaning in myths of many cultures. Myth as a primary literary MW7 phenomenon, with some attention to anthropological and psychological perspectives. 6:10-7:30pm TBA, CAC
195:150:90 World Mythology – Story, structure, and meaning in myths of many cultures. Myth as a primary literary Online phenomenon, with some attention to anthropological and psychological perspectives. TBA
Literature Across Borders: Music and Literature – This course is an introduction to the field of Comparative
Literature, and is required of all majors and minors. “Literature Across Borders” illustrates the concept and 195:201 practice of comparative literature across historical periods, cultures, and genres. For the Spring 2018 semester 01, 02, 03 we will engage with the topic of “Music and Literature” by looking at musical motifs in literary works, and MH2 (01) literary motifs in musical works. Among our many possible questions: does music as music tell stories, and if 9:50-11:10am M2H3 (02) so, how does musical story-telling compare to literary fiction? Is music a language? Does it make sense to name 9:50-11:10am sound patterns musical “sentences”? Can poetry be described as musical? A work of music as poetic? In the 11:30-12:50pm wake of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature: are song writers poets? Is classical music history? How about M2H4 (03) the literary canon? What makes a musical piece classical and what does this teach us about canonization 9:50-11:10am generally? Do novels have rhythms? Do they have a music? Is the opera novelistic, the novel operatic? What 1:10-2:30pm does music as medium teach us about “language" as medium? Our primary materials will consist of poetry, E. Efe music, films, musical plays and operas, novellas and short stories from a variety of cultural traditions – English, CAC Italian, French, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, German, Indian, American, Japanese, among others. Each week a different distinguished scholar of Comparative Literature and/or Music, from Rutgers and elsewhere, will lecture and/or perform in class, challenging us to think in new ways about literature's relations with music. Assessments will take the form of weekly responses, a midterm and a final paper. Fulfills SAS Core Requirements AHo and AHp.
Grading and Requirements: Weekly responses and participation (%30); midterm (%30); final paper (%40).
The Global Ecological Imagination – The mainstream media and popular culture represent indigenous and 195:220 aboriginal communities as models for re-imagining our own relationship with nature. Nevertheless, these stories 01,02,H1 can’t help but to be melancholic: the damages brought by modernization seem to be unstoppable; progress is MH2T4 (01) always desirable even if it disappoints us; and indigenous and aboriginal cultures apparently have no choice but 9:50-11:10am to adapt or to protect their way of life by heroic means. In this course we will explore this conundrum from 1:10-2:30pm below. How are indigenous/aboriginal peoples impacted by planetary and local environmental changes? How MH2T5 (02) are they reacting to them? And how are their lives changed by their own responses and activism? We will focus 9:50-11:10am on feature films, documentaries, fictions, and testimonies produced by indigenous or aboriginal intellectuals, or 2:50-4:10pm by authors in close collaboration with such communities. Their stories take place in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, MH2T3 (H1) Haiti, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, and South Africa. We will learn about the conflict but also the 9:50-11:10am 11:30-12:50pm confluence between traditional aboriginal and indigenous beliefs of the human and the nonhuman, on the one Marcone hand, and modern economic development, scientific knowledge, and Western environmentalism, on the other. CAC Fulfills SAS Core Requirements 21C and AHo.
2
Required Texts: Witi Ihimaera. The Whale Rider. 1987. New Zealand. Ken Saro-Wiwa. Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy. 1992. Nigeria. Mayra Montero (Cuba-Puerto Rico). In the Palm of Darkness. 1998. Haiti. Zakes Mda, The Heart of Redness. 2000. South Africa. Amitav Ghosh. The Hungry Tide. 2004. India.
Required Films: Tambogrande: Mangos, Muerte, Minería (2007); Perú. Douglass Media Center. RU 10-1048. Crude: The Real Price of Oil (2009); Ecuador. Douglass Media Center. RU 10-2824. Waste Land (2010); Brazil. Douglass Media Center. RU 10-2849. The Life of Pi. (2012). Douglass Media Center. Instructor’s copy. Detrás del TIPNIS (2012); Bolivia. Sakai.
Introduction to the Literatures of South Asia - South Asia as a region includes the Republic of India; the two 195:243:01 modern nations that were formerly part of British India: Pakistan and Bangladesh; Sri Lanka; Nepal; and the TH6 Maldives. A single course could never hope to cover the literatures of all of these nations, and this course will 4:30-5:50pm concentrate only on India, with some attention to Pakistan. We will analyze the relationships between the human Mangharam and the divine, men and women, and tradition and modernity; and caste and communal relationships as they are CAC articulated in texts translated from several South Asian languages from ancient times to the present. Fulfills SAS Core Requirements AHo and AHp. Course Cross-listing: 013:231:01
Required Texts: Works will be chosen from among the following: excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata ; The Little Clay Cart; love poetry of the Tamil poets; poems of Ghalib; the bhakti (devotional) poetry of Kabir and Mirabai; stories of Rabindranath Tagore, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Mahasweta Devi, and Qurratulain Hyder; and the recent films In Custody and Earth. All texts will be available on Sakai.
195:244:01 Introduction to Mythology –This course presents a Jungian approach to myth. Starting with Jung’s MH3 definition of myth and a description of its powers, discussion will then turn to a series of myths as 11:30-12:50pm articulated in literary and filmic texts: Walker, S. The Shadow and Evil in the dybbuk figure—the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man CAC The Shadow—Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Evil—Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles Scapegoating and Shadow Projection—The Book of Job Love and the Contrasexual Other—The Romance of Tristan and Iseult Apocalypse—Peter Weir’s film The Last Wave The Heroine—Tom Tykwer’s film Run Lola Run The Hero—The Romance of Tristan and Iseult Myth as Cultural Compensation—the Hindu myth “The Marriage of Gunasundari” The Power of Myth—Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp.
Required Texts Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles; Joseph Bédier:The Romance of Tristan and Iseult; The Book of Job (Trans. Stephen Mitchell); Steven F. Walker: Jung and the Jungians on Myth.
Grading and Requirements Attendance and participation (15%), two short papers (20%), midterm (25%), final examination (40%).
3
195:244:02 TH5 Introduction to Mythology – Myths of various cultures; their structures and functions in social and especially 2:50-4:10pm literary contexts. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp TBA CAC
195:244:90 Introduction to Mythology – Myths of various cultures; their structures and functions in social and especially Online literary contexts.Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp TBA
195:244: 91 Introduction to Mythology – Myths of various cultures; their structures and functions in social and especially Online literary contexts. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp TBA
Fairy Tales Then and Now – This course analyzes the structure, meaning, and function of fairy tales and their 195:246:01 enduring influence on literature and popular culture. While we will concentrate on the German context, and in MW5 particular on the works of the Brothers Grimm, we also will consider fairy tales drawn from a number of 2:50-4:10pm different national traditions and historical periods, including the American present. Various strategies for Helfer interpreting fairy tales will be examined, including methodologies derived from structuralism, folklore studies, CAC gender studies, and psychoanalysis. We will explore pedagogical and political uses and abuses of fairy tales. We will investigate the evolution of specific tale types and trace their transformations in various media from oral storytelling through print to film, television, and the stage. Finally, we will consider potential strategies for the reinterpretation and rewriting of fairy tales. This course has no prerequisites. Fulfills SAS Core Requirements AHp, WCd. Course Cross-listing: 470:225:01
Required Texts: The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, tr. Jack Zipes, 3rd ed. Bantam, ISBN: 0553382160 Spiegelman, Maus I and Maus II. Pantheon, ISBN: 0679748407 Grimm/Sendak, Dear Mili. Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN: 9781250035127 Fouqué, Undine, tr. F.E. Bunnett (Wildside Press, 1-58715-689-x [also available in Kindle edition])
Required films (Streaming available via Sakai course site): Snow White (Disney) Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau and Disney) The Little Mermaid (Disney) Frozen (Disney) Mulan (Disney) The Lion King (Disney) Into the Woods (Sondheim musical, 1991 Broadway version)
195:256:01 Introducing Italy City by City: – Description still to come. TH4 Fulfills SAS Core Requirements AHo and AHp. Course Cross-listing: 560:256:01 1:10-2:30pm White CAC
195:267:01 Latino Literature: Puerto Rican Literature – Study of the development of Puerto Rican literature from the TH4 Spanish colonial period to the present. Emphasis on major writers: Pales Matos, Corretjer, Marquez, Gonzalez, 1:40-3:00pm Soto, Diaz, Valcarcel, Sanchez, and Blanco. Credit not given for both this course and 01:940:331,332. Course Duchesne- Cross-listing: 595:266:01 Sotomayor LIV 4
Introduction to Caribbean Literature –The history, culture, and geography of the Caribbean have made it a 195:260:01 distinctive and complex world area: the experiences of colonialism, slavery, and indentured servitude; the MH3 region’s multiplicity of races, cultures, and languages; the insular and maritime condition of its geography; and 12:00-1:20pm its proximity to the United States have shaped the region’s literary, cultural, and artistic production. The Stevens objective of this class is to become acquainted with major authors, themes, and literary movements that have LIV emerged in the Caribbean. The course incorporates a range of media and employs an interdisciplinary perspective in exploring Caribbean prose, poetry, and drama. Some of the topics that will organize our discussions include: empire, revolution, sugar and labor, decolonization, storytelling and the oral tradition, re- visioning European traditions, ritual and carnival, transnationalism, diaspora, and exile, and constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Fulfills SAS Core Requirements AHp and WCR. Course Cross-listing: 595:270:01; 940:270:01
195:270 TF3W2 (01) Past Today The great American novelist William Faulkner famously said, "The past is not dead. It's not even 12:00-1:20pm past." Why do some conflicts endure despite the enormous political, technological, cultural and economic 10:20-11:40am changes of the past several decades? What can we learn about 21st-century struggles through examining the TFW3 (02) representation of conflict in comparative literature and arts? How can we understand the ways in which the past 12:00-1:20pm TF3W4 (03) remains “undead” through its continuing animation of today's clashes while complicating all attempts to resolve 12:00-1:20pm them? How can literature, film, and other visual arts, as well as architecture, and music, be used to understand 1:40-3:00pm how the past shapes political and cultural strife today? Focusing on three current conflicts from disparate TF3W5 (04) cultures, this course explores how conflicts are constructed and searches for the means to look through and 12:00-1:20pm beyond them, to overcome them, and to loosen the past’s hold on the present and future. 3:20-4:40pm Fulfills SAS Core Requirement 21C, AHo and AHp. TFH3 (05) 12:00-1:20pm TF3H4 (06) 12:00-1:20pm 1:40-3:00pm Serrano LIV
Realism and Revolution – This course provides the opportunity for an in-depth study of representative German 195:276:01 literature of the nineteenth century. We will look at the way in which literature responds to the German MH3 Sonderweg (special path) that eventually led an aggressively modernizing society to imperialism and 11:30-12:50pm totalitarianism. We will examine the various ways in which revolution, social upheaval and historical trauma are Behrmann being reflected, warded off, and incorporated by 19th-century German fiction. Special attention will be paid to CAC the relationship between the figure of the “revolution” as a disruptive force and the pursuit of “realist” fiction to depict the world we live in objectively. We will also consider various forms of unstable narratives that traverse realist fiction: excessive description, repetition, secrets, rumors, and the uncanny.
Readings include canonical texts of German literature including poems by Heinrich Heine, paintings by Adolph Menzel and Edouard Manet, plays by Georg Büchner and Gerhart Hauptmann, novellas by Joseph von Eichendorff, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, and Adalbert Stifter, and Heinrich Mann’s novel The Loyal Subject (Der Untertan). Emphasis will be placed on developing close-reading and critical writing skills. Theoretical interventions will be provided by Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt. Course Cross-listing: 470:276:01
Required Texts:
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, Penguin Classics, 2006
# ISBN-10: 0143039903, # ISBN-13: 978-0143039907
Georg Büchner, Complete Plays and Prose, trans. Carl Richard Muller, Hill and Wang, 1963
# ISBN-10: 0809007274
Heinrich Mann, Man of Straw, Penguin Classics, 1992*
# ISBN-10: 0140181377
Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, CreateSpace, 2010
# ISBN-10: 1453835598 5
Grading and Requirements: Class participation and regular blog posts (15%), 3 Response essays (45%), short presentation or online project (15%) and Final paper (25%).
Latino and Caribbean Culture Studies- Comparative study of Latino and Caribbean cultures by reviewing 195:295:01 key definitions of culture, paying attention to the historical and disciplinary development of the term, as well as MW6 the key debates on cultural studies in the Humanities. The second part of the course reviews some of the key 4:30-5:50pm debates in the study of culture in Caribbean and Latinos studies, such as the links between historical experience, Gonzalez ethnicity, race and culture, the quest for and critique of national and ethnic identities, populism and studies on CAC popular culture, the cultural contacts paradigm and hybridity, the multicultural debate, the Culture Wars of the 1980s, gender and queer studies, the study of cultures in displacement, the ethnic turn in cultural studies, the analysis of visual cultures, and the emergence of pop, media and electronic cultures. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHp and WCR. Course Cross-listing: 595:295:01
Required Texts: All required texts available on sakai.
Grading and Requirements: Class Attendance and Participation 10% 3 “reflexiones” or 3-4 pages reaction papers 30% Midterm (take home) 15% 2 essay exams written in class 20% Pop quizzes 10% Partial Exam due on the day of the final exam (take home) 15%
Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures and Theories – In this course we will discuss, through the lens of 195:307:01 theories of postcolonialism and decoloniality, major literary and filmic texts that, as John McLeod puts it, have TH5 been “produced by people from countries with a history of colonialism, primarily those concerned with the 2:50-4:10pm workings and legacy of colonialism, and resistance to it, in either the past or the present.” We will read and Walker, J. discuss texts from four nations: Indonesia, India, Senegal, and Guatemala, with the goal of developing the CAC student’s capacity to think and write critically about postcolonial literatures in a comparative framework. In the course of the semester we will pay particular attention to the role of nation and national culture, language, education, and law in constructing the identities of both colonized peoples and contemporary people in postcolonial nations struggling to decolonize their identities. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement 21C, AHo and AHp. Course Cross-listing: 013:307:01
Required Texts: Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s This Earth of Mankind (ISBN #978-014256352) Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (Random House ISBN #978-0812979657), Rigoberta Menchú’s I, Rigberta Menchú (Verso 2nd edition 2010: ISBN# 978-1844674183) Ousmane Sembène’s Xala (Lawrence Hill Books ISBN# 978-1556520709). A few short required readings will be available on Alexander Online Reserve. All texts will be read or viewed in translation.
Grading and Requirements: Attendance and participation (10%), quizzes and short response papers (30%), oral presentation (15%), midterm paper (20%), and final paper (25%).
Journey to Hell and Beyond: Dante and Medieval Culture – Dante’s Divine Comedy incorporates 195:315:01 philosophy, theology, history, art, mythology, spirituality, mysticism, and theatrics—while giving the account of 6
MW5 a journey through the afterworld. Despite being the foundational masterpiece of the Italian language, the poem 2:50-4:10pm reaches out to numerous other cultures in the Mediterranean area and beyond, to create a diverse, rich story, Vettori something we might call an “international” epic. Judaism, Islam, Provençal poetry, Scholastic philosophy from CAC Paris, and constant references to Roman and Greek culture are some of the topics it presents. As narration of an afterlife experience, the poem closely scrutinizes moral issues and their consequences, which are applicable to any era and any place. Students will be required to “translate” such concepts into contemporary issues. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement AHo and AHp. Course Cross-listing: 560:315:01
Required Texts: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Inferno. A Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books ISBN 055321344X The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio. A Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Paradiso. A Verse Translation by Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books
Grading and Requirements: Students in this course will be required to do the assigned readings ahead of the lectures, to write two papers (one 500-word paper and one 1,000-word research paper with footnotes and bibliography), to take a midterm and a final exam. Attendance is required.
Post Modern Approaches to Sacred Literature – An examination of some significant aspects of postmodern literary, psychological and cinematic approaches to religion through the close analysis of a few 195:318:01 select texts. The course does not deal primarily with the theological or historical interpretation of canonic MW7 sacred texts, but rather is designed to highlight the literary daring and the sometimes even outrageous 6:10-7:30pm postmodern freedom of authors who, through a process of bricolage, and via reference to a canonical sacred Walker, S. text, create statements of religious orientation and personal declarations of faith. By means of the CAC elaboration of a creative and original literary, cinematic and/or psychological response, these authors come to terms personally with the ongoing power of the sacred text to captivate modern minds. Their own texts, when put into juxtaposition with the original sacred texts, may be taken to some degree as personal confessions in terms of their particular sensibilité religieuse. The course will analyze key texts by such original postmodern interpreters as Sigmund Freud (Moses and Monotheism/the Biblical story of Moses), D.H. Lawrence (Apocalypse/ John of Patmos’ Apocalypse), C.G. Jung (Answer to Job/The Book of Job), and Marcel Proust (Time Regained/the ritual of the Tridentine Mass). The analysis will also include films of two modern directors (Peter Weir’s The Last Wave/apocalyptic themes) and Haifaa al- Mansour’s Wadjda (secret messages), and my own literary contextualization of the Bhagavad Gita (based initially on van Buitenen’s The Gita in the Mahabharata). These analyses will provide material for the study of such postmodern religious themes as the antinomy of Good and Evil, apocalypse as a myth of both world and individual transformation, and the feminine side of God. Course Cross-listing: 840:362:01
Required Texts: Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism Marcel Proust, Time Regained (translated by Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God (translated by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda) The Book of Job (translated by S. Mitchell) Answer To Job The Apocalypse (translated by Willis Barnstone)
Grading and Requirements: The course will require two examinations, two short response papers, and one long course paper. Grading: attendance/participation 15% (3 unexcused absences without penalty), midterm 25%, final exam 30%, final paper/response papers 30%
7
Women Writers of Africa – This course is a survey of writings by women from a variety of cultural, linguistic, 195:363:01 and regional areas of Africa and the Diaspora. Using an intercultural approach, it focuses on the imaginative MW5 works of African women, exploring the socio-cultural and political landscapes that have shaped their works, and 2:50-4:10pm how their works, in turn, are a reflection of the (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial) conditions of their Alidou production. Special attention is given to the intersection of power, class and gender in the analysis of the texts CAC covered in class, demonstrating how the writings of women often constitute a different voice about Africanity. The texts give testaments to women’s quest to re-imagine/reshape the world we share – to reinterpret history, re- read culture, reconfigure the structures that define female and male roles, and reconstruct identities. This course will focus on contemporary African women poets like Abena Busia, African women’s short Stories edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, novels written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Fatou Dione, Angélique Kidjo, Razinat T. Mohammed, a selection of African women’s verbal arts and performance, and films by African women. Course Cross-listings: 013:311:01; 016:363:01; 988:312:01
Required Texts Ama Ata Aidoo, African Love Stories, Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers (January 30, 2007) – ISBN 0954702360 Busia, Abena, Testimonies of Exile. Africa World Press, ISBN 9780865431607 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's, Purple Hibiscus, Anchor 2004, ISBN-10-1400076943 Diome, Fatou, Belly of the Atlantic. Perseus, ISBN 9781852429034 Kidjo, Angélique, Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music. Harper Design ISBN 978-0-06-207179-8 Mohammed, Razinat T., Habiba, Kraftgriots Books, ISBN 9789789181254
Grading and Requirements This course focuses on reading and discussions (of print, visual and audio materials). Therefore, it is very important that each student read assigned reading material before coming to class in order to fully participate in class discussions. Assignments consist of unannounced quizzes, leading class discussion of assigned readings, a comprehensive take-home midterm exam and a final exam paper. A failure to take a quiz, lead discussion of assigned reading, and turn in exams on due dates will result in a zero (0) grade unless a satisfactory document of excuse is presented.
Marx, Nietzsche, Freud – Exploration of the work of three German writers who revolutionized modern 195:374:01 philosophy, theology, psychology, aesthetics, social and political science, gender studies, historiography, TH4 literature and the arts. We will be reading and discussing a selection of key writings by Karl Marx, Friedrich 1:10-2:30pm Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Along with these we’ll examine a sampling of texts that were important for their Rennie work, and writings that later both reflected their influence and drew their ideas in new directions. In English. No CAC prerequisites. Fulfills SAS Core Requirement HST j&k and AHp. Course Cross-listings: 470:371:01; 730:344;01
Required Texts: 1. Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism ISBN: 9780394700144] 2. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the Interpretation of Dreams, and Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex) ISBN: 9780679601661 3. Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader ISBN: 9780393090406 4. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Nietzsche Reader ISBN: 9780631226543 All other readings available via Sakai.
Grading and Requirements: Assessments for the course include responses, discussion board posts and three take-home exams.
195:384:01 Russian Poetry: – This course will introduce students to Russian lyric poetry by showing its historical MW4 development from the late 18th to the 20th century. We will weave our way through the most important poetic movements (Romanticism, Symbolism, Acmeism, Futurism), sampling representative works from Russia's 8
1:10-2:30pm leading poets. Our major day-to-day focus will be on reading, translating, understanding, and appreciating Brooks Russian poetry. Readings will be in Russian, and distributed in .pdf format on Sakai. Readings are in Rusisan, CAC discussions in English. Course Cross-listing: 860:332:01
Grading and Requirements: Tentative: Attendance and participation, 25%; Sakai forum posts, 10%; First (20%) and second papers (20%), each 4-5 pp.; Oral presentation, 10%; Final exam, 15%
Issues in Comparative Literature: Masculinities and Literature - An analysis of literary, visual, and critical 195:395:01 texts that reflect on the question of masculinity, and its representation. Some topics for discussion will be the TH6 following: masculinity as spectacle, authorial voice, heteronormativity, race, male bodies, cyberidentity, and 4:30-5:50pm Sifuentes-Jáuregui pleasure. Selected works include Losey's film adaptation of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Melville's Billy Budd, CAC Sailor, Mann's Death in Venice, Freud's case of the Wolf Man, Hwang's M. Butterfly, and other works.
195:396:02 Issues in Comparative Literature: – Modern Urdu Literature and Culture – Introduces students to modern TW3 Urdu literature and popular culture in various genres and cultural contexts. Provides overview of diverse 11:30-12:50pm manifestations of South Asian culture and history in Urdu literature. Conducted entirely in Urdu. Course Cross- Parveen listing: 013:433:01 CAC
Issues in Comparative Literature: – Films After Benjamin- Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940) was one of the 195:397:01 most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. He is said to be the first who saw–long before Marshall MW4 McLuhan–»that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.« 1:10-2:30pm »Shock« and »distraction« are key concepts of his film theory. Taught in a seminar format and based on Dotzler readings, discussion, and active participation, the course first studies Benjamin's most important essays on film, CAC photography, and the philosophy of history, including »The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,« »Brief History of Photography,« »On the Present Situation of Russian Film,« »The Storyteller,« and »Theses on the Philosophy of History.« Secondly, the course addresses the question of how Benjamin's theory, or reflections, can be identified in actual movies. Screenings will include Twelve Monkeys (dir. Terry Gilliam), La Jetée (dir. Chris Marker), Hélas pour moi! (dir. Jean-Luc Godard), Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments (dir. Udi Aloni), Erzählen/Telling (dir. Harun Farocki), and Wings of Desire (dir. Wim Wenders). Required films will be on reserve in the Douglass Media Center and available for streaming. Course Cross-listings: 470:390:01 and 175:377:01
Gender and Sexuality in Russian Literature: - In this course we study questions of gender and sexuality in 195:480:01 modern Russian literature and culture through close readings of novellas, short stories, poems, films, essays, and TTh4 memoirs. How have gender and sexuality been constructed in different periods of Russian history? What erotic 1:10-2:30pm utopias did radical thinkers propose? How did Soviet ideology build on traditional myths and images of Kitzinger femininity and masculinity? How have gay and lesbian love been represented, given the enduring presence of CAC cultural taboos? The course will move from key (pre-)19th-century predecessors (fairy tales, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy), through the turbulent decades surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution (symbolism and decadence, socialist realism, and various avant-garde movements), and on to contemporary literature, including Pussy Riot's performance art and the journalistic prose of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. We will broaden our study through encounters with influential theoretical and critical texts, both inside and outside the Russian tradition. Course Cross-listings: 860:4350:01 and 988:435:01
Required Texts (provisional): Karolina Pavlova, A Double Life (1848) L. Tolstoy, “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1889) Fedor Sologub, The Little Demon (1907) Yuri Olesha, Envy (1927) 9
Short stories of I. Turgenev, A. Chekhov, L. Petrushevskaia, and T. Tolstaia Poetry of Zinaida Gippius and Anna Akhmatova Films of Avram Room and Larisa Shepitko; Documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer Selections from Svetlana Aleksievich, The Unwomanly Face of War (1985) and Secondhand Time (2013)
Grading and Requirements Basic requirements include one 4-page discussion paper and oral presentation/response to another student’s paper and presentation (15% and 10%), a midterm exam (25%), and an 8-10 page final paper (30%), as well as regular attendance and engaged participation in class discussions (20%). Weights given are provisional.
10