College of Letters 1 Kari Weil BA, Cornell University; MA, Princeton University; PHD, Princeton University COLLEGE OF LETTERS University Professor of Letters; University Professor, Environmental Studies; The College of Letters (COL) is a three-year interdisciplinary major for the study University Professor, College of the Environment; University Professor, Feminist, of European literature, history, and philosophy, from antiquity to the present. Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Co-Coordinator, Animal Studies During these three years, students participate as a cohort in a series of five colloquia in which they read and discuss (in English) major literary, philosophical, and historical texts and concepts drawn from the three disciplinary fields, and AFFILIATED FACULTY also from monotheistic religious traditions. Majors are invited to think critically about texts in relation to their contexts and influences—both European and non- Ulrich Plass European—and in relation to the disciplines that shape and are shaped by those MA, University of Michigan; PHD, New York University texts. Majors also become proficient in a foreign language and study abroad Professor of German Studies; Professor, Letters to deepen their knowledge of another culture. As a unique college within the University, the COL has its own library and workspace where students can study together, attend talks, and meet informally with their professors, whose offices VISITING FACULTY surround the library. Ryan Fics BA, University of Manitoba; MA, University of Manitoba; PHD, Emory University Visiting Assistant Professor of Letters FACULTY Charles Barber BA, Harvard University; MFA, Columbia University EMERITI Associate Professor of the Practice in Letters Howard I. Needler Joseph J. Fitzpatrick BA, Oxford University; BS, Yale University; MA, Oxford University; PHD, Columbia BA, Harvard University; PHD, Duke University University Assistant Professor of the Practice in Letters; Assistant Professor of the Practice, Professor of Letters, Emeritus Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Laurie Nussdorfer Tushar Irani BA, Yale University; MA, Princeton University; MSC, London School of Economics BA, Colgate University; PHD, Northwestern University and Political Science; PHD, Princeton University Associate Professor of Philosophy; Associate Professor of Letters; Chair, College William Armstrong Professor of History, Emerita; Professor of Letters, Emerita of Letters; CPE Instructor Paul Schwaber Ethan Kleinberg BA, Wesleyan University; MA, University of California, Berkeley; PHD, Columbia BA, University of California, Berkeley; MA, University of California, Los Angeles; University PHD, University of California, Los Angeles Professor of Letters, Emeritus Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor; Professor of History; Professor of Letters; Khachig Tölölyan Chair, History; Editor-in-Chief, History and Theory BA, Harvard University; MA, University of Rhode Island; MAA, Wesleyan Typhaine Leservot University; PHD, Brown University BA, University of Caen; MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; PHD, Professor of English and Letters, retired University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Associate Professor of French; Associate Professor of Letters; Coordinator, Muslim Studies DEPARTMENTAL ADVISING EXPERTS Gabrielle Piedad Ponce-Hegenauer BA, University of Illinois Urbana; MFA, Johns Hopkins University; PHD, Johns Tushar Irani; Typhaine Leservot; Ethan Kleinberg; Ulrich Plass; Gabrielle Piedad Hopkins University Ponce-Hegenauer, Khachig Tölölyan; Jesse Torgerson; Kari Weil Assistant Professor of Letters; Assistant Professor, Feminist, Gender, and • Undergraduate College of Letters Major (https://catalog.wesleyan.edu/ Sexuality Studies departments/col/ugrd-col/) Daniel Smyth COL101F Truth and Lies in Crime Writing (FYS) BA, University of Chicago; MA, University of Chicago; PHD, University of Chicago This course will explore a range of crime fiction and nonfiction, from literary Assistant Professor of Letters; Assistant Professor, German Studies; Assistant classics to genre-based texts. Readings will include Dostoevsky's "Crime Professor, Philosophy and Punishment," Edgar Allan Poe, Raymond Chandler, and P.D. James, and Jesse Wayne Torgerson nonfiction works such as "In Cold Blood," Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls," and Charles BA, Biola University; MA, University of California, Berkeley; PHD, University of Barber's "Citizen Outlaw." A theme of the class will be the duplicitous and elusive California, Berkeley nature of truth and objectivity in both the journalistic and fictional accounts. Assistant Professor of Letters; Assistant Professor, Medieval Studies; Assistant Students will have the opportunity to write a short piece of crime fiction or Professor, History narrative nonfiction, in addition to analytical papers. Offering: Host 2 College of Letters Grading: OPT through the rise of the novel in 18th-century Britain to romanticism, realism, and Credits: 1.00 modernism. Gen Ed Area: HA-COL Prereq: None We will focus on texts that had tremendous impact (and long afterlives) throughout Europe, that inspired responses and imitations in many different COL101Z Truth and Lies in Crime Writing languages, and that provided European intellectual culture with archetypal This course will explore a range of crime fiction and nonfiction, from literary characters and plots through which problems of history, politics, and philosophy classics to genre-based texts. Readings will include Dostoevsky's "Crime and were articulated--Voltaire's naïf and Dostoevsky's nihilist; Defoe's heroic Punishment," Nabokov's "Lolita," Raymond Chandler, and P.D. James, and bourgeois individualist and Kafka's victim of modern bureaucratic rationality. nonfiction works such as "In Cold Blood," Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls," and Charles The readings will also introduce students to some of the European novel's Barber's "Citizen Outlaw." A theme of the class will be the duplicitous and elusive important subgenres (e.g., romance, gothic, grotesque, the philosophical novel) nature of truth and objectivity in both the journalistic and fictional accounts. and important narrative forms (e.g., epistolary novel, unreliable narration, free Students will have the opportunity to write a short piece of crime fiction or indirect discourse). narrative nonfiction, in addition to analytical papers. Offering: Host Offering: Host Grading: Cr/U Grading: OPT Credits: 1.00 Credits: 1.00 Gen Ed Area: HA-COL Gen Ed Area: HA-COL Prereq: None Prereq: None COL114F Freud and Psychoanalysis (FYS) COL108F Language (FYS) This course offers a close, critical study of Freud's psychoanalytic writings This course, beyond providing an introduction to the science of linguistics, is through the major phases of his career. We will be attending to individual texts, designed to give students in their first year an awareness of the importance of ongoing issues, the cogency of his theoretical formulations, and the range of his language in everyday life and of the range of its uses and abuses as a cultural and relevance and reception in deconstruction (Jacques Derrida), feminism (Elizabeth class marker, vehicle of knowledge, and instrument of power. It is an objective A. Wilson), and Black Studies (Franz Fanon, Hortense Spillers, and Christina of this course that students who complete it should be better prepared than Sharpe). they were before for the sensitive and exacting study not only of literature Offering: Host but of whatever specialized studies they subsequently undertake. Topics to Grading: OPT be considered include whether language is a cultural artifact that is learned Credits: 1.00 or is instinctual; the varieties of languages; language as expression of culture; Gen Ed Area: HA-COL linguistic imperialism; problems of translation; the distinction between speech Identical With: FGSS112F and writing; stenolanguage, metalanguage, and poetic language; metaphor and Prereq: None symbol; and semiotics. Offering: Host COL115 How to Read a Literary Text Grading: Cr/U This course will introduce students to the practice of close reading and to the Credits: 1.00 formal study of literary texts. Working with selections of poetry and prose Gen Ed Area: HA-COL (including texts that have been translated from languages other than English), Prereq: None students will learn to analyze and make arguments according to the disciplinary methods of literary studies. COL110 What Does Art Mean? Studies in Aesthetics and Cultural Relevance Humans have felt compelled to make what we now call "art" for millennia; Primary readings will include texts from a wide range of historical periods, clearly, the drive to create and express is a pressing one in our species. Can we national literatures, and cultural contexts. Secondary readings will include define that drive? The title of this course encompasses multiple questions. What exemplary works of literary criticism and theoretical writings on critical method. do we mean when we say "art," and is there a way to legitimately wield or deny In addition to performing close readings of the primary texts, we will discuss that designation? Does that designation have universal meaning? Is there an theoretical problems of genre, author, closure, and ambiguity, along with the inherent exclusion, or exclusivity, within it? Also, what is art communicating? limitations of formal analysis and the text/context binary. Is there a common thread or purpose to what we call art? Can there ever be a "right" answer to that question? Or, put another way,