Comparative Literature (COML) 1 COML 010 Central and Eastern Europe: Cultures, Histories, Societies COMPARATIVE LITERATURE The reappearance of the concept of Central and Eastern Europe is one of the most fascinating results of the collapse of the Soviet empire. (COML) The course will provide an introduction into the study of this region its cultures, histories, and societies from the foundation of the Holy COML 003 Introduction to Sexuality Studies and Queer Theory Roman Empire to the enlargement of the European Union. Students are This course will introduce students to the historical and intellectual encouraged to delve deeper into particular countries, disciplines, and sub- forces that led to the emergence of queer theory as a distinct field, as well regions, such as Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, through as to recent and ongoing debates about gender, sexuality, embodiment, an individual research paper and class presentations. Prerequisite: This race, privacy, global power, and social norms. We will begin by tracing course is one of two required core courses for the Russian and East queer theory's conceptual heritage and prehistory in psychoanalysis, European Studies (REES) major. deconstruction and poststructuralism, the history of sexuality, gay and Taught by: Ghodse lesbian studies, woman-of-color feminism, the feminist sex wars, and Course usually offered in spring term the AIDS crisis. We will then study the key terms and concepts of the Also Offered As: REES 010 foundational queer work of the 1990s and early 2000s. Finally, we will Activity: Seminar turn to the new questions and issues that queer theory has addressed in 1.0 Course Unit roughly the past decade. Students will write several short papers. COML 012 India's Literature: Love, War, Wisdom and Humor Taught by: Sanchez This course introduces students to the extraordinary quality of literary Course usually offered in fall term production during the past four millennia of South Asian civilization. Also Offered As: ENGL 003, GSWS 003 We will read texts in translation from all parts of South Asia up to the Activity: Lecture sixteenth century. We will read selections from hymns, lyric poems, epics, 1.0 Course Unit wisdom literature, plays, political works, and religious texts. COML 006 Hindu Mythology For BA Students: Arts and Letters Sector Premodern India produced some of the world's greatest myths and Taught by: Patel stories: tales of gods, goddesses, heroes, princesses, kings and lovers Course not offered every year that continue to capture the imaginations of millions of readers and Also Offered As: SAST 004 hearers. In this course, we will look closely at some of these stories Activity: Lecture especially as found in Purana-s, great compendia composed in Sanskrit, 1.0 Course Unit including the chief stories of the central gods of Hinduism: Visnu, COML 013 Introduction to Modern South Asian Literatures Siva, and the Goddess. We will also consider the relationship between This course will provide a wide-ranging introduction to the literatures of these texts and the earlier myths of the Vedas and the Indian Epics, the South Asia from roughly 1500 to the present, as well as an exploration of diversity of the narrative and mythic materials within and across different their histories and impact on South Asian society today. How are literary texts, and the re-imagining of these stories in the modern world. movements and individual works - along with the attitudes towards For BA Students: Arts and Letters Sector religion, society, and culture associated with them - still influential in Taught by: Patel literature, film, and popular culture? How have writers across time and One-term course offered either term language engaged with questions of caste, gender, and identity? We will Also Offered As: RELS 066, SAST 006 read from the rich archive of South Asian writing in translation - from Activity: Lecture languages that include Braj, Urdu, Bangla, and Tamil - to consider how 1.0 Course Unit these literatures depict their own society while continuing to resonate COML 009 Introduction to Digital Humanities across time and space. Topics of dicussion will include the Bhakti This course provides an introduction to foundational skills common poetries of personal devotion, the literature of Dalits - formerly referred in digital humanities (DH). It covers a range of new technologies and to as the Untouchables - and the ways in which literature addresses methods and will empower scholars in literary studies and across contemporary political and social problems. Students will leave this humanities disciplines to take advantage of established and emerging course with a sense of the contours of the literatures of South Asia as digital research tools. Students will learn basic coding techniques that well as ways of exploring the role of these literatures in the larger world. will enable them to work with a range data including literary texts and No prior knowledge of South Asia is required; this course fulfills the utilize techniques such as text mining, network analysis, and other cross-cultural analysis requirement. computational approaches. For BA Students: Arts and Letters Sector Taught by: Trettien Taught by: Goulding One-term course offered either term One-term course offered either term Also Offered As: CIMS 009, ENGL 009, HIST 009 Also Offered As: SAST 007 Activity: Lecture Activity: Seminar 1.0 Course Unit 1.0 Course Unit 2021-22 Catalog | Generated 08/18/21 2 Comparative Literature (COML) COML 014 Critical Speaking Seminar COML 023 In Praise of the Small American political discourse, especially since September 11th, has often We can memorize aphorisms and jokes, carry miniature portraits with depicted Islam as an oppressive force from which both Muslims and us, and feel playful in handling small objects. This seminar will ask us to non-Muslims, particularly women and gender/sexual minorities, must pay attention to smaller texts, art works, and objects that may easily be be saved. In this CWiC critical speaking seminar, we will investigate how overlooked. In addition to reading brief texts and looking at images and oral and written narratives-such as political rhetoric, apologetics and objects, we will also read texts on the history and theory of short genres historical sources - claim to establish unassailable "facts" about Islam, and the small. Muslims and the Middle East. We will also investigate how the notion of Taught by: Weissberg empire-both in its traditionally understood form in Islamic and European Course not offered every year history, as well as in its iterations as US Military and soft power-privileges Also Offered As: GRMN 023 certain voices over others, and how we can reclaim the voices of the Activity: Seminar marginalized in both contemporary discourse as well as historical oral 1.0 Course Unit traditions. Notes: Freshman seminar. All readings and lectures in English. No Taught by: Rafii knowledge of German is required. One-term course offered either term COML 025 Chaucer: Poetry, Voice, and Interpretation Also Offered As: GSWS 008, NELC 008 Watching Chaucer at work, modern poet Lavinia Greenlaw says, is Activity: Seminar like meeting English "before the paint has dried." Before rules (even of 1.0 Course Unit spelling) have hardened. Before live oral performance is subordinated to COML 015 Writing the Self: Life-Writing, Fiction, Representation written record. Chaucer was fluent in French, the most prestigious lingua This course investigates how people try to understand who they are by franca of Europe. His wife Philippa was French, so his pillow talk was writing about their lives. It will cover a broad range of forms, including French. He learned Latin, the language of law and the Church, as a boy. memoirs, novels, essay films, and even celebrity autobiographies. The He first learned Italian from merchants working along the Thames, where course will be international and in focus and will ask how the notion of he grew up; he later travelled to Italy (and Spain) on royal missions. Out of self may shift, not only according to the demands of different genres, all his he fashioned his mash up Middle English. This wonderfully flexible but in different literary, linguistic, and social contexts. Questions probed language captures the nuances of medieval London life while projecting will include the following: How does a writer's language--or languages-- itself imaginatively into ancient Athens, Tartary, and realms of romance. shape how they think of themselves? To what extent is a sense of self Chaucer's poetry comes fully alive when read aloud. Each of you will and identity shaped by exclusion and othering? Is self-writing a form gradually come to read and perform Middle English fluently and well. of translation and performance, especially in multilingual contexts? And this will give you a good idea of where modern English comes from: What can memoir teach us about the ways writers navigate global Middle English is the floor upon which, word by word, modern English literary institutions that shape our knowledge of World Literature? How walks; a frequent challenge is "etymologize that!" Our flower the daisy, do various forms of life-writing enable people on the margins, whether for example, comes from the Old English dayes eye, "the eye of day"; the sexual, gendered, or racial, to craft narratives that encapsulate their dandelion is from the French dent de lion ("the lion's tooth": such is the experience? Can telling one's own story bring joy, affirmation, and greater shape of its petals). Why do so many poets, especially women poets, transcultural or even global understanding? In sum, this course proposes and minority women poets, find Chaucer so imaginatively liberating? to illuminate the many ways in which writing becomes meaningful for What is so special about Alisoun, the Wife of Bath? How does a return to those who take it up.