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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Italian Studies, Medieval Studies Hegel credited the Divine Comedy with inventing the literary technique on which the novel would come to rely: suspense. Yet suspense is only one of myriad poetic innovations in Dante's masterpiece. This course examines the span of literary influences underlying those innovations. Students also explore Dante's early works ( Vita Nuova, Convivio, Letters), reading the texts against the general backdrop of medieval Christian culture and exploring themes such as human vs. divine knowledge; linear history vs. circular time; revelation and faith; virtue and sin ( contrappasso); allegory and the responsibilities of authorship; and the function and redefinition of literary genres.
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4.00 Credits
Human Rights, Integrated Arts This seminar explores how personal narrative, monuments, memorials, and photography produce and document the memory of trauma, at once vividly present and inevitably dependent on our ethical response for its existence. Students discuss some issues of human rights, drawing on the discourses of politics, the media, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis. Readings include theoretical texts by Benjamin, Agamben, Blanchot, Caruth, Felman, Alcava, Baer, and LaCapra. Case studies include narratives by Holocaust survivors, such as Szpilman and Levi, and from survivors of the desaparecidos of Latin America. The complexity of response to a variety of visually powerful material-photographs of Civil War battlegrounds, Holocaust sites, and public monuments, for example-is explored.
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4.00 Credits
Africana Studies, American Studies, SRE Unlike other writers of his generation, who viewed America from distant shores, William Faulkner remained at home and explored his own region. From this intensely intimate vantage point, he was able to portray the American South in all of its glory and shame. Within Faulkner's narratives, slavery and its aftermath remain the disaster at the heart of American history. In this course, students read Faulkner's major novels, poetry, short stories, and film scripts. Students also read biographical material and examine the breadth of current Faulkner literary criticism.
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4.00 Credits
Human Rights This seminar examines the role of representation and mediation in the experience of war and conflict. Why does it matter how conflicts are presented in literature, the arts, and mass media? What sort of fight is the battle for public opinion, and by what means is it waged? Students explore the shifting line between violence and politics, in order to construct (across a wide range of theoretical texts and frontline accounts and images) an analysis of the media in conflict. Topics include propaganda, censorship, photo opportunities, compassion fatigue, digital video, testimony, the mobilization of shame, Internet jihad, and torture. Special attention is paid to humanitarian responses to conflict and to terrorism and counterterrorism. Students explore the works of Michael Ignatieff, Rony Brauman, David Rieff, Samuel Weber, Stanley Cohen, and George Lakoff, among others, and examine readings and footage from recent and contemporary conflicts.
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4.00 Credits
French Studies This course consists of a study of plays, "revolutionary"in their own right, which are misleadingly referred to as the Theater of the Absurd (or of Cruelty). Their authors bring to the stage-in unusual forms, images, and symbols-works that are simultaneously realistic in their depiction of human motives and values, expressionistic or surrealistic in their episodic structure, and explicit or implicit in their ideology. The class reads Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame; Ionesco's Rhinoceros and The Bald Soprano; Genet's The Maids; Adamov' s ProfessorTaranne; and Arrabal's The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria. Students with an adequate command of French are encouraged to read texts in the original and discuss them (in French) during a weekly tutorial, for two extra credits.
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4.00 Credits
GSS The figure of the tragic heroine-abject, grandiose, vengeful, self-sacrificing, murderous, noble, alluring-has gripped the Western imagination for nearly 30 centuries. Why do male authors focus so consistently on the representation of suffering females-often for the benefit of male audiences? Through a series of close readings of representative texts in a number of genres (epic, tragedy, lyric, fiction, opera), students explore the aesthetic nature and ideological roots of this cultural preoccupation.
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4.00 Credits
Students present their own work to the group for analysis and response and read works by contemporary poets. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors by permission of the instructor.
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4.00 Credits
This seminar, designed to elicit a poetic response to the complexity of life in today's world, explores a range of forms, media, logics, constraints, and experiences. Compositional strategies are taught that entail an acute level of observation of words and their consequences. Investigative methods from a variety of fields are studied, along with the works of an international selection of contemporary poets. Projects may involve visual and electronic media and performance dimensions. Participants attend poetry readings and other events. Prerequisites: Upper College standing and a writing sample.
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4.00 Credits
With the publication of works such as Julio Cortázar' s Rayuel a and Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez Cien a?os de soledad, the Latin American novel achieved an international reputation and readership. This course begins by analyzing several novels of the "boom" period, to determine thereasons behind their critical acclaim and popular appeal. In particular, the phenomenon of magical realism is examined as a key element in the "globalization" of Latin American prose.Students also read novels from the "post-boom"and examine the relationship of these works to theoretical articulations of postmodernism and feminism. Authors include Allende, Arenas, Asturias, Carpentier, Cortázar, Ferré, Fuentes,GarcÃa Márquez, Peri Rossi, Puig, Skármeta, anValenzuela. The course is conducted in English, with a concurrent reading tutorial in Spanish.
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4.00 Credits
Italian Studies What is unique about the Italian literary tradition? How has it influenced the development of other languages and literatures? This course examines modern Italian literature in light of the aesthetic and historical developments that shaped what has been called sapientia Italorum (Italian wisdom). Texts include Foscolo's Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, Manzoni's The Betrothed, Verga's The House by the Medlar Tree, Gramsci'stheoretical writings, Eco's semiotics, and Calvino'sblend of science and fantasy. Students also examine literary nationalism and the relationship of Italian literature to cinema and opera. The course is taught in English, but an option exists for completing course work in Italian.
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