|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
3.00 Credits
Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S Through the ages, from The Arabian Nights and the Old Testament to Thomas Mann and Alice Walker, short fiction in its many different shapes has been one of the most enduring and most adaptable genres of literary art. This course will be a study of various forms of short fiction such as novella, tale and short story. Offered periodically with varying historical content, the course will correlate literary texts with their social and cultural contexts.
-
3.00 Credits
10S: 3A This course will approach the study of narrative from the perspective of a specific technique or theme; it might explore narrative genres such as autobiography, memoir, letters, epistolary fiction, oral narrative traditions. In 10S, Inescapable Romance: From Late Antiquity through Early Modernity. Although often regarded with disdain, romances have been written by some of the most gifted and important writers from late antiquity through the present. In this course, we will begin with two brilliant books written in Greek, namely Heliodorus's Aethiopika and Longus's Daphnis and Chloe. These prototypical "romances" were actively revived during the 16th and 17th centuries, notably in works by Tasso, Cervantes, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Shakespeare. We will sample these texts, either in English or in English translation. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Crew
-
3.00 Credits
10W: 2A This course will study texts from a generic perspective, concentrating on a particular genre or subgenre that stands outside the broad categories of poetry, drama and narrative. In 10W, Travelers in the Mind: European Travel Writing from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Travel writing has recently become a focus for formal analysis and theorization in several disciplines. It is a rich resource for studying representations of identity and difference, gender, race and power. In this course we study travel writing from antiquity to the present, including topics such as pilgrimage; travel writing and ethnography; the Grand Tour; travel and empire; women travelers; tourism. Secondary readings may include: Todorov, Said, Porter, Clifford, Pratt, Gikandi, Hulme, Youngs, de Certeau. WCult: CI. Williamson.
-
3.00 Credits
09S: 2A This course will study aspects of the comic: satire, parody, comic theater or shorter forms, such as the anecdote, the joke or the caricature. Examples may be literary or pictorial. In 09S, Rabbis, Rogues and Schlemiels: Jewish Humor and its Roots (Identical to Hebrew 63 and Jewish Studies 24.2). What is Jewish humor, what are its roots, and what can it begin to tell us about Jewish society, its values and its self-image Using Freudian and other humor theory, we examine 2000 years of Hebrew comedy and satire, from the Bible to contemporary Israel, in such genres as short stories, jokes, and strip cartoons, and its relationship to American Jewish humor. Taught in English translation. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Glinert.
-
3.00 Credits
09W: 10A 10W: 11 Applying critical literary theories to the study of popular culture, this course will examine how popular culture is produced, disseminated, and consumed. In 09W, Exhibiting Culture: The World Fairs, 1850-2008. This course examines the intersection of politics, literature, and popular culture in the phenomenon of the "world fair." Fairs exhibit for millions of visitors ideas that also circulate in more rarified quarters. How are ideas of race, gender, nation, and history rendered in the design of exhibits Materials for the course include: historical records of the fairs in Britain, the United States, and France; literature, films and music that reference the fairs; readings in cultural, visual, and architectural theory. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Warren.In 10W, The Cultures of Surveillance. A number of popular film trilogies highlight cultures of surveillance within the context of globalization. We will consider film as genre, global surveillance techniques, intertwined plotlines, geo-political borders, the role of the hero, and the role of viewers. Primary texts: The Matrix trilogy; the Bourne trilogy; and the so-called I árritu trilogy (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel). Critical/theoretical texts: David Lyon's Globalizing Surveillance; Julia Thomas's Reading Images; Benjamin, Sartre, DeLauretis, Barthes, Foucault, Lacan, Zizek, Butler. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Biron
-
3.00 Credits
09F: 10 In 09F, Oscar Wilde said it: "A map of the world that did not show the land of Utopia would be leaving out the one country at which we are always landing." In this course we will try to answer questions like: What is Utopia What is the relationship between utopia and fantasy, utopia and history, utopia and revolution What are the utopias of our time and how do they shape our perceptions, our political options, our work, and our daily lives Materials for discussion will include fiction, travel accounts, maps, city plans, letters, political manifestoes, journalistic articles, and films. Dist: LIT or INT. WCult: W. Pastor.
-
3.00 Credits
08F: 2A This course will explore the intersections of literary and familial structures in social and psychological contexts. It will study ideologies which both support and contest the family's cultural hegemony. Individual offerings might concentrate on mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, family romances, marriage, family and society. Readings will range from myth and fairy tale to some of the great family novels or dramas. Dist: Varies. In 08F, The Jewish Family (Identical to Jewish Studies 27). This course will explore the various narrative forms-novel, short story, essay, self-portraiture, drama-in which the Jewish family is represented. We will examine how the rhetorical configurations of texts describe the varieties of Jewishness and the significance of Jewish cultural identity in a cross-cultural context. Authors to be studied include Aleichem, Bellow, Finkelkraut, Freud, Ginzburg, Kafka, Kushner, Paley, Perec, Roth, and Singer. Dist: LIT. Kritzman.
-
3.00 Credits
Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S Myth has inspired literature from ancient times to the present. This course examines original mythic material and how that material has been transformed in later versions. Possible topics include: the legend of Troy, Odysseus through the ages, the Faust theme, the trickster figure, Antigone and Medea, the legend of Don Juan. Dist: Varies.
-
3.00 Credits
09W: 12 09S: 11 10W: 2A In 09W, Godzilla's Revenge: Anime, Manga, J-Pop and Cultural Identities in Modern Japan (Identical to Japanese 61). A vague suspicion that Japan's ultimately disastrous war effort had been fueled by both the culture of the elite meant that popular culture took on a new significance after WW II.This course will explore the evolution of this popular culture through the changing technologies of representation, from the manga (comic books), film, pulp fiction and popular music of the early postwar years through the animation, TV programming, and video games of present times. Topics to be addressed include the dynamics between high- and low-brow genres; the delineation of race, gender, and national identity in popular culture; the nature of culture in post-industrial consumer capitalism. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Dorsey.In 09S at 11, National Allegory: Readings in Postcolonial Literature and Culture (Identical to English 63). This course explores current theories of nationalism and postnationalism and how these theories could be productively utilized in making sense of literary texts from the postcolonial world. Authors include Lu Xun from China; Raja Rao from India; Sembene Ousmane from Senegal; Ngugi wa Thiong'o from Kenya; and Chinua Achebe from Nigeria. Cultural theorists whose work will be discussed include Ernest Renan, Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, Partha Chatterjee, Franz Fanon, and Frederic Jameson, among others. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Giri. In 10W, Law and/as Literature. Ever since the exclusion of poets from Plato's Republic, literature has often been accused of being dangerous. Law, on the other hand, is considered to work at the behest of the status quo. Although sharing the same medium (the written text), law and literature seem to be worlds apart. This class will probe this relationship, both the representation of the law in literature and how law itself is a kind of literature: law as literature. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: W. Mladek.
-
3.00 Credits
08F: 11 Literatures of the world cannot be compared without regard for the relations of domination that exist among the cultures that produced them. Colonialism and imperialism constitute important aspects of European history and self-perception from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. This course will focus on the cultural impact of domination on colonizer and colonized. Offered periodically with varying content. In 08F, Another European Identity: The Memory of Dissidence. This course explores the memory and experiences of those voices suppressed by the European nations-states in the construction of their homogeneous political and cultural identities. We will explore three sites of resistance: Jewish and Muslim marginality; the political identity of the citizen; and the sexual identity of those who confront the state's regulatory practices of the body. Texts by Sebald, The Emigrants; Pamuk, Snow; Jelinek, Lust; Semprun, Literature or Life; among others. Dist: LIT: WCult: CI. Aguado.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|