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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
09S: 2A 10S: 10 This course will be offered periodically and with varying content. It will explore the rich relations that exist between literature and politics, focusing on literature both as an instrument of political interest and as a product of political contexts. In 09S, From Dagos to Sopranos: Italian American Culture (Identical to French and Italian in Translation 35). Yo! (from the Sicilian "Guagliò") What does it mean to be an Italian American This course looks at the history of Italian migration to the United States, and at novels written by Italian Americans (Pietro di Donato, John Fante, Helen Barolini, Louise De Salvo, Marianna de Marco Torgovnick). A number of films by Coppola, Scorsese, Turturro, Savoca, and Tarantino will be shown. Of course we will also work on the portrayal of Italian Americanness in "The Sopranos." The last week of the course is devoted to the music by Italian Americans such as Sinatra and Madonna. Dist: LIT; WCult: CI. ParaIn 10S, The Good Fight: The Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was a complex sociopolitical moment that profoundly marked the international intellectual community of the twentieth century. We will focus on the revolutionary politics in pre-Civil War Spain (the Second Republic) and the tragic outcome of the Fascist victory of Franco, paying attention to the politics of national-catholicism in the context of European fascism, the consequences of the war on culture, education, regional identities, and civil liberties for men and women, and comprehend the persistence of this topic today. Wide-array of texts, genres, and mediums. Authors include Hernández, Hellman, Hughes, Hemingway, Koestler, Malraux, Gaite, Semprún. Painting and/or photography by Capa, Motherwell, and Singer Sargent. Films by Patino, Saura, Miró, and Loach. Dist: LIT. MartÃ
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3.00 Credits
08F: 10A 09X: 2A The course will explore the relationship between literature and history, focusing both upon the interplay of historiographical and fictional discourses and upon conceptualization and representation of history in some major literary texts. Dist. Varies. In 08F, The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Middle Eastern Literature and Film (Identical to Jewish Studies 56 and Arabic 61). This course will examine the Arab-Israeli conflict as portrayed in both Arabic and Hebrew/Israeli literary traditions - poetry, short story, novellas, literary essays, personal accounts, and also film, looking at how adversaries portray each other, how mutual stereotypes are created and reinforced, and how the conflict has shaped the development of these respective literary and cinematic traditions in substantially different ways. Dist: INT; WCult: CI. Bardenstein. In 09X, Fascist Italy: Fascism in Literature and Film. This course focuses on the history of the rise and fall of fascism and on the cultural forces that validated its power. Special attention will be given to literature and film in propaganda. Students will watch films such as Cabiria, Black Shirt, The White Squadron, and A Very Special Day and read novels and short stories by Alberto Moravia, Fausta Cailente, F.T. Marinetti, and Elsa Morante and critical texts by Spackman, Pickering-Iazzi, de Grazia, and Ben-Ghiat. Dist: LIT, WCult: W. Parati.
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3.00 Credits
09W: 10 This course will consider the intertwining of literature, science, and technology. We shall investigate the literary representation of scientific activity and the variety of ways in which literary and scientific modes of thought have diverged or come together. In 09W, A Matter of Time (Identical to Mathematics 5). Everybody knows about time. Our everyday language bears witness to the centrality of time with scores of words and expressions that refer to it as a measure, a frame of reference, or an ordering factor for our lives, feelings, dreams, and histories. Playing with time has been a favorite game in works of high culture-from the Greek sophists to cubism-and in popular culture-from H.G. Wells to Monty Python. And time is at the center of one of the most revolutionary scientific theories of all time: Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In this course we will use mathematics, literature, and the arts to travel through history, to explore and understand Time as a key concept and reality in the development of Western culture and in our own twentieth -century view of ourselves and the world. Dist: QDS. Lahr, Pasto
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3.00 Credits
Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S This course aims to explore the relationship between literature and the theoretical and clinical writings of psychoanalysis. Through readings representing a range of psychoanalytic and literary traditions, we will examine the connections that can be made between psychic structures and literary structures, between the language of the mind and the emotions and the language of the literary, cultural or cinematic text.
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3.00 Credits
09S: 2A This course will focus on the cultural construction of gender as it is manifested in various texts and traditions. Topics may include one or more aspects of gendered literary study: writing (male/female authorship), reading, literary form, masculine and feminine subjectivity, representation, or feminist literary and cultural criticism. In 09S, Colonial and Postcolonial Masculinities (Identical to African and African American Studies 67 and Women's and Gender Studies 52.1). In this course, we will develop an understanding of masculinity as a construct which varies in time and space, and is constantly (re)shaped by such factors as race, class, and sexuality. The contexts of the colonial encounter and its postcolonial aftermath will set the stage for our examination of the ways in which social, political, economic, and cultural factors foster the production of specific masculinities. Texts include Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lafferiere's How to Make Love to a Negro, and additional writings by Irish, Indian, and Australian authors. Our study will be organized around the questions of the production of hegemonic and subaltern masculinities, the representation of the colonial and postcolonial male body, the militarization of masculinity, and the relation between masculinity and nationalism. Theoretical material on masculinities will frame our readings. Dist: LIT. Col
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3.00 Credits
09S: M 3-6 09F, 10S: 2A In 09S, Cultural Studies: Resisting Theory This course introduces students to debates on culture and its different theorizations and addresses the institutionalization of Cultural Studies as a field of inquiry. By exploring the concepts of "culture" and "theory" and their linkage to the contestation of institutions of power, this course examines how Cultural Studies is both a practice and a theorization of what to "do" with high, and popular culture. What kinds of rethinking happens when disciplines lose their "text" to Cultural Studies Why has Cultural Studies become the theoretical forerunner in the age of globalization Texts will be architectural, filmic, musical, literary, and theoretical. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. MartÃn, In 09F, European Jewish Intellectuals (Identical to Jewish Studies 60). The course will examine the role of the Jewish intellectual in twentieth central Europe. We shall focus on several paradigmatic figures (Arendt, Benjamin, Adorno, Levinas, Derrida) who confront the redefinition of politics and civil society in modern times. Some attempt to deal with these changes through a critical reflection on the concepts of democracy and ethics and on how justice can be practiced either within or outside of the geographical and spiritual boundaries of the modern nation state. We shall examine how Jewish self-consciousness and a deep attachment to biblical tradition enables these intellectuals to reconcile ethical imperative with political realities. Particular attention will be paid to topics such as the challenges of Eurocentric Christian humanism and universalism to Jewish assimilation; the promises of totalitarianism, Marxism and messianism; the politics of biblical exegesis; history and Jewish mysticism; Zionism, antiZionism and the ArabIsraeli conflict. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Kritzman. In 10S, Midrash: How the Rabbis Interpreted the Bible (Identical to Hebrew 62 and Jewish Studies 24.3). Midrash is the ancient Jewish term for Biblical interpre-tation. We examine how the Bible was interpreted by the Rabbis 1500 to 2000 years ago, at the crucial juncture in history when the Bible was being canonized in the form it now has. We focus on powerful motifs such as the Creation, the Flood, Jacob and Esau, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and the Exodus, and view them through two prisms: through a wide range of ancient Midrashic texts themselves; and through one influential modern Jewish literary reading of the Midrashic themes of Genesis. No Hebrew required. Dist: LIT; WCult: NW. Glinert. Refer also to Philosophy 20.
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3.00 Credits
Not offered in the period from 08F through 10S This course will focus on three periods in particular-antiquity, the Renaissance and the Romantic period-and on topics and issues which link these periods, such as theories of representation, the functions of poetry, the relationship of poetry to truth, the privileging of particular genres at different times, the sublime, theories of the self. We will pay particular attention to texts that are still generating debate and critique today, including some from a feminist perspective, and will end with a brief consideration of some of the nineteenth-century thinkers whose work has been influential in this century. Readings may include the following authors: Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Lucian, Horace, Longinus, Jonson, Sidney, Burke, Kant, Wordsworth, J.S. Mill, Coleridge, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud.For a related course, see English 63.
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3.00 Credits
08F: 12 09F: 2A Covering some of the major theoretical movements of the second half of the twentieth century, this course focuses on the issues and questions motivating theoretical debate in literary and cultural studies. Movements studied may include New Criticism, structuralism, semiotics, poststructuralism and deconstruction, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis, narratology, reader-response theory, feminist criticism, African American criticism, film criticism, and the new historicism. In 08F, What is Theory Since the beginnings of the 20th Century, critical theory has slowly transformed the study of literature. Although most scholars who study literary texts now use theory in one way or another, few would be able to define the discipline. This course will examine some of the major texts in the field, including the roots of contemporary critical practices in philosophy, linguistics, and semiotics, as well as some of the latest, "cutting edge" applications of theory to all kinds of cultural "objects": texts, films, clothes, bodies, genders, identities, buildings, cities, nations, etc. Works by Saussure, Jakobson, Foucault, Lacan, Benjamin, Derrida, Hegel, Butler, Venturi, Kohlhaas and others. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. LaGuardiIn 09F, Author, Reader, Text. An introduction to literary and critical theory through explorations of the author function, the nature of texts, and the role of readers. Schools of literary theory will be reviewed, but structure the class. Critics to be read include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Iser, Gayatri Spivak, and Susan Winnett.Creators of literature include: Italo Calvino, Henry James, Jeanette Winterson. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Kacandes.
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3.00 Credits
09W: 2A 10W: 3A This course will focus on a specific preoccupation of contemporary theory or on a particular theoretical movement. In 09W, Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective. Why did postmodernity become a cultural dominant in the US but not in Europe, and why did poststructuralism become more prominent in the American academy than in the French Exploring the meanings of modernity, postmodernity, or the avant-garde in the works of Arnold, Huxley, Adorno, Marcuse, Trilling, Howe, Sontag, Fiedler, Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Lyotard, Jameson and others, we shall discuss how these and other ostensibly universal terms inflect concepts of culture on both sides of the Atlantic, and accrue specific meanings in the society in which they appear. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Milich. In 10W, A User's Guide to Narrative Theory. This course introduces narratology, the theoretical study of narrative, by exploring the trajectory of narrative theory from the 1960s to the present for the study of literary prose and concluding with uses of narrative theory in the realms of the disciplines. Literary and non-literary texts will be read in tandem with the theory. Students should read or reread the first and final chapters of Joyce's novel Ulysses ("Telemachus" and "Penelope") before the term begins. Dist: LIT or INT; WCult: W. Kacan
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3.00 Credits
08F, 09W, 09S: Arrange A tutorial course designed by the student with the assistance of a member of the Comparative Literature faculty who is willing to supervise it. Offers the student an opportunity to pursue a subject of special interest through a distinctive program of readings and reports. During the term prior to the course, applicants must submit a course outline to the Chair for written approval.
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