Supernatural Tales of Japan: Ghosts, Gods, and Goblins

 

Professor: Phuong Ngo  

 

Course Number: LIT 154

CRN Number: 10259

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English   

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies

Since ancient times, humans have been fascinated with the otherworldly: stories of divine, ghostly, and fantastical beings regularly appear across various traditions and continue to serve as an endless source of inspiration for the creation of new art and literature. This course will introduce students to a variety of texts from the Japanese tradition that explore encounters between the ordinary and the strange. Topics include gender, sexuality, kinship, fear, abhorrence, and longing. The materials covered span a wide range of genres and time periods, starting with creation myths in the Kojiki and accounts of the otherworldly in the earliest texts of the written tradition, such as the Nihon ryōiki, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and The Tale of Genji, and ending with horror movies, novels, and comics in the modern period. Some questions we will attempt to answer are: What lies at the root of humanity’s perpetual fascination with the strange? How does the Japanese tradition differ from other traditions across time and space in its imaginations of sites of contest between the this-worldly and the other-worldly? What do these stories tell us about evolving social forms, codes, expectations, and the relationships among self, other, and community? All materials will be in English and no prior knowledge of Japanese is required.  This is a World Literature course offering.

 

How to Construct Meaning: Introduction to Chinese Narrative

 

Professor: Shuangting Xiong  

 

Course Number: LIT 156

CRN Number: 10260

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin Languages Center 120

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English   

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies

This course serves as an introduction to “how to read” Chinese narratives. The way that stories are told can reveal a great deal about how people construct meaning. Although the approach of this class is largely aesthetic—meaning we will analyze narrative texts closely to look at the choices each author made when constructing character, plot, symbols, and meaning--we will also spend a lot of class time discussing some of the fundamental questions raised by narrative studies: what values give individual lives meaning? What is the relationship between the individual self and larger systems of order, such as the family, society, the state, and the cosmos? What distinguishes fiction from history? The course covers a broad historical range of texts, from the third century BCE to the present, to maximize our exposure to literary styles as they reflect changing cultural values in China. Texts to discuss include early historical narratives, biographical accounts, fantastic tales, vernacular fiction, classical novels such as The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stones), and modern fiction. We will also focus on how the Chinese narrative tradition differs from the realistic mode of western narrative but ultimately was made to reconcile with the demands of realism in the 20th century. In doing so, we will treat each text as an aesthetic text in its own right as well as a window onto changing cultural-philosophical values and mindsets. All readings are in translation; no prior knowledge of Chinese is required. This is a World Literature course offering.

 

Hope in the Dark: Eurasian Fantasy and Folklore

 

Professor: Olga Voronina  

 

Course Number: LIT 164

CRN Number: 10261

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin Languages Center 115

 

Distributional Area:

FL  Foreign Languages and Lit   

 

Crosslists: Russian and Eurasian Studies; Written Arts

Resisting totalitarian regimes takes not only courage, but imagination as well. This course explores the Eurasian nations’ responses to war, oppression, famine, epidemics, and exile through the oral tradition (epic narratives, fairy-tales, nursery rhymes, and popular jokes), along with the works of fantasy literature which often absorb, amalgamate, and recontextualize these genres. How can a pauper whose livelihood depends on nomad’s luck idolize and worship a horse? How can grandmother’s song save the world from destruction? Can two species form a union to give the future humanity its power and purpose? To people who need to find a refuge from danger and hardship, answers to these questions really matter. They lie in the ability of language to construct reality, as demonstrated by a variety of works, from the Kyrgyz epic poem Manas to Chinghiz Aitmatov’s novel Farewell, Gul’sary; from the fairy tales of the Bering Strait to Yuri Rytkheu’s rendering of the Chukchi foundational myth in “When the Whales Leave”; and from tales and lullabies that originated in Belarus, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, to Alindarka’s Children: Things Will be Bad by Alhierd Bacharevic – a recent fantasy of grief, frustration, horror, and all-conquering compassion. We will read these narratives as well as essays by Roman Jacobson, Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, Vladimir Propp, Mieke Bal, and Cristina Bacchilega to contemplate the energy of defiance concealed in storytelling traditions across national borders and the millennia. We will also study heroic and trickster archetypes in modern renderings of classical mythology; analyze the politics of myth; and survey the mechanisms of domination and oppression that inspire such fantastical tropes as metamorphosis, magic helpers, and otherworldly journeys. Finally, in our attempt to understand what makes works of Eurasian folklore and fantasy so mesmerizing and full of hope we will endeavor to write both analytically and creatively on and around some of them, develop performative responses, and/or practice translation. This course is part of the World Literature offering.

 

The Land of Disasters: A Cultural History of Catastrophic 'Japan'

 

Professor: Chiara Pavone  

 

Course Number: LIT 267

CRN Number: 10362

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin Languages Center 115

 

Distributional Area:

FL  Foreign Languages and Lit   

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies; Experimental Humanities

In a famous speech given shortly after the occurrence of the Great Tōhoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster in 2011, writer Murakami Haruki affirmed that "To be Japanese means, in a certain sense, to live alongside a variety of natural catastrophes." This course's main objective will be to explore and dispute the origins and genealogy of this – widespread and undisputed – claim. Each class will introduce literary works and media tracing Japan's history of natural and man-made disasters, explore different methodologies in disaster research (including disaster anthropology, sociology, post-colonial theory and ecocriticism), and engage critically with issues shaping the perception and representation of disasters – such as the proximity of narrators and narratees to the epicenter of the catastrophe, minority populations' vulnerability to hazards and systemic discrimination, authority and biases in the process of memorialization. The course will offer some critical instruments to answer the question through the close reading of literary works, films and visual artifacts; and by situating these pieces in a larger cultural and technological history that extends well beyond the borders of the modern Japanese nation.  This course is part of the World Literature offering.

 

Palestinian Literature in Translation

 

Professor: Elizabeth Holt  

 

Course Number: LIT 245

CRN Number: 10370

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Languages Center 208

 

Distributional Area:

FL  Foreign Languages and Lit 

 

 

This course is a survey of Palestinian literature, from the early Arabic press in Palestine to contemporary Palestinian fiction.  We will read short stories, poetry and novels by authors including Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habiby, Samira 'Azzam, Anton Shammas, Mahmoud Darwish, Sahar Khalifeh, Fedwa Tuqan, and Elias Khoury.  All literary texts will be read in translation. This course is part of the World Literature course offering.

 

Reading Youth in Korean Film and Literature

 

Professor: Soonyoung Lee  

 

Course Number: LIT 275

CRN Number: 10372

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Languages Center 118

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English   

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies

This comprehensive course delves into the multifaceted representations of youth in Korean society, spanning from the colonial era to contemporary times. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates literature, film, and popular culture, we examine the significant role that the concept of "youth" has played in shaping modern Korean history. We will unpack how various historical and social forces have contributed to the construction of "youth" as a cultural and social category. Special attention will be given to the interplay between gender and these constructions, exploring how they influence and are reflected in diverse youth cultures. By engaging with a range of intersectional cultural contexts—including music, media, literature, and film—students will gain a nuanced understanding of the complexities that shape youth identities and cultures in Korea.  This course is part of the World Literature offering.

 

Like Family: Domestic Worker Characters in Fiction

 

Professor: Marina van Zuylen  

 

Course Number: LIT 282

CRN Number: 10377

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin 205

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English   

 

Crosslists: Human Rights

This course will delve into the idea that female domestic workers (maids, nannies, cooks), often portrayed as invisible and powerless, can also wield considerable influence and authority over their employers, affecting the structure of everyday life. Far from only being consigned to the margins of storytelling, mere backdrop to the narrative, our examples will show these workers in different light. Starting with excerpts from the comedic tradition where the "servant" uses role reversals to subvert traditional social hierarchies (Terence, Cervantes, Molière, Kundera), we will then tackle the ethical and social implications of figures that are both part of and excluded from the household. Self-destructive loyalty (Flaubert, A Simple Heart, Ishiguro, Remains of the Day), skewed hierarchies (Szabo, The Door, du Maurier, Rebecca), Class warfare (NDiaye, The Cheffe, Slimani, The Perfect Nanny), cultural upheavals (Faizur Rasul, Bengal to Birmingham). This course is part of the World Literature offering.

 

Light Writing: Literature and Photography in the French Tradition

 

Professor: Gabriella Lindsay  

 

Course Number: LIT 285

CRN Number: 10379

Class cap: 22

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    5:10 PM - 6:30 PM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English  D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Experimental Humanities; French Studies

What happens when photographs and texts are brought together? In the French-speaking world, there is a particularly strong tradition of writers and artists using photographic images and text to create new forms of meaning, unsurprising perhaps, given French claims on the invention of a photographic process in the early 19th century. This seminar will consider the relationship between literature and photography by engaging closely with photo-textual and theoretical works translated from French, focusing on the themes of autobiography, historical memory and postcoloniality. We will examine questions of documentation, experimentation, selfhood, violence, colonialism, memory and forgetting, perception, ethics, and the nature of representation. From Sophie Calle and Hervé Guibert's photobiographical blurring of fiction and reality to Malek Alloula's "album" of Algerian colonial postcards and Patrick Chamoiseau and Rodolphe Hammadi's photo-poetic history of Guianan work-camps, we will think about how words and photographic images transform one another to create new understandings of the self, individual and collective memory, loss and history. Students will also have the opportunity to make photo-texts of their own. Authors to be studied may include Roland Barthes, Sophie Calle, Marie NDiaye, Hervé Guibert, Hélène Cixous, Malek Alloula, Patrick Modiano, Patrick Chamoiseau, Rodolphe Hammadi, Marc Garanger, Leïla Sebbar. This course is conducted in English and does not assume any prior knowledge of French, photography, or literature in French. This course fulfills the World Literature requirement. By engaging with the representation of colonial violence and colonial memory, the class also counts for the Difference and Justice distributional area.

 

Radical Reading: Nganang's Historical Fiction

 

Professor: Ursula Embola  

 

Course Number: LIT 369

CRN Number: 10388

Class cap: 14

Credits: 4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 304

 

Distributional Area:

LA  Literary Analysis in English   

 

Crosslists: Africana Studies; Human Rights 

"Radical Reading: Nganang's Historical Fiction" is a reading-intensive course that introduces students to contemporary texts in English translation penned by award-winning Cameroonian-American author Patrice Nganang. Students taking this course will develop an appreciation of the historical, cultural, thematic, and aesthetic preoccupations expressed within Nganang's trilogy of historical fiction novels centered on Cameroon's development into a West/Central African nation over the course of the 20th century. A key question that sits at the heart of this course is the following: "How is the literary genre of historical fiction employed by Nganang in the work of crafting a Cameroonian national identity, and how is that work complicated by the specificity of the Cameroonian multicultural, multilingual, and postcolonial situation?" The course seeks to use Literature as a means of decolonizing African history and is designed to provide students with exciting and challenging new learning experiences which they can easily apply to other areas of their academic journeys. This course is part of the World Literature offering.