This course focuses on two celebrated uprisings, their background, consequence, and remembrance. We will be studying what participants and witnesses saw or thought they saw, in letters, diaries, fiction, poems, plays and song, including eyewitness accounts of 1798 and 1916 by Jane Adams and James Stephens, respectively, political reconstructions and commemorative occasions (1998 and 2001 for instance), and stories such as Lady Morgan's The Wild Irish Girl, Sean O'Faolain's "Midsummer Night Madness, " Frank O'Connor's "Guest of the Nation," and Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry. (Limited to 12 students.)

CRN	90003	Distribution	B/D
Course No.	LIT 331
Title	Translation Workshop
Professor	William Weaver
Schedule	Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 308

Although some knowledge of a foreign language is necessary, this is not a language course, and no particular proficiency is required. An interest in language, especially English, is the most important thing. Students will be expected to work on some translation project (preferably prose); but their work will serve chiefly as a basis for the discussion of general problems of translation, its cultural significance, and the relationship between translation and creative writing. Class limited to 12 students.

CRN	90379	Distribution	B
Course No.	LIT / GER 3323
Title	Poetics of the Self: On Ethics and Narration in Literature
Professor	Matthias Goeritz
Schedule	Th 4:00 pm - 6:20 pm LC 120

How should one live? This question has been posed since ancient times in philosophy as well as literature. This course will compare actional conflicts as represented in literature with several ethical systems in philosophy. Taking as our starting point the notion that certain moral views can best be expressed through novels, poetry, and dramas, we will read and discuss exemplary works of Greek tragedy, Goethe's Iphigenia on Tauris, selections from Musil's The Man Without Qualities, some of Kafka's late stories, and Heiner Mueller's "bricolage" texts. In understanding narrative as ethics, we assume an intrinsic and necessary connection between the two. Stories are not ethical because of the morals they present, but because they forge a link between perception and communication, because they bind the story teller, the witness and the reader to one another. The course will probe the question of what we gain- and what risks we run - in telling stories. Careful reading and rereading of the seminar materials is required, as is active participation in class discussions, a minimum of one short presentation and written assignments. Creative work is also encouraged. Taught in English.

CRN	90023	Distribution	B/C
Course No.	LIT 335
Title	Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages
Professor	Karen Sullivan
Schedule	Fr 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm LC 120

Cross-listed: Medieval Studies

"There is no one more Christian than the heretic," writes Bernard of Clairvaux, the powerful Cistercian abbot and pursuer of heretics. How was it that medieval Catholics, like Bernard, could at once acknowledge the apparent sanctity of heretics and advocate their persecution in the name of the faith? What was it that heretics represented for their contemporaries that they prompted such harsh reactions from them? Why was it that members of the religious orders most respected for their learning, their holiness, and their pastoral concerns were also the people most likely to staff the Inquisition? In this course, we will be attempting to answer these questions, among others, through a close reading of a series of texts, including sermons, chronicles, inquisitors' manuals, trial transcripts, and lyric poems. While we will address the historical development of heresy and Inquisition between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, especially in France, Italy, and Germany, where these phenomena were most important, our focus will be on the rhetorical depiction of heretics and inquisitors in the works we are reading. At the end of the semester, we will consider what the words "heresy" and "Inquisition" have come to mean in the modern, secular world and, by extension, how a certain version of "the medieval" has survived among us to the present day.

CRN	90036	Distribution	B
Course No.	LIT 3361
Title	Longing and Belonging: The Literary Art of Paule Marshall
Professor	Michelle Wilkinson
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 307

Cross-listed: AADS, Gender Studies, MES

In this seminar on Barbadian-American writer Paule Marshall, we will read all of her major works from Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) to The Fisher King (2000). Keeping in mind the themes of "longing" and "belonging" in Marshall's texts, we will follow primarily female protagonists who journey toward self-discovery and in the process learn about themselves as sexual and spiritual beings. Through close readings of novels such as The Chosen Place, the Timeless People, Praisesong for the Widow, and Daughters, we will delve into topics as diverse as political corruption, cultural imperialism, the mother-daughter relationship, and interracial love. Throughout the semester we will attempt to place Marshall's novels, short fiction and essays within a diasporic literary tradition that includes African American and Caribbean American writers. To this end, we will read selectively from texts by Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat and others who offer pathways into and out of Marshall's literary art.

CRN	90004	Distribution	B
Course No.	LIT 338
Title	Non-Fiction Workshop
Professor	William Weaver
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 310

Students are first asked to write on assigned topics in a specific nonfiction genre (review, travel), to provoke discussion of the genre and of the special demands made by writing short nonfiction. This is not, however, a journalism course, and later the participants may choose a genre - autobiography, for example - in which to write a longer, more substantial piece. All work is discussed by the group, and if revision seems opportune writers may be asked to produce a second version of their works. Limited to twelve students; pass or fail grade.

CRN	90071	Distribution	B
Course No.	LIT 3410
Title	Hawthorne, Melville, and Literary Friendship
Professor	Geoffrey Sanborn
Schedule	Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 107

An intensive study of America's most famous literary friendship, on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick. After a brief survey of the careers of Hawthorne and Melville prior to their arrival in the Berkshires in 1850, we will read everything each author wrote between 1850 and 1852, the period of their intimacy. This will include, in addition to works like The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Moby-Dick, and Pierre, their letters, journals, and marginalia. The major aims of the course are to develop and deepen a critical appreciation of these two great writers and to consider more generally the relationship between friendship and art. Early in the semester we will visit Melville's house in Pittsfield and the site of Hawthorne's cottage in Lenox.

CRN	90380	Distribution	B/D
Course No.	LIT 358
Title	Exile & Estrangement in Modern Fiction
Professor	Norman Manea
Schedule	Tu 4:00 pm - 6:20 pm OLIN 308

Reading and discussion of selected fiction by such writers as Mann, Kafka, Nabokov, Camus, Singer, Kundera, Naipaul, etc. examining the work for its literary value and as a reflection of the issue of exile - estrangement as a fact of biography and a way of life. The complex topics of foreignness and identity, (ethnic, political, sexual) of rejection and loss, of estrangement and challenge, and also of protean mutability, are discussed in connection to relevant social-historical situations (war, expulsion, migration) and as major literary themes. Upper College Seminar. Preference given to students moderated in Language and Literature.

CRN	90228	Distribution	B
Course No.	HIST 358 / LIT
Title	Paris & the Lost Generation
Professor	Donna Grover / Tabetha Ewing
Schedule	Tu 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 305

Cross-list: AADS, American Studies, French Studies, History

Paris was a curious space of freedom for ex-patriot American writers to 'come of age" and to come to know their American-ness. We will read writers of the so-called " Lost Generation" including Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But in our reexamination of "The Lost Generation" we will also include expatriate writers best known for their participation in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Jean Toomer and Claude McKay. The African-American presence in Paris, which included the iconic figure Josephine Baker as well as jazz great Louis Armstrong altered this picture in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate. This course looks at a period in which American culture found roots abroad in the strange cauldron of Paris. Important to our work is how this American invasion impacted the French intellectual scene as well as French culture in general.

CRN	90033	Distribution	A/C
Course No.	LIT 368
Title	The Making of Modern France: Its Ideology and Culture
Professor	Justus Rosenberg
Schedule	Tu 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 308

Cross-listed: French Studies, History

The course will examine axial moments in French history - the 1789 Revolution, the Paris Commune, the Dreyfuss Affair, the rise and fall of the Third Republic, the Students Revolt of 1968 - and how these contributed in shaping the politics and culture of contemporary France. Particular attention will be given to literature and the role it played in affecting French society. Background readings in history. Authors include Emile Zola, André Gide, Henri Lefèbre, Aragon, Paul Nizan, Mauriac, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Prévert. In English.

CRN	90068	Distribution	A/B
Course No.	LIT 3691
Title	Seminar: The Brontes
Professor	Deirdre d'Albertis
Schedule	Tu 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Victorian Studies, Gender Studies

2 credits Note: This course begins at mid-semester. A two-credit module devoted to close study of a few major works by the most famous family of women writers in nineteenth-century England. For better or worse, the inhabitants of Haworth parsonage have long been considered as a single entity known as "The Brontes." This course will examine some of the best-known writings of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Bronte. Reception of the Brontes has varied enormously over the years; we will discuss the impact of shifts in canon formation on the status of texts such as Wuthering Heights (1847), Jane Eyre (1847), and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), as well as the influence of theoretical, historical, and biographical accounts (for instance, Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte) in shaping what Terry Eagleton refers to as "myths of power" and desire associated with the poetry and fiction of the these three women. Students with compelling interests may elect to extend their research beyond the module's end with an independent study project on the Brontes over intersession.

CRN	90070	Distribution	B
Course No.	LIT 390
Title	Introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory
Professor	Nancy Leonard
Schedule	Wed 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 308

Cross listed: Integrated Arts, Philosophy and the Arts

A first course in contemporary critical theory especially intended for just-moderated majors and other students interested in, but new to theory. The seminar will discuss accessible but challenging readings drawn from approaches loosely grouped under the term poststructuralism: semiotics, deconstruction, feminism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, neo-Marxist and Foucauldian history, and postmodernism. Students will learn key terms and concerns, analyze arguments, and create convincing responses; they will write and exchange work frequently. Theorists to be read include Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Butler, Kristeva, deLauretis, Althusses, Williams, Bourdieu, and Lyotard.

CRN	90008	Distribution	A/B
Course No.	LIT 397
Title	Semiotics
Professor	Frederic Grab
Schedule	Wed 8:00 am - 10:20 am OLIN 304

Early in the twentieth century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure conceived the science of semiotics as follows: "Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to writing, to the deaf-mute alphabet, to symbolic rites, to codes of good manners, to military signals, etc. It is simply the most important of these systems. A science that studies the life of signs in society is therefore conceivable: it would be a part of general psychology; we shall call it semiology (from the Greek semeion: sign). Semiology would teach us what signs are made of and what laws govern their behavior. Since this science does not yet exist, no one can say quite what it will be like, but it has a right to exist and it has a place staked out in advance." Since that time, the place of semiotics (Saussure's semiology) has assumed increasing importance in a wide variety of fields: literature, cinema, painting, music, and others. Culture in general has been studied as a system of signs; "any reality drawn into the sphere of culture begins to function as a sign," according to the Soviet theorist Jurij Lotman. In this course we will study a number of texts which attempt to define the history and the current status of "the tell-tale sign."

CRN Course No.	90277 Distribution B LIT 426
Title	Contemporary Masters: Tisma and Saramago
Professor	Norman Manea
Schedule	Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN 107

Two of the most important European writers of today will be present in this class. Aleksandar Tisma is considered among the great storytellers of contemporary literature. Reviewing "The Book of Blam," praised by The New York Times Book Review as an exceptional novel, the German magazine Der Speigel wrote: "In Tisma's hands, Novi Sad has become a European literary presence on a par with Joyce's Dublin, Svevo's Trieste, and Grass's Danzig." The class will meet the author several times to discuss the literary impact of his main topics (ethnic conflicts, Holocaust, communism). Mr. Tisma will also give a lecture to the College about the last decade in Jugoslavian culture and political life. The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. The Swedish Academy's citation called his novels "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony." His prose has been translated into more than twenty languages. "The spare simplicity of Saramago's narrating voice, the stripped-down quality of his characterizations...the mythic air of his work (TLS), established him as one of the most influential living writers. Mr. Saramago will meet our class and give a lecture to the College about his artistic and political (communist) beliefs.