CRN |
94160 |
Distribution |
B / *(Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2002 |
||
Title |
Americans
Abroad |
||
Professor |
Donna Grover |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 306 |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies
Post World War I was an exciting time for American
artists who chose to come of age and discover their own American-ness from
other shores. 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, Claude McKay and Jessie
Fauset. The African-American presence
in Europe, 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.
CRN |
94271 |
Distribution |
A/B / *(Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2011 |
||
Title |
Aesthetics
of Narrative |
||
Professor |
Nancy Leonard |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN
310 |
A study of varieties of modern narrative and the
aesthetic questions that shape our attention and involvement. How does a
narrative reflect its own telling and give us signs as to where to find—or lose—the
author? How does it create sympathy with a self-absorbed teller? Does confusion
or hostility sometimes foster narrative involvement? Can a case study also be
“literature”? How does literary narrative differ from film narrative? Fictions
to be read include Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness, Charles Dickens’ Great
Expectations, William Faulkner’s Absalom,
Absalom! Sigmund Freud’s The Wolf Man, Samuel Beckett’s Molloy, Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Film adaptations of Great Expectations, directed by David
Lean, and of The Big Sleep, directed
by Howard Hawks, will be screened. Theory of narrative will be drawn from
Mikhail Bahktin, Peter Brooks, Julia Kristeva, Maurice Blanchot, and Diana
Fuss, among others.
CRN |
94295 |
Distribution |
B/D / *(Lit
in English |
Course
No. |
LIT 2116 |
||
Title |
The
Literature of Private Life |
||
Professor |
Marina van Zuylen |
||
Schedule |
Th 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
205 |
Cross-listed: French Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights
The representation of private life in the
nineteenth-century French novel coincided with the advent of Realism and
culminated in Naturalism. Novelists not
only started to describe the institutions that shaped private life (i.e.,
marriage, education, religion), but dwelled also on the discrete dramas
occurring backstage--the plight of the child (Sand, Francois le champi), the torments of family life (Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet), the ambiguities of
marriage (Madame Bovary), the despair of domesticity (Maupassant's A Woman's
Life), the nature of obsession (Zola,
Thérèse Raquin), and the
thematization of decadence (Huysmans, A
Rebours ). Using as a backdrop influential writings on everyday life
(Debord, de Certeau, Vaneigem, Goffman, Lefebvre), this class will examine topics
previously considered too private, too
personal to be viewed as literature. Students will also uncover the techniques
that helped dramatize these highly subjective conflicts (interior monologue,
free indirect discourse, early examples of flow of consciousness). Issues of
gender, sexuality, and the role of
women in defining domesticity will be central. In order to situate these texts
within a tradition that rethinks the self, the class will start out discussing
texts by Locke, Descartes, Kant, Shaftesbury, Marx, Hegel, and Foucault.
Students will also read excerpts from
the recent anthology History of Private
Life, an invaluable research tool to examine the connection between
literature, philosophy, social history, and anthropology. Taught in English. Students with knowledge of
French will read the texts in the original language.
CRN |
94156 |
Distribution |
B / *(Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2156 |
||
Title |
Romantic
Literature: Writing and British Society, 1780 - 1830 |
||
Professor |
R. Cole Heinowitz |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN
309 |
Cross-listed: Human
Rights
This course offers a
critical introduction to the literature produced in Britain at the time of the
Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. The term traditionally used to categorize
this literature, “romantic,” is interestingly problematic: throughout the
course we will question the assumptions built into this term instead of
assuming that we know what it means or taking for granted a series of supposed
characteristics of “romantic” literature and art. We will also explore the extent to which key conflicts in British
culture during the “romantic period,” including the founding of the United
States, independence movements in the Americas, the development of free trade
ideology, and the debates over slavery and colonialism, are still at issue
today. The centerpiece of this course is the close reading of poetry. There
will also be a strong emphasis on the historical and social contexts of the
works we are reading, and on the specific ways in which historical forces and
social changes shape and are at times shaped by the formal features of literary
texts. The question of whether “romantic” writing represents an active
engagement with or an escapist idealization of the important historical
developments in this period will be a continuous focus. Readings include
canonical and non-canonical authors: Blake, Wordsworth, Helen Maria Williams,
Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Robert Southey, Coleridge, Percy
Shelley, Mary Shelley, Keats, and Clare.
CRN |
94808 |
Distribution |
B/D / *(Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2157 |
||
Title |
European
Short Stories and Novellas |
||
Professor |
Justus Rosenberg |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed 11:30 am – 12:50 pm OLIN 303 |
An in-depth study of the difference between the
short story, built on figurative techniques closely allied to those employed in
poetry which allows the writer to achieve remarkable intimacy and depth of
meaning in the space of a few pages, and the novella that demands the economory
and exactness of a short work while at the same time allowing a fuller
concentration and development of both character and plot. We explore the range and scale of the
artistic accomplishments of such masters in these genres as de Maupassant, Leo
Tolstoy, Chekhov, Kleist Sholem Aleichem, Brecht, Thomas Mann, Isaac Babel, A.
France, Camus, Kafka, Colette, Borges. (Students who can read in the original
language are encouraged to do so.)
Audio/visual materials are used to illuminate the texts.
CRN |
94301 |
Distribution |
A/C / * (Lit in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 218 |
||
Title |
Free
Speech |
||
Professor |
Thomas Keenan |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 205 |
Cross-listed: Human Rights
An introduction to the intersections between literature and human rights, from the Greeks to the French Revolution, Salman Rushdie, hate speech and censorship on the Internet. The course will examine the ways in which rights, language, and public space have been linked together in ideas about democracy. What is 'freedom of speech'? Is there a right to say anything? We will investigate who has had this right, where it has come from, and what it has had to do with literature. Why have poetry and fiction always been privileged examples of freedom and its defense? What powers does speech have, who has the power to speak, and for what? Is an encounter with the fact of language, which belongs to no one and can be appropriated by anyone, at the heart of democracy? In asking about the status of the speaking human subject, we will ask about the ways in which the subject of rights, and indeed the thought of human rights itself, derives from a 'literary' experience. These questions will be examined, if not answered, across a variety of literary, philosophical, legal and political texts, including case studies and readings in contemporary critical and legal theory (Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Spivak, Fish, Agamben). A core course in the Human Rights Program.
CRN |
94179 |
Distribution |
B/D / *
(Humanities) |
Course
No. |
CLAS / LIT 221 |
||
Title |
From
Babel to Brain – The Origin of Language in Western Thought |
||
Professor |
Benjamin Stevens |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 201 |
Where does language come from, and why do languages differ? This course explores the history of Western answers to these questions and their implications for human nature and identity. Topics considered include the role of the divine; whether language is “natural” or “conventional”; linguistic diversity, evolution, and ecology; language acquisition and whether or not “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”; sound, gesture, and symbol; biology, evolutionary theory, and neuropsychology; ethology and zoosemiotics; and language as blessing and curse. Readings include the Biblical account of Babel and related stories; Greek and Roman philosophical speculation; Medieval and Renaissance searches for Adamitic, “perfect”, and “universal” languages; tales of “feral children” and other foundlings; and more recent perspectives on language origins: philological, scientific, critical, and fictional. No prerequisites, but knowledge of languages other than English potentially useful.
CRN |
94162 |
Distribution |
B/F / *
(Practicing Art) |
Course
No. |
LIT 223 |
||
Title |
Cultural
Reportage |
||
Professor |
Peter Sourian |
||
Schedule |
Tu 4:00 pm - 6:20 pm OLIN
310 |
For the self‑motivated student interested in
actively developing journalistic skills relating to cultural reportage,
particularly criticism. The course stresses regular practice in writing reviews
of plays, concerts, films, and television. Work is submitted for group response
and evaluation. College productions may be used as resource events. Readings
from Shaw's criticism, Cyril Connolly's reviews, Orwell's essays, Agee on film,
Edmund Wilson's Classics and Commercials,
Susan Sontag, and contemporary working critics. Enrollment limited, but not
restricted to majors.
CRN |
94320 |
Distribution |
B / * |
Course
No. |
LIT 2232 |
||
Title |
Writing
the World: Nonfiction Prose |
||
Professor |
Verlyn Klinkenborg |
||
Schedule |
Th 1:30 pm – 3:50 pm OLIN 303 |
This is a course in two skills: learning to make excellent nonfiction prose and learning to see the world around you. When it comes to the art of nonfiction prose, the emphasis nearly always falls on the personal, and especially on essay and memoir. In this course, I want to turn our gaze outward and to think about how we write from direct experience, not for the purpose of capturing our reactions but in order to understand the shape of what we have experienced. Our models will be drawn from history and from the broad category of nonfiction writing that is often, and absurdly, called “current events.” Our goal will be to become compelling witnesses and makers of acute prose—but our goal will also be art, not journalism. Students will be expected to write 4-5 pages every week.
CRN |
94311 |
Distribution |
B / * (Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 238 |
||
Title |
Modern
African Fiction |
||
Professor |
Chinua Achebe |
||
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
101 |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies, Human Rights, SRE
Related
interest: French Studies
The second half of the 20th century saw the
emergence of modern African literature. This course will introduce this new
writing through a few key texts in its fiction. Works written originally in
French or Arabic will be read in their English translations. The course will
relate the literature, wherever appropriate to Africa's past traditions as well
as its contemporary reality. The authors to be studied include Cheikh Hamidou
Kane, Alex La Guma, Nadine Gordimer, Ferdinand Oyono, Amos Tutuola, Nawal El
Saadawi, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tayeb Salih.
CRN |
94128 |
Distribution |
B / * (Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 240 |
||
Title |
Satire |
||
Professor |
Terence Dewsnap |
||
Schedule |
Mon Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 305 |
This is a two-semester course, divisible. The first semester deals with traditions of satire (humorous social criticism) from ancient times through the renaissance and enlightenment to the late nineteenth century. Writers include Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal, Petronius, Machiavelli, Moliere, Voltaire, Swift, Pope, Wilde, Beerbohm). Students, if they choose, will have the opportunity to experiment with satiric forms in two of their three papers.
CRN |
94161 |
Distribution |
B / * (Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2403 |
||
Title |
Interrogating
Feminism(s) |
||
Professor |
Donna Grover |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 309 |
Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies
During the 1960s and 1970s a so called “second
wave” of feminism emerged. This
movement had many divergent voices and many ideals of feminism. This course is concerned with the how the
many women writers, poets and artists fashioned new ways of self
-representation while in an ever changing social and political scene. We will begin with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It was this book that inspired feminists
like Betty Friedan, Erica Jong and Germaine Greer to pen their works. We will also read Audre Lorde, Doris
Lessing, Adrienne Rich and other writers and poets who were a part of this
“second wave.’
CRN |
94305 |
Distribution |
B / * (Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 249 |
||
Title |
Arthurian
Romance |
||
Professor |
Mark Lambert |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 203 |
Cross-listed: Medieval Studies
A study of the variety of concerns, meanings, and
pleasures in medieval narratives of King Arthur and his knights. Readings in Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of
Britain, Chretien de Troyes’ Lancelot,
Beroul and Thomas's Romance of Tristan,
Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival,
the vulgate Quest of the Holy Grail,
and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
among other works.
CRN |
94154 |
Distribution |
B / * (Lit
in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 2503 |
||
Title |
Studies
in Shakespeare |
||
Professor |
Elizabeth Frank |
||
Schedule |
Wed Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 203 |
Cross-listed: Theater
This course will be an intensive examination of
selected plays in every genre in which Shakespeare wrote: comedy, tragedy,
history and romance. Although we will
remain open to a variety of approaches and questions, we will ground our
discussion throughout the semester in the close reading of actual texts. Plays include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, King Lear,
Henry IV (Parts I and II), Richard III, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.
CRN |
94129 |
Distribution |
B/C / *
(Lit in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 261 |
||
Title |
Growing
Up Victorian |
||
Professor |
Terence Dewsnap |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm LC
120 |
Cross-listed:
Victorian Studies
Victorian children come in a variety of forms:
urchins, prigs, bullies, grinds. They are demonstration models in numerous
educational and social projects intended to create a braver future. The
readings include nursery rhymes, fairy and folk tales, didactic stories,
autobiography, and at least two novels: Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.
CRN |
94433 |
Distribution |
B/D / * (Lit in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT / GER 270 |
||
Title |
Rebels
with(out) a Cause: Great Works of German Literature |
||
Professor |
Franz Kempf |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am LC 208 |
A survey of representative works of German
literature from the eighteenth century to the present, from Goethe’s
Weltschmerz bestseller The Sufferings of
Young Werther (1774) to Mother Tongue
(1990), a collection of stories by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, a Turkish-German woman
writer. Other authors include: Schiller, Eichendorff, Heine, Hauptmann,
Wedekind, Rilke, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Brecht, Dürrenmatt, and Jelinek. Course
conducted in English. Students with an advanced proficiency in German are
expected to read the works in the original.
CRN |
94157 |
Distribution |
B/C / *
(Lit in English) |
Course
No. |
LIT 276 |
||
Title |
The
Holocaust & Literature |
||
Professor |
Norman Manea |
||
Schedule |
Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
308 |
Cross-listed: Human Rights, Jewish Studies
Reading and discussion of selected short fiction
and novels by such major writers as Franz Kafka, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski,
W.G Sebald, Aleksandar Tisma, Danilo Kis, and by two Nobel Laureates for
literature, I. B. Singer and Imre Kertesz. The Holocaust will be considered in
comparison with such other genocides of the twentieth century as the Gulag,
communist China and Cambodia and Rwanda etc.
We will debate questions about the boundaries of art incorporating
unprecedented cruelty and despair, about literature of extreme situations (the
traditional and the more experimental modes of narrative representation). We will also pay attention to post-Holocaust
reality, to the trivialization of tragedy in fashionable, simplistic melodramas
of the current mass-media culture or in political-ideological manipulation
(especially in former East European socialist countries).