Course	LIT / CLAS 3034 Homer
Professor	William Mullen
CRN	17114
Schedule	Mon Wed 1:30-2:50 pm Olin 201
Distribution	OLD: D	NEW: Foreign Language, Literature & Culture

In taking the measure of the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey we will use several complementary approaches. First, in scrutinizing short passages we will compare a range of English translations, from Chapman and Pope to Logue and Reck, and students will become acquainted with the metrical and linguistics properties of the original Greek. Second, we will study the evolution of the approach to the Homeric poems as instances of oral formulaic traditions passed on by illiterate bards for many generations before being crystallized into written texts-- the theoretical approach founded by Parry and Lord and further extended by Nagy. Third, we will fit the poems into the larger context of Indo-European epic as disseminated from India to Ireland. Fourth, we will ponder the archetypes of combat trauma traced in the poems by the psychiatrist Jonathan Shay in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. On-line registration

Course	LIT 3104 Modern Tragedy
Professor	Benjamin La Farge
CRN	17082
Schedule	Tu Th 1:00-2:20 pm Olin 309
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English

All tragedies see the human condition as doomed; but in classical Greek tragedy the protagonist's fate, usually signified by an oracle, is externalized as something beyond human control, whereas in modern tragedy, starting with Shakespeare and his contemporaries, fate is more or less internalized as a flaw in the protagonist's character. Since then the modern protagonist has increasingly been seen as a helpless victim of circumstance, a scapegoat. Fate is sometimes externalized as history, war, or society, sometimes internalized, but in either case the protagonist has been reduced in stature, so that 20th century tragedy can only be called ironic--a far cry from the heroic tragedy of ancient Greece. In tracing this complex history, including the disappearance and revival of the chorus, we will examine tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky (his novel Crime and Punishment), Ibsen, Strindberg, O'Neill, Brecht, Sartre, and Miller, all of which will be scrutinized in the light of major theories by Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and others. On-line registration

Course	LIT 311 Anglo-American Modernist Fiction: Form, History & Gender
Professor	Deirdre d'Albertis
CRN	17384
Schedule	Fr 10:00- 12:20 pm Olin 301
Distribution	OLD: A/B	NEW: Literature in English

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies

“The proper stuff of fiction does not exist,” observed Virginia Woolf, “everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss." This course sets out to examine Anglo-American modernist narrative as it was fashioned by writers who fractured realist conventions of narration and championed formal innovation in the representation of human consciousness. We will investigate the ways in which the modernist project both did and did not encompass an awareness of history, paying close attention to gender in particular and to revisions of what Wallace Stevens referred to as "the sexual myth." Works under consideration will include James's The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, Forster's Howard's End, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves, selected short stories by Mansfield, Lawrence's The Rainbow and Women in Love, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom!. Upper College standing assumed.

On-line registration

Course	LIT 3110 James Joyce's Ulysses
Professor	Terence Dewsnap
CRN	17387
Schedule	Tu 4:00-6:20 pm Olin 107
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English

Cross-listed: Irish and Celtic Studies

Participants in this seminar pool their ideas about text and context. Recent Joyce criticism will be emphasized. Prior knowledge of Joyce and his early writings, notably Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is required. On-line registration

Course	LIT 3133 Shelley and His Circle
Professor	Cole Heinowitz
CRN	17390
Schedule	Fr 12:00-2:20 pm Olin 107
Distribution	OLD: B/C	NEW: Literature in English

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a radical nonconformist in every aspect of his life. At the age of 18, he was expelled from Oxford for distributing his pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism. Soon after, he published Queen Mab, a long poem that identified institutionalized religion as the root of all evil and prophesied the emergence of a post-moral utopia. The following year, Shelley (though already married to another woman) fell in love and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. True to Shelley’s belief in free love, the couple were accompanied in their travels through Europe by Mary’s step-sister. The rest of Shelley’s dramatically brief life was spent mostly in Italy, almost entirely without an audience. But under these unlikely circumstances, Shelley produced some of the most stunningly crafted and ideologically complex literature ever written in English. In this seminar, we will read all of Shelley’s major poetry and prose. In order to situate these texts in their historical and intellectual context, we will also read works by other members of the “Shelley Circle” such as Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Leigh Hunt. We will complement this approach by touching on the keystones of Shelley’s mature poetic thought: Milton’s Paradise Lost, British empirical philosophy, Platonic idealism, and the skeptical tradition of David Hume. In addition, we will study both foundational and cutting-edge works of Shelley scholarship, focusing on methodological approaches ranging from post-structuralism to cultural studies and new historicism. While a strong emphasis will be placed on understanding Shelley both in terms of his own historical moment and in terms of his significance for contemporary literary criticism, equal attention will be given to the close reading of Shelley’s texts themselves. Our objective: To gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon that is Shelley by bridging the gap between scholarly, theoretical, philosophical, and purely poetic approaches to his work. On-line registration

Course	LIT / ITAL 3205 Dante
Professor	Nina Cannizzaro
CRN	17383
Schedule	Wed 1:30-3:50 pm HEG 300
Distribution	OLD: B/D	NEW: Literature in English

Cross-listed: Italian Studies, Medieval Studies

G. W. F. Hegel credited the Divine Comedy with inventing the prototype of the literary technique on which the culminating genre of Western literature, the novel, would above all come to rely: suspense. Yet suspense is only one of myriad poetic innovations in Dante’s masterpiece. This course will examine in depth the span of literary influences underlying that innovation (classical and contemporary authors from Vergil, Ovid, Boethius, to A. Daniel, Cavalcanti, Latini and Dante’s early works: Vita Nuova, Convivio, Letters, On Literature in the Vernacular), while reading the work against the general backdrop of medieval Christian culture, exploring themes such as human vs. divine knowledge; linear history vs. circular time; revelation and faith; virtue and sin (contrappasso); allegory and the responsibilities of authorship; and the function and redefinition of literary genres.

On-line registration

Course	LIT 3209 Media and Conflict
Professor	Thomas Keenan
CRN	17393
Schedule	Tu 4:00-6:20 pm Olin 309
Distribution	OLD: A	NEW: Humanities

Cross-listed: Human Rights

The seminar will examine the role of representation and mediation in the experience of war and conflict. Why does it matter how conflicts are presented, in literature and the arts and the mass media? In spite of the apparently all-consuming character of the events themselves, it nevertheless does matter – and, perhaps strangely, to the participants most of all – how conflicts appear in public. What sort of fight is the battle for public opinion, and with what means is it waged? What forms does it take? We will explore the shifting line between violence and politics in order to construct, across a wide range of theoretical texts and frontline accounts and images, an analysis of the media in conflict. Topics include: propaganda, censorship, photo opportunities, compassion fatigue, digital video, testimony, the mobilization of shame, Internet jihad, and torture. We will pay special attention to humanitarian responses to conflict and to terrorism and counter-terrorism. Readings from Michael Ignatieff, Rony Brauman, David Rieff, Samuel Weber, Stanley Cohen, George Lakoff, among many others, and a multitude of exemplary readings and screenings from recent and contemporary conflicts. On-line registration

Course	LIT 328 Ideology and Politics in Modern Literature
Professor	Justus Rosenberg
CRN	17397
Schedule	Wed 1:30-3:50 pm Aspinwall 302
Distribution	OLD: B/C	NEW: Literature in English

We examine how political issues and beliefs, be they of the left, right, or center, are dramatically realized in literature. Works by Dostoyevsky, Ibsen, T. S. Eliot, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Malraux, Gordimer, Kundera, Neruda, and others are analyzed for their ideological content, depth of conviction, method of presentation, and the artistry with which these writers synthesize politics and literature into a permanent aesthetic experience. We also try to determine what constitutes the borderline between art and propaganda and address the question of whether it is possible to genuinely enjoy a work of literature whose political thrust and orientation is at odds with our own convictions. The discussions are supplemented by examples drawn from other art forms such as music, painting, and film.

Course	LIT 3306 Scholasticism vs. Humanism
Professor	Karen Sullivan
CRN	17401
Schedule	Fr 1:30-3:50 pm Olin 101
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English

Cross-listed: Human Rights, Italian Studies, Medieval Studies, Theology

Throughout the Middle Ages, intellectual life was dominated by scholastics, who sought to integrate reason and faith, logic and revelation, classical philosophy and the Christian Gospels. For many of these thinkers, the City of Man, in which we now live, should ideally mirror the City of God, in which we hope one day to reside: both are single, unified, exquisitely ordered and hierarchical structures, in which the individual part is harmoniously integrated into the greater whole. During the Renaissance, however, intellectual discourse was taken over by humanists, who stressed empiricism over abstraction, rhetoric over dialectic, and Plato over Aristotle as the means of access to truth. With experience now privileged over logic, the personal, subjective perception expressed in literature became prized over the impersonal, seemingly objective cosmos of philosophy. In this seminar, we will be exploring the tension between scholastic and humanist thought against the background of the rise of the university, the shift from Gothic to Renaissance architecture, the discovery of the New World, and the eruption of the Protestant Reformation, as well as within the context of more recent historical eras. Authors to be read include Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, and Descartes. On-line registration

Course	LIT 331 Translation Workshop
Professor	Robert Weston
CRN	17545
Schedule	Mon 1:30- 3:50 pm Olin 203
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English

This workshop is designed 1) to introduce students to major theories of translation, 2) to provide students with the tools to compare published translations and analyze the different strategies employed by the translators and 3) to provide a forum for students to work on a translation project of their own design. The course will thus move between theoretical, critical and practical approaches to the art of translation. Knowledge of German and/or French and/or Spanish will be helpful but is not required; all students are, however, expected to have proficiency in at least one language besides English and a strong interest in exploring the nuances of language. Readings will include short theoretical texts by Dryden, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Pound, Jakobson, Szondi, Riffaterre and Derrida. Theoretical texts not written in English will be read in translation, yet wherever possible with an eye to the original.

Course	LIT 3310 Middle Eastern Literature and Post-Colonial Theory
Professor	Youssef Yacoubi
CRN	17404
Schedule	Tu Th 9:00- 10:20 am Olin 308
Distribution	OLD: B/D	NEW: Literature in English/ Rethinking Difference

Cross-listed: Middle Eastern Studies

This course will focus on developments in recent cultural and literary theory, which are primarily concerned with the relationships between cultural power, colonialism and different forms of representation. Surveying a wide range of issues, literary texts and theorists, this course will consider the impact of colonialism; it will examine the relationship between empire and writing; it will consider forms of resistance to the process of domination, and will look in particular at the ways literary and artistic representations from the Middle East have been crucial to this “writing back” and “writing beyond” by unsettling or undermining the ideologies at the core of imperialism, colonialism and internal structures of oppression. As well as drawing upon concepts associated with colonial discourse analysis and postcolonial/ critical theory, this course will consider works of fiction, autobiography, paintings and film, and will relate these representations to approaches which have emerged out of Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and cultural materialism. On-line registration

Course	LIT 333 New Directions in Contemporary Fiction
Professor	Bradford Morrow
CRN	17450
Schedule	Mon 1:30-3:50 pm Olin 205
Distribution	OLD: A/B	NEW: Literature in English

The diversity of voices, styles, and forms employed by innovative contemporary prose fiction writers is matched only by the range of cultural and political issues chronicled in their works. In this course we will closely examine novels and collections of short fiction from the last quarter century in order to begin to define the state of the art for this historical period. Particular emphasis will be placed on analysis of work by some of the more pioneering practitioners of the form. Authors whose work we will read include Cormac McCarthy, Angela Carter, Thomas Bernhard, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, William Gaddis, Michael Ondaatje, Jamaica Kincaid, and others. One or two writers are scheduled to visit class to discuss their books and read from recent work.

Course	LIT 3362 The Essay
Professor	Luc Sante
CRN	17448
Schedule	Th 1:30-3:50 pm Olin 306
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English

This course will consider the essay form as well as its style, with a particular focus on voice, viewpoint, and rhetorical technique. Intensive study will be devoted to word choice, cadence, and even punctuation, in the belief that even the most minute aspects of writing affect the impact of the whole. The goal is to equip students with a strong but supple command of their instrument, a prerequisite for personal expression. There will be writing and reading (from Macauley to Didion) assignments each week, and exercises and discussion in class. On-line registration

Course	LIT 3364 The Slave Narrative
Professor	Mathew Johnson
CRN	17391
Schedule	Tu 4:00-6:20 pm Olin 202
Distribution	OLD: B	NEW: Literature in English/ Rethinking Difference

Cross-listed: Africana Studies, American Studies, SRE

The goal of this course is to gain an understanding of the “peculiar institution” through the first-hand accounts of the former slaves themselves, and to explore the role the slave narrative has played in American letters. We will start with The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano and follow the evolution of the slave narrative through the works of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Josiah Henson, and Booker T. Washington. In addition to these famous accounts, we will explore lesser-known voices, such as those recorded by the Federal Writers' Project. On-line registration

Course	LIT 390 Contemporary Critical Theory
Professor	Nancy Leonard
CRN	17507
Schedule	Wed 1:30-3:50 pm Olin 310
Distribution	OLD: A/B	NEW: Humanities

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts

During the last century major changes in the ways works of art and culture were conceived took place under the influence of modernism and poststructuralism. This course engages key texts in this transformation of our knowledge of language and representation, either classic texts still influential today or contemporary ones. Reading full-length studies or significant excerpts of major theorists, the seminar will introduce students to the aesthetics and ethics of modernist and postmodern debates about representation, and about the links between ethics, politics and language. Perspectives to be introduced include semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian analysis, Foucauldian history, and postfeminist film theory, to name a few. Students will be working collaboratively as theorists, independently as writers, and collectively as members of the whole seminar. Theorists to be read include Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, Slavoj Zizek, and Judith Butler. Admission by interview prior to registration; Upper College standing is assumed. A college course in philosophy, literary, cultural, political or arts theory is a prerequisite.

On-line registration

Course	LIT 425 Narrative Strategies
Professor	Bradford Morrow
CRN	17451
Schedule	Mon 9:30- 11:50 am Olin 205
Distribution	OLD: B/F	NEW: Literature in English

With special emphasis on post-genre fabulism and the New Gothic, this workshop is intended for the writer interested in engaging the theory that reading is a primary function of creating fiction. We will explore, through selected readings and responsive writing, the ways a literary narrative best finds its expression, its voice. Students will study contemporary fiction by David Foster Wallace, Jamaica Kincaid, Angela Carter, Rick Moody, Russell Banks, John Crowley, Kelly Link, and others. Class discussion will focus on the variety of technical means by which the author develops a story, and on intensive workshop discussion of student writing. Expect to write one critical essay about the style and technique of the writers we are reading, as well as two original works of fiction patterned on texts in the course, and a third story of independent work in progress. Candidates must submit samples of their work before registration, with cover letter to Prof. Morrow via campus mail by 4:00 pm on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006.

Course	LIT CONF Literature / Writing Conference
Professor	Mona Simpson
CRN	17676
Schedule	TBA

0 credits Discussion of the problems and challenges of revision that might arise in completing one’s first major continuous work of fiction, whether it be a collection of stories, of short shorts, of connected tales, a novella or a novel. This will be a chance for students laboring on extensive fiction writing projects to meet each other, to discuss their work and even perhaps to form networks of readers for works-in-progress. Mona Simpson will lecture and lead the discussion.

Course	LIT CONF Master Class Workshop
Professor	Mona Simpson
CRN	17676
Schedule	TBA

0 credits A small seminar, run as a master class workshop, for students working with Mona Simpson on senior project. Students will share their work and offer critiques to each other.