15049

LIT  130   

 Anna Karenina

Elizabeth Frank

. . W Th .

11:50am-1:10pm

ASP 302

ELIT

Cross-listed:  Russian & Eurasian Studies  An introduction to the study of fiction through a semester devoted to the close reading of not one, but two translations of this major Russian novel.  In addition to constant comparison between the two texts, discussion includes such topics as genre, narrative voice, the representation of character and time, nineteenth-century French, English and Russian realism, and the play of psychological analysis and social observation. We will pay particular attention to the magnificent construction of the novel--what Tolstoy himself referred to as its "architecture,” particularly its parallel plots. Weekly reading responses and frequent class reports, two short (4-6pp) papers and one long (10-12) term paper. Class size: 18

 

15204

LIT  2002   

 Americans Abroad

Donna Grover

. T . Th .

11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 203

ELIT

Cross-listed:   Africana Studies, American 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. Class size: 22

 

15199

LIT  2016   

THE Great american Indian Novel

Alexandre Benson

. T . Th .

1:30pm-2:50pm

OLIN 203

ELIT/DIFF

Cross-listed:  American Studies, Human Rights   In a 1996 poem titled “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel,” Sherman Alexie delivered a series of jabs at the stereotypical Native narrative: “the hero should often weep alone,” for instance, while “A white child and an Indian child, gender / not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.” The endgame of such a story is, for Alexie, appropriation and genocide: “all the white people will be Indians and all the Indians will be ghosts.” The stereotypes are familiar and Alexie’s satire has bite. Yet of course the field of American Indian fiction is in fact remarkably diverse in its tropes and its narrative forms. We will explore that diversity in texts written in English from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first. Certain concerns will recur, including population displacement, ecological disaster, the politics of religion, and the relationship between orality and print. We will pay equal attention, though, to each writer’s unique approach to the genre of the novel. In doing so we will consider relationships to tradition, both cultural and literary, that exceed the commonplaces Alexie skewers. Authors will include Black Elk, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise Erdrich, D’Arcy McNickle, N. Scott Momaday, John Oskison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Yellow Bird.  Class size: 22

 

15200

LIT  2026   

INTRODUCTION TO Children’S AND Young Adult LiteraturE

Maria Cecire

. T . Th .

3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 203

ELIT

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies  What is children’s literature? Who is it for? In this course you will be encouraged to think about how notions of childhood and teenagerdom are constructed and reproduced in Anglophone literature for young people, and to interrogate the social and literary structures that guide these representations. Our goal will be to gain familiarity with the history of children’s literature in English and some of its major genres, while constantly challenging our own conceptions of childhood and literariness. How can we, as adults and critics, read a book that has been classed as “children’s literature”? How do we theorize texts that are written for children by adults? What makes a work of children’s literature a classic? Can we say that children’s literature “colonizes” the child? Given their importance to contemporary ideas of the child, we will give special attention to questions of gender and sexuality throughout the semester. Course texts include literature by Kenneth Grahame, J.M. Barrie, C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, J.K. Rowling, Jane Yolen, Toni Morrison, and M.T. Anderson, as well as a selection of picturebooks. Class size: 20

 

15040

LIT  206   

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL:

Goethe's Faust

Franz Kempf

M . W . .

11:50am- 1:10pm

OLINLC 120

ELIT

Cross-listed: German Studies  An intensive study of Goethe's drama about a man in league with the devil. The dynamics of Faust's striving for knowledge of the world and experience of life and Mephistopheles' advancement and subversion of this striving provides the basis for our analysis of the play's central themes, individuality, knowledge and transcendence, in regard to their meaning in Goethe's time and their relevance for our time. To gain a fuller appreciation of the variety, complexity, and dramatic fascination of Goethe's Faust, we will also consider Faust literature before and after Goethe and explore the integration of Faust in music, theater, and film  (e.g., Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus, Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele, Friedrich W. Murnau's film Faust).  Taught in English. Students with an advanced proficiency in German can sign up for a tutorial in German.  Class size: 18

 

15201

LIT  2119   

 Shakespeare’s tragedies and the Problem of Government

Noor Desai

M . W . .

10:10am- 11:30am

HDR 106

ELIT

Shakespeare’s tragedies often deal with men of high social stature bringing about both personal and public ruin. It often seems as if his most brutally poignant depictions of individuals in hopeless situations arise when he is also his most politically barbed. This course explores how Shakespeare uses the framework of tragedy to investigate the contours of political life, focusing specifically on how familial, friendship, and sexual ties reflect and influence overarching governmental realities. How do we understand kingship after seeing it portrayed as an isolating burden? What do the tragic consequences of notions like honor and duty reveal to us about the interrelations between early modern masculinity and political organization? As we closely analyze several of Shakespeare’s tragedies, including Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Coriolanus, and King Lear, we will also examine writings from the period by figures such as Machiavelli, Bodin, James I, and Thomas Hobbes in order to develop a rich sense of how the problems of government troubling the early modern period were exposed and interrogated upon the stage.This course counts as pre-1800 offering. Class size: 22

 

15060

LIT  2191   

 Media & Metropolis in Modern Japan

Nathan Shockey

M . W . .

1:30pm-2:50pm

FISHER ANNEX

FLLC

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Environmental & Urban Studies, Experimental Humanities  Modern Japan has undergone one of the most dramatic urbanizations in history. In just over a hundred years, it has been transformed from a largely rural, agricultural nation to a global symbol of high-tech hyper futurism. In this course, we will explore the myriad ways in which this process and the urban space it has created has been written and represented. We will ask how artists attempt to express and make sense of the shifting field of sensation and information that constitutes city life in modern Japan. We will also examine questions of what is lost in the rural to urban transition and problems of nostalgia and alienation in the countryside and new suburbs. The course explores how the experiences and emotions germane to metropolitan life can be expressed, communicated, and understood through literature, film, photography, music, manga, maps, and more. Includes work by Tanizaki, Kafû, Yokomitsu, Akutagawa, Tatsumi, and Kuroi, and many more. The class also serves to introduce major works of urban theory by Mumford, Lefebvre, Simmel, Harvey, and others.  Class size: 22

 

15216

LIT  2281   

 THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE:

From Martyrs to Suicide BomberS

Karen Sullivan

. T . Th .

10:10am- 11:30am

OLIN 204

ELIT

Cross-listed:  Human Rights  Is it courageous to stand up for a cause in which you believe, even to the point of dying for it? In Western history, many of the individuals who have been most admired for their bravery are those who have willingly accepted death for a higher purpose, whether that purpose be intellectual (Socrates), religious (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim martyrs), or political (Thomas Becket, Mahatma Gandhi, Bobby Sands). But what if the cause for which the martyr wishes to sacrifice herself is not a good cause? What if the martyr is driven, not only by a desire for justice, but by a desire for glory or even for death? What if the martyr is willing to sacrifice, not only his life, but the lives of other people around him? What is the relation between martyrdom and fanaticism? In an effort to answer these questions, we will be considering a series of historical moments that produced martyrs, including the persecution of the early Christians, the Battle of Karbala, the Crusades, the Protestant Reformation, the Jesuit missions in Asia and America, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, and September 11th. Readings will include theories and accounts (both historical and fictional) of courage and martyrdom from the fourth century BCE to the present day. This counts as a pre-1800 offering.  This course is part of the College Seminar “The Practice of Courage.” It is open to Sophomores and Juniors and is limited to 16 students. Students are required to attend three evening lectures on Mondays from 6-8. There will also be dinner discussions with guest speakers and students from other sections of the College Seminar. Class size: 16

 

15514

LIT  2282   

 THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE:

HEROISM OR HUBRIS?

Marina van Zuylen

. T . Th .

3:10 pm – 4:30 pm

OLIN 310

ELIT

Plato distrusted literature's ability to complicate, rather than to present straightforwardly an identifiable moral landscape.  With its allegories and polyphonic voices, its multiple narratives, its deliberate silences, literature obscures our access to pat answers about good and evil, vice and virtue.  Reading a historical account of courage or cowardice is radically different from its being conveyed in a poem, a play, or a novel.  This class will examine how writers have disguised and distorted a quality such as courage to convey the multi-faceted nature of human motives and motivation.  Each of our examples of courage will be read in clashing ways.  Is Antigone's heroism a mark of hubris? Shakespeare's Cordelia's refusal to lie stubborness? Don Quixote's idealism insanity?  Melville's Bartleby's standing up to authority obstructionism?  Are Camus' The Plague and Saramago's Blindness allegories of courage or narratives of the absurd?  Readings will include texts by Emerson, Tillich, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, and Rony Brauman. This course is part of the College Seminar “The Practice of Courage.” It is open to Sophomores and Juniors and is limited to 16 students. Students are required to attend three evening lectures on Mondays from 6-8. There will also be dinner discussions with guest speakers and students from other sections of the College Seminar. Class size: 16

 

15203

LIT  2318   

 Poetry & Aesthetics in

Victorian England

Stephen Graham

M . W . .

11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 303

ELIT

Cross-listed:  Victorian Studies  John Ruskin announced in Modern Painters (1843) that the greatest art must contain “the greatest number of the greatest ideas.” Fifty years later, Oscar Wilde declared with equal assurance the “All art is quite useless.” What happened in that intervening half-century? Reading major Victorian poets including Tennyson, Browning, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy and William Butler Yeats, as well as criticism by Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, and Wilde—among the finest prose stylists of the century—this course follows the evolution of poetry and poetic theory, and the accompanying Victorian debate about the status of art and of the artist in relation to society. This latter narrative begins with Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate and cultural institution, and concludes with Oscar Wilde, social pariah and convicted felon, as Victorian poets gradually withdraw from their position in the center of the culture to a stance of defiance, transgression, and martyrdom.  Class size: 16

 

15059

LIT  232   

 Middle Eastern Cinemas

Dina Ramadan

                 Screenings:

. T . . .

. . . Th .

4:40 pm- 7:00pm

6:00pm-9:00pm

OLIN 205

PRE 110

FLLC

Cross-listed:  Film & Electronic Arts, Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies  The history of cinema in the Middle East is as old as the art form itself; screenings of films by the Lumiere Brothers took place in Cairo, Alexandria, Algiers, Tunis, Fez, and Jerusalem just months after their initial screening. The “Orient” quickly became the location for early cinematic productions and cinemas sprang up across the region. This course begins with a survey of the development of national cinemas in the Middle East, before turning to a series of case studies of influential directors working on both documentary and features films. These will include Yusif Chahine, Abbas Kiarostami, Omar Amiralay, Avi Moghrabi, and Elia Suleiman. We will focus on transformations in stylistic and aesthetic approaches as well as examining the shifting place of cinema, the role of state sponsorship, the problem of censorship, and the question of audience. Finally, students will be exposed to the growing body of contemporary video artworks produced by younger practitioners from the region. All readings will be in English. Weekly evening screenings are mandatory.  Class size: 20

 

15202

LIT  2324   

 Freudian Psychoanalysis, Language and literature

Helena Gibbs

M . W . .

3:10pm-4:30pm

OLIN 304

ELIT

The understanding that language inhabits the human subject is essential to Sigmund Freud’s conception of the unconscious. It is Freud who taught us to read slips of the tongue, bungled actions, memory lapses, dreams, and symptoms—what he calls formations of the unconscious—as speech in their own right. He explored how speech implicates us at a level far beyond what we typically consider communication, how it structures us as subjects. While Freud’s influence spans art, literature, and the human sciences, his ideas continue to engender wide-ranging debates about the efficacy of the psychoanalytical cure and its scientific status. Even those critical of Freud’s method, however, cannot deny that his concepts (such as the unconscious, repression, transference, or sexual and death drives) have become part of our everyday language, thus bearing witness to the extent in which they are ingrained in the way we perceive ourselves, society, and the world. This course will address fundamental concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis, a field that encompasses both a body of theoretical knowledge and a clinical practice grounded in listening and interpretation. Readings will include selections from Freud’s seminal texts, as well as writings by Jacques Lacan and other authors, whose work provides insight into Freud’s ideas and their intersection with literature, film, and poetry, such as StéphaneMallarmé, Marguerite Duras, and W. G. Sebald.  Class size: 18

 

15206

LIT  2401   

 The Canterbury Tales

Marisa Libbon

M . W . .

10:10am- 11:30am

OLIN 310

ELIT

Cross-listed: Medieval Studies  Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is an acknowledged masterpiece, a cornerstone of the canon of English literature.  Yet, Chaucer never finished The Canterbury Tales: he spent the last dozen years of his life working on the Tales, dying in 1400 and leaving behind a fragmented collection of stories that readers have been reassembling since his death.  In this course we will undertake a semester-long exploration of The Canterbury Tales, reading the text and piecing together the picture of medieval England that it at once preserves and critiques.  We will be particularly concerned with the literary and cultural conventions that Chaucer both expertly mobilizes and fascinatingly troubles.  (This course counts as pre-1800 offering.)  Class size: 18

 

15205

LIT  2414   

 The Book Before Print

Marisa Libbon

M . W . .

1:30pm-2:50pm

OLIN 204

ELIT

Cross-listed:  Experimental Humanities, Medieval Studies  In 1476, an Englishman named William Caxton set up England’s first printing press at Westminster in London.  Prior to this technological innovation (which the sixteenth-century writer John Foxe deemed miraculous), books were made from vellum (animal skin) and were written and illuminated—or painted—by hand.  In this course, we’ll study Anglo-Saxon and medieval English books as both cultural objects and literary artifacts, dividing our time between learning how manuscript-books were imagined and constructed before the invention of the printing press, and reading them.  For us, “reading” will mean engaging in literary analysis of our texts—including epics, lyrics, myths, and romances, all of which will be made available in modern printed editions—as well as learning to decipher the handwriting of scribes responsible for copying our texts.  Our work will raise questions about literacy and its definitions; literary labor; the history of the book; the development and preservation of literary and visual artifacts; the relationship between image and text; the ethical and practical problems of producing modern printed editions of handwritten texts; and the proximity of anonymous pre-print culture to the so-called Internet Age. (This course counts as pre-1800 offering.)  Class size: 22

 

15315

LIT / THTR  250   

 Dramatic Structure

Gideon Lester

. T . Th .

1:30pm-2:50pm

OLINLC 120

ELIT

See Theater section for description.