WORLD LITERATURE courses explore the interrelations
among literary cultures throughout the world. They pay special attention to
such topics as translation, cultural difference, the emergence of diverse
literary systems, and the relations between global sociopolitical issues and
literary form.
15037 |
LIT 2031 Ten Plays that Shook the World |
Justus Rosenberg |
M . W . . |
10:10am- 11:30am |
OLIN 303 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: French Studies, Theater A close reading and textual analysis of
plays considered milestones in the
history of the theater. In this course
we isolate and examine the artistic, social and psychological components that
made these works become part of the literary canon. Have they lasted because they conjure up
fantasies of escape, or make its readers and viewers face dilemmas inherent in
certain social conditions or archetypical conflicts? What was it exactly that made them so
shocking when first preformed? The language, theme, style, staging? We also explore the theatre as a literary
genre that goes beyond the writing. For
a meaningful and effective performance, all aspects of the play, directing, acting,
staging, lighting will be considered. This course is part of the World Literature
offering. Class size: 18
15050 |
LIT 2159 INTO THE WHIRLWIND: Literary Greatness and Gambles |
Jonathan Brent |
. . . . F |
3:00pm-5:20pm |
OLIN 202 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Russian and Eurasian Studies This course will examine the fate of the
literary imagination in Russia from the time of the Revolution to the
stagnation of the Brezhnev period. We will look at the majestic,
triumphant imaginative liberation in writers such as Isaac Babel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam and
Mikhail Bulgakov; the struggle with ideology and the
Terror of the 1930s in Yuri Olesha, Anna Akhmatova, Lidia Chukovskaya,
Mikhail Zoshchenko, Varlam Shalamov, Boris Pilnyak and Yuri Tynyanov; the hesitant Thaw as reflected in Boris
Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago;
and the course will conclude by reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Moscow to the End of the Line, by Venedikt Erofeev. Readings of
literary works will be supplemented with political and historical documents to
provide a sense of the larger political-social-historical context in which they
were written. After the violent, imaginative ebullience of the Revolutionary
period, how did literature stay alive during the darkest period of mass
repression, censorship and terror when millions of Soviet citizens were either
imprisoned or shot? What formal/aesthetic choices did these writers make
in negotiating the demands of official ideology and Party discipline, on the
one hand, and authentic literary expression, on the other? What image of
history and of man did these “Engineers of human souls” produce? These
are some of the questions we will ask and seek to answer. All readings will
be in English. This course is part of the World Literature
offering. Class size: 20
15215 |
LIT 3045 Irish Writing and the Nationality of Literature |
Joseph O'Neill |
M . . . . |
11:50am-2:10pm |
ASP 302 |
ELIT/DIFF |
Cross-listed: Irish & Celtic Studies In this course, students
will read so-called Irish writing as a means of investigating the general
notion that literary texts may possess the attribute of nationality. How is
'Irishness' to be located in a text? What is the function of the term 'Irish'
when applied to a piece of writing? In what ways does the idea of 'nationality'
(or 'ethnicity,' or 'community') connect the literary, juridical, and political
realms? What does artistic discourse have to do with political ethics? What
might a post-national literature involve?
Students will read artistic work by (inter alia) Jonathan Swift, Maria
Edgeworth, J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, James
Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett,
and Bram Stoker, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Friel. Theoretical work by (inter alia)
Rudolf Rocker, John Rawls, Noam Chomsky, and Benedict Anderson will be touched
on. This course is part of
the World Literature offering.
Class size: 15