Course:	LIT 2071  Modernity and Modernism in the Arabic Literature
Professor:	Ziad Dallal
CRN:	15708		Schedule/Location:		Mon   Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 202
Distributional Area:		LA Literary Analysis in English
Credits: 4						Class cap: 22
Crosslists: Africana Studies; Middle Eastern Studies

This course introduces students to the major revolutions of Arabic literature from the nineteenth century onwards. Our readings will be anchored in the two terms, modernity and modernism, in order to understand how social and material changes precipitate cultural transformation, and in turn, how literary movements emerge as galvanized critiques of a world marked by (de)colonization, national independence movements, and (civil war). Thus, one of the objectives of this course would be to define and distinguish modernity and modernism. To do so, we will read manifestos and essays on literary theory, as well as new scholarship that situates literary movements within their global contexts. The second objective of this course will be to familiarize students with the rich material of modern literary production from the Arab world. We will read widely and wildly from this bountiful material, including hybrid literary forms from the 19th century, the travel literature of the early 20th century, the modernist poetry of the mid-20th century, the response in prose to that latter movement, and postcolonial prison literature. Authors may include Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Zaynab Fawwaz, Etel Adnan, Tayeb Salih, Adonis, Nazik al-Maka’ika, Mahmoud Darwish, Anton Shammas, Ghassan Kanafani, Emile Habibi, Saadallah Wannous, Sulayman al-Bassam, Sonallah Ibarhim, Latifa al-Zayyat, Ibrahim el-Salahi, Ibrahim Aslan, and Edwar al-Kharrat. The course will also tackle issues of globalization, nationalism, gender, and citizenship. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.

 

Course:	LIT 2291  Fictions of Southeast Asia
Professor:	Nathan Shockey
CRN:	15709		Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 201
Distributional Area:		LA Literary Analysis in English
Credits: 4						Class cap: 22
Crosslists: Asian Studies

This class explores the vibrant body of literature from and about Southeast Asia and considers the role of fiction in the imagination of modern national and transnational histories. Reading works by local, imperial, immigrant, and diasporic authors, both those written in English and in translation, we will bring a prismatic array of texts into contestation and conversation in order to explore conflicting narratives of colonization, decolonization, war, empire, refugee passages, and the loss of homeland. We will read novels from across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malay(si)a, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as stories about those places by British, American, and other Asian writers to think about how acts of storytelling have themselves shaped the region’s contours and fractured histories. Topics will include the polyphonic and polyglottal history of Philippine literature, ghostly memories of the Pacific War, conflicting perspectives on the American War, the effects of global capitalism and multinational trade on everyday life, and attempts by first- and second-generation diasporic and immigrant authors to rectify transformations of culture and memory in the United States. Readings may include works by Jose Rizal, Nick Joaquin, Gina Apostol, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Le Thi Diem Thuy, Tash Aw, Pitchaya Subandthad, Jessica Hagedorn, Kao Kalia Yang, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Veasna So, Joseph Conrad, Bao Ninh, Graham Greene, Eka Kurniawan, Kevin Kwan, and Pramaoedya Ananta Toer, among others. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.

 

Course:	LIT 2451  The Art of Chinese Poetry
Professor:	Lu Kou
CRN:	15706		Schedule/Location:		Mon   Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 201
Distributional Area:		LA Literary Analysis in English
Credits: 4						Class cap: 22
Crosslists: Asian Studies

This course introduces students to the rich tradition of premodern Chinese poetry and poetics. We will learn the art of reading poetry, theories on poetic composition and criticism in Chinese literary tradition, and receptions of classical Chinese poetry and poetics in the global context. Our survey starts with The Odes in the first millennium BCE and ends at China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), when literati found traditional poetic forms and language insufficient to describe their encounters with the modern world. The course will take a chronological approach, covering famous poets including Tao Qian, Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, and Su Shi; within the chronology, each class will focus on a specific theme, such as poetry and ritual, poetry and translation, or poetry and the everyday. The last one-third of the course will be devoted to discussions of non-Chinese readers’ (for example, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Arthur Waley, I. A. Richards, and William Empson) interpretations and appropriations of Chinese poetics in the 20th century when the East became a profession and the subject of academic enquiry for poets and scholars from Europe and America. Are there “epics” in Chinese poetic tradition? Is Chinese poetry non-mimetic? Is there an aesthetic or ethnic “essence” in Chinese poetry that will be misinterpreted, if not erased, during translation? Investigating the questions posed by these modern readers—their assumptions and implications—will generate fruitful discussions on issues important in fields of comparative literature, world literature, and Sinophone studies, such as “Chineseness,” “comparison” as a methodology, and application of western critical theories on non-western texts. This course encourages students to critically engage with the politics of difference in the East-West comparative paradigm. No background in Chinese language or literature is required. This course is part of the World Literature and Pre-1800 course offering.

 

Course:	LIT 2461  Global Modernism
Professor:	Alys Moody
CRN:	15710		Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin Languages Center 115
Distributional Area:		LA Literary Analysis in English
Credits: 4						Class cap: 22

Modernist literature and the other arts represented a revolution in aesthetic form, keyed to the disasters, possibilities, and disorientations of modernity. While it has traditionally been seen as a movement limited to Europe and the US in the early twentieth century, recent scholarship has revealed that modernism—like modernity itself—was a global phenomenon. In this course, we explore the implications of this new understanding of “global modernism.” We will ask: what happens to modernism when we read it as a movement that operated at the scale of the world? What can a study of global modernism reveal about the nature of modernity, including its interactions with colonialism and decolonization, global capitalism and industrialization, and the associated changes in how we see and experience the world itself? And what are the literary consequences of this dynic, cross-cultural, and highly contested aesthetic movement? Readings will include work from all over the world, in English and in translation, and may include works by Oswald de Andrade, Aimé Césaire, Mulk Raj Anand, Lu Xun, Chika Sagawa, Ahmed Hid Tanpinar, Adonis, Wole Soyinka, T. S. Eliot, Mina Loy, and others, as well as little magazines and digital archives. This is an OSUN Collaborative Course taught in cooperation with courses on global modernism offered at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Bard College (USA), Bard College Berlin (Germany), BRAC University (Bangladesh), and the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Common sessions, lectures, readings, and/or assignments will offer opportunities for connections across the network, but the core teaching of the course will be conducted fully in-person on Bard’s Annandale campus. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.

 

Course:	LIT 2670  Women Writing the Caribbean
Professor:	Donna Grover
CRN:	15723		Schedule/Location:		Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin 306
Distributional Area:		LA Literary Analysis in English D+J Difference and Justice
Credits: 4						Class cap: 18
Crosslists: Africana Studies; American Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies

The “creolized” culture of the Caribbean has been a hotbed of women’s writing from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Claudia Mitchell-Kernan describes creolization as “nowhere purely African, but … a mosaic of African, European, and indigenous responses to a truly novel reality.” This course is concerned with how women, through fiction, interpreted that reality. While confronting the often explosive politics of post-colonial island life and at the same time navigating the presence of French, English, and African influence, women saw their role as deeply conflicted. We will begin with The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) and Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857). Other writers will include Martha Gelhorn, Jean Rhys, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, and Edwidge Danticat.  This course counts as a World Literature offering.

 

Course:	LIT 279  Japanese Folklore
Professor:	Wakako Suzuki
CRN:	15715		Schedule/Location:		Mon   Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 203
Distributional Area:		FL Foreign Languages and Lit
Credits: 4						Class cap: 22
Crosslists: Asian Studies

This course explores a wide range of cultural expressions from premodern to contemporary Japan: magic, epic narratives, local legends, myth, folktales, fairy tales, urban legends, stories of the supernatural, music, discourses of monsters, images of witches, religious festivals, manga, anime, and film. Rather than focusing on the survey of folklore, we examine its ontological dimension, historical roots and epistemological shifts along with the development of industrial capitalism. Through our discussions and readings, we will also tackle some of the ideas and assumptions underlying the notion of the folk. Who are the folk? From when and where does the concept of a folk people originate inside and outside of Japan? Is the folk still a viable, relevant category today? How does it treat regional versus national identity? As we analyze the construction of this concept, we will consider its implications for the Japanese and our own perception of Japan. By looking at folklore and magic across East Asia, we also move beyond confines of “Japanese” folklore and grapple with critical discourses related to (de)colonization and (dis)enchantment, in relation to re-reading of primitive accumulation and a Marxist-feminist viewpoint. Includes works by Lafcadio Hearn, Yanagita Kunio, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Enchi Fumiko, Izumi Kyoka, Ueda Akinari, Mizuki Shigeru, Kobayashi Masaki, Kurosawa Akira, Mizoguchi Kenji, Miyazaki Hayao, Shinkai Makoto and many others. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.

 

Course:	LIT/MES 303  Petroculture
Professor:	Elizabeth Holt
CRN:	15725		Schedule/Location:		Fri   12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 308
Distributional Area:		MBV Meaning, Being, Value D+J Difference and Justice
Credits: 4						Class cap: 15
Crosslists: Environmental & Urban Studies; Literature, Science, Technology, Society

This course joins a growing movement to imagine a world after oil, focusing on North America's relationship with the Middle East. We will read from the Petrocultures group and a broad range of work produced in English and Arabic -- from Allen Ginsberg and William Faulkner, to Shell Oil, to the Iraq Petroleum Company, to Amitav Ghosh, to Ghassan Kanafani and Abdelrahman Munif -- in order to historicize and theorize the literary formations, aesthetics and metaphors produced by and productive of petroleum. This course is part of the World Literature Course offering.