Comparative Literature Courses
                        Spring 2007

Any literature course in any language, including English, at the 300 level or above counts towards the Comparative Literature major or minor.

COURSES OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDENTS:

CPLT 202 (3) History of European Literature II cross-listed with CPLT 202 -- You must sign up both for the lecture (section 0001) and for a discussion section.
Mr. Cantor, Instructor
1230-1345 TR

This course surveys European literature from the seventeenth century to the present day. Although it builds upon work in CPLT 201, 202 is a self-contained course and can be taken by students who have not taken 201. Among the topics to be discussed will be the rise of the novel, the nature of the Enlightenment, the Romantic revolution in poetry, the new role of women in literature, responses to revolution and imperialism, nihilism and modern literature, and the issue of postmodernism. Readings will include Tartuffe, Robinson Crusoe, Candide, Faust, Persuasion, Wuthering Heights, Notes from Underground, and Waiting for Godot, as well as poetry by Blake, T. S. Eliot, and Rilke and short stories by Kafka and Mann. Two lectures and one section meeting per week. Sectioning will not be available on ISIS, but will be done at the first class meeting; be sure to attend that first class if you plan on taking the course. Ordinarily, this course will admit all students who wish to take it. We will require three papers and a final examination, as well as regular attendance and participation in discussion sections.. The course fulfills the Second Writing Requirement and counts toward the English major under the 3-hours of "Literature in Translation" option. This course is also listed as ENLT 216; it may be taken under either rubric, but may not be taken twice.

CPLT 305 (3) Fiction of the Americas
Mr. Pellon, Instructor
1530-1645 TR

In this second-year seminar, we will study the centuries long “conversations” between North American and Spanish American writers. Principally through short stories and some novels, we will examine their mutual fascination. Our reading list will include works by Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Mary Peabody Mann, Herman Melville, Horacio Quiroga, John Reed, Mariano Azuela, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Raymond Chandler, Osvaldo Soriano, Mempo Giardinelli, Charles Darwin, and Silvia Iparraguirre. Short papers and take-home essay exam. The class will be conducted in English, and students may read Spanish American works in English translation or Spanish according to their ability or desire.

CPLT 327 (3) Maps and Mapping
Mr. Padron, Instructor
1400-1630 M

Maps are a ubiquitous part of our lives. We see them on the news and in the newspaper. We use them when we travel both far away and close to home. We follow the stories that we read, both factual and fictional, on their geographies. Yet we rarely think about the fact that maps have a history, that there was a time when people in western culture did not have access to them, and barely even had a name for them, or that their history is tied up with the ways that we perceive time and space themselves. This course will explore the nature and history of maps and mapping, asking questions about
how they affect and even determine the ways we relate with the world on a variety of levels and in a variety of ways. Readings will draw from critical social theory, history, and literature. Possible texts include:

Denis Wood, The Power of Maps, Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Marco Polo, The Travels, selections from the writings of Christopher Columbus, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. We will also draw upon the collection of maps and atlases in the UVA Special Collections Library.

CPLT 343 (3) Contemporary Drama
Ms. Löfgren, Instructor
0930-1045 TR

This is the second half of a two-semester course on modern and contemporary American and European drama (with forays into other regions), covering post-Absurdism to the present. ENMC 341/CPLT 342 is not a prerequisite. We will examine postwar quests for dramatic and theatrical structures relevant to a socially and morally chaotic world. From a study of reactions to the Theatre of the Absurd, we move to an investigation of contemporary drama, celebrating the success of women and minority playwrights in our own period. Playwrights include, among others, Tom Stoppard, Derek Walcott, Sam Shepard, Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Caryl Churchill, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, and Suzan-Lori Parks.

CPLT 375 (3) Self Solitude Connectedness
Mr. Quirk, Instructor
1400-1450 MWF

This course will explore “senses of connection,” the ways in which human beings are imagined or represented as connected or disconnected with others. Such connections are the relations by which an individual has a sense of self and can range from the personal (love) to the global (internet), from the communal (religion) to the nonexistent (alienation). This is a comparative course in which we will read German texts in translation as well as texts originally in English. -- We will start with the masterpiece of the American novelist Don DeLillo, his monumental Underworld of 1997. From DeLillo we will move to philosophical texts by Nietzsche, Freud, Arendt, and the media theorist Marshall McLuhan. Here we will compare, and synthesize, different perspectives on “human interconnectivity,” particularly in terms of psychology, politics, technology, religion, and language. Other texts: Kafka, “The Trial”; Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”; eckett,“Endgame”; Kleist, “The Marquise of O”; and stories by Melville, Mann, J. C. Oates, Christa Wolf and others.

CPLT 482 (3) Literature As Philosophy
Ms. Wicke, Instructor
1700-1930 W

Literature and philosophy have always been perceived as intertwined, sometimes as partners, sometimes as rivals, occasionally as mirror opposites. This seminar explores those dimensions of literature that may be considered to be philosophical, and those aspects of the literary that may exceed or elude philosophy’s grasp. Conversely, the course devotes equal time to the literary aspects of philosophy: its language, its style, even its truths. Does philosophy “do” something that literature cannot, or vice versa? In what sense are issues of knowledge, truth, self-awareness or social relatedness exclusively philosophical? Does literature have as much to do with justice or thinking, for example, as it does with conveying emotions or expressing beauty? Are literature and philosophy mutually defining, or do they differ primarily in how they are read and used? And in a contemporary world where both literature and philosophy are seen as endangered or vanishing cultural practices, what new forms carry on the “mission” of these genres or their mixtures? In some cases we will read “against the grain,” by exploring a literary work for its philosophical import or rigor, and by looking at philosophical texts as works of literature in their own right. We will spark a dialog between these forms of life, as Wittgenstein called them, and in the crossover hope to delineate not so much what “belongs” to each genre as why we read in the first place. We won’t seek to cover a specific literary or philosophical tradition in a linear way, or simply to draw parallels from one tradition to another, but instead will foreground “literariness” and philosophical inquiry and investigate these by moving freely from the past to the present and across genres, writers, and even media.

Texts include works by Plato, Augustine, Poe, Pascal, Sor Juana, Mary Shelley, Nietzsche, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Nabokov, Woolf, James, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Austin, Derrida, Ronell, Acker, Ware, etc. and “hybrid”genres that operate in the space between literature and philosophy, such as works of scripture, the graphic novel, critical theory, film and video, concrete poetry, and the memoir. There will be a significant amount of fairly difficult although wonderful reading; students should be passionate about doing the reading and participating in the seminar. There will be two short (3-5 pages) papers, one slightly longer paper (5-7 pages), and a final (10-15 pages) paper that will confront and explore questions of literature and philosophy first separately and then together.

Instructor’s permission required.

CPLT 485 (3) Repetition: Psychoanalysis and Philosophical Literature
Mr. Kaiser, Instructor
1530-1800 T

Repetition is an odd phenomenon, and it has preoccupied writers, thinkers, analysts, critics repetitively. It seems that repetition insists on and in major texts and representatives of the three disciplines we will investigate in the course of this seminar. Repetition cuts across them and repeats itself in them in various forms, transformations and deformations. To mention but a few: repetition and reflection (Hegel; Kierkegaard; German Romanticism); repetition, recurrence and return (Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same and its return in 20th century texts, Heidegger, Benn or Mann for example); repetition as reproduction in the technical, theatrical and narratological sense (Benjamin, Brecht, Kafka, Handke); forms of repetition in psychoanalysis (especially in Freud's texts on the mystic writing pad; in "memory, repetition, working through"; in the entire concept of transference etc.); forms of repetition in literature and film (the analysis of "haunted writings and haunted screens"); forms of repetition in the analysis of repetition in contemporary practices of philosophical and literary criticism (Deleuze; Derrida; Adorno et. al.). In short: there is plenty of material out there for us to investigate. The purpose of the seminar is to link the phenomenon of repetition to the acts of textual production and analysis.

Requirements: regular participation and attendance; in-class-introduction and -presentation of at least one text; graduate students will submit a paper at the end of the semester (20 pages); undergraduate students and all those who sign up under the CPLT mnemonic are expected to write one short paper (due by mid March) and pass a final examination. Texts will be made available both in English and their native languages (French and German). Discussions in class will be in English.

AMEL 101 (3) Literature of Asia and the Middle East
Mr. Heldt, Instructor
1530-1645 TR

ARTR 329/529 (3) Modern Arabic Literature in Translation
Mr. Al-Samman
1100-1215 TR

ENCR 562 (3) History of Criticism
Mr. Jost, Instructor
1830-2100 W

An introduction to the history of "Western" literary criticism from the Greeks through the nineteenth century. We will spend the majority of our time on earlier periods, especially from Antiquity through the Renaissance. This course is especially helpful for putting contemporary likterary and cultural theory in historical perspective.

ENMC 352/MDST 352 (3) Vernaculars, Media, Texts
Mr. Golumbia, Instructor
1230-1345 TR

This class explores the role of so-called nonstandard or vernacular languages in contemporary worldwide texts and media. Vernaculars include languages and "dialects" that are widespread in culture but usually not taught in schools. Examples of vernaculars include African-American English, Appalachian English, Hawaiian "Creole" English, Haitian Creole, Taglish, and others. In many cases, these language practices, while full and complete languages in every diagnostic and linguistic sense, remain the target of intense cultural prejudice. We will explore commonalities and differences in the presentation of these linguistic practices across several genres and places, and students will write two short response papers and develop a research paper on a topic raised in class or related to it. This class will have a screening period that meets about five evenings during the term. No prerequistes, but at least one previous course in English, Linguistics, or Media Studies is suggested. Restricted to students in 2nd year and above.

ENRN 482B (3) Masks of Desire
Ms. Kinney, Instructor
1400-1515 TR

This seminar will explore the courtly and erotic performances and acts of “self-fashioning” which shape some sophisticated and beguiling lyric, narrative and dramatic works produced in sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century England and Europe. We will pay particular attention to gendered voices within our readings and will read them with an eye to the cultural politics of their historical moment. At the same time we will address the ways in which our authors interrogate and creatively redeploy the paradoxes of Petrarchism, the conventions of chivalric and pastoral romance, and certain persistent master-narratives of desire.

Tentative reading list: Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier; Machiavelli, The Prince; Edmund Spenser, Amoretti and Book III of The Faerie Queene; Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella and The Old Arcadia; Shakespeare, As You Like It; Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus;

John Webster, The White Devil.

Course requirements: Regular attendance and lively participation in class discussion; one 7 page paper; one 12-15 page paper; portfolio of e-mail responses.

ITTR 371 (3) From Fiction to Film
Ms. Della Colletta, Instructor
1530-1645 TR

This course focuses on several Italian film directors: Luchino Visconti, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the Taviani brothers. It concentrates on these directors' cinematic adaptations of seven classic narratives: James M.Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, J.L. Borges's "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero," Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Decameron, Edgar Poe's "Never Bet The Devil Your Head," Julio Cortazar's "Blow-up," and Luigi Pirandello's Novelle per un anno. We will study the literary texts combining narratological and socio-historical interpretative approaches. Then we will discuss their cinematic adaptation, concentrating on the study of film technique, comparative analyses of textual and filmic sequences, and cross-cultural
examinations of the different socio-historical contexts that produced both narratives and films.

This course is taught in English. Italian majors and graduate students will read all Italian texts in Italian; the other students may read them in English translation. All films have English subtitles. Attendance at the film screenings is mandatory.

JPTR 382/582 (3) The Modern Japanese Women Writers: Gender, Power and Sexuality
Ms. Wilson, Instructor
1400-1630 W

This course is an introduction to the Japanese female literary tradition from the early 1920s to the present. Through lectures and open discussions, we will learn about: (1) the themes and techniques of each literary text; 2) how each individual woman artist challenges and is shaped by Japanese culture and society; (3) surprising portrayals of Japanese women and men; 4) the institutions of marriage and the family; 5) their voices as cultural critics. This course also addresses several questions centered around the changing roles of and self-identity of Japanese women through an examination of their creative writings between 1920s-present: Are Japanese women as meek and voiceless as Hollywood movies and American media have traditionally portrayed them? Are Japanese women content simply being a mother and wife? How do they respond to the confinement imposed upon them by the family institution or to the political and emotional freedom given to them after World War II? How conscious are they of their gender? How do they balance gender and literary and other aspirations? Some of the readings will include writings, both literary texts and critical woks, by American women writers for the appreciation of female literary traditions between Japan and USA.

RUTR 232 (3) America Through Russian Eyes
Ms. Nafpaktitis, Instructor
1700-1750 MW

From revolution to Cold War to perestroika to post-communism, American visions of Russia have changed. Russian representations of America have been changing, too. This course explores how ideas of America are refracted through another culture's lens and grounds them within the dynamic context of Russian cultural, social, and political life.

RUTR 336 (3) 20th Century Russian Literature
Ms. Ryan, Instructor
1230-1345 TR

This course explores the rich literary culture of Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. Because modern Russian literature is inexorably linked to the historical and political context in which it was written and read, literary works examined in this course are considered in that context. All works are read in Engish translation. The list of readings includes works by Bely, Babel, Olesha, Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, Erofeev, Pelevin and others.

SATR 300 (3) Colors of Loneliness: Literature of the Diaspora
Ms. Farooqi, Instructor
1400-1515 WF

SATR 328 (3) The Ghazal: Poetry of Passionate Devotion
Ms. Farooqi, Instructor
1100-1215 TR