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Comparative Literature Courses
Fall 2009

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

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COURSES OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDENTS


CPLT 201 (3) History of European Literature I
Mr. Cantor, Instructor
1230-1345 TR
Clark 107

This course surveys European literature from its origins in Ancient Greece through the Renaissance.  As a course in literary history, it seeks to develop an understanding of period concepts, such as Medieval and Renaissance, as well as concepts of genre, such as epic, tragedy, and comedy. Readings include (sometimes in the form of selections) the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Oresteia, Oedipus, Antigone, the Aeneid, the Inferno, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Hamlet, and Don Quixote. All foreign language works will be read in English translation.  Requirements: three papers and a final examination.  Two lectures and one section meeting per week. 

 

This course is required of all Comparative Literature majors, but all interested students are welcome. It also may be counted toward the English major as three hours of “Literature in Translation.” This course will satisfy the Second Writing Requirement.

 

CPLT 3559/ GETR  3559 (1) The Dramatic Theater: Theory and Practice 

Mr. Bennett, Instructor

200-315  MW  WIL 301  

 

Reading and discussion of dramatic literature and dramatic theory from at least five major epochs:  Hellenic antiquity, English Renaissance, 17th-century France, Germany 1750-1830, and Europe from the late 19th century on.  The focus will be on theory but the readings will be mainly literary, in the form of dramas that have a strong explicit or implicit theoretical component:  e.g. The Eumenides, Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides’ Bacchae, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Hamlet, two Amphitryons (Moliere and Kleist), Danton’s Death, perhaps Schiller and Shaw on Joan of Arc, Pirandello’s Six Characters, Cocteau’s Infernal Machine, Brecht’s Mahagonny.  The exact balance between theory of drama and history/theory of the theater will be determined by the needs of the students in the course.  Graduate students will each do one presentation to the whole class.  All students will write a substantial final paper.

 

ENGN/CPLT 3559 (2)  History of Drama I:Aeschylus to Ibsen

1230-1345 TR - CABELL 123

Instructor: Lotta Löfgren

This is the first of a two-semester survey of the history of Western drama from the fifth century B.C. to the present; the first semester will take us through the nineteenth century. Aside from investigating, through a close reading of the texts, what makes for ageless drama, we will also examine the texts from several contextual perspectives. For example: How do the political, religious, and physical environments in which the plays were first performed inform our texts? How do changes in those environments affect our interpretation of those texts? Why are so many societies suspicious of the theater and of actors? How do gender issues influence text and performance? Who was the intended audience? We will travel widely throughout the Western world in the course of the semester, reading plays by Sophocles, Aristophanes, Hrotswitha, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Molière, Sheridan, Ibsen, and others. Requirements: Two shorter papers and a longer paper or a project (one option is to write your own play); a final exam.

CPLT 3590 courses are all completely different and independent from each other. They have the same root number for registration purposes, but more than one 3590 can be taken in the same semester, as long as the topic is different.

 

CPLT 3590/ GETR 3590 (1)  Nietzsche

Mr. Bennett, Instructor

1200-1250 MWF 

RFN G004C 

 

Most of Nietzsche’s major works will be read, in the best available English versions, and discussed in detail.  Secondary and corollary readings will be decided upon by the class as a whole and will be chosen to suit their needs.  A short midterm paper, on an assigned topic, and a longer final paper will be required.

 

CPLT 3590/ GETR 3590 (3) Beckett & Brecht 

Ms. Voris, Instructor

1100-1215 TR  BRN 310

 

Two of the most influential and radical writers of the 20th (and beyond) century are the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett and the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. This couse will investigate the goals, strategies, and possibilities of

a socially and politically engaged literature and theater, an approach seemingly familiar in the case of Brecht, surely absurd in the case of Beckett. But what does it mean to be "political"? Which elements and aspects of theatrical fiction other than "mere" content render a play (or text) "political"? What is the difference between political staging and staging the political? And why theater? Why do we applaud and what? Perhaps theater is an anachronism in the age of web-site culture? Or has the stage a real place in our lives/culture? What function can it have? What are its special properties? Among the plays we'll read are by Beckett Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, and Not-I; by Brecht, Baal, In the Jungle of the Cities, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti. Several of our readings will be supplemented by screening Brecht's and Beckett's own theater

productions. Requirements will include a series of short papers and presentations,

final exam.

  

CPLT 3590/ GETR  3590 (4) Freud and Literature

Ms. Martens, Instructor

1100-1215 TR  CAB 430 

 

In formulating his model of the psyche and his theory of psychoanalysis, Freud, a scientist with a vast humanistic education, availed himself of analogies drawn from various fields, including mechanics, optics, philosophy, politics--and not least, literature. Freud textualized the human mind, turning the palimpsestic stories generated by its different levels into an object of analysis. But if literature was formative for psychoanalysis, Freud's ideas in turn captured the imagination of many twentieth-century literary writers. After introducing Freud's theories through a reading of his major works, including The Interpretation of Dreams, the course will turn to literary works by post-Freudian writers, including Kafka, Schnitzler, Breton, Lawrence, and Woolf, that engage with Freud's masterplot.

Two 5-page papers; midterm examination; final examination.

No prerequisites.

CPLT 4998 Fourth Year Thesis 

TBA Pope

CPLT 8002 (3) Comparative and Transnational Studies

Mo 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM  New Cabell Hall 224

Mr. Pope, Instructor

CPLT 8002 is a required course for all students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Comparative Literature; other students are also welcome.  The course offers an overview of key arguments and debates within the field of comparative literature, transnational studies, and recent theories of world literature. Topics to be discussed include the benefits and dangers of thinking comparatively; critiques of nationalist and nativist theories of culture; the relations between comparative literature and postcolonial theory; questions of canonicity and aesthetic value; multiple modernities; theories of translation; the pedagogy of teaching courses in world literature. We will also read various examples of comparative criticism.

COURSES IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST

ENCR 3559 Theories of Reading

MoWe 3:30PM - 4:45PM New Cabell Hall 122
Ms. Felski, Instructor

This course consists of two parts. In the first half, we will survey influential models of critical interpretation:  reading as resistance, reading texts as sociopolitical allegories, structuralist modes of reading,  reading like Freud, reading deconstructively, and so on. In the second half, we will think sympathetically as well as  theoretically about other aspects of reading that are often ignored or treated with suspicion in literary studies:  identification and recognition; experiences of horror and shock; enchantment, absorption and self-loss; fanhood and the pleasure of collective reading.

ENMC 3559/MDST 3559: Hard Science Fiction
Mr. Golumbia
200-315 MW CAB 325

Contemporary film, television, digital and written examples of the genre, one based on the premise that it is constructed from "plausible" science. This class will ask whether such an idea is itself plausible, while reading a variety of texts closely in cultural and formal terms. Our primary focus as always will be the texts themselves, but we will look for patterns and themes in the works as we analyze them. In two cases we will watch texts be transformed from novel to film (Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, and Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky) and from novel to film to film (Solaris, a novel by Stanislaw Lem and films by Tarkovsky and Steven Soderbergh). We will also read authors such as Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke, and Gregory Benford, and view films such as Event Horizon, The Astronaut's Wife, and Sunshine. The course is taught primarily via discussion. Presentations, short papers, and a longer final paper. One prior class in English, Media Studies, Comparative Literature, or an appropriate topic in another discipline, or permission of instructor. Open to third years and above.

FREN 4743 - Africa in Cinema          

1100-1215

TR

CAB 242

Dramé

This course is a study of the representation of Africa in American, Western European and African films. It deals with the representations of African cultures by filmmakers from different cultural backgrounds and studies the ways in which their perspectives on Africa are often informed by their own social and ideological positions as well as the demands of exoticism. It also examines the constructions of the African as the “other” and the kinds of responses such constructions have elicited from Africa’s filmmakers. These filmic inventions are analyzed through a selection of French, British, American, and African films by such directors as John Huston, S. Pollack, J-J Annaud, M. Radford,  Ngangura  Mweze, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Souleymane Cisse, Gaston Kabore, Amadou Seck, Dani Kouyate, Brian Tilley,  Jean-Marie Teno, A. Sissako on a variety of subjects relative to the image of Africa in cinema. The final grade will be based on one mid-semester paper (select a film by an African filmmaker and provide a sequential reconstruction of the story based on the methods of P. S. Vieyra and of F. Boughédir (30%), a final paper (7-10 pages, 50%), an oral presentation and contributions to discussions (20%). Each oral presentation should contribute to the mid-semester paper and to the final research paper. The final paper should be analytical, well documented and written in clear, grammatical French using correct film terminology supplied with this description.

GETR  3590/  (3)  War Stories

1300-1350   MWF,  CHM 305                                               Ms. Bjorklund

 

 

Rather than either military history or pacifist politics, the course deals with representations of war in literature, art, and film. Beginning with excerpts from the works of classical Greek authors, the course moves quickly toGermany, notorious for its wars. Readings include Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which deals with the so-called “Great War.” English literature is represented by Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. World War II is represented in stories by the German writers Böll, Borchert, and Grass, attempting to deal with the devastations of their country and the burden of war crimes. The American perspective is represented by Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Heller’s Catch-22, and Ondaatje’s The English Patient.  For more recent US wars, letters and diaries will be considered, and we shall also screen the film Invisible Children regarding the child soldiers in Uganda. A basic text for the course is the book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. The provocative title suggests existentialist causes and consequences of war. Is war necessary to give meaning to life? What is the driving force behind war? Are there fundamental conflicts of interest between aesthetic form and real-life content? We shall seek to uncover the cognitive, emotive, and sexual motivations for human beings working out their aggressive instincts in war. The correspondence between Freud and Einstein is relevant, and Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction provides the essential underpinnings. Grading will be based on participation in class discussions (which presupposes class attendance), occasional writing assignments and short oral reports, as well as a midterm and final.

 

 

TTR 4559 Love and War: Italian Perspectives

Prof. Brendan Dooley

MWF 1:00 PM-1:50 PM

 

From medieval literature to modern cinema, the pairing of love and war has captured the attention of readers and viewers. And there is no doubt that emotion and violence are constant features of human interaction, and therefore they have been central topics of the literary (and historical) imagination.

This course investigates a range of Italian classics in translation. Since love and war are also connected to issues regarding power, sex and gender, discussion in the course will focus on insights from our understanding of these issues. Authors and texts to be discussed may include Ariosto, Tasso, Don Giovanni de’ Medici, Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Casanova, Dionisotti, Foucault, Bataille, correspondence from the Medici Archive project in Florence.

Dr. Brendan Dooley is Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jacobs University, in Bremen (Germany). He taught at Cleveland State University, Princeton, and the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

 

SPAN 4040 Translation

Mr. Pellón, Instructor

Spanish 4040 offers an introduction to the art of translation from Spanish to English.  The course is run as a workshop stressing the practice rather than the theory of translation.  There are brief translation assignments for each meeting and they are discussed in class.  In consultation with the course instructor, each student chooses a text to research and translate as their final project (no more than 15 pages long).  During the second half of the course, class meetings are devoted to the joint discussion of each student’s project as it progresses.
 
Texts:

  • Jack Child.  Introduction to Spanish Translation.
  • John Biguenet and Rainier Schulte, eds.  The Craft of Translation.
  • Texts for translation assignments in Collab.


J-Term 2010

SLAV 2250 (J-Term)  THE DARK SIDE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: BETWEEN AUSCHWITZ AND THE GULAG

Dariusz Tolczyk, Instructor

The twentieth century was a period of humanity's unprecedented progress as well as its greatest recorded downfall into barbarity, genocide, and mass oppression.  This course will enable us to reflect on the latter. For this purpose, we will confront a selection of short literary and cinematic testimonies to the most extreme experiences of evil perpetrated by twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.  The readings and films explore horrors of communism and Nazism. We will discuss the history of totalitarian evil and its intellectual, cultural and psychological roots (racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, radical nationalism, and radical utopianism). We will ask, What can we learn from these accounts about human nature of humanity in extremis?  Do humans possess a unique capacity to be motivated by moral values even under the most dehumanizing conditions? Why and how do we want to remember traumatic experiences of the twentieth century? Do we?

Readings include: Varlam Shalamov, The Kolyma Tales, Lydia Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna, Elie Wiesel, Night, Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Zhang Xianliang, Grass Soup. Films include: Solovki Power (documentary, Maina Goldovskaya, dir.), Danton (Andrzej Wajda, dir.), Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov, dir.), Korczak  (Andrzej Wajda, dr.), Interrogation (Ryszard Bugajski, dir.) The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe, dir.).

 
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