Bryn Mawr College

Contact Us

Maria Cristina Quintero
Bryn Mawr College
(610)526-5080
mquinter@brynmawr.edu

Israel Burshatin
Haverford College
(610)896-1065
iburshat@haverford.edu

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Core Course List

NOTE: Please note that not all topics courses (B223, 209, 321, 325, 326, 340) count toward COML elective requirements. See adviser.

This page displays the schedule of Bryn Mawr courses in this department for this academic year. It also displays descriptions of courses offered by the department during the last four academic years.

For information about courses offered by other Bryn Mawr departments and programs or about courses offered by Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, please consult the Course Guides page.

For information about the Academic Calendar, including the dates of first and second quarter courses, please visit the College's master calendar.

Spring 2012

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
COML B222-001	Aesthetics: The Nature and Experience of Art	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM T	Russian Center Seminar Room	Krausz,M.
COML B223-001	Topics In German Cultural Studies: Kafka's Prague	Semester / 1	LEC: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW	Thomas Hall 118	Kenosian,D.
COML B225-001	Censorship: Historical Contexts, Local Practices and Global Resonance	Semester / 1	LEC: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH	Dalton Hall 212A	Seyhan,A., Seyhan,A.
			Film: 4:30 PM- 7:00 PM TH	Thomas Hall 224
COML B237-001	The Dictator Novel in the Americas	Semester / 1	LEC: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW	English House Lecture Hall	Harford Vargas,J.
COML B261-001	The Russian Anti-Novel	Semester / 1	Lab/Lec: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM TH	Russian Center Conference Room	Allen,E.
COML B321-001	Advanced Topics in German Cultural Studies: The Trans Cosmo of Swiss Lit	Semester / 1	LEC: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM W	Thomas Hall 104	Seyhan,A., Werlen,H.
COML B323-001	Culture and Interpretation	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM W	Bettws Y Coed 100	Krausz,M.
COML B350-001	Voix médiévales et échos modernes	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM M	Thomas Hall 111	Armstrong,G.
COML B399-001	Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature	Semester / 1	Lab/Lec: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM T	Taylor Hall C	Dept. staff, TBA
COML B403-001	Supervised Work	Semester / 1			Dept. staff, TBA
COML B403-001	Supervised Work	Semester / 1			Dept. staff, TBA

Fall 2012

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
COML B220-001	Writing the Self in the Middle Ages	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH	Carpenter Library 17	Conybeare,C.
COML B223-001	Topics In German Cultural Studies: Crime and Detection in German Literature and Cultu	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW	Dalton Hall 10	Schlipphacke,H.
COML B260-001	Ariel/Caliban y el discurso americano	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:30 PM- 4:00 PM MW	Thomas Hall 102	Sacerio-Garí,E.
COML B266-001	Travel and Transgression	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW	English House II	Taylor,J.
COML B271-001	Litertura y delincuencia: explorando la novela picaresca	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	Thomas Hall 118	Gastanaga,J.
COML B274-001	From Myth to Modern Cinema: From Dionysus to the Silver Screen: Greek Tragedy in Contemporary Film	Semester / 1	LEC: 1:00 PM- 2:30 PM MW	Taylor Hall B	Baertschi,A.
COML B279-001	Introduction to African Literature	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH	English House I	Beard,L.
COML B293-001	The Play of Interpretation	Semester / 1	Lecture: 2:15 PM- 3:45 PM TTH	Dalton Hall 212A	Seyhan,A.
COML B323-001	Culture and Interpretation	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM T	Thomas Hall 251	Krausz,M.
COML B325-001	Etudes avancées	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:00 PM- 2:00 PM W	Taylor Hall, Seminar Room	Mahuzier,B.
COML B340-001	Topics in Baroque Art: Costume and Consumer Culture	Semester / 1	LEC: 2:00 PM- 4:00 PM TH	Carpenter Library 15	McKim-Smith,G.
COML B398-001	Theories and Methods in Comparative Literature	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM W	Dalton Hall 212A	Dept. staff, TBA

Spring 2013

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/ UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
COML B200-001	Introduction to Comparative Literature	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH	Dalton Hall 10	Quintero,M.
COML B231-001	Cultural Profiles in Modern Exile	Semester / 1	Lecture: 11:15 AM-12:45 PM TTH	Taylor Hall, Seminar Room	Seyhan,A.
COML B245-001	Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture: A History of Queer Bodies	Semester / 1	Lecture: 7:00 PM- 9:30 PM M	Carpenter Library 15	Schlipphacke,H.
COML B302-001	Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts	Semester / 1	Lecture: 12:00 PM- 2:00 PM W	Taylor Hall B	Armstrong,G.
COML B306-001	Film Theory	Semester / 1	Lecture: 1:00 PM- 3:30 PM F	Carpenter Library 25	Levine,S.
COML B345-001	Topics in Narrative Theory: Theory of the Ethnic Novel	Semester / 1	LEC: 12:45 PM- 2:15 PM TTH	English House I	Harford Vargas,J.
COML B365-001	Erotica: Love and Art in Plato and Shakespeare	Semester / 1	LEC: 1:00 PM- 4:00 PM T	English House II	Hedley,J., Salkever,S.
COML B388-001	Contemporary African Fiction	Semester / 1	Lecture: 9:45 AM-11:15 AM TTH	English House I	Beard,L.
COML B399-001	Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature	Semester / 1	Lecture: Date/Time TBA		Dept. staff, TBA

Haverford Fall 2011 Course List

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	INSTRUCTOR(S)
COMLH205A01	Legends of Arthur	Semester 1/1	TTh 2:30-4:00	Maud McInerney
COMLH214A01	Writing the Nation: 19th-Century Literature in Latin America	Semester 1/1	TTh 2:30-4:00	Ariana Huberman
COMLH223A01	Working Through the Holocaust Past in German Drama & Film	Semester 1/1	T 7:30pm-10:00pm	Imke Brust
COMLH228A01	The Logos and the Tao	Semester 1/1	TTh 10:00-11:30	Kathleen Wright
COMLH248A01	The Quran	Semester 1/1	TTh 1:00-2:30	Travis Zadeh
COMLH293A01	Translation and other Transformations: Theory and Practice	Semester 1/1	MW 12:30-2:00	Deborah Roberts
COMLH301A01	Topics in Middle English: Sex & Gender in the Middle Ages	Semester 1/1	MW 12:30-2:00	Maud McInerney
COMLH312A01	Advanced Topics: Pascal entre les disciplines	Semester 1/1	T 1:30-4:00	David Sedley
COMLH321A01	Literature & Media: From Print Culture to Web 2.0	Semester 1/1	M 7:30-10:00pm	Henning Wrage
COMLH322A01	Politics of Memory in Latin America	Semester 1/1	MW 2:30-4:00	Aurelia Gomez Unamuno
COMLH351A01	Writing and Social Construction of Subjectivity	Semester 1/1	F 1:30-4:00	Zolani Ngwane
COMLH377A01	Problems in Postcolonial Literature	Semester 1/1	TTh 11:30-1:00	Rajeswari Mohan
COMLH398A01	Theories and Methods in Comparative Literature	Semester 1/1	M 7:30-10:00pm	Israel Burshatin

Haverford Spring 2012 Course List

COURSE	TITLE	SCHEDULE/UNITS	MEETING TYPE TIMES/DAYS	LOCATION	INSTRUCTOR(S)
COMLH200B01	Introduction to Comparative Literature	Semester 2/1	TTh 1:00-2:30		Travis Zadeh
COMLH215B01	Tales of Troy	Semester 2/1	TTh 10:00-11:30		Bret Mulligan
COMLH222B01	Rethinking Latin America in Contemporary Narrative	Semester 2/1	TTh 1:00-2:30		Aurelia Gomez Unamuno
COMLH224B01	Political Action in Greek and Latin Literature	Semester 2/1	TTh 2:30-4:00		Danielle La Londe
COMLH229B01	Topics in Rhetorical Theory: Roland Barthes and the Image	Semester 2/1	TTh 10:00-11:30	Stokes 102	John Muse
COMLH235B01	Spanish American Theater	Semester 2/1	W 1:30-4:00		Graciela Michelotti
COMLH250B01	Words and Music	Semester 2/1	TTh 1:00-2:30	Mcrt	Andrew Oster
COMLH262B01	European Film	Semester 2/1	MW 12:30-2:00		Imke Brust
COMLH278B01	Christian Thought from Modernity to Post- modernity	Semester 2/1	TTh 10:00-11:30		Jennifer Heckart
COMLH312B01	La revolution haitienne: Historiographie et imaginaire	Semester 2/1	W 1:30-4:00		Koffi Anyinefa
COMLH321B01	Topics in German Literature	Semester 2/1	M 7:30-10:00pm		Henning Wrage
COMLH352B01	Topics in the Philosophy of Language: Metaphor, Meaning, and the Dialogical Mind	Semester 2/1	TTh 11:30-1:00		Ashok Gangadean
COMLH357B01	Topics in Aesthetics: The Apolline and the Dionysiac Creative Drives	Semester 2/1	TTh 10:00-11:30		Kathleen Wright

2012-13 Catalog Data

COML B200 Introduction to Comparative Literature Spring 2013 This course explores a variety of approaches to the comparative or transnational study of literature through readings of several kinds: texts from different cultural traditions that raise questions about the nature and function of storytelling and literature; texts that comment on, respond to, and rewrite other texts from different historical periods and nations; translations; and readings in critical theory. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

COML B209 Introduction to Literary Analysis: Philosophical Approaches to Criticism Not offered 2012-13 Designated theory course. An introduction to various methods of reading the literary text from the perspective of critical methods informed by philosophical ideas. In their quest for self-understanding and knowledge, literature and philosophy share similar forms of inquiry and imaginative modeling. Selected literary texts and critical essays focus on questions of language, translation, understanding, and identity in their relation to history, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. One of the main objectives of the course is to provide students with the critical tools necessary for an informed reading of texts. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as GERM B209 Cross-listed as PHIL B209

COML B211 Primo Levi, the Holocaust and Its Aftermath Not offered 2012-13 A consideration, through analysis and appreciation of his major works, of how the horrific experience of the Holocaust awakened in Primo Levi a growing awareness of his Jewish heritage and led him to become one of the dominant voices of that tragic historical event, as well as one of the most original new literary figures of post-World War II Italy. Always in relation to Levi and his works, attention will also be given to other Italian women writers whose works are also connected with the Holocaust. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ITAL B211 Cross-listed as HEBR B211

COML B212 Borges y sus lectores Not offered 2012-13 Primary emphasis on Borges and his poetics of reading; other writers are considered to illustrate the semiotics of texts, society, and traditions Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as SPAN B211

COML B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities Not offered 2012-13 Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ITAL B213 Cross-listed as ENGL B213

COML B220 Writing the Self in the Middle Ages Fall 2012 A consideration, through analysis and appreciation of his major works, of how the horrific experience of the Holocaust awakened in Primo Levi a growing awareness of his Jewish heritage and led him to become one of the dominant voices of that tragic historical event, as well as one of the most original new literary figures of post-World War II Italy. Always in relation to Levi and his works, attention will also be given to other Italian women writers whose works are also connected with the Holocaust. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as CSTS B220 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B222 Aesthetics: The Nature and Experience of Art Not offered 2012-13 Here are some questions we will discuss in this course: What sort of thing is a work of art? Can criticism in the arts be objective? Do such cultural entities answer to more than one admissible interpretation? What is the role of a creator's intentions in fixing upon admissible interpretations? What is the nature of aesthetic experience? What is creativity in the arts? Readings will be drawn from contemporary sources from the analytic and continental traditions, including John Dewey's Art as Experience, and works in Gary Iseminger, ed., Intention and Interpretation. Prerequisite: One introductory course in philosophy. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as PHIL B222

COML B223 Topics In German Cultural Studies
Section 001 (Fall 2012): Crime and Detection in German Literature and Cultu
Section 001 (Spring 2012): Kafka's Prague Fall 2012 This is a topic course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as GERM B223 Cross-listed as CITY B247

COML B225 Censorship: Historical Contexts, Local Practices and Global Resonance Not offered 2012-13 This course examines the ban on books and art in the US, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe through a study of the historical, political, and sociocultural conditions of censorship practices and the rhetorical strategies writers and artists use to translate repression and trauma into idioms of resistance. Prerequisite: EMLY B001 or a 100-level intensive writing course. Division III: Humanities Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC) Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures Counts toward Middle East Studies

COML B231 Cultural Profiles in Modern Exile Spring 2013 This course investigates the anthropological, philosophical, psychological, cultural, and literary aspects of modern exile. It studies exile as experience and metaphor in the context of modernity, and examines the structure of the relationship between imagined/remembered homelands and transnational identities, and the dialectics of language loss and bi- and multi-lingualism. Particular attention is given to the psychocultural dimensions of linguistic exclusion and loss. Readings of works by Julia Alvarez, Anita Desai, Sigmund Freud, Milan Kundera, Friedrich Nietzsche, Salman Rushdie, and others. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as GERM B231 Cross-listed as ANTH B231 Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures Counts toward International Studies Major

COML B234 Postcolonial Literature in English Not offered 2012-13 This course will survey a broad range of novels and poems written while countries were breaking free of British colonial rule. Readings will also include cultural theorists interested in defining literary issues that arise from the postcolonial situation. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B234

COML B237 The Dictator Novel in the Americas Not offered 2012-13 This course examines representations of dictatorship in Latin American and Latina/o novels. We will explore the relationship between narrative form and absolute power by analyzing the literary techniques writers use to contest authoritarianism. We will compare dictator novels from the United States, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Southern Cone. Prerequisite: only for students wishing to take the course for major/minor credit in SPAN is SPAN B200/B202. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ENGL B237 Cross-listed as SPAN B237 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures

COML B238 The History of Cinema 1895 to 1945 Silent Film: From United States to Soviet Russia and Beyond Not offered 2012-13 This course will explore cinema from its earliest, most primitive beginnings up to the end of the silent era. While the course will focus on a variety of historical and theoretical aspects of cinema, the primary aim is to look at films analytically. Emphasis will be on the various artistic methods that went into the direction and production of a variety of celebrated silent films from around the world. These films will be considered in many contexts: artistic, historical, social, and even philosophical, so that students can develop a deeper understanding of silent cinema's rapid evolution. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B238 Cross-listed as HART B238 Counts toward Film Studies

COML B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture
Section 001 (Spring 2013): A History of Queer Bodies
Section 001 (Fall 2011): Sexuality & Gender in German Literature & Film Spring 2013 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as GERM B245 Cross-listed as ENGL B260 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B248 The Reception of Classics in the Hispanic World Not offered 2012-13 A survey of the reception of Classical literature in the Spanish-speaking world. We read select literary works in translation, ranging from Renaissance Spain to contemporary Latin America, side-by-side with their classical models, to examine what is culturally unique about their choice of authors, themes, and adaptation of the material. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as CSTS B248 Cross-listed as SPAN B248 Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures

COML B251 Romantic Prose Fiction Not offered 2012-13 This seminar studies representative works of Romantic poetry's "poor relation"--prose fiction. Readings include novels from England, France, Germany and Russia, such as Frankenstein, A Hero of Our Time, The Red and the Black, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Wuthering Heights, as well as short stories. Discussions include such topics as national varieties of Romanticism, the Romantic ideals of nature, love and the self, and the impact of the revolutionary era on art. Illustrative examples of Romantic painting and music are also considered. All readings and discussions in English. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

COML B257 The Realist Novel Revisited Not offered 2012-13 This seminar undertakes the study of a deceptively simple cultural and literary historical concept--realism--by closely reading well-known 19th-century novels by George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Theodor Fontane, Henry James, Stendhal, Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, all of which have traditionally been placed within realism's parameters. Critical essays exploring the nature of realism, either in general or in a particular author's works, are also discussed. The ethical implications of the realist enterprise and, more broadly, the possible relations between art and life receive special scrutiny. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

COML B260 Ariel/Caliban y el discurso americano Fall 2012 A study of the transformations of Ariel/Calibán as images of Latin American culture. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Inquiry into the Past (IP) Cross-listed as SPAN B260 Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures

COML B261 The Russian Anti-Novel Not offered 2012-13 A study of 19th- and 20th-century Russian novels focusing on their strategies of opposing or circumventing European literary conventions. Works by Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Pushkin, and Tolstoy, are compared to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and other exemplars of the Western novelistic tradition. All readings, lectures, and discussions in English. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as RUSS B261

COML B266 Travel and Transgression Fall 2012 Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B266

COML B271 Litertura y delincuencia: explorando la novela picaresca Fall 2012 Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as SPAN B270

COML B274 From Myth to Modern Cinema: From Dionysus to the Silver Screen
Section 001 (Fall 2012): Greek Tragedy in Contemporary Film Fall 2012 Explores how contemporary film, which is, like Greek drama, a creative medium appealing to the entire demographic spectrum, looks back to the ancient origins. In addition to literary-historical interpretation, the course will involve various methodological approaches such as film and gender theory, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory.
Current topic description: This course explores how contemporary film, a creative medium appealing to the entire demographic spectrum like Greek drama, looks back to the ancient origins. Examining both films that are directly based on Greek plays and films that make use of classical material without being explicitly classical in plot or setting, we will discuss how Greek mythology is rewritten, re-assessed and appropriated for modern audiences and how the classical past continues to be culturally significant. In addition to literary-historical interpretation, particular attention will be paid to feminist theory, film and gender studies, and psychoanalysis. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as CSTS B274

COML B278 Reading the Middle East Not offered 2012-13 This course examines major themes in modern Middle Eastern literatures through selected prose works by prominent modern writers in translation from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish. Topics include tradition versus modernity, gender and the family, the individual and the state, and the impact of regional conflict. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI)

COML B279 Introduction to African Literature Fall 2012 This course examines major themes in modern Middle Eastern literatures through selected prose works by prominent modern writers in translation from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish. Topics include tradition versus modernity, gender and the family, the individual and the state, and the impact of regional conflict. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ENGL B279 Counts toward Africana Studies

COML B293 The Play of Interpretation Fall 2012 Designated theory course. A study of the methodologies and regimes of interpretation in the arts, humanistic sciences, and media and cultural studies, this course focuses on common problems of text, authorship, reader/spectator, and translation in their historical and formal contexts. Literary, oral, and visual texts from different cultural traditions and histories will be studied through interpretive approaches informed by modern critical theories. Readings in literature, philosophy, popular culture, and film will illustrate how theory enhances our understanding of the complexities of history, memory, identity, and the trials of modernity. Division III: Humanities Critical Interpretation (CI) Cross-listed as ENGL B292 Cross-listed as PHIL B293 Counts toward International Studies Major

COML B302 Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts Spring 2013 This study of selected women authors from the French Middle Ages, Renaissance and Classical periods--among them, Marie de France, the trobairitz, Christine de Pisan, Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, and Madame de Lafayette--examines the way in which they appropriate and transform the male writing tradition and define themselves as self-conscious artists within or outside it. Particular attention will be paid to identifying recurring concerns and structures in their works, and to assessing their importance to female writing: among them, the poetics of silence, reproduction as a metaphor for artistic creation, and sociopolitical engagement. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as FREN B302 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B306 Film Theory Spring 2013 An introduction to major developments in film theory and criticism. Topics covered include: the specificity of film form; cinematic realism; the cinematic "author"; the politics and ideology of cinema; the relation between cinema and language; spectatorship, identification, and subjectivity; archival and historical problems in film studies; the relation between film studies and other disciplines of aesthetic and social criticism. Each week of the syllabus pairs critical writing(s) on a central principle of film analysis with a cinematic example. Class will be divided between discussion of critical texts and attempts to apply them to a primary cinematic text. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B306 Cross-listed as HART B306 Counts toward Film Studies

COML B310 Genres of Italian Popular Fiction in a Comparative Context Not offered 2012-13 This course explores the Italian "giallo" (detective fiction), today one of the most successful literary genres among Italian readers and authors alike. Through a comparative perspective, the course will analyze not only the inter-relationship between this popular genre and "high literature," but also the role of detective fiction as a mirror of social anxieties. In Spring 2011, ITAL B310 will be offered in English. Italian majors taking this course for Italian credit will be required to meet for an additional hour with the instructor and to do the readings and writing in Italian. Prerequisites: one literature course at the 200 level. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ITAL B310

COML B312 Crimen y detectives en la narrativa hispánica contemporánea Not offered 2012-13 An analysis of the rise of the hardboiled genre in contemporary Hispanic narrative and its contrast to classic detective fiction, as a context for understanding contemporary Spanish and Latin American culture. Discussion of pertinent theoretical implications and the social and political factors that contributed to the genre's evolution and popularity. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as SPAN B311

COML B313 Classical Bodies Not offered 2012-13 An examination of the conceptions of the human body evidenced in Greek and Roman art and literature, with emphasis on issues that have persisted in the Western tradition. Topics include the fashioning of concepts of male and female standards of beauty and their implications; conventions of visual representation; the nude; clothing and its symbolism; the athletic ideal; physiognomy; medical theory and practice; the visible expression of character and emotions; and the formulation of the "classical ideal" in antiquity and later times. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ARCH B303 Cross-listed as HART B305 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B314 Troilus and Criseyde Not offered 2012-13 Examines Chaucer's magisterial Troilus and Criseyde, his epic romance of love, loss, and betrayal. We will supplement sustained analysis of the poem with primary readings on free will and courtly love as well as theoretical readings on gender and sexuality and translation. We will also read Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Cross-listed as ENGL B314 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B321 Advanced Topics in German Cultural Studies
Section 001 (Spring 2012): The Trans Cosmo of Swiss Lit Not offered 2012-13 This is a topics course. Course content varies. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as GERM B321 Cross-listed as CITY B319 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B322 Queens, Nuns, and Other Deviants in the Early Modern Iberian World Not offered 2012-13 The course examines literary, historical, and legal texts from the early modern Iberian world (Spain, Mexico, Peru) through the lens of gender studies. The course is divided around three topics: royal bodies (women in power), cloistered bodies (women in the convent), and delinquent bodies (figures who defy legal and gender normativity). Course is taught in English and is open to all juniors or seniors who have taken at least one 200-level course in a literature department. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as SPAN B322 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures

COML B323 Culture and Interpretation Fall 2012 This course will pursue such questions as the following. For all objects of interpretation--including works of art, music, literature, persons or cultures--must there be a single right interpretation? If not, what is to prevent one from sliding into an interpretive anarchism? Does interpretation affect the nature or the number of an object of interpretation? Does the singularity or multiplicity of interpretations mandate such ontologies as realism or constructivism? Discussions will be based on contemporary readings. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as PHIL B323 Counts toward International Studies Major

COML B325 Etudes avancées Fall 2012 An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilisation. The seminar topic rotates among many subjects: La Révolution frantaise: histoire, littérature et culture; L'Environnement naturel dans la culture française; Mal et valeurs éthiques; Le Cinéma et la politique, 1940-1968; Le Nationalisme en France et dans les pays francophones; Etude socio-culturelle des arts du manger en France du Moyen Age à nos jours.
Current topic description: A historical, social and anthropological approach to religion(s) through literature in post-revolutionary France. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as FREN B325

COML B326 Etudes avancées Not offered 2012-13 An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilisation. The seminar topic rotates among many subjects: La Révolution frantaise: histoire, littérature et culture; L'Environnement naturel dans la culture frantaise; Mal et valeurs éthiques; Le Cinéma et la politique, 1940-1968; Le Nationalisme en France et dans les pays francophones; Etude socio-culturelle des arts du manger en France du Moyen Age à nos jours. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as FREN B326

COML B340 Topics in Baroque Art
Section 001 (Fall 2012): Costume and Consumer Culture Fall 2012 This is a topics course. Course content varies.
Current topic description: The course considers costume and fashion from the perspective of visual and cultural studies, combined with a historical acknowledgment of consumerism. Representations of costume in Europe and Latin America from the fifteenth century forward to the present day. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as HART B340 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B345 Topics in Narrative Theory
Section 001 (Fall 2011): Theory of the Ethnic Novel
Section 001 (Spring 2013): Theory of the Ethnic Novel Spring 2013 Narrative theory through the lens of a specific genre, period or style of writing. Recent topics include Victorian Novels and Ethnic Novels.
Current topic description: This course traces the development of the U.S. ethnic novel. We will examine novels by Native Americans, Chicana/os, and African Americans, focusing on key formal innovations in their respective traditions. In addition, we will become versed in key concepts developed by narrative theorists to understand the genre of the novel. Cross-listed as ENGL B345 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies Counts toward Latin Amer/Latino/Iberian Peoples & Cultures

COML B350 Voix médiévales et échos modernes Not offered 2012-13 A study of selected 19th- and 20th-century works inspired by medieval subjects, such as the Grail and Arthurian legends and the Tristan and Yseut stories, and by medieval genres, such as the roman, saints' lives, or the miracle play. Included are works by Bonnefoy, Cocteau, Flaubert, Genevoix, Giono, Gracq, Hugo, and Yourcenar. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as FREN B350

COML B351 Medieval Encounters in Contemporary Fiction Not offered 2012-13 Muslim, Christian and Jewish relations, particularly in the medieval period, have occupied a number of recent works of fiction in English and other languages. Why that subject has so captured the literary imagination and how individual authors treat it are the central issues the course aims to ad-dress. Selected works of fiction will serve as entry points into questions of how different religious communities interacted with and perceived one another before modern times. Another goal of the course is to make students think about how works of historical fiction serve to shape as well as to challenge current religious sensibilities. Division III: Humanities

COML B365 Erotica: Love and Art in Plato and Shakespeare Spring 2013 The course explores the relationship between love and art, "eros" and "poesis," through in-depth study of Plato's "Phaedus" and "Symposium," Shakespeare's "As You Like It" and "Antony and Cleopatra," and essays by modern commentators (including David Halperin, Anne Carson, Martha Nussbaum, Marjorie Garber, and Stanley Cavell). We will also read Shakespeare's Sonnets and "Romeo and Juliet." Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B365 Cross-listed as PHIL B365 Counts toward Gender and Sexuality Studies

COML B375 Interpreting Mythology Not offered 2012-13 The myths of the Greeks have provoked outrage and fascination, interpretation and retelling, censorship and elaboration, beginning with the Greeks themselves. We will see how some of these stories have been read and understood, recounted and revised, in various cultures and eras, from ancient tellings to modern movies. We will also explore some of the interpretive theories by which these tales have been understood, from ancient allegory to modern structural and semiotic theories. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as CSTS B375

COML B388 Contemporary African Fiction Spring 2013 Noting that the official colonial independence of most African countries dates back only half a century, this course focuses on the fictive experiments of the most recent decade. A few highly controversial works from the 90's serve as an introduction to very recent work. Most works are in English. To experience depth as well as breadth, there is a small cluster of works from South Africa. With novels and tales from elsewhere on the huge African continent, we will get a glimpse of "living in the present" in history and letters. Division III: Humanities Cross-listed as ENGL B388 Counts toward Africana Studies

COML B398 Theories and Methods in Comparative Literature This course, required of all senior comparative literature majors in preparation for writing the senior thesis in the spring semester, has a twofold purpose: to review interpretive approaches informed by critical theories that enhance our understanding of literary and cultural texts; and to help students prepare a preliminary outline of their senior theses. Throughout the semester, students research theoretical paradigms that bear on their own comparative thesis topics in order to situate those topics in an appropriate critical context.

COML B399 Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature Thesis writing seminar. Research methods.

COML B403 Supervised Work

Haverford Comp Lit Course Descriptions

200b. Introduction to Comparative Literature
(Zadeh)
The course offers a comprehensive reconstruction of literature from the Renaissance period to the present, by focusing on a) the changing relationship between literature and religion, b) the construction of identities (class, gender, race), c) the representation of history, and d) models of literary self-referentiality. In addition, the class will introduce a variety of literary and cultural theories necessary for the analysis of (non)fictional texts.

203b. Writing the Jewish Trajectories in Latin American
(Michelotti; cross-listed as Spanish 203b) E
"Jewish Gauchos," "Tropical Synagogues," "Poncho and Talmud," "Matza and Mate." This course will examine the native and diasporic worlds described in the apparent dichotomies that come together in the Latin American Jewish Literature. The class will trace the different trajectories of time, space and gender of the Jewish experience in Latin America, where issues of migration, memory and hybridization come to life through poetry, narrative and drama. Prerequisite: Spanish 102, placement, or consent.

205a 01. Studies in the Spanish American Novel
(cross-listed as Spanish 205a) E
Introduction to selected short 20th-century Spanish-American short stories and novels. .

205a. Legends of Arthur
(McInerney; cross-listed as English 205b) E
An exploration of the Arthurian legend, from its earliest versions to most recent retellings. The tradition of Arthurian tales is complex and various, combining Celtic and Christian mythologies. Sometimes called the "matter of Britain" the Arthurian narrative has been critical in establishing national and ethnic identities ever since the Middle Ages. Medival notions of chivalry and courtly love also raise fascinating questions about the conflict between personal and private morality, and about the construction of both identity and gender.

207b. Fictions of Spanish American History
(Castillo-Sandoval; cross-listed as Spanish 207b) E
The relationship between history and literature in Spanish America through examination and comparison of selected historiographical and literary texts. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which historical and literary genres have interacted and influenced one another from the Discovery and Conquest through the Independence and national formation periods and the 20th century. Prerequisite: Spanish 102, placement, or consent of the instructor.

208a. Museum Anthropology
(Gillette; cross-listed as Anthropology 208a) E
What kinds of uses, values, and meanings do people attribute to objects? Why do museums exist as special sites for housing objects? What do museums do to objects, how, and why? This course is a comparative and historical introduction to museums and objects, and an overview of the kinds of things anthropologists do in and around museums. Students conduct research on museums (museums as the object of research) and museum research (research as museum professionals). Offered occasionally.

210b. Spanish and Spanish-American Film Studies
(Michelotti; cross-listed as Spanish 210b) E
Exploration of films in Spanish from both sides of the Atlantic. The course will discuss approximately one movie per class, from a variety of classic and more recent directors such as Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Pedro Almodóvar, Lucrecia Martel among others. The class will focus on the cinematic discourse as well as the cultural and historic background of each film. The course will also provide advanced language training with particular emphasis in refining oral and writing skills. Prerequisite: Span 102, placement, or consent.

211b. Introduction to Post-Colonial Literature
(Mohan; cross-listed as English 211b) E
An introductory survey of English literature from regions that used to be part of the British Empire, focusing on topics such as the representation of first contact, the influence of western education and the English language, and the effects of colonial violence, displacement, migration, and exile; consideration of specific aesthetic strategies that have come to be associated with this body of literature. Typically offered in alternate years.

212a. The Classical Tradition in Western Literature
(Roberts; cross-listed as Classical Studies 212a) E
An exploration of the uses of Greek and Latin literature in later writers, with attention to particularly influential ancient authors (Homer, Vergil, Ovid, and others), to a range of modern authors, and to the varieties of literary influence and intertextuality. Offered occasionally.

213b 01. Approches critiques
(Higginson; cross-listed as French and French Studies 213b) E/T
This seminar provides exposure to influential 20th-century French thinkers. It will examine three major currents: Postcolonial Theory; Feminist Theory; Post-Structuralist Theory. The primary goal here is to introduce students to exciting and difficult critical thought that will prove useful to their future studies and will begin to develop necessary critical skills. While the materials covered are primarily grounded in French intellectual history the course will also spend time situating these intellectual currents in broader transnational and transdisciplinary contexts. In other words, while "French" and "Francophone" centered, this course is explicitly designed to serve students in the humanities, regardless of field. This is a required course for the French major. Course taught in English and serving the humanities.

213b 02. Tragedy and the Tragic: Suffering, Representation, and Response
(Roberts; cross-listed as Classical Studies 213b) E
This course, an exploration of tragedy and the tragic from ancient Greece to the present, is concerned with tragedy as a kind of drama, with the idea of the tragic as manifested in a variety of cultural contexts and forms, and with critiques of tragedy. Offered occasionally.

214a. Writing the Nation: 19th-Century Literature in Latin America
(Huberman; cross-listed as Spanish 214a) E
An examination of seminal literary texts written in Latin America in the nineteenth century. Novels, essays, travelogues, short stories, miscellaneous texts, and poetry will be analyzed and placed in the context of the process of nation-building that took place after Independence from Spain. A goal of the course will be to establish and define the nexus between the textual and ideological formations of 19th-century writings in Latin America and their counterparts in the 20th-century.

215a. Tales of Troy
(Mulligan; cross-listed as Classical Studies 215a) E
An introduction to the myth of the Trojan War and its role in the history of western literature and culture, focusing on the development and adaptation of the myth in literature, art, music, and film from antiquity to the present day.

220b. The Epic in English
(McInerney; cross-listed as English 220b) E
An exploration of the long narrative poems that shape the epic tradition in anglophone literature. Readings in classical epic and medieval epic, Milton, Romantic epics and the modern aftermath of epic.

222b. Rethinking Latin America in Contemporary Narrative
(Gomez-Unamuno; cross-listed as Spanish 222b) E
This course explores literary texts and films produced after the 80's. These texts address political issues including memory, gender, violence, and border, and destabilize foundational identities and mythic representations found in the Latin American Boom narrative.

223a. Working Through the Holocaust Past in German Drama & Film
(Brust; cross-listed as German 223a) E
This course will provide a historical overview of the Holocaust, its origins, process, and outcomes, and how it has served as a mental map for the construction of contemporary German national identity. In this context, we will explore such topics as notions of memory, collective guilt, trauma, and mourning. In addition, the course will critically engage issues of portrayal and representation of historical memory within the context of Holocaust commemoration by discussing several different plays and films that can be contextualized within the German Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (working through the past). Lastly, this course will also explore the tragedy and remembrance of the Holocaust as a transnational phenomenon in the contemporary world. The course is taught in English with an extra session in German.

224b. Political Action in Greek and Latin Literature
(La Londe; Cross-listed as Classical Studies 224b) E
An examination of political action in classical literature as an avenue of ancient political thought. The course explores the ever-changing relationship between individual participation and the body politic in Greek and Roman epic, drama, history, and philosophy

228a. The Logos and the Tao
(Wright; cross-listed as Philosophy 228a and East Asian Studies 228a) E
Foucault and Derrida agree with Heidegger that what in Chinese philosophy is called “dao is thoughtlessly translated as ‘reason, mind, raison, meaning, logos.’” However, Foucault and Derrida do not attempt to bridge the difference between logos and dao and thus dao is and remains “the other” of what in the West is called logos. In this course, we will examine how Heidegger instead takes up the task of bridging this difference by calling fundamentally into question what the West has called “thinking” or logos.

229b Topics in Rhetorical Theory: Roland Barthes and the Image
(Muse; cross-listed as ICPR 229b) T
An exploration of the rhetoric of visual culture through an examination of 20th century French critic Roland Barthes' many writings on photography, film, and what he calls the "civilized code of perfect illusions." We will spend the semester reading his texts, charting the trajectory of a career that begins with the euphoria of an ever-expanding semiotic and ends with a meditation on the limits of this very project.

235b. Spanish-American Theater
(Michelotti; cross-listed as Spanish 235) E
An exploration of various plays produced during the 20th Century in different Latin American countries and the US in the context of major theatrical movements and central themes in Latin American culture and history. The readings will include works by female and male playwrights. When possible, there will be a correlation with films, based on the plays discussed in class. The students will also be encouraged to perform in class chosen acts or scenes from one or more of the plays analyzed during the semester.

240b As the World Turned: Milton and Early Modern Revolutions
(Sedley; cross-listed as English 240b) E
A study of John Milton's major poems and prose in their historical contexts, with particular attention to Milton's engagements with aesthetic, scientific, and political inventions of the seventeenth century. Prerequisite: Freshman Writing.

241a. The Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area
(Hart; cross-listed as Anthropology 241a) E
This course focuses on pluralism and cultural interaction in circum-Mediterranean societies. It includes such topics as: orientalism and the problematics and politics of ethnographic production in and on peripheral societies; the use and abuse of concepts of cultural continuity; ethno-religious interaction in rural and urban settings; imperial legacies and nation-state ideologies in 21st century cultural politics; local and transnational economic systems; migration patterns, conflicts, and contemporary social transformations. Typically offered in alternate years.

243b. 18th C. Lit: Trans.-Atlantic Exchanges: Conversion & Revolution in Britain
(Staff; cross-listed as English 243b) E
This course examines religious, domestic and political literature that defined a Trans-Atlantic model of print culture in 18th-century Britain and America. Emphasis on journal/newspaper reviews and comparative notions of literary, sexual, national, and racial identities. Typically offered in alternate years.

247a. Anthropology and Literature: Ethnography of Black African Writing 1888-1988
(Noonan-Ngwane; cross-listed as Anthropology 247a) E
Through analysis of the development of writing in colonial and apartheid South Africa this course examines the "crisis of representation" of the past two decades in literature and anthropology. We will consider debates about the textual status of ethnographic monographs and the more general problems of writing and social power. Specifically, we will look at how such writing contributed to the construction and transformation of black subjectivity. Course material will include 19th and 20th century texts by black South Africans including life narratives, particularly collaborated autobiographies by women in the 1980s. Prerequisite: One course in literature or anthropology. Typically offered in alternate years.

248a The Quran
(Zadeh; cross-listed as Religion 248a) E
Overview of the Qur'an, the scripture of Islam. Major themes include: orality, textuality, sanctity and material culture; revelation, translation, and inimitability; calligraphy, bookmaking and architecture; along with modes of scriptural exegesis as practiced over time by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

250a 01. Introduction à la littérature et au cinéma francophones
(Anyinefa; cross-listed as French and French Studies 250 01) E
A study of representative male and female writers of Africa, the Maghreb, and the Caribbean.

250a 02. Words and Music: Tones, Words, and Images
(Cacioppo; cross-listed as Music 250a) E
This course explores musical, textual, and visual correspondences in art song, opera, ballet, tone poem and film. Principal works for study include Lieder settings on texts from Goethes Wilhelm Meister (Beethoven, Schubert, R. Schumann, et al.); The Magic Flute of Mozart, its influence on Beethovens Fidelio, and its 20th century reworkings (W.H. Auden, John Updike); Liszts Dante-inspired concert pieces; comparative treatments of Maurice Maeterlincks Pelléas et Mélisande (Debussy, Sibelius, and others), and its connection to Bluebeards Castle (Balázs/Bartók, with reference to early symbolist theater & film) and Dukas Ariane et Barbe-bleue; Stravinskys Le sacre du printemps and the original Nijinsky choreography; Kandinskys manifesto Concerning the Spiritual in Art, The Blue Rider, and their relation to music and painting of Schoenberg; more recent electro-acoustic text, tone and movement relations in examples by Paul Lansky, Roger Reynolds, Steve Reich, and others. Visual referencing features Palladian design through Pre-Raphaelite and art nouveau images to the contemporary glass sculpture set designs of Dale Chihuly.

250b 01. Quixotic Narratives
(Burshatin; cross-listed as Spanish 250b) E
Study of Cervantes, Don Quixote and of some of the works of fiction, criticism, philosophy, music, art and film which have drawn from Cervantes's novel or address its formal and thematic concerns, including self-reflexivity, nation and narration, and constructions of gender, class, and "race" in narrative. Other authors read include Borges, Foucault, Laurence Sterne, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Kathy Acker. Course taught in English.

250b 02. Words and Music: The Renaissance Text and its Musical Readers
(Freedman; cross-listed as Music 250b) E

255a. Cinéma français/francophone et colonialisme
(Anyinefa; cross-listed as French and French Studies 255a)
A study of films from Africa, France, the Maghreb, and the Caribbean dealing with the colonial and post-colonial experience.

262b. European Film
(Brust; cross-listed as German 262b)

266a. Iberian Orientalism and the Nation
(Burshatin; Cross-listed as Spanish 266 and Latin American and Iberian Studies, and African and Africana Studies) E
This course examines cultural production in the frontier cultures of medieval Iberia and the patterns of collaboration and violence among Islamic, Christian, and Jewish communities. Other topics include Christian "reconquest" and the construction of Spanishness as race and nation; foreign depictions of Spain as Europe's exotic other; internal colonialism and Morisco resistance; and contemporary African migrations. Class conducted in English. Prerequisite: Freshman Writing or Span 102 or consent.

278b. Christian Thought from Modernity to Post- modernity
(Heckart; Cross-listed as Religion 278b) E
Twentieth-century and Twenty-First Century Christian thought in the West. Readings may include Barth, Bultmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rahner, von Balthasar, Segundo, Tracey, Frei, McFague, Irigaray, Cone, Lindbeck, Marion, and others.

290a. History of Literary Theory: Plato to Shelley
(Roberts; cross-listed as English and Classical Studies 290a) E/T
In this course we investigate central texts in literary theory from the Greeks to early nineteenth-century Europe, with attention to key critical terms and concepts. Topics of discussion include the nature and origin of literary creation, socio-political ideas about the function of poetry and the poet, mimetic models of literature, the roles of art and nature, literature in relation to its audience, theories of genre, defenses of poetry, allegorical interpretation, the idea of the sublime, definitions of the imagination, poetic language, and the application of critical theory to particular texts. Readings include selections from: Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Dante, Augustine, Sidney, Corneille, Dryden, Pope, De Stael, Johnson, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley. Requirements include 5 short papers and a final exam. Not open to first-year students. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above. Typically offered in alternate years.

293a. Translation and other Transformations: Theory and Practice
(Roberts; cross-listed as Classical Studies 293a) E/T
An exploration of the theory and practice of translation (both historical and current) and of other forms of rewriting. Theoretical readings include works by Dryden, Schleiermacher, Arnold, Benjamin, Venuti, and others; examples of translation will be drawn from a variety of texts in different languages. Students will have the opportunity to work on translation projects of their own.

301a 01. Sex and Gender in the Middle Ages
(McInerney; cross-listed as English 301a) E
This seminar will examine the construction and representation of sex and gender in the Middle Ages. Medieval ideas about men, women and sexuality are often apparently contradictory. Women may be represented as bride of Christ or virgin mother on the one hand, on the other as temptresses and whores; "courtly love" appears to teach men to idolize women, even as clerical misogyny encouraged men to despise women. The courtly Romance exists side by side with the obscene Fabliau, but both were composed for the same audiences. Religious and devotional texts are full of transvestite saints, castrations threatened and accomplished, attempted rapes both homo- and heterosexual, strange distortions of the body and cases of holy anorexia.

Our focus will be on medieval texts (polemic, drama, lyric, narrative, autobiography), but we will accompany these primary readings with secondary readings in feminist and queer theory and the history of the body, as well a couple of contemporary novels which revise or reread medieval texts and ideas.

301a 02. Topics in the Philosophy of Literature: Jacques Derrida
(Miller; cross-listed as Philosophy 301a) T

302b. Speaking in Tongues: The Poetics of Essay
(McInerney; cross-listed as English 302b) E/T

312a. Advanced Topics in French Literature: Pascal entre les disciplines
(Sedley; cross-listed as French and French Studies 312a) E
Contrary to what one may think, the notion of "interdisciplinarity" has a long history. In this history, the career of Blaise Pascal represents a high point. This course examines the achievements of Pascal as mathematician, physicist, engineer, entrepreneur, theologian, philosopher, and literary genius through his works as well as criticism, theory, and film. This examination will illuminate why transgressing frontiers between disciplines matters so much--and why it has become so difficult to do.

312b. Advanced Topics in French Literature: La revolution haitienne: Historiographie et imaginaire
(Anyinefa; cross-listed as French and French Studies 312b) E

315a. Novísima Literatura Hispanoamerica
(Michelotti; cross-listed as Spanish 315a) E
A selection of recent, representative Latin American fiction, examined in light of the transformations in the narrative discourse after the seminal novels of the Latin American "Boom" of the 60's and 70's. Prerequisite: A 200 level course or consent of instructor.

317a. Novels of the Spanish American "Boom"
(Castillo-Sandoval; cross-listed as Spanish 317a; prerequisite: A 200 level course or consent of instructor) E

320a. Spanish-American Colonial Writings
(Castillo Sandoval; cross-listed as Spanish 320a) E
Representative writings from the textual legacy left by Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization of the New World. Emphasis will be placed on the transfiguration of historical and literary genres, and the role of Colonial literature in the formation of Latin-American identity. Readings include Columbus, Bernal Díaz, Gómara, Ercilla, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Cabeza de Vaca, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Sigüenza y Góngora. Prerequisite: One 200 level Spanish course or consent.

321a. Literature & Media: Films, texts and theories from print culture to Web 2.0
(Wrage; cross-listed as German and German Studies 320 01) E
“Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media” – Niklas Luhmann's famous quote reminds us of the enormous importance that books and newspapers, movies, TV shows and the Internet have for our perception of the world. On the other hand we know enough about media that we do not trust them as objective sources. We know that they are not just mirroring the world but rather select very specific events to become news and that they are subject to political and cultural influences.

Our course will deal with a number of major media theories (Luhmann, McLuhan, Baudrillard, Elsaesser et.al.), that will help us to understand what media are and how they work. Starting with the book as the first and most important storage system of the modern world, we will reconstruct main thresholds where "old" and "new" media compete with each other. We will investigate the synergies and functional differentiations between literature and film and between film and television. Last not least we will take a closer look at some of the latest developments in media history: today’s “digitization” and “hybridization” of culture – from hypertext literature to social networks.

Readings will include texts and films by C.M. Wieland, O. Welles, A. Asquith, F. Lang, B. Brecht, A. Pakula, D. Cronenberg, and G. Ryman.

321b. Literature and New Media: From the Gutenberg Galaxy to Cyberspace
(Wrage; cross-listed as German and German Studies 321b) E
The emergence of new acoustic, visual, and electronic media since the late 19th-century has dramatically changed the status of writing, textuality, and literature. Focusing on modernist as well as contemporary texts, the seminar will reconstruct the changing intermedial relationship between the book and its technologically advanced other from the print-based medium to the latest digital Hypertext novel.

322a. Politics of Memory in Latin America
(Gómez-Unamuno, cross-listed as Spanish 322a) E
Memory and the writing of history in contemporary Latin-American narratives. We will address themes such as the struggle against forgetting, the construction of memory, and the writing of the official history in novels, testimonies and documentaries. Memory and the writing of history in contemporary Latin-American narratives. We will address themes such as the struggle against forgetting, the construction of memory, and the writing of the official history in novels, testimonies and documentaries.

332a. Topics in the Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (course topic varies)
(Miller; cross-listed as Philosophy 332a; Prerequisite: One 200 level course plus junior standing, or consent of the instructor) T

334b. Gender Dissidence in Hispanic Writing
(Burshatin; cross-listed as Spanish 334b) E
Study of the dissenting voices of gender and sexuality in Spain and Spanish America and U.S. Latino/a writers. Interrogation of "masculine" and "feminine" cultural constructions and "compulsory heterosexuality," as well as exemplary moments of dissent. Texts to be studied include Hispano-Arabic poetry; Fernando de Rojas's Celestina; Tirso de Molina; Don Gil de las calzas verdes; Teresa of Avila; Gloria Anzaldúa; and Reinaldo Arenas. Prerequisite: A 200 level course or consent of the instructor.

350a. Social and Cultural Theory: Writing, Self and Society (course topic varies)
(Noonan-Ngwane; cross-listed as Anthropology 350a) E

351a. Writing and Social Construction of Subjectivity
(Ngwane; cross-listed as Anthropology 351a) T
This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of writing as a social institution, personal ritual, cultural artifact and a technology. Beginning with some debates in the social sciences concerning the place of literacy in individual cognitive development and social progress, we will proceed to explore some core assumptions about speech and writing in western thought from Plato to recent French feminist theory. The goal of this course is to offer students a genealogical account of anthropological ways of thinking about the human being as a creative agent and a social subject.

352b. Topics in the Philosophy of Language: Metaphor, Meaning, and the Dialogical Mind
(Gangadean; Cross-listed as Philosophy 352b) E
This course explores the nature of language with special attention to the origin of meaning and metaphor in the dialogical mind. Topics include analogy and imagination, communication & translatability, meditative meaning and the limits of language; ambiguity across diverse language-worlds, the dynamics of dialogue between worldviews. Readings include selections from such diverse thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sommers, Derrida and Nagarjuna and others. Cross listed with Comparative Literature. Prerequisite: one 200 level Phil course or consent.

353b. Topics in the Philosophy of Language (course topic varies)
(Gangadean; cross-listed as Philosophy 353b) T

357b. Topics in Aesthetics: The Apolline and the Dionysiac Creative Drives
(Wright; cross-listed as Philosophy 357b) T

377b. Problems in Postcolonial Literature
(Mohan; cross-listed as English 377) E
The decisive role that Fanon attributes to violence in the colonial context has had an inexorable afterlife in postcolonial societies. Course texts explore this dialectic of violation and violence, but they present it as a mutating, complex phenomenon, drawing its energies from multiple histories and traditions that are not always centered on the colonial experience.

381a. Textual Politics: Marxism, Feminism, and Deconstruction
(Mohan; cross-listed as English 381a) E/T

385b. Popular Culture, Cultural Identity and the Arts in Latin America
(Castillo-Sandoval; cross-listed as Spanish) E
This course will examine the interaction among mass, elite, traditional, and indigenous art forms and their relationship with the dynamics of national/cultural identity in Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the forms of expression to be studied are oral poetry and narrative, the "folleti" (19th-Century melodramas by installment) to 20th-century "fotonovelas," "radionovelas," and "telenovelas," broadsides, comics, musical and political movements such as "neo-folklore," "New Song" and "Nueva Trova," artistic movements such as Mexican Muralism, popular dance, and the cinema. Prerequisite: A 200 level course or consent of instructor.

385a. Topics in British Literature: Apocalyptic Literature
(McInerney; crossed-listed as English 385a) E
This course questions the connections between mythology and eschatology, vision and violence, prophecy and poetry, memory and millennialism. Centered on readings of John, Langland, Dante and Blake, it will require the reading of images as well as texts, including medieval manuscript illuminations, allegorical paintings, and Blake's Illuminations.

389b. Problems in Poetics: The Interpretation of Lyric
(Benston; cross-listed as English 389b) T
An examination of theoretical issues and presentational strategies in various verse structures from Ovid to Bishop. Close readings of strategically grouped texts explore the interplay of convention and innovation with close attention to rhetorics of desire, external and internal form, and recurrent lyric figures, tropes, and topoi.

398a. Theories and Methods in Comparative Literature
(Burshatin) T This course, required of all senior comparative literature majors in preparation for writing the senior thesis in the spring semester, has a twofold purpose: to review interpretive approaches informed by critical theories that enhance our understanding of literary and cultural texts; and to help students prepare a preliminary outline of their senior theses. Throughout the semester, students research theoretical paradigms that bear on their own comparative thesis topics in order to situate those topics in an appropriate critical context.