Courses

COML B200 Introduction to Comparative Literature

Spring 2024

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.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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COML B216 Dreaming and Fictional Narrative in Comparative Context

Not offered 2023-24

Is the sleeping you still "you"? How does your dream-self relate to your "real world" self? In this course we will examine the relationship between dreams and other acts of imagination represented in fiction, drama, film, and other related arts. How do dreams engage questions of the distinctions between reality and fiction? Following the philosopher Zhuangzi's dream of the butterfly: if there is a clear distinction, can we know which side of that distinction we are on? In this course, we will look at the ways that different authors have used dreams to explore topics such as: the relationship between true and false, dreams as expressions of innermost desire, dreams as predictions of the future, and dreams as interpretations of experiences. Surveying classical and contemporary fiction, drama, film, and graphic novels from Chinese, American, and other national languages and traditions, we will apply ideas developed in philosophy and critical theory to examine how authors have explored this tradition. Theoretical topics include: narrative theory, time and memory, epistemic injustice. All texts are read in English translation, but students who can read the original language are encouraged to do so when possible. EALC or COML majors have the option to take it as 316 with permission of instructor.

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COML B217 Lovesick

Not offered 2023-24

Love has often been compared to some kind of sickness. In this class, we will explore this traditional discourse on love from different angles: how sick is love? What kind of sickness are we talking about? Is there a cure to love? Is love always delusional? Is there always a touch of sacrifice in love? In order to answer these questions, we will read books, a graphic novels, and watch movies belonging to a variety of cultures and times. Authors include: Ovid, Mme de La Fayette, Charles Burns.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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COML B242 German Encounters w East Asia: A Transnational Cinema Course

Not offered 2023-24

Due to increased mobility in the age of globalization, the encounter between East and West has shifted from the imaginary to the real. Actual encounters provide the potential for debunking cultural myths and prejudices that an orientalist lens tended to produce. East and West both carry their own traditions, value systems, and distinct cultural identities. This sparks conflicts, but also generates mutual interest. In present-day Germany, the Asian-German connection constitutes a neglected aspect of multicultural discourses and thus deserves more scrutiny. This transnational film course focuses specifically on encounters between German-speaking countries and East Asia. Using film as the main medium, this course touches on prominent issues such as orientalism, race, gender, class, nation, and identity, which have been much studied by literary and cultural critics in recent years.

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COML B324 Version Control: Surface, Depth and Literature

Fall 2023

"Version Control" is a semester-long course in Comparative Literature that explores the way we read and interpret texts. Are texts hiding their true meanings under a surface layer of plot? Is a story a riddle that we have to overcome in order to understand it? As Rita Felski wrote: "the professional reader, whether critic or detective, presses below distracting surfaces to the deeper meaning of signs" (Felski, "Suspicious" 224). What are the hazards of pressing below the surface? We will address this and other questions this semester through the close reading of a variety of texts that make this question central to their plots. We read literary texts where multiple-and often contradictory-levels of story are held in suspension; texts that use images and texts together to tell their story; and, finally, we will look intra-textually at adaptations of literary texts.

Course does not meet an Approach

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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. This is a required for majors and minors.

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COML B399 Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature

Thesis writing seminar. Research methods.

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COML B403 Supervised Work

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ARCH B303 Classical Bodies

Not offered 2023-24

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.

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CRWT B261 Writing Poetry I

Fall 2023

In this course students will learn to "read like a writer," while grappling with the work of accomplished poets, and providing substantive commentary on peers' work. Through diverse readings, students will examine craft strategies at work in both formal and free verse poems, such as diction, metaphor, imagery, lineation, metrical patterns, irony, and syntax. The course will cover shaping forms (such as elegy and pastoral) as well as given forms, such as the sonnet, ghazal, villanelle, etc. Students will discuss strategies for conveying the literal meaning of a poem (e.g., through sensory description and clear, compelling language) and the concealed meaning of a text (e.g., through metaphor, imagery, meter, irony, and shifts in diction and syntax). By the end of the course, students will have generated new material, shaped and revised draft poems, and significantly grown as writers by experimenting with various aspects of craft.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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CSTS B219 Poetic Desires, Queer Longings

Not offered 2023-24

This course places poetry that considers love and desire from Greco-Roman antiquity in conversation with modern poetry and critical theory (queer, feminist, and literary). How are the roles of lover and beloved constructed through gender? How does queer desire and sexuality manifest in different cultural contexts? How have poets sought to express desire through language, and in what ways does language fail to capture that desire? Students in this course will face the difficulties of articulating desire head-on through both traditional literary analysis papers and a creative writing project. Texts will include love poetry by Sappho and Ovid, Trista Mateer's Aphrodite Made Me Do It, Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet, and Audre Lorde's "The Uses of the Erotic."

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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CSTS B375 Interpreting Mythology

Fall 2023

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. The student should gain a more profound understanding of the meaning of these myths to the Greeks themselves, of the cultural context in which they were formulated. At the same time, this course should provide the student with some familiarity with the range of interpretations and strategies of understanding that people of various cultures and times have applied to the Greek myths during the more than two millennia in which they have been preserved. Preference to upperclassmen, previous coursework in myth required.

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EALC B200 Major Seminar: Methods and Approaches

Spring 2024

This course is a writing intensive course for EALC majors and minors to introduce some foundational ideas and concepts in the study of East Asia. Beginning with close readings of primary source texts, students are introduced to the philosophy and culture of China, and its subsequent transmission and adaptation across the vast geographical area that is commonly referred to as "East Asia." Students will gain familiarity with methods in this interdisciplinary field and develop skills in the practice of close critical analysis, bibliography, and the formulation of a research topic. Required of EALC majors and minors. Majors should take this course before the senior year. Prerequisite: One year of Chinese or Japanese.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

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EALC B240 Topics in Chinese Film

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

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EALC B281 Food in Translation: Theory and Practice

Section 001 (Fall 2022): Taste

Not offered 2023-24

This semester we will explore the connections between what we eat and how we define ourselves in the context of global culture. We will proceed from the assumption that food is an object of culture, and that our contemplation of its transformations and translations in production, preparation, consumption, and distribution will inform our notions of personal and group identity. This course takes Chinese food as a case study, and examines the way that Chinese food moves from its host country to diasporic communities all over the world, using theories of translation as our theoretical and empirical foundation. From analyzing menu and ingredient translations to producing a short film based on interviews, we will consider the relationship between food and communication in a multilingual and multicultural world. Readings include theoretical texts on translation (Apter), recipe books and menus, Chinese and Chinese-American literature (Classic of Poetry, Mo Yan, Hong Kingston). Films include Ian Cheney's "Searching for General Tso," Wayne Wang's "Soul of a Banquet" and "Eat a Bowl of Tea," Ang Li's "Eat Drink Man Woman," and Wong Karwai's "In the Mood for Love."

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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EALC B310 Advanced Readings in the Graphic Narrative

Not offered 2023-24

This advanced seminar focuses on critical and theoretical approaches to the graphic novel. In the past several decades, a genre of "auteur comics" has emerged from the medium that are highly literary with a deep engagement between form and meaning. This seminar focuses on weekly close readings of such graphic novels with rigorous analysis of form and content. Primary text readings are supplemented with readings from literary theory, visual studies, and philosophy. Participants are expected to be comfortable with the application of literary critical theory and visual studies theory to texts. There are no prerequisites for the course, but due to the quantity and complexity of the reading material, some background in literary study is necessary. Students interested in taking this course in fulfillment of a major requirement in Comparative Literature or East Asian Languages and Cultures will need to discuss with me prior to enrollment. Preference given to students who have taken EALC B255. This semester (Spring 2021) we will explore theories of narrative in the context of the graphic narrative. Students will read and view primary texts, supplemented by theoretical readings, that engage questions of how subjects develop through unconventional notions of "travel" in time, space, or both. THIS COURSE IS OFFERED AS PART OF A 360

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EALC B355 Animals, Vegetables, Minerals in East Asian Literature & Film

Not offered 2023-24

This semester, we will explore how artists question, explore, celebrate, and critique the relationships between humans and the environment. Through a topics-focused course, students will examine the ways that narratives about environment have shaped the way that humans have defined themselves. We will be reading novels and short stories and viewing films that contest conventional binaries of man and animal, civilization and nature, tradition and technology, and even truth and fiction. "Animals, Vegetables, Minerals" does not follow chronological or geographical frameworks, but chooses texts that engage the three categories enumerated as the major themes of our course. We will read and discuss animal theory, theories of place and landscape, and theories of modernization or mechanization; and there will be frequent (and intentional) overlap between these categories. We will also be watching films that extend our theoretical questions of thes e themes beyond national, linguistic, and generic borders. You are expected to view this course as a collaborative process in which you share responsibility for leading discussion. There are no prerequisites or language expectations, but students should have some basic knowledge of East Asian, especially Sinophone, history and culture, or be willing to do some additional reading (suggested by the instructor) to achieve an adequate contextual background for exploring these texts.

Writing Attentive

Counts Toward Environmental Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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ENGL B213 Global Cinema

Not offered 2023-24

This course introduces students to one possible history of global cinema. We will discuss and analyze a variety of filmmakers and film movements from around the world. Students will be exposed to the discipline of film studies as it is specifically related to the cinema of East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. We will study these works with special emphasis on film language, aesthetics, and politics, as well as film style and genre. Along the way, we will explore a number of key terms and concepts, including colonialism, postcolonialism, form, realism, surrealism, futurism, orientalism, modernity, postmodernity, hegemony, the subaltern, and globalization. Filmmakers will include, among others, Wong Kar-wai, Satyajit Ray, Shirin Neshat, Fernando Mereilles, Agnès Varda, and Werner Herzog.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Film Studies

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ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Not offered 2023-24

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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ENGL B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Fall 2023

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres-including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals-to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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ENGL B279 Introduction to African Literature

Not offered 2023-24

Taking into account the oral, written, aural, and visual forms of African "texts" over several thousand years, this course will explore literary production, intertextuality, translation, and audience/critical reception. Representative works to be studied include oral traditions, the Sundiata and Mwindo epics, the plays of Wole Soyinka and his Burden of History, the Muse of Forgiveness; and the work of Sembène Ousmane, Bessie Head, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mariama Bâ, Naguib Mahfouz, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yvonne Vera, and others.

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ENGL B381 Post-Apartheid Literature

Not offered 2023-24

South African texts from several language communities which anticipate a post-apartheid polity and texts by contemporary South African writers which explore the complexities of life in "the new South Africa." Several films emphasize the minefield of post-apartheid reconciliation and accountability.

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ENGL B388 Contemporary African Fiction

Not offered 2023-24

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.

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FREN B207 Ouvrir la voix: Introduction aux études francophones

Not offered 2023-24

This course provides students with an overview of foundational concepts, methods and texts relevant to Francophone Studies. We will engage with past and present debates relating to identity, diversity, nation and empire in the colonial and postcolonial contexts and explore the specificity of Francophone Studies with regards to the field of postcolonial studies. While focused on literature, the course will also explore other forms of cultural production (movies, graphic novels, political speeches, etc.) from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Caribbean and Vietnam. The course will train students in literary analysis and develop their ability to speak and write critically in French. Prerequisites: FREN 102 or 105.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

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FREN B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Not offered 2023-24

By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. The class will be conducted in English with an additional hour in French for students wishing to take it for French credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

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FREN B229 Monstres et Merveilles

Fall 2023

Sous leurs dehors simples, les contes merveilleux ont fasciné les critiques littéraires comme les spécialistes du folklore. Ces derniers ont tenté de définir leur structure primordiale et de les classer selon des motifs universels. Nous nous inspirerons à la fois de l'analyse structurale et de l'analyse symbolique pour réenchanter des contes devenus parfois trop familiers. Pour y voir plus clair, nous lirons plusieurs versions d'un même conte. A la fin du cours, vous pourrez répondre à ces questions : quel est le rapport entre Cendrillon et les cendres ? Pourquoi le chaperon du Petit Chaperon Rouge est-il rouge ? Le devoir final sera un conte que vous écrirez vous-même.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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FREN B302 Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts

Not offered 2023-24

This study of selected women authors from Latin CE-Carolingian period through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and 17th century-among them, Perpetua, Hrotswitha, 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 women's writing in general: among them, the poetics of silence, reproduction as a metaphor for artistic creation, and sociopolitical engagement. Prerequisite: two 200-level courses or permission of instructor.

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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FREN B312 Advanced Topics in Literature

Section 001 (Spring 2023): La Francophonie Queer

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisites: two 200-level courses.

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FREN B325 Topics: Etudes avancées

Not offered 2023-24

An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilization. This is a topics course. Course content varies. The seminar topic rotates among many subjects: La Révolution française: 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; Étude socio-culturelle des arts du manger en France du Moyen Age à nos jours; Crimes et criminalité; Ecrire la Grande Guerre: 1914-10; Le "Rentrée Littéraire"; Proust/Baudelaire; L'Humain et l'environnement.

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FREN B326 Etudes avancées

Section 001 (Spring 2024): Aux armes, citoyennes!

Spring 2024

An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilization. This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: Olympe de Gouges, une des actrices de la Révolution française et pionnière du féminisme en France, reste encore méconnue de beaucoup. En effet, ses combats et son œuvre ont été dénigrés, ignorés et passés sous silence pendant près de deux siècles. Or, lorsque nous constatons qu'à l'époque contemporaine, le droit des femmes à disposer de leur corps est menacé et que les inégalités entre les individus ne cessent de croître, les messages d'Olympe de Gouges prennent tout leur sens, et méritent d'être examinés en profondeur. Ce cours aura pour objectif de familiariser les étudiant.e.s avec les combats d'Olympe de Gouges, à travers ses prises de position concernant l'éducation des femmes, les inégalités liées au mariage, ainsi que l'esclavage. Nous explorerons tant ses écrits politiques - dont la Déclaration de la femme et de la citoyenne - que ses textes dramatiques, comme L'esclavage des noirs. Nous étudierons ces œuvres dissidentes en parallèle avec des évènements majeurs de la Révolution, des expériences personnelles de l'autrice, et des phénomènes contemporains. Ce cours sera enseigné en français.

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FREN B350 Voix médiévales et échos modernes

Fall 2023

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. Among the texts and films studied are works by Bonnefoy, Cocteau, Flaubert, Genevoix, Giono, and Gracq.

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Spring 2023): Under Surveillance: From ETA Hoffmann to Christa W

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Recent topics include Remembered Violence, Global Masculinities, and Crime and Detection in German. Current topic description (spring 2023): Under Surveillance: Literature and Visual Culture from the Enlightenment to the Present. Taught in English.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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GERM B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Scenes of Observation:

Fall 2023

This is a topics course. Taught in German. Course content varies. Previous topics include, Women's Narratives on Modern Migrancy, Exile, and Diasporas; Nation and Identity in Post-War Austria.

Current topic description: Scenes of Observation: Physicians, Scientists, and Experiments in German Literature. This course explores scenes of experimentation and medical observation in German literature from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, probing the nexus between literature, artistic practices, and the sciences. Figures of the scientist or the physician as observers of human behavior and natural phenomena often find themselves at the very threshold of knowledge, navigating structures of power that operate both socially and biologically. In the wake of the Age of Reason, they are both agents of order and originators of chaos, testing themselves, others, and cultural frameworks that give rise to their position and insights on the human condition. Disease, illness, gender, and disability become loci of investigation that unmoor the stability of scientific and medical observation. In the early twentieth century, scenes inside and outside of the clinic stage different dimensions of human life mediated through interactions with physicians, responding to new technological developments that begin to shift what it means to be human and to study the human. This course will feature works by Thomas Mann, among others, and writers who themselves were trained in the sciences or as physicians, including Gottfried Benn, Georg Büchner.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema

Spring 2024

This course is writing intensive. An introduction to the analysis of film and other lensed, time-based media through particular attention to the role of the spectator. Why do moving images compel our fascination? How exactly do spectators relate to the people, objects, and places that appear on the screen? Wherein lies the power of images to move, attract, repel, persuade, or transform their viewers? Students will be introduced to film theory through the rich and complex topic of identification. We will explore how points of view are framed by the camera in still photography, film, television, video games, and other media. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. Fulfills Film Studies Introductory or Theory course requirement. This course was formerly numbered HART B110; students who previously completed HART B110 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward Film Studies

Counts Toward Visual Studies

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ITAL B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Fall 2023

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward Africana Studies

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

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ITAL B216 Body and Mind

Not offered 2023-24

In this course, we will explore representations of the relationship between body and mind, starting from 19th-century Russian novels that conceptualize love as a physical ailment and ending with the history of Alzheimer's disease. Talking about the relationship between body and mind will allow us to investigate how gender roles and models of womanhood and masculinity shaped the evolution of modern sciences, from psychiatry to obstetrics. Investigating how bodies have been (and continue to be) read, we will discuss systems created to police societies by cataloguing bodies, from Lombroso's phrenology to modern fingerprinting and face recognition softwares. Finally, we will consider how our understanding of the relationship between body and mind has changed over time. Many of the theories we will discuss during the semester are now considered outdated pseudo-science - but how can we conceptualize the difference between science and pseudo-science? As new categories and disease designations appear to substitute the old ones, which are the implications of creating a label for a constellation of existing symptoms? The course will be taught entirely in English. There will be an optional hour in Italian for students of Italian.

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ITAL B302 Italo Calvino Transnational Writer

Not offered 2023-24

Italo Calvino is one of the best-known Italian writers in the world - but in addition to being the author of numerous novels and short stories, Calvino was a translator, and editor and - perhaps most importantly - a reader. His activity provides us with a window into the Italian editorial landscape and its connection with foreign literary markets and traditions. Analyzing Calvino's letters to his colleagues at the publishing house Einaudi, his famous risvolti, introductions, and book reviews, we will reflect on the journey of texts from their selection and translation, to their publication, to their promotion and reception. We will discuss books as complex and stratified objects, reflecting on how editorial choices shape the reception and interpretation of a text. In exploring Calvino's engagement with other people's books, we will focus on the international dimension of his work, his personal and professional connections with France - where he lived for several years - with South America, Russia, and the United States. Such an emphasis on Calvino as a transnational reader and writer reflects and illuminates the peculiarity of the Italian editorial and literary ecosystem, in which translation has a central role.

Writing Attentive

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ITAL B308 Rome as Palimpsests: from Ruins to Virtual Reality

Not offered 2023-24

From the urban dream that Raphael confessed to pope Leo X in the middle of the Renaissance to the parkour on the top of the Colosseum in the Assassin's Creed videogames, Rome has always been both a memory and a vision: a place of nostalgia and endless potential. In this course we will investigate some crucial places, moments, and ideas in the modern history of this ancient capital of Western culture: XVI century Mannerist painting and the Pop Art of Piazza del Popolo, the early modern re-uses of the Colosseum and its cubic clone designed under fascism, the narrations of Romantic grand-tours and the ones of contemporary postcolonial authors. We will adopt a trans-historical and inter-disciplinary perspective, focusing on the main attempts to revive the glory of the ancient empire. We will try to understand weather Italy's capital is a museum to be preserved, an old laboratory of urban innovations, a cemetery, a sanctuary, or simply an amalgam of past and future, glory and misery, beauty and horror. For Italian majors you will have an additional hour for credit. Prerequisite: One two-hundred level course for students interested in taking the course towards Italian credits.

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ITAL B312 Black, Queer, Jewish Italy

Not offered 2023-24

This seminar approaches the two most studied phases of Italian history, the Renaissance and the 20th century, by placing what we call 'otherness' at the center of the picture rather than at its supposed margins. The main aim is to challenge traditional accounts of Italian culture, and to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, the rise of fascism, courtly culture, the two World Wars, 16th century art, futurism) from the point of view of black, queer, and Jewish protagonists, authors, and fictional characters. Our theoretical bedrock will be offered by modern and contemporary thinkers such as Fred Moten, Antonio Gramsci, Edie Segdwick, and Hannah Arendt. Our primary sources will come from cultural epicenters of Renaissance, Baroque, and late Modern Italy, such as Leo X papal court, fascist Ferrara, 17th century Venice, and colonial Libya. In class, we will adopt a trans-historical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspective inspired by Fred Moten's work, which will serve as the poetic common ground for our investigations. Themes and issues will be analyzed at the crossing of the two historical phases and of the three topics in exam, and the material will include historical and theoretical analyses, narrative texts, poems, films, and visual art. The course is taught in English. No previous knowledge of Italian is required, as readings will be in English translation. An additional hour in Italian will be offered for departmental credits. Students taking the course for departmental credit will also read part of the readings in the original language, and produce three short response-papers in Italian in lieu of the Midterm.

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ITAL B313 Primo Levi, the Writer

Not offered 2023-24

Today Primo Levi is one of the most widely read Italian writers of post-World War II in Italy and abroad. Even though still known primarily for his contributions to Holocaust testimony and theory, paradoxical as it may seem, the experience of Auschwitz and his need to tell proved to be the initial impulse that drove Levi to continue to write until his death as a critical engagement of the Western classical canon and civilization that in the end created Auschwitz. In addition to being a memoirist, he was a columnist, novelist, writer of short stories and fantasy tales, many of which touch on science fiction, a literary critic, poet, essayist, and he also tried his hand as translator (of Kafka's The Trial) and playwright. He has also been the subject of countless illuminating interviews, many of which have been translated into English. Levi is one of most prolific writers of our time, earning the right to be regarded simply as a well-respected writer, as he himself wished, with no other qualifications added. This course will be taught in Italian. Prerequisite: ITAL B102 or permission of instructor.

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ITAL B316 Mountaineering Heroes: Masculinity and Nation-building

Not offered 2023-24

Narration is an intrinsic component of the practice of mountaineering: ascents are conducted in isolation and need to be documented in order to be validated. In the 20th century, with the professionalization of this practice, mountaineering narratives became widespread across a broad range of genres and platforms - from the memoirs of illustrious alpinists to novels and short stories, to propaganda material and articles in popular magazines. In this course, we will focus on Italian mountaineering heroes, exploring how their construction and evolution was shaped by models of masculinity and (less frequently) of womanhood, colonialism and nation-building ideals, and by shifting understandings of the relationship between humans and the environment. We will discus the symbolical and political role of alpine ascents in the Italian unification and in the first world war. We will study Fascist alpinists and the legacy of Fascist, individualist and white supremacist rhetoric in today's mountaineering narratives. At the same time, however, we will encounter groups of alpinists and climbers who challenged this rhetoric, seeking to reframe ascents as play, rather than conquest, influenced by youth movements and the novel American alpinism.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have to option of attending an additional hour of class taught in Italian or in Russian

Writing Attentive

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ITAL B325 Literature and Film, Literature into Films and Back

Not offered 2023-24

This course is a critical analysis of Modern Italian society through cinematic production and literature, from the Risorgimento to the present. According to Alfred Hitchock's little stories, two goats were eating the reel of a movie taken from a famous novel. "I liked the book better," says one to the other. While at times we too chew on movies taken from books, our main objective will not be to compare books and films, but rather to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". Students will become acquainted with literary sources through careful readings; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. An important concern of this course will be to analyze the particularity of each film/book in relation to a set of themes -gender, death, class, discrimination, history, migration- through close textual analysis. We shall use contemporary Film theory and critical methodology to access these themes.

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ITAL B335 The Italian Margins: Places and Identities

Fall 2023

Thompson Fullilove's scholarship will be the theoretical foundation of this survey of 20th century topics-from literary representations of mental health to the displacement of marginalized communities, from historical persecution in Europe to contemporary domestic violence in Italy. The main goal of the seminar will be to challenge the rhetoric of 'otherness', 'encounters', 'marginalization', 'anti-canon', and 'exoticism' that is typical of broader readings of Italy's modern traditions, adopting Thompson Fullilove's inter-sectional and trans-historical paradigms to re-imagine Italian Studies, to center the gender gap, and overcome the stigma of mental illness and madness. Rooted in the perspectives of trans-codification, trans-historical tradition, and cultural translation, this course attempts to address such questions both in theory and practice using Freudian literary criticism (The interpretation of Dreams, 1899; The Uncanny, 1919; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920; The Ego and the Id, 1923; Civilization and its Discontents, 1930). We will start with a seminar, devoted to the analysis and discussion of primary sources and then follow with a scholarly (and creative) workshop. Tailored activities related to social activism (Praxis) will also fulfill the course requirements. Prerequisite: 200 level course or permission of instructor.

Writing Intensive

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward Gender/Sex Studies (Min/Conc)

Counts Toward Praxis Program

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RUSS B220 Chornobyl

Fall 2023

This course introduces students to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, its consequences, and its representations across a range of cultures and media through a comparative lens and as a global phenomenon. Culture meets ecology, science, history, and politics. Students will contribute to a digital exhibition and physical installation. Taught in translation. No knowledge of Russian required.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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RUSS B232 Coal, Oil, Nuclear: Narrative Afterlives

Fall 2023

Coal. Oil. Nuclear energy. These items give shape to our everyday lives in countless ways. They impact our health, our politics, and our very survival on earth.. Nevertheless, because these resources permeate nearly every aspect of our existence, the human mind can struggle to comprehend them in their totality. In this course, we'll explore texts that engage with our environment to help us bring humans' relationship to these materials into focus. Scientific, historical, and economic studies tend to focus on their scale and widespread impact. Reading stories, watching

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

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RUSS B238 Topics: The History of Cinema 1895 to 1945

Not offered 2023-24

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

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SPAN B211 Borges y sus lectores

Not offered 2023-24

Primary emphasis on Borges and his poetics of reading; other writers are considered to illustrate the semiotics of texts, society, and traditions. Prerequisite: SPAN B120; or another SPAN 200-level course. Critical Interpretation (CI). Counts toward Latin American, Iberian and Latina/o Studies.

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SPAN B252 Compassion, Indignation, and Anxiety in Latin American Film

Fall 2023

Stereotypically, Latin Americans are viewed as "emotional people"--often a euphemism to mean irrational, impulsive, wildly heroic, fickle. This course takes this expression at face value to ask: Are there particular emotions that identify Latin Americans? And, conversely, do these "people" become such because they share certain emotions? Can we find a correlation between emotions and political trajectories? To answer these questions, we will explore three types of films that seem to have, at different times, taken hold of the Latin American imagination and feelings: melodramas (1950s-1960s), documentaries (1970s-1990s), and "low-key" comedies (since 2000s.) Course is taught in Spanish

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward Film Studies

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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SPAN B260 Ariel/Calibán: colonialismo y neocolonialismo

Not offered 2023-24

A study of the transformations of Ariel/Calibán as images of Latin American and Caribbean cultures. Prerequisite: B120 or another SPAN 200-level course.

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SPAN B317 Poéticas de poder y deseo en el Siglo de Oro español

Spring 2024

The poetry cultivated during the Renaissance and Baroque Spain was not an idle aesthetic practice. We discover in the rich poetic practice of the era preoccupations with historical, social and political themes, including discourses of power and empire, racial difference, and the representation of women as objects of desire. In addition, we will consider the self-fashioning and subjectivity of the lyric voice, theories of parody and imitation, and the feminine appropriation of the male poetic tradition. Although the course will deal primarily with the poetry of Spain, readings will include texts from Italy, France, England, and Mexico. Taught in Spanish. Prerequisites: at least one 200-level course.

Counts Toward Latin American,Iberian,Latinx

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SPAN B370 Literatura y delincuencia

Not offered 2023-24

A study of the origins, development and transformation of the picaresque genre from its origins in 16th- and 17th-century Spain through the 21st century. Using texts, literature, painting, and film from Spain and Latin America, we will explore topics such as the construction of the fictive self, the poetics and politics of criminality, transgression in gender and class. Among the topics to be discussed: criminalization of poverty, prostitution, and the feminine picaresque. Prerequiste: At least one SPAN 200-level course. Course fulfills pre-1700 requirement and HC's pre-1898 requirement.

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