Courses
Courses offered in the past four years.
▲ indicates offered in the current term
▹ indicates offered in the upcoming term[s]
CMLT 0101 - Intro to World Literature ▹
Introduction to World Literature
This course is an introduction to the critical analysis of imaginative literature of the world, the dissemination of themes and myths, and the role of translation as the medium for reaching different cultures. Through the careful reading of selected classic texts from a range of Western and non-Western cultures, students will deepen their understanding and appreciation of the particular texts under consideration, while developing a critical vocabulary with which to discuss and write about these texts, both as unique artistic achievements of individual and empathetic imagination and as works affected by, but also transcending their historical periods. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
CMLT 0110 - Continental Fiction
Continental Fiction
An introduction to some major novels and shorter works by 19th and 20th century European authors, including Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Zola's L'Assommoir, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Mann's The Magic Mountain, Kafka's The Trial, Sartre's Nausea, Camus's The Stranger, and others. These works of fiction are triumphs of achievement and innovation aesthetically and conceptually; and they give us a powerful sense of significant and significantly different levels of society, culture, and periods of history. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2013
CMLT 0150 - Greek and Roman Epic Poetry ▲
Greek and Roman Epic Poetry
Would Achilles and Hector have risked their lives and sacred honor had they understood human life and the Olympian gods as Homer portrays them in the Iliad? Why do those gods decide to withdraw from men altogether following the Trojan War, and why is Odysseus the man Athena chooses to help her carry out that project? And why, according to the Roman poet Vergil, do these gods command Aeneas, a defeated Trojan, to found an Italian town that will ultimately conquer the Greek cities that conquered Troy, replacing the Greek polis with a universal empire that will end all wars of human freedom? Through close study of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and Vergil's Aeneid, we explore how the epic tradition helped shape Greece and Rome, and define their contributions to European civilization. 3 hrs. lect., 1 hr. disc.
Fall 2012, Fall 2013
CMLT 0190 - Greek and Roman Comedy
Greek and Roman Comedy
A survey of the comic playwrights of Greece (Aristophanes and Menander) and Rome (Plautus and Terence) in light of their ancient social, political, and religious contexts as well as modern theoretical approaches to laughter (including psychoanalysis and structural anthropology). We will trace enduring aspects of the comic tradition that can be found in both Greece and Rome and also look forward to Renaissance and modern comedy. These include: the nature of the comic hero; the patterns of comic plots; the dependence of comedy on language; the comic poet's concern with questions of freedom and slavery, desire and repression. (formerly CLAS 0160) 3 hrs. lect., 1 hr. disc.
Spring 2012, Spring 2013
CMLT 0200 - Folk-Fairy Tales of the World
Once Upon A Time ... Folk Fairy Tales Of The World
Tell me a story! We will examine the complex, inter-connected fairy tale traditions found in every society. Comparing fairy tale variants from around the world-including Japan, China, India, Near East, Africa-we will explore their convoluted and fertile relationships as observed in the rise of fairy tale collections in 15th-century Europe, reaching a culmination in the Brothers Grimm collection, often synonymous with the fairy tale itself. To attain a more dispassionate critical perspective we will explore theoretical approaches to the fairy tales through authors such as Zipes, Bottigheimer, Tatar, and Rölleke, and conclude by examining modern variants in prose, poetry, and film.
Spring 2013
CMLT 0205 - Intro:Contemporary Lit. Theory ▲ ▹
Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory
This course will introduce several major schools of contemporary literary theory. By reading theoretical texts in close conjunction with works of literature, we will illuminate the ways in which these theoretical stances can produce various interpretations of a given poem, novel, or play. The approaches covered will include New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Cultural Criticism, Feminism, and Post-Structuralism. These theories will be applied to works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, The Brontës, Conrad, Joyce, and others. The goal will be to make students critically aware of the fundamental literary, cultural, political, and moral assumptions underlying every act of interpretation they perform. 3 hrs. lect/disc.
Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
CMLT 0210 - Arabia: A Literary Approach ▹
Arabia: A Literary Approach (in English)
In this course we will examine the Arabian Peninsula as a literary topos that has beguiled representation in both Eastern and Western literature. Whether it is depicted as a glittering spectacle of petro-dollars, the haunt of Bedouin tribesmen or as a sacred focal point, Arabia is an open canvas on which successive societies have sketched their anxieties and aspirations Simultaneously, Arabia has its own rich legacy of self-representation that has been shaped by its harsh environment and unique resources. We will sift through these representations in texts that range among pre-Islamic poetry, the accounts of foreign explorers, novels by modern Arab authors, and contemporary Bedouin oral poetry. All readings will be in English and no previous knowledge of Arabic is required. 3 hrs. sem.
Spring 2014
CMLT 0230 - Myth & Contemporary Experience
Myth and Contemporary Experience: Modern Poems on Classical Myths*
Greek mythology, an enduring presence in Western thought, has provided, according to Carl Jung, the foundation of one half of our spiritual tradition. In this course we shall study how this rich mythical material has shaped modern poetry. Through close readings of modern poems and their ancient models, we will trace the way 20th-century poets appropriate and transform the classical past in order to reflect on their historical present. While viewing this function of myth as an element of modernity, we shall also explore how these poets build connections between the archetypal meaning of the ancient stories, the questions of existence, and our own contemporary lives. Readings will include Rilke, Eliot, Pound, Cavafy, Montale, Akhmatova, Borges, as well as Sylvia Plath, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott, Louise Glück, and Seamus Heaney. 3 hrs. lect., 1 hr. disc.
Spring 2013
CMLT 0238 - Literature Mystical Experience ▲
Literature and the Mystical Experience
In this course we will explore how narrative art articulates spiritual perception by examining selected works of 20th century writers such as Miguel De Unamuno, Nikos Kazantzakis, J. D. Salinger, Charles Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Alice Munroe, Marilynne Robinson, and Annie Dillard. Drawing on theology and philosophy as an interpretative mode, we will consider the following questions: How does literature illuminate selfhood and interiority? How do contemplation and ascetic practice guide the self to divine knowledge and cosmic unification? How do language, imagery and symbols shape the unitive experience as a tool for empathy and understanding of the other? 3 hrs. lect., 1 hr. disc.
Fall 2013
CMLT 0299 - Literary Feasts ▹
Literary Feasts: Representations of Food in Modern Narrative (in English)
This course will consider food and eating practices within specific cultural and historical contexts. We will analyze realistic, symbolic, religious, erotic, and political functions surrounding the preparation and consumption of food. Readings will be drawn from several national traditions, with a focus on Europe. Authors will include, among others, I. Dinesen, L. Esquivel, J. Harris, E. Hemingway, T. Lampedusa, P. Levi, C. Petrini, M. Pollan, E. Vittorini, and B. Yoshimoto. Viewing of several films where food and eating play an important role will supplement class discussion. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2012, Spring 2014
CMLT 0300 - Translation: Theory & Practice ▲
History of Translation: Theory and Practice
In this course we will examine the history and practice of the act of translation in a global context. Readings will include selected theoretical works by authors such as Goethe, Benjamin, Borges, Jakobson, Derrida, and Appiah, as well as studies of the specific technical and cultural challenges translators have faced in carrying texts across cultural boundaries. As a final project, students will either attempt their own translation of an artistic text into English (with an accompanying explanation of their translation method) or write a research paper engaging with the theories examined in the course. 3 hrs. sem.
Fall 2013
CMLT 0310 - Holocaust in Literature ▹
Representing the Unthinkable: The Holocaust in Literature (in English)
Can the Holocaust be described in words? Can images represent the horrors of Auschwitz? In this seminar we will explore the literary and artistic representations of the Shoah, their mechanisms, tensions, and challenges. We will approach the issues of Holocaust representations by considering a significant array of texts that span genres, national literatures, time, narrative and poetic styles, and historical situations. Readings will include theoretical texts on witnessing, memory, post-memory, and trauma by authors such as Sherman Alexie, Jean Amery, Hannah Arendt, Ilan Avisar, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Chaim Kaplan, Ruth Kluger, Primo Levi, Bernhard Schlink, Art Spiegelman, Peter Weiss, and Eli Wiesel. 3 hrs. sem.
Spring 2014
CMLT 0315 - Hotel and Modern Experience
"A Home Away From home": The Hotel and the Modern Experience (in English)*
In this course we will examine the hotel as a quintessentially modern social and cultural space. Sex and love, death and crime, money and leisure, and architecture and commerce find a special "home away from home" in the hotel, a quality that has inspired the cultural imagination for generations. Theories by G. Simmel, S. Kracauer, and Th. Veblen will help explain the complex dynamics between time, space, and money underlying the hotel's special aura. By “reading" real and fictional hotels in the arts and media (E. Hopper, Th. Mann, A. Hailey, St. Zweig), we will show the hotel's complex significance as a symbol of modern life. 3 hrs sem.
Spring 2013
CMLT 0325 - Chinese Poetry in the Far West ▹
Chinese Poetry in the Far West
This course combines a study of Tang poetry with a survey of its influence on non-Chinese poetry in the modern era. We will emphasize the American context and Ezra Pound as the "inventor of Chinese poetry for our time," as T.S. Eliot memorably put it. In order to give students with no knowledge of Chinese the necessary tools for making the most of a facing-page translation, we will spend a significant portion of the course learning the characters most common to Tang poetry as well as the fundamentals of classical grammar. We will thus read the original poems alongside multiple translations and also discuss loose adaptations in "Chinese" modes. Theoretical questions concerning the nature of intercultural adaptation and globalization will be a constant concern. Readings will include numerous Chinese and American poets, and also extensive critical theory. For students with no knowledge of Chinese. 3 hrs. lect/disc.
Spring 2014
CMLT 0361 - Ancient Poetics
Ancient Poetics: China and the Greco-Roman World
In this course we will examine questions that have rankled human beings for millennia: What constitutes a great work of literature? What ends does it serve, and how does its structure aesthetically achieve these ends? While we will not endeavor to answer these questions definitively, we will explore theories of aesthetics elaborated in two of the world’s great literary traditions, the Chinese and the Greco-Roman. To what extent do these cultures’ answers resemble one another, and where do they diverge? Is poetic value culturally circumscribed, or do both traditions attempt to articulate universal norms, each within its unique context? Through close readings of primary texts, we will examine some of the guidelines ancient theorists established for the production of literature that not only expresses the author’s innermost sentiments but also—in Horace’s words—both pleases and instructs. Primary texts to be examined from the Chinese tradition include the Great Preface to the Book of Poetry, Lu Ji’s Poetic Exposition on Literature, and Liu Xie’s Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. Texts from the Western tradition include selections from Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, and Horace’s Art of Poetry. (Three college-level literature courses or approval of instructor) 3 hrs. sem. CMP (R. Handler-Spitz)
Spring 2012
CMLT 0396 - Francophone Fiction
(Re)Constructing Identities: Francophone Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction*
This course will focus on major works written in French by writers from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. We will explore the complex (re)construction of identities through fiction writing as it evolves from traditional folktale to political criticism, and as it shifts from colonial alienation to post-colonial disillusionment. We will also examine the emergence of cultural blending or métissage. (FREN 0221 or by waiver) 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2013
CMLT 0450 - History of Clas Lit ▲
History of Classical Literature
A comprehensive overview of the major literary, historical, and philosophical works of Greece and Rome. Greek authors studied include Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. Roman authors include Lucretius, Cicero, Livy, Vergil, Petronius, and Tacitus. Required of senior majors in Classics/Classical Studies (see CLAS 0701) and open to all interested students with some background in Greek and Roman literature, history, or philosophy. 3 hrs. lect.
Fall 2012, Fall 2013
CMLT 0500 - Independent Study ▲ ▹
Independent Study
Approval Required
Fall 2011, Winter 2012, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Winter 2013, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014
CMLT 1117 - Orlando Furioso and Ren Epic
Orlando Furioso and the Renaissance Epic
The Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto is among the most influential works of European Renaissance literature. In this course, we will situate this Italian romance epic in its literary and historical context (including its inclusion of the legendary Hippogriff, pre-dating Harry Potter by half a millennium!). Ariosto takes his readers all over the globe, to the moon, and beyond, and does so with a humor that will make 21st century readers laugh and even cringe. Through comparison to other Renaissance epics (e.g., The Fairie Queene and Paradise Lost), students will gain a better understanding of Renaissance literature and the epic genre.
Winter 2012
LITP 0101 - Intro to World Literature
This course is an introduction to the critical analysis of imaginative literature of the world, the dissemination of themes and myths, and the role of translation as the medium for reaching different cultures. Through the careful reading of selected classic texts from a range of Western and non-Western cultures, students will deepen their understanding and appreciation of the particular texts under consideration, while developing a critical vocabulary with which to discuss and write about these texts, both as unique artistic achievements of individual and empathetic imagination and as works affected by, but also transcending their historical periods. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
CMP CW LITSpring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011
LITP 0110 - Continental Fiction
Continental Fiction
An introduction to some major novels and shorter works by 19th and 20th century European authors, including Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Zola's L'Assommoir, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Mann's The Magic Mountain, Kafka's The Trial, Sartre's Nausea, Camus's The Stranger, and others. These works of fiction are triumphs of achievement and innovation aesthetically and conceptually; and they give us a powerful sense of significant and significantly different levels of society, culture, and periods of history. 3 hrs. lect./3 hrs. disc. L
Fall 2010
LITP 0210 - A Literary Approach To Arabia
Arabia: A Literary Approach (in English)
In this course we will examine the Arabian Peninsula as a literary topos that has beguiled representation in both Eastern and Western literature. Whether it is depicted as a glittering spectacle of petro-dollars, the haunt of Bedouin tribesmen or as a sacred focal point, Arabia is an open canvas on which successive societies have sketched their anxieties and aspirations Simultaneously, Arabia has its own rich legacy of self-representation that has been shaped by its harsh environment and unique resources. We will sift through these representations in texts that range among pre-Islamic poetry, the accounts of foreign explorers, novels by modern Arab authors, and contemporary Bedouin oral poetry. All readings will be in English and no previous knowledge of Arabic is required. 3 hrs. sem.
Fall 2009
LITP 0220 - Modern Hebrew Culture & Trans
Modern Hebrew Culture in Translation
This course serves as an introduction to the diverse genres and movements of cultural production in Hebrew, covering roughly the last one hundred years. We will explore a broad selection of poetry, fiction, film, music, and theatre originally intended for Hebrew-speaking audiences, including works composed in Israel (or pre-1948, from British-mandated Palestine) and elsewhere. In translation, we will study works by Yehuda Amichai, Maya Arad, H.N. Bialik, Sayed Kashua, Etgar Keret, Atallah Mansour, Amos Oz, Dalia Ravikovitch, Anton Shammas, A.B. Yehoshua, and others. Particular emphasis will be placed on the themes of modernity, political expression, and aesthetics. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2009
LITP 0230 - Myth & Contemporary Experience
Myth and Contemporary Experience: Modern Poems on Classical Myths*
Greek mythology, an enduring presence in Western thought, has provided, according to Carl Jung, the foundation of one half of our spiritual tradition. In this course we shall study how this rich mythical material has shaped modern poetry. Through close readings of modern poems and their ancient models, we will trace the way 20th-century poets appropriate and transform the classical past in order to reflect on their historical present. While viewing this function of myth as an element of modernity, we shall also explore how these poets build connections between the archetypal meaning of the ancient stories, the questions of existence, and our own contemporary lives. Readings will include Rilke, Eliot, Pound, Cavafy, Montale, Akhmatova, Borges, as well as Sylvia Plath, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott, Louise Glück, and Seamus Heaney. 3 hrs. lect., 1 hr. disc.
Spring 2009, Fall 2010
LITP 0299 - Literary Feasts
Literary Feasts: Representations of Food in Modern Narrative (in English)
This course will consider food and eating practices within specific cultural and historical contexts. We will analyze realistic, symbolic, religious, erotic, and political functions surrounding the preparation and consumption of food. Readings will be drawn from several national traditions, with a focus on Europe. Authors will include, among others, I. Dinesen, L. Esquivel, J. Harris, E. Hemingway, T. Lampedusa, P. Levi, C. Petrini, M. Pollan, E. Vittorini, and B. Yoshimoto. Viewing of several films where food and eating play an important role will supplement class discussion. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2009, Spring 2011
LITP 0305 - Love Stories:
Love Stories: Desire & Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Pre 1800)
Our modern conceptions of desire, self, body and gender are informed in complex and often invisible ways by earlier narratives of love. We will investigate the conflicting accounts of love written during the medieval and early modern periods, considering in particular the relationship between the idealized notion of "courtly love" and the darker, medical picture of love as a form of madness or melancholia. Reading a variety of works including lyric, drama, romance and medical texts, we will look at the construction of gender and sexuality, the relationship between desire and subjectivity, and the gendering of certain "diseases" of love (such as hysteria) during this period. Authors to be studied will include: Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, and a selection of male and female lyric poets. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Spring 2011
LITP 0460 - Sexing the Canon
Sexing the Canon
Human sexuality has been the topic of scientific and artistic explorations for centuries. Regulatory norms of individual cultures enable or deny the expression of specific forms of sexuality in life and literature. As Foucault states: "What is at issue, briefly, is the over-all 'discursive fact,' the way in which sex is 'put into discourse.' In this course we will explore and compare the ways theories of sexuality from different times and places inform and determine our readings of literature. Theoretical texts form the basis for discussions of the works of authors such as Plato, Boccaccio, Choderlos de Laclos, Stifter, Henry James, Woolf, Genet, James Baldwin, Wittig, Thomas Mann, and Santos-Febres. 3 hrs. sem.
Spring 2009, Spring 2011