Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

ROMANTIC LIT AND ITS DISCONTENTS: FLAUBERT, SAND, BAUDELAIRE (CL3059)

Studies in the literary works, poetic aspirations and legal trials of Flaubert, Sand, and Baudelaire, while tracing their tremendous influence on the 19th-century French literature and their contribution to the emergence of modernity. Readings include Indiana, Madame Bovary, Trois contes, Bouvard et Pecuchet, and Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal among other works, as well as a range of critical and philosophical commentaries.

LITERATURE & THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION (CL3060)

Approaches Western political discourses through major texts of 19th-century literature. Provides an introduction to socialism, anarchism, liberalism, and communism, and relates them to questions of literary production, arguing that the literary and the political imaginations are intimately related. Literary texts studied include fiction by Zola, Gaskell, Dickens, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chernyshevsky, and Conrad, and poetry by French and British writers.

KAFKA AND WORLD LITERATURE (CL3063)

Kafka’s work has left indelible traces in the pages of today’s most important novelists, in the West and beyond. In this course we consider the meaning – and when relevant, the burden – of his global legacy. Assigned readings include “The Metamorphosis”, The Trial and other seminal works by Kafka alongside an assortment of Kafka-inflected fictions from around the world.

THE AESTHETICS OF CRIME FICTION (CL3069)

Traumatic reaction in the aftermath of WWI, the rapid evolution of cinema and photography, emerging trends of psychoanalytic thought, all contributed to a disturbing, often volatile, re-examination of the aesthetics of literature in the wake of a culture of ruin characterizing early 20th century Europe. Trends in mass consumption, such as the popularity of crime fiction and its existential outgrowth film noir, are largely rooted in this struggle to come to terms with cultural transitions taking place between the two wars. This course will examine the origins and aesthetics of crime fiction and film, notably, the evolution of film noir and the série noire, and other developments in Europe and America just before and after WWII. Students will analyze some of the canonical writers whose works influenced a second generation of crime fiction writers as well as the works of film directors who presided over these crucial moments of transition.

INTERMEDIATE ANCIENT GREEK II (CL3070)

This course builds on the skills acquired in Intermediate Ancient Greek I. Students read longer, more difficult texts and train basic methods of classical philology and literary criticism, e.g., metrical and stylistic analysis, textual criticism, use of scholarly commentaries and dictionaries, recognizing levels of style and characteristic generic features.

ULYSSES & BRITISH MODERNISM (CL3073)

Reads Joyce's Ulysses in depth, and in the context of British modernist culture. Supporting readings include works by Wyndham Lewis and Virginia Woolf, and documents from contemporary periodicals. Articulates the relationships between stylistic creativity and the imagination of new possibilities for living, arguing that stylistic innovation attempts seriously and productively to grasp the emerging difficulties and opportunities of late capitalism.

QUEENS, FAIRIES & HAGS: ROMANCE OF MEDIEVAL GENDER (CL3075)

This course is a quest for understanding of the conventions of medieval romance, a genre of predilection for establishing codified, recognizable normative femininities and masculinities through the lens of gender, sexuality and feminist and queer theory. We will explore medieval texts and the social contexts of their production and reception, the aspirations and contradictions of the idealized, and the heteronormative world of knighthood and courtly love.

MODERN SEXUALITIES IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING (CL3076)

Considers a range of literary writing in which experimental prose and challenging depictions of sex have together defined a particularly subversive force. Reads these works against the development of particularly modern arieties of sexual identity and sexual behavior. Includes works by Genet, Nabokov, Orton, Bataille, Kathy Acker, Nella Larsen, among others.

BRECHT & FILM (CL3080)

We examine Brecht's application of his theories and plays to his work in German and Hollywood cinema. We consider his collaborations with Fritz Lang, Charles Laughton, G.W. Pabst, Lotte Eisner and others. We also analyze his influence on later filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Hans Jurgen Syberberg and R.W. Fassbinder and his contributions to film theory.

POST-COLONIAL LIT. & THEORY (CL3081)

Explores literary works from Africa, Asia, India, Latin American, Ireland and/or the Caribbean alongside classics from the Western canon that address key colonial and post-colonial issues and concepts: imperialism, nationalism, globalization, empire, resistance writing, feminism, hybridity, border-crossing, exile and cultural translation. Introduces major voices in post-colonial literary and cultural studies, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak.