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Comparative Literature Courses
2009-10
CPLT 113/ENG 113 Studies in Fiction
Topic A: The World of Fiction
Ko (English)
A journey into worlds of fiction that range from grimy and scandalous to fantastic and sublime. As we enter wildly different fictional worlds, we will also think about how those worlds illuminate ours. The syllabus will likely include Francois Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Richard Wright’s Native Son, Isak Dinesan’s short story “Babette’s Feast,” and Gish Jen’s contemporary novel The Love Wife. Students may register for either ENG 113 or CPLT 113 and credit will be granted accordingly.
Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0 NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10
Topic B: Fantastic Fictions
Sides (English)
When fiction blurs or crosses the line between our “real” world and “other worlds,” the reader (as well as the narrator or main character) has entered the realm of “the fantastic,” a genre that (broadly interpreted) contains “the uncanny,” “the supernatural or ghost story,” and “science fiction.” We will read “fantastic” novels and short fiction by nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, and twenty-first century masters from Europe, Japan, North and South America. Taught primarily in lecture, this course will not be writing-intensive. Students may register for either ENG 113 or CPLT 113 and credit will be granted accordingly.
Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0
Young (Classical Studies)
Topic for 2009-10: Afterlives of Antiquity / Classical Crossings.
Taking up one of the major concerns of Comparative Literature as a field, this course looks at how texts move, tracing several works of Greek and Roman literature as they travel through centuries and across continents. We will begin with the troubled notion of a classic and explore questions of canonicity. Case studies will Include texts Sophocles’ Antigone and the poems of Catullus and Sappho. With the help of readings in reception and translation theory, we will look at these works as they change over time, asking how they have contributed to modern discourses and practices including colonialism, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, contemporary pop-culture, and modernist avant-gardes.
Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0
CPLT 228 Narratives of the Self
Nolden (Comparative Literature/German)
Focusing on memoirs which represent the extremes of the human condition, the course will address generic problems and narrative patterns of autobiographical writing and discuss the tension between fact and fiction, the (un-)reliability of memory, the problems of representing history, and the complicated relationship between text and reader. Texts by Augustine, J.-J. Rousseau, W. Benjamin, G. Perec, P. Levi, C. Yang, and others.
Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0
CPLT 284 Magical Realism
Weiner (Russian)
This course examines fictions whose basic reality would be familiar if not for the introduction of a magical element that undermines commonplace notions about what constitutes reality in the first place. The magical element can be a demon, talisman, physical transformation, miraculous transition in space or time, appearance of a second plane of existence, revelation of the unreality of the primary plane of existence, etc. Students will read Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Queneau’s The Blue Flowers, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveler, Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland & The End of the World and Sokolov’s School for Fools, and short stories by Borges, Cortazar, and Nabokov.
Prerequisite: None
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: N/Ol Unit: 1.0 NOT OFFERED IN 2009-10
Aadnani (Middle Eastern Studies) Nolden (Comparative Literature/German))
Topic for 2009-10: Cairo / Paris / Weimar: Encounters between Middle Eastern and European Literatures
This seminar explores patterns of influence and modes of (mis)readings that have shaped the encounter between the literatures of the Middle East and Western Europe. From the Crusades to Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt and colonialism, the interaction between “East” and “West” has
left indelible impressions on literature and has heightened the challenges of representation.
Topics include the construction of the East in Enlightenment and Romantic literature and thought; the trajectory of Orientalism; the postcolonial critique of Eurocentrism; contemporary rewritings of the legacy of the 19th century in texts and films. Readings include: Montesquieu, Goethe, Omar Al-Khayyam, Richard Burton’s translations of Thousand and One Nights, Sally Potter, Jacques Doillon, Naguib Mahfouz, Tayeb Salih, Helene Cixous, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Katia Rubinstein.
Prerequisite: One 200-level course in literature or by permission of the instructor to other qualified students.
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0
Respaut (French)
Drawing on texts from different countries, this course investigates literature’s obsession with medicine. Literary representations of doctors and patients, disability, insanity, AIDS, birth, death and grief, the search for healing and the redemptive power of art. Attention will be given to the links between the treatment of medical issues in fiction, in autobiography and in visual representations (film and photography). This course should be of interest to everyone drawn to health related fields as well as students in social sciences and the humanities.
Prerequisite: One 200-level course in literature or by permission of the instructor.
Not open to first-year students.
Distribution: Language and Literature
Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0
Prerequisite: By permission of the Director. See Academic Distinctions.
Distribution: None
Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0
Prerequisite: By permission of the Director. See Academic Distinctions.
Distribution: None
Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0
Prerequisite: 360 and permission of department.
Distribution: None
Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0
