LIT-Literature

LIT 61A Theater and Theatricality

Survey of the relation of theater to cinema from 1905 to the 1960s. Theater-positive tendencies include Melies, Eisenstein, and German Expressionists. Examines cinematic resistance to theater in the opposition to sound film in France and the Soviet Union, Vertov's kino-eye, and Bresson's barring actors from film.

Credits

5

LIT 61B Introduction to Detective Fictions

A critical overview of detective fiction (and selected films) from Arthur Conan Doyle to contemporary and postmodern reappropriations. Lectures provide historical background and introduction to genre theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural critique.

Credits

5

Instructor

Earl Jackson

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 61D Introduction to Reading Drama

Introduction to the Western theatrical tradition through the study of dramatic form in social context.

Credits

5

Instructor

Mary-Kay Gamel

Quarter offered

Fall, Summer

LIT 61E Introduction to Ethnic Literature

An introduction to the study of ethnic literatures, addressing issues of voice, political agency, and the construction of subjectivity across racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries in the U.S. Topic: Slavery and the literary imagination.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Fall, Summer

LIT 61G Introduction to Women's Literature

An introduction to women writers from a variety of cultures and historical eras.

Credits

5

Instructor

Pascale Gaitet

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 61I Introduction to the Italian Renaissance

Study of the Renaissance in Italy as concept and educational/artistic revolution with special attention to literary works and to the dialogue among the arts and sciences. Authors vary but may include Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Michelangelo.

Credits

5

LIT 61O Literature and Social Change in the Middle Ages

Critical examination of medieval texts that represent and comment upon social changes in Europe and Asia from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries. Readings include such texts as Crusade narratives, the Inferno, Piers Plowman, and the Book of Margery Kemp.(Formerly course 66A.)

Credits

5

LIT 61Q Modern Irish Writing

Presents an interdisciplinary overview of writing in and about Ireland from the 1801 Act of Union to the 1980s, with special attention to historical events and conditions; colonial discourse and English nationalism; ethnographic and literary representation; gender, sexuality, and nationalism; and the problem of violence. (Formerly course 63A.)

Credits

5

LIT 61V Romantic Fiction

A study of novels, short stories, and fairy tales by authors from America, England, France, and Germany. Readings include works by Poe, Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, Goethe, Hoffman, Rousseau, and Merimee. (Formerly course 80M.)

Credits

5

Instructor

Loisa Nygaard

LIT 64H Literature and History

Examines literature's relationship to the past and to the experience of history. Considers diverse modes of understanding the past: myth, tradition, chronicle, novel-writing, and scientific history.

Credits

5

LIT 80A Biblical Narratives

No book has so decisively influenced the development of the Western world as the Bible. Traces the Bible's influence on narrative, themes, and ideas in Western literature. Explores major Biblical stories and themes in a comparative context and traces their reappearance in Western literature and imaginative works.

Credits

5

LIT 80C The Ancient Novel in Cultural Perspective

A survey of ancient novels from the first to the fourth centuries B.C.E. as tales of adventure and romance. Discussions of the meaning of romance, the history of the erotic novel, the history of texts, ancient sexuality, ancient literary production, and the contemporary romance novel.

Credits

5

LIT 80G Studies In Modernism

This introductory course explores literature and culture of the first half of the 20th century. Course materials may include literary texts, films, philosophy, visual arts, and critical essays.

Credits

5

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Spring, Summer

LIT 80J Modern Medievalisms

Examines the ideological functions of the representation of the Middle Ages in literature and film from the 19th century to the present, with special attention to issues of cultural contact, the formation of nationalisms, and the uses of history and fiction.

Credits

5

LIT 80P Topics in Latin American Culture

Through films, literary texts, historical, sociological, and anthropological writings, explores topics pertaining to Latin American culture and society. Course topic changes; please see the Schedule of Classes for current topic.

Credits

5

Instructor

Lourde Martinez-Echazabal

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 80R Modern Italian Literature: From Realism to Myth

An introduction to modern Italian literature from the 19th century to the present, with emphasis on social, political, and gender issues, and the development of narrative prose from realism to myth.

Credits

5

LIT 80S Aristotle's Poetics

Close reading and analysis of Aristotle's Poetics,with special attention to the subsequent fate and influence of the notions advanced in the book.

Credits

5

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

LIT 109A Readings in Theory

A follow-up to Literature 101, consists of readings and discussion of theoretical texts.

Credits

2

LIT 109X Marxist Literary Criticism

Considers the tradition of literary criticism with the tradition of Marxist thinking about society and culture with particular attention to some classic texts in the tradition.

Credits

3

LIT 109Z Twenty-First Century Novels

Examines novels from around the world published since 2000. Class discussion focuses on the novel form and its condition at the beginning of the new millennium.

Credits

3

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 110E Masterpieces of German Literature

Introduction to some of the major works by authors from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Emphasis on close analysis of the texts, but also considers the special role literature has played in German cultural life, and the relationship between the works covered and the dominant intellectual and social movements of the times. Authors include Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Mann, and Kafka. Critical approach designations: Canons, Geographies.

Credits

5

LIT 111A Aphra Behn

Focus is on the corpus of the 17th-century English woman writer Aphra Behn. Examines the role of genres, culture, literary history, colonialism, gender, and the theater in the genesis of Behn's writing career. Critical approach designations: Canons, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 111C John Milton

Selected poetry and prose. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

H Leicester

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 112B Calvino

Advanced introduction to an author whose influence on post-war fiction is acknowledged by writers in Latin America, the United States, Europe, and beyond. Readings include Marcovaldo, Italian Folk Tales, Baron in the Trees, Cosmicomics, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Critical approach designations: Canons, Geographies.

Credits

5

LIT 112D Emily Dickinson

Focuses on Emily Dickinson's letters and poems with emphasis on genre, audience, art and the erotic, and on current textual editing issues. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 112F Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Poetics of American Capitalism

Through close readings of essays, poems, and critical studies, examines how the vision of cultural poetics, strong selfhood, and will to national sublimity of Emerson represents the creative-destructive dynamics of American capitalism. Manifest destiny, imperial subjectivity, class, and globalization are issues. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 112H James Joyce

Study of fiction of James Joyce, emphasizing narrative innovations, cultural conflicts, and crisis of nationalism in the early 20th century. Topic: Ulysses. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 112J Federico García Lorca and Modern Spanish Poetry

Concentrates on poetry and drama of García Lorca but also includes works by Nobel Laureate in Literature Vicente Aleixandre, and other important poets of 20th-century Spain. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 112L John Steinbeck

A critical study of John Steinbeck's novels and short fiction, with close attention to both formal and thematic elements in the author's work. Critical approach designations: Canons, Geographies.

Credits

5

LIT 112N Virginia Woolf

Students read The Voyage Out, Orlando, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between the Acts, plus selections from The Collected Letters. The foci of the course are critical, biographical, and historical. Concerns are also with expressions of feminism present in Woolf's work, and the importance of a female community in providing a framework for the development of her vision. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres.

Credits

5

LIT 115A Homer and Sappho

Close reading of the Iliad, Odyssey, and fragments of Sappho and other lyric poets of the Archaic Age. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

John Lynch

LIT 115B Women Modernists: Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein

Focuses on two innovative modernist writers, Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, in their artistic, cultural, and historical contexts. Critical approach designations: Canons, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

LIT 116A Ancient Philosophy

A close reading of selected dialogues of Plato. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 116D Power, Pleasure, and Danger in Ancient Athens

Works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, and Plato will be read as products of their own time and culture, as sources of Western artistic, intellectual, and moral traditions, and as works still meaningful today. Topics include heroism, relationships between thought and action, conflicts between the individual and society, the nature of divinity and its relationship to human beings. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jennifer Lynn

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 116E Love and Madness in Medieval Literature

A study of the development of the courtly love tradition in medieval Italy and France, with close attention to the construction of gender and authorship, and to the interconnections between Eros, madness, and death. Works include troubadour poetry, the romances of Chretien de Troyes, tales of Marie de France, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 118B Translation, Midrash, Interpretation

Focuses on theory and practice of translation, and on Midrash, their interrelation and the ways in which they inflect our understanding of literary and cultural interpretation. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Murray Baumgarten

LIT 118C Jewish Mysticism

Overview of literature of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah from antiquity to the present. Focuses on primary texts including the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmud, Midrash, Medieval/Spanish Kabbalah, Kabbalah of Safed, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, and contemporary authors. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Global, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Daniel Selden

LIT 118D Performing Texts

Wide-angled exploration of the cultural worlds connected with Jewish liturgy across the diaspora. Offers an anthropological approach to the connections between written text and oral cultures in Judaism: classical and contemporary texts, poetry, music, architecture, and synagogue life. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 120G Modern British Poetry

A survey of selected British poets from the late 19th century through the present. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

General Education Code

TA

LIT 120I Spanish American Poetry

A study of the major periods in Spanish American poetry from the movement known as modernismo to the present. Concentrates on those authors who have changed the course of poetry by introducing new forms and themes in the constitution of a new poetics. Poets studied include Darío, Storni, Hidobro, Vallejo, Neruda, Mistral, Paz, Parra, Castellanos, Cardenal, Orozco, Ferré, Pacheco, and Lihn. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Global, Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 121A The Heroic Epic

A survey and analysis of primary epic: Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Exodus. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Thomas Walsh

LIT 121B Lyric Traditions in Comparative Perspective

Close reading of Greek and Roman lyric poems, including major works by Sappho, Catullus, Pindar, and Horace. Special attention to poetics and aesthetics; to social, political, and economic contexts; to the influence of Greek and Roman lyric on later literatures; and to independent parallels seen in lyric forms from non-Western cultures. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 121C Orphic Poetry

Examines varying interpretations, appropriations, and exploitations of the Orphic myth in its threefold manifestation as harmony, descent, and dismemberment. Topics include the regeneration of language, the poet as priest, and the re-sacralization of an increasingly secularized world. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 121E The Beloved in Medieval Poetry

The figure of the Beloved is a medieval invention. Course traces its development from the Mozarabic Jarchas to Petrarch, and includes Provençal Troubadours, German Minnesaenger, French Trouveres, the Spanish Libro de Buen Amor, and The Romance of the Rose. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 121F Medieval French Romance

Arthurian, realist and allegorical romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries studied in their social and historical context. In English translation.Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Sharon Kinoshita

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 121I Poetry

A comparative examination of poetry in the modern world, and of poetic responses to social change and crisis. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 123A Autobiography: The Augustinian Tradition

Close reading of five genetically linked self-portraits that have determined the dominant tradition of self-representation in the West: Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Montaigne, Rousseau. Topics for discussion: the concept of identity, narrative strategies for presentation of the self, the interplay between discursive operations (language, reading, writing) and lived experience, the policing of the body, and sexual difference as a basis for self-determination. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 123B The Challenge of Testimonio

Explores three related problematics (authority and literature, writing and subjectivity, historical and literary discourses of memory) through the genealogical study of a genre: the testimonial narrative in Latin America. Colonial, republican, and contemporary texts are studied. Critical approach designations: Genres, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 125E Modern Italian Novel

Surveys Italian novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. Critical approach designations: Canons, Geographies.

Credits

5

Instructor

Deanna Shemek

LIT 125F The New Latin American Novel

Examination of contemporary narrative from Latin America. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 125G The Classic Russian Novel

Detailed literary analysis of novels by Gogol, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pasternak. Focus upon aesthetic devices of texts, as well as upon ethical and philosophical issues that inform them. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

General Education Code

CC

Quarter offered

Fall, Summer

LIT 126B Detective Fiction

Representative works of 19th- and 20th-century detective fiction, including works by Poe, Conan Doyle, Christie, Sayers, Hammett, Chandler, P.D. James, Paretsky, and others. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

John Jordan

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 126C Literature of the Fantastic

An analysis of the structure and effects of the peculiar narrative genre called le Fantastique through a comparative study of certain 19th- and 20th-century short fictions. Readings in Balzac, Poe, James, Nerval, Blanchot, and Freud. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 126D Travels in Hyper-Reality: 20th-Century Italian Fiction

Modern Italian fiction, emphasizing the non-realist traditions of fantasy and the fantastic. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 126E The Historical Novel

Traces major developments in the historical novel, looking at how this popular genre has taken up a series of different forms, concerns, and questions about history and the different senses of historicity that fiction can express. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 127A American Prose: Modern and Contemporary Non-Fiction

Explores the strands and streams of creative non-fiction in postwar American literature. Topics range from the non-fiction novel and the New Journalism, to experiments in autobiography, media, art, and cultural criticism that make up the world of publishing today.Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 127B French Philosophical Writers

Analysis of leading figures, periods, and problems in French philosophy. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 127C Satire

An introduction to satire as both an individual genre with a unique literary history, and as a discursive technique present in other literary genres. Students will investigate a range of satiric works from the classical, early modern, and modern periods. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

The Staff

LIT 130C Magic Divination Astrology

Cross-cultural study of magic, divination, and astronomical prognostication as rituals of power that both express and negotiate differences in gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Literature 101 or previous experience with critical theory strongly recommended. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Daniel Selden

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 132B Modern Italian Literature in Translation

Readings in Italian literature and culture ranging from Romanticism to the post-modern. Emphasis on Italy's relation to modernity in terms of artistic innovation; politics and social life; family and gender relations; regional, national, and international identities. Topics vary from year to year. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 132C Italian Postmodern Fiction

Exploration of issues in postmodern writing through readings of several substantial Italian texts, in translation. Authors include Gadda, Calvino, Morante, and Eco. Focus is on questions of interpretation, textuality, and authority. Critical approach designations: Canons, Geographies.

Credits

5

LIT 133A Classical Japanese Literature in Translation

A survey of major works in classical Japanese novels and poetry of ancient and medieval times. Reading includes such works as The Ten Thousand Leaves, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book, The Tale of Heike, Twenty Plays of the Noh Theater. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Global, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 133B Japanese Poetry and Poetics

Surveys poetry and poetic theories in the contexts of literary and intellectual history from the eighth century to the 1970s, with emphasis on the dynamics of tradition and innovation. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 133C Modern Japanese Novel

Important 20th-century novels and short stories in English translation including works by Soseki, Kawabata, Mishima, Oe, and significant women authors. Discussion of literary themes in the context of changing Japanese society and thought. Japanese language skills not required. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 134B Twentieth-Century Francophone Literatures of Africa and the Caribbean in Translation

Introduction to 20th-century Francophone literatures through the study of selected texts from Africa and the Caribbean. Particular emphasis is placed on the social, cultural, historical, and intellectual contexts within which these works can be situated. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 135B Studies in South African Literature

A survey of writing from South Africa since 1948, focusing on social and political themes. Authors include Paton, Gordimer, Mphahlele, Fugard, Ndebele, Head, Brutus, Coetzee, and others. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

John Jordan

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 135C Race Relations: The U.S., South Africa in the Late 19th Century

Focuses on the more prominent theories of biological determinism and on the responses to their theories. In the case of America: the debate over integration versus segregation and on the Pan African movement. In the case of South Africa: the intertwined issues of the institutionalization of segregation and the growth of Afrikaner nationalism. Offered in alternate academic years. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 135D Slavery, Race, and Nation in the Americas

Compares literatures and histories of slavery, abolitionism, and nationalism in 19th-century Cuba and the U.S. Readings include slave narratives by Juan Francisco Manzano (Cuba) and Harriet Jacobs (U.S.) and antislavery novels by black nationalist Martin Delany, Cuban nationalist Cirilio Villaverde, and sentimental reformers Harriet Beecher Stowe and Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 136A American Writers Abroad

Focuses on American modernist expatriate writers and travelers including Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller, Djuna Barnes, Paul and Jane Bowles, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, John Reed, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 136C Community and Escape

Examination of 20th-century writers' response to 19th- and 20th-century canonical models of community and escape, particularly in relationship to evolving ideas of wilderness and utopian community. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 137B The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetry and Community

Examines poetic regionalism, with particular attention to theories and practices coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area from 1945–65: opposition to war, alternative practices of publishing communities, and artistic collaborations and inter-related artistic and poetic communities.Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter, Summer

LIT 140A Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Kabbalah

A study of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism as they emerge out of Near Eastern traditions (Greek, Egyptian, Semitic, Iranian), and their ultimate convergence in Judaism as the teaching and practice of Kabbalah. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Global, Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 140B Archaeology of Power

Historical study of the concept of power as institutionalized in Indo-European society, elaborated in the ancient world, and bequeathed to the nation-states (Eastern and Western) of today. Focus is on the logic and ideas implicit in basic political, military, economic, and social structures. Readings in history, anthropology, linguistics, religion, political science, and myth. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750. Taught in conjunction with course 210.

Credits

5

LIT 144B English Renaissance Literature

Sampling of early modern English prose, verse, and drama. Topic: Jews, Race, and Renaissance England. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Margo Hendricks

LIT 144C Italian Renaissance

Study of Renaissance in Italy as concept and educational/artistic revolution, with special attention to literary works and to dialogue among the arts and sciences. Authors vary but may include Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Deanna Shemek

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 144D Spanish Masterpieces of the Golden Age

Works from various genres including the Poem of the Cid, the Celestina, and Lazarillo de Tormes. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 144E Italian Renaissance: How to Do It

Examines the proliferation of advice literature in early modern Europe as indication of the widespread impression that the world was undergoing unprecedented change. Readings include advice books for state rulers (Machiavelli), instructions for educating daughters (Vives), books on manners (Della Casa), and exercises for spiritual discipline (Ignatius of Loyola). Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 144F The Seventeenth Century

Discussion of selected major works of 17th-century European literature in their historical and philosophical context. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 145B The 18th Century: Sense and Sensuality

A consideration of the complex attitudes of 18th-century English society toward the individual family structure, sexuality, gender, and class. Historical texts are read along with drama, fiction, and nonfiction prose. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 146E Eighteenth Century to the Present

Major works of European fiction in their social, cultural, and intellectual contexts. Works are read in translation. Course topic changes; please see the Schedule of Classes for current topic. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

General Education Code

TA

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 147B Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction in Translation

Masterpieces of poetry and prose from the Golden Age of Russian literature, from Pushkin to Chekhov. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 148A Twentieth-Century British Literature

Extensive study of literary productions of 20th-century Britain. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Sherri Helvie

LIT 148B The Harlem Renaissance

Examination of major writings of the Harlem Renaissance, with attention to cultural and historical background. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivies. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

Instructor

Nathaniel Mackey

LIT 148C American Literature: 1900 to WWII

Surveys American literature in and around the climate of modernism. Beginning with texts written at the turn of the century, course ranges widely through the early to mid-20th century. Special attention will be given to works produced before and between World Wars, as well as to the various artistic, social and international movements characterizing that period. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Louis Chude-Sokei

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 148D The Lawrence Myth: D.H. and T.E. Lawrence

Considers the writing and mythos of D. H. Lawrence and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) in the culture of Great Britain between 1910 and 1930. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

LIT 148E Russian Literature in Revolution

Survey of 20th-century Soviet literature, from the revolution to the death of Stalin. Readings include modernist and avant-garde texts of the 1920s and socialist realism. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

General Education Code

CC

Quarter offered

Fall, Summer

LIT 148F Literature and Culture of the American Left

Survey of literature, music, and film associated with leftist social movements and culture. Situates literary and cultural representations in an historical context. Course topic changes; please see the Class Search for the current topic. Critical approach designations: Histories, Media.

Credits

5

Instructor

Christine Hong

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 148G Nazism and Literature

Study of various literary reactions to Nazism. Examines cultural conditions at the time the movement arose, authors who supported it, authors who opposed it, and post-war writers who have attempted to deal with the Nazi past. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 148H Post-War English Novel

Survey of major works of post-WWII British fiction. Emphasis on postmodernism and experimental fiction, questions of social and sexual identity, utopia and dystopia, and problems of historical representation in fiction. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 150A Literacy and the Coming of the Book

What difference in world history do books make? Topics in the history of literary institutions, including the production, distribution, and reception of printed works. The transition from manuscript to print. The history of reading. The end of the book? Critical approach designations: History, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jody Greene

LIT 150B Writing and Authority in the Pre-Capitalist World

How writing functions before the emergence of the nation, class, capitalist relations, the individual, and printing. Theories of world history/periodization; the social and political character of literacy; technologies of writing. Focus is on early imperial China and post-Carolingian Europe. Critical approach designations: Histories, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 150C Theory and Practice of Literary Translation

Provides theoretical background and practical experience in the translation into English of literary works of poetry and prose originally written in another language. A thorough knowledge of at least one foreign language is required. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 151A Women and Comedy

Readings in Aristophanes, Plautus, Hroswitha, Shakespeare, and various women playwrights. Women as agents of social change on the stage are discussed in historical and theoretical contexts. Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 151C Studies in Early Modern Theater

Examines early modern theories of theatricality, cultural, and social values. Critical approach designations: Histories, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 151D Studies in the Italian Theater: Early Modern Comedy

The courtly, popular, and populist traditions in Renaissance comedy from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Emphasis is placed on the way in which particular social and historical factors conditioned the forms of dramatic representation which flourished during the Renaissance. Among authors to be studied are Aretino, Machiavelli, Poliziano, and examples of the commedia dell'arte. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 151E Spanish Golden Age Theater

Analyzes theater during the Golden Age (16th and 17th centuries) of Spanish literature, when the theater was a democratic meeting point and a social barometer. The popularity of playwrights such as Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca is comparable to the stars of Hollywood of today. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jorge Aladro Font

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 151F Drama under the Sun King

Masterpieces of French classical theater from the reign of Louis XIV, with particular attention to the social, cultural, and political context of their production: Corneille, Moliere, Racine. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 151H Introduction to American Drama

Examines drama in the United States. Issues such as race, sexuality, gender, class, and the art of drama are explored.Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Margo Hendricks

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 151I Twentieth-Century British Drama

Studies in British dramatists, including Shaw, Eliot, Beckett, Osborne, Pinter, Stoppard, Bond, Orton, and Churchill. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 151J Modern Italian Theater: The Spectacle of Reason and Madness

Authors include Nobel Prize winners Luigi Pirandello (1934) and Dario Fo (1997). Topics: relation of modern theater's innovative forms to medieval street performance and early modern commedia dell'arte, theme of the inversion of reason and madness as instrument of social critique, modern dramatic theory. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 154A Avant-Gardes

Survey of major avant-garde movements relating literature and other arts. Movements considered include cubism, futurism, expressionism, vorticism, surrealism, Black Mountain, and minimalism. Critical approach designations: Histories, Media.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 155B British Film

Films are considered both as texts in their own right and as expressions and contributions to larger social discourses around the specific tensions of British society and culture. Course topic changes; see the Class Critical approach designations: Histories, Media.

Credits

5

Instructor

H Leicester

Repeatable for credit

Yes

General Education Code

IM

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 155F Post-Colonial Cinema

Explores how the colonial encounter, anti-colonial struggles, neo-colonial impositions, and postcoloniality as an evolving construct have been registered in (predominantly fictional) films from the U.S., Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 155G Films on the Border

Surveys a range of cinematic representations of the U.S.-Mexico border region from Hollywood, independent, Chicano/Latino, Mexican, and local sources. Studies the border in both concrete and symbolic registers. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Media. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

Julianne Burton-Carvajal

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 155I Violence in Contemporary American Film

A survey of recent American feature films in which graphic depiction of physical violence is an important element. Primary emphasis on analysis of formal, textual, and generic elements; some attention is paid to psychological, sociopolitical, and ideological contexts and implications of representing violence. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

Instructor

Mary-Kay Gamel

LIT 155K Howard Hawks

Howard Hawks: nearly complete survey of a major auteur of the classic Hollywood cinema plus close reading of major works from Scarface to the Rio trilogy, and influence on later films. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 157B The Comedy of Sex on Stage and Screen

Surveys the theory and practice of comedy in several contexts and media including stage, film, and television, with special attention to questions of gender and sexuality. Texts include Aristophanes, Plautus, Shakespeare, Moliere, Orton, Chaplin, Seinfeld, Freud, Bakhtin. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Mary-Kay Gamel

General Education Code

IM

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 157D Texts and Bodies: Representation of Desire in Four Texts, Three Media

1. Psychoanalysis: Barthes and Lacan; 2. Chaucer and fabliau: The Miller's Tale; 3. Verdian opera; 4. Films of John Carpenter. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 158A Introduction to Music Drama

Introduction to opera from Mozart to Berg. Close analysis of text setting, musical form, dramaturgy, and performance (singing/acting), with particular attention to politics, gender, subject-formation, and opera's constitutive role in the rise, as well as critique, of modern bourgeois culture. No previous training in music theory required, although some affinity for classical music desirable. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

Instructor

Daniel Selden

LIT 158B Opera and Film

Interactions between the media of opera and film from the silent era to contemporary movies and television. Special attention will be paid to the flowering of opera films in the eighties, from Losey's Don Giovanni to Zefferelli's Otello, and to Peter Sellar's postmodern reworkings of Mozart for television. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

LIT 159A Beyond Identity

Recent scholarly attention has focused on identity construction among individuals, collectivities, and even products (branding). This seminar focuses on getting one's bearing in a changing organization of knowledge and on determining one's place within it. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 160A Inventing the Barbarian

Texts about encounters with unknown and/or foreign cultures (designated by the Greek term barbarian) provide the basis for historicizing the emergence of Western colonialism, racism, and sexism. Homer, Odyssey; Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places; Euripides Bacchae; documents relating to the discovery of the New World. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 160B Monsters, Barbarians, and Women: Topics in Ancient Ethnography

Focus is on the construction of race and gender in ancient Greek culture. Literary, historical, philosophical, dramatic, and medical texts (Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Euripides, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle) as well as visual media (vase painting, sculpture) are studied. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jennifer Lynn

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 160D Race, Sex, and Nation in U.S. Popular Culture

Theory and practice of popular culture in the U.S. We will address how popular culture forms have historically adapted racial and sexual stereotypes and formulas in relation to nationalism, whether to challenge or to confirm the nation. Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 160H Narratives of Resistance

Selections from writers from around the world, whose common theme is resistance to domination. In most cases, the domination is multiple and complex, involving gender oppression, and racial and colonial domination. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

LIT 161C Afro-Asian Cultural Production

Charts, through examination of literature, film, and historical documents, the legacy of Afro-Asian encounters within the Americas and on the global stage with a focus on comparative racialization, slavery, and colonialism, Third World liberation, and inter-ethnic tensions. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

Christine Hong

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 164E Jews in Italy

Examines major Jewish writers in Italy. Course materials include films, poetry, cultural documents. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 164F Israeli Literature

An introduction to Hebrew literature since the 1940s, and to Israeli culture and history of this period. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

Moshe Ron

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 164I Modernity as Jewish Challenge and Catastrophe: The American Experience

Examines modernity as Jewish challenge and catastrophe, and focuses on the American experience. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Bruce Thompson

General Education Code

ER

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 166D Feminist Theory in Historical Perspective

A study of the various strands of contemporary feminist thought and scholarship, and an investigation of the usefulness of feminist insights for the analysis of a particular culture and its texts. Readings in Middle English and in translation. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 166F French Women Writers

Offers an introduction to the work and thought of three 20th-century French women writers: Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Monique Wittig. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 166G Italian Women Writers

Examination of literary texts and feminist works of Italian women writers; special attention to the relationship between women's writing, constructions of authorship and gender, and the historical-cultural context. While most of the works are from the 20th century, some earlier writings are also explored. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 166H Latin American Women Writers

Explores literary production by women in relation to social movements and historical events. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

Lourde Martinez-Echazabal

LIT 166I Women in Russian Literature

Survey of women's writing and representations of women in Russian and Slavic literature from the medieval folk tale through the contemporary period. Topics include Baba Yaga tales, woman as subject in 19th-century literature, Soviet memoir literature, and evolution of the persona of the female author. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global.

Credits

5

Instructor

William Nickell

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 166J Women Modernists

Readings of innovative fiction, poetry, and essays by women writers from 1900-1950. We will discuss issues of gender and sexuality as they affect literary theme and form, female literary collaboration and lesbian salons, and the critical framing of women's writings by feminism and modernism. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 167A The Body in Antiquity

Focuses on the political, historical, and ontological construction of the body in ancient Greek culture. Literary, historical, philosophical, and medical texts (Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates) as well as visual media (vase painting, sculpture) are studied. Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 167D Topics in Medical Humanities

Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history, and religion) concerned with its application to medical education and practice. The humanities provide insight into the human condition, suffering, personhood, and our responsibility to each other; and offer an historical perspective on medical science. Course helps prepare students for the reading comprehension and writing parts of the MCAT. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities. Students cannot receive credit for this course and Literature 80K.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

HISC 145E

Instructor

Wlad Godzich

LIT 179D Special Projects in Creative Writing

Focuses on the development of extended creative writing projects, and may be used by students to prepare for the creative writing senior.

Credits

3

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 182B Le seizième siècle

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in French required. Literature and history of early modern (16th, 17th, or 18th century) France. May include poetry, prose, and drama. Topics include the study of identity and difference in premodernity, gender, sexuality, and travel narratives. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750. (Formerly Early Modern France.)

Credits

5

Instructor

Carla Freccero

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 182C Littérature moderne

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in French required. Study of 19th- and 20th-century literary innovation and/or representations of sociohistorical events. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. (Formerly Introduction to Modernity.)

Credits

5

Instructor

Richard Terdiman

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 182D Récit et fiction

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in French required. Course topic changes; see the Class Search for current topic. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies. (Formerly Studies in Narrative.)

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 182G Littérature et les arts

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in French required. Literary texts studied in the context of the development of other arts (visual, cinematic, musical, architectural) in the same historical period. Consideration of the relation between the written text and visual or acoustical images. May be repeated for credit as topic varies. Critical approach designations: Histories, Media. (Formerly Literature and the Arts.)

Credits

5

LIT 183C Medieval German Literature

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. An introduction to the language and literature of the Middle High German period (circa 1200). The material studied will include selections from the great epics (including Das Nibelungenlied) and from the Minnesang poets (including Walther von der Volgelweide). Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 183E German Lyric Poetry

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. A look at carefully selected poems by major German poets from 1730 to 1900. Authors read include Goethe, Hölderlin, Eichendorff, Heine, Mörike, Hofmannsthal, and Rilke. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories, Media. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 183J German Women Writers

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. A study of women writing in German as well as of the social and political contexts in which they wrote. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 183L German Travelers

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. A study of travel narratives, both fictional and autobiographical, focusing on how German-speaking travelers have responded to foreign cultures and often gained, through travel, new perspectives of their own. Authors include Goethe, Heine, Eichendorff, Hesse, and Wolf. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 183O German Identity

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. Pursues the development of German identity from the Middle Ages to the present and approaches this issue from an interdisciplinary perspective, using literary, anthropological, historical and political texts. What is German identity after a 40-year history of division and a reunification process that continues? Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 183Q German Cultural Criticism: The Poetics of Resistance

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. Referring to the Debates on Realism of the 1930s, considers a variety of counter-textual forms: the fantastic, the grotesque, melodrama, the avant-garde, dada. Critical approach designations: Histories, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 183R Goethe

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. Close study of the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 183S Kafka

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. An intensive study of the works of Franz Kafka, with close readings in particular of the aphorisms and shorter texts, and with reference to the literary, social, and historical context in which Kafka's work emerged. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 183T Kleist, Hoffmann, and Kafka

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. Study of the three leading figures among German writers of bizarre and fantastic stories. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 183U Thomas Mann

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in German required. An intensive study of the works of Thomas Mann, with particular attention given to his portrayal of pre-fascist and fascist European culture. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories.

Credits

5

LIT 185A Italian Literary Genres

Close readings of a small number of texts representing major authors, periods, and genres (lyric, dramatic, narrative) of Italian literature. Intensive practice in spoken and written Italian. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres.

Credits

5

Instructor

Deanna Shemek

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 185C Early Modern Comedy

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. The courtly, popular, and populist traditions in Renaissance comedy from the fourteenth- through the seventeenth-centuries. Emphasis is placed on the way in which particular social and historical factors conditioned the forms of dramatic representation which flourished during the Renaissance. Among authors to be studied are Aretino, Machiavelli, Poliziano, and examples of the commedia dell'arte. Critical approach designations: Media, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirements: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 185D Italian Renaissance Survey

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. Survey of the chief writers in Florence and Ferrara at the turn of the 15th century and the early 16th century. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirements: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 185E Romanticism

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. A close thematic and stylistic study of the poetics of romanticism in Italy. Readings include the epistolary novel and lyrics of Ugo Foscolo and the Canti of Giacomo Leopardi, as well as selections from his prose dialogues, Le Operette Morali. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirements: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 185F Italian Autobiography

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. Examines various critical perspectives on the writing of autobiography in Italy, including issues of gender; the construction of the self; theories of representation and narratology; cultural and political context. Principal readings in Italian: Dante, Cellini, Renaissance female poets, Alfieri, Pellico, Aleramo, Ginzburg, Levi. Selected readings from St. Augustine and Rousseau. Critical approach designations: Genres, Power and Subjectivities.

Credits

5

LIT 185G Modern Drama

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. Major currents in the 20th-century Italian theater, from D'Annunzio to the contemporary avant-garde. The dramatic texts are approached from a variety of different perspectives: semiotic, anthropological, and sociological. The differentiation between the literary and the theatrical codes is a major focus. Among authors studied are D'Annunzio, Pirandello, Betti, De Filippo and Fo. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 185K Studies in the Italian Novel

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. A study of the development of the novel in Italy with attention to the cultural context. Critical approach designations: Genres, Geographies.

Credits

5

LIT 185R Machiavelli

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Italian required. Study of the literary and political works of one of the most influential political thinkers of modernity. Readings include The Prince, selections from the Discourses and from Machiavelli's letters, at least one of Machiavelli's comedies, and his misogynist novella, Belfago. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Deanna Shemek

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 186E Latin Prose Composition

Reading proficiency in Latin required. An introduction to Latin prose composition. Begins with formal composition exercises, progresses to close stylistic analyses of selected passages and free compositions modeled on them. Critical approach designations: Canons, Genres. Distribution requirement: Poetry, Pre-1750.

Credits

2

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 188C Autobiography in the Spanish Renaissance

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. Study of the phenomenon of the boom of a literary genre in Renaissance Spain: the autobiography. Why do soldiers, conquerors, picaros, and monks reveal their selves and their life experiences? What are common aspects and what do these texts reveal about the historic reality? Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 188D Introduction to the Golden Age

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. An introduction to representative works of the main genres of the period by authors such as Garcilaso de la Vega, Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Jesús, Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, and Calderón de la Barca, and to life in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750

Credits

5

LIT 188J El teatro en los s. XVI–XVII

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. An overview of the development in Spanish theater during the sixteenth and 17th centuries. Special emphasis is placed on the works of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca. Shows how Lope e Vega, considered the father of theater in Spain, changed the medieval conception of theater and influenced the creation of theater of the same epoch. In this context, plays of Sor Juana and Ruiz de Alarcón are studied. Critical approach designations: Canons, Media. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750.

Credits

5

LIT 188K García Lorca and the Generation of '98

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. Readings in the poetry of Spain since 1898 with a study of the main currents in Spanish and European poetry in the 20th century. Course concentrates on the works of García Lorca, as well as the poetry of Alberti, Machado, Aleixandre, and others. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 188N Poetry of the Spanish Diaspora

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. Focuses on the problematics of exile as it affects Spanish poetry, granting central attention to the period of Francoist dictatorship. Course work includes readings of Prados, Cernuda, Alberti, Altolaguirre, et al. Secondary readings on appropriate history and literary and cultural criticism. Critical approach designations: Genres, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Poetry.

Credits

5

LIT 189J Social Documentary: Histories, Theories, Practice

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. Examines the forms and functions of film and video documentary throughout Latin America from the 1950s to the present. Emphasizes engagement with historical events, political conflicts, and social movements, along with changing theories and perceptions of documentary. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Global

Credits

5

Instructor

Julianne Burton-Carvajal

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 189W Literatures of the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. By reading Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican texts, explores questions of modernity and postmodernity, of cultural, political, gender, and racial identities, while also addressing the position of Caribbean literature within the Latin American literary canon. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global

Credits

5

Instructor

Lourde Martinez-Echazabal

LIT 189Y African-Latin American Literature

Speaking, reading, and writing proficiency in Spanish required. By reading sociological, historical, and political writings dealing with race mixture, race relations and cultural/national identity in Latin America, delves into the ideology of Mestizaje particularly African-Spanish and African-Portuguese, and its representation in visual and literary texts. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Global

Credits

5

Instructor

Lourde Martinez-Echazabal

LIT 190B Theories of Meaning

Focuses on theories of meaning advanced in premodern and early modern Europe. Authors include Aristotle, Augustine, Capellus, Plato, and Shakespeare. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750, Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

LIT 190C Love and Death in Medieval Literature

A study of the development of the courtly love tradition in medieval France and Italy; examination of the construction of gender, authorship, and the interconnections among Eros, madness, and death. Works include troubadour poetry, romances of Chrètien de Troyes, tales of Marie de France, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Critical approach designations: Genres, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750, Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

LIT 190D Making Europe in the Middle Ages

Examines the emergence of a common culture in western Europe, 1050-1500. Topics include internal colonization and frontier societies, Latin Christendom and vernacular cultures, and crusades and the perception of cultural differences. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750, Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

LIT 190E Studies in Early Modern British Literature

Study of selected authors or issues in early modern British literature. Course topic changes; see the Class Search for current topic. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirements: Pre-1750, Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): LIT 101. Enrollment is restricted to senior literature majors.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 190G Frame Tale Fictions

Introduces several major works of world literature through their shared employment of the frame tale. Topics: permutations of stories as they pass from collection to collection, frame's narrative structure, meaning of storytelling within such collections. Readings: The Arabian Nights, The Decameron and selected modern texts. Critical approach designations: Genres, Histories. Distribution requirement: Pre-1750, Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Instructor

Deanna Shemek

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): LIT 101. Enrollment is restricted to senior literature majors.

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 190H Studies in the Horror Film

The horror genre in film: Nosferatu (1921) to the present. Using the U.S. as a reference point, the course considers problems of genre definition and canon formation, historical and international developments, social and psychological perspectives. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Instructor

H Leicester

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 190M Women Novelists

Students will read novels by such 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century novelists as Ann Radcliffe, Elizabeth Inchbald, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. Critical, historical, and theoretical texts will be assigned, and a lengthy seminar paper is required. Critical approach designations: Genres, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): LIT 101. Enrollment is restricted to senior literature majors.

LIT 190P Literature and Other Media: Visions of Carmen

Carmen as literary text, opera, and film. Critical approach designations: Genres, Media. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Instructor

H Leicester

LIT 190Q Studies in 20th-Century British Literature

Intensive study of selected authors or other issues in 20th-century British literature. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Histories. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Instructor

Vilashini Cooppan

Requirements

Prerequisite(s): LIT 101. Enrollment is restricted to senior literature majors.

LIT 190R <I>The Magic Mountain</I>

An intensive study of Thomas Mann's great novel of ideas, The Magic Mountain, with a focus on its brilliant analysis of German and European culture in the early years of the 20th century, and its prophetic anticipation of the rise of German Nazism and other Fascist movements. Critical approach designations: Canons, Histories. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

LIT 190S Imagining the Pacific: Colonial Narratives, Postcolonial Contestations

Studies tropes, narratives, discourses, and genres used to represent the Pacific as a region of (a) Euro-American fascination and control since the era of colonial contact; (b) counter-hegemonic, local, and indigenous perspectives that have reclaimed cultural-national identity since decolonizing ferment of the 1970s. Critical approach designations: Geographies, Power and Subjectivities. Distribution requirement: Senior Seminar.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 203 The Theory and Practice of Teaching Writing

An introduction to current theory and research on the teaching of writing and discussion of practical strategies for applying that research not only in composition classes but throughout the curriculum as well.

Credits

5

LIT 209Y Modern Literary Studies

The course topic changes; please see the Schedule of Classes for the current topic.

Credits

2

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 209Z Modern Literary Studies

The course topic changes; please see the Class Search for the current topic.

Credits

3

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to literature graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 230E Twentieth-Century Russian Literary Theory

Twentieth-century Russian literary theory from Formalism and Marxism to Bakhtin and contemporary Soviet semiotics. Seminal theoretical and literary texts are discussed in the context of Soviet literary culture and politics: literary polemics of the twenties, subsequent consolidation of Communist Party control and the monopoly of Socialist Realism, post-Stalinist thaw, and the development of the Moscow and Tartu schools of semiotics.

Credits

5

LIT 231B Archaeology of Power

Historical study of the concept of power as institutionalized in Indo-European society, elaborated in the ancient world, and bequeathed to the nation-states (Eastern and Western) of today. Focus is on the logic and ideas implicit in basic political, military, economic, and social structures. Readings in history, anthropology, linguistics, religion, political science, and myth.

Credits

5

LIT 232A Nationalist Geographies of Film Melodrama

Examines theories of film melodrama, genre theories, film language and visual style, and constructions of the nations as exemplified by Asian, European, Latin American and U.S. films, with special emphasis on Mexican, Cuban, and Argentinian examples. No prior film expertise necessary.

Credits

5

LIT 232B Gender/Interpretation/Film

Examines changing paradigms of gender in Latin American feature films (1940-1990), exploring the applicability of currents of western feminist, gender theory to these peripheral texts. Provides instruction and practice designing college-level film courses.

Credits

5

LIT 232C Texts and Bodies: Representations of Desire in Four Texts, Three Media

1. Psychoanalysis: Barthes and Lacan; 2. Chaucer and fabliau: The Miller's Tale; 3. Verdian opera; 4. Films of John Carpenter.

Credits

5

Instructor

H Leicester

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 233A Gender and Interpretation

The study of assorted fiction, poetry, and interpretive writing by women, with an eye to the implications of gender for literary theory and practice.

Credits

5

LIT 233B The Fantastic

Through literary, critical, and theoretical texts, explores fantastic fiction as the subversive other of the bourgeois novel: a form which interrogates conventional narrative forms and theories of genre and reveals cultural anxieties about sexuality, subjectivity, racial and gender identity, religion, science, and the family. Authors include Walpole, Austen, Radcliffe, Le Fanu, de Sade, M. Shelley, Poe, E. Bronte, Hawthorne, Melville, B. Stoker, Conan Doyle, H. James, Conrad, Faulkner, Kafka, Toni Morrison, Lacan, Kristeva, Edmund Burke, Fanon, E. Said, P. Macherey, F. Jameson, Freud.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 233C Freud and Lacan

An in-depth overview of the early-mid periods of Freud's thought, beginning with the Project for a Scientific Psychology through the metapsychological texts of 1914-1918. The later Freud is discussed in the contexts of the career and writings of Jacques Lacan, in particular Lacan's doctoral dissertation, and the Seminars I and II. Both writers are assessed individually and in dialogue in discussions framed by contemporary critical theory, semiotics, and questions concerning cinematic practice. Special attention is paid to Lacan's analysis of Poe's The Purloined Letter.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 233D Representation

Close reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the basis of modern critical thought. Focus is on the theory of representation and its reception both in 19th-century philosophy (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche) and 20th-century literary theory (Saussure, Freud, Heidegger, Derrida, de Man, Foucault, gender and cultural studies).

Credits

5

LIT 237B Logics of Modernism

Explores fundamental concepts and aesthetico-political principles of key avant-garde movements: futurism, expressionism, Vorticism, Proletcult, and constructivsm. Particular focus on the interpretations of basic avant-garde frameworks in national contexts ranging from Great Britain to Italy and Germany to countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Credits

5

Instructor

Tyrus Miller

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 238 Postmodernism

Key debates and central theorists of postmodernism.

Credits

5

Instructor

Richard Terdiman, Jody Greene

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Winter, Spring

LIT 239 Literary Posthumanism/s

Concentrates on a reading of 19th- and 20th-century texts that interrogate the mainstream Western anthropocentric humanist tradition. Issues include the values of self-consciousness, autonomous agency, individual rights, hostility to technology, prostheses, cyborg identity and boundary confusions, postmodern technosublime, paranoia, and the domestication of cyberspace.

Credits

5

LIT 240A Studies in Antiquity

An in-depth study of a topic in Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 240B Ancient Novel

Narrative fiction from the age of Alexander through the first centuries of the Christian era, with particular attention to the influence of Near Eastern and African cultures on the formation of the European novel. Principal readings: The Alexander Romance, Petronius, Apuleius, Khariton, Achilles Tatius, Heliodoros.

Credits

5

LIT 240C The Body in Antiquity

Focuses on the political, historical, and ontological construction of the body in ancient Greek culture. Literary, historical, philosophical, and medical texts (Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates) as well as visual media (vase painting, sculpture) are studied.

Credits

5

LIT 240D The Literature of Classical Athens

Primary texts from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. in Athens, including drama, historical narrative, philosophy, zoological and medical treatises will be read in their historical, political, and spatial or architectural contexts and in relation to contemporary literary and cultural theory. Knowledge of Greek is not required.

Credits

5

LIT 240E The Rhetoric of Tragedy: Politics, Ideology, and Spectacle

Devoted to situating Greek tragic production within the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the polis and the western canon. Topics include the origins of tragedy, tragedy as a civic and political institution, the dramatic festival, the tragic construction of gender, mimesis.

Credits

5

LIT 240F Orphic Poetry

Examines varying interpretations, appropriations, and exploitations of the Orphic myth in its threefold manifestation as harmony, descent, and dismemberment. Topics include the regeneration of language, the poet as priest, and the re-sacralization of an increasingly secularized world.

Credits

5

LIT 241A Medieval Epic

Medieval reworkings of stories and motifs drawn from the barbarian or Germanic tradition, including Beowulf, The Song of Roland, the Nibelungenlied, Snorri Sturlason: King Harald's Saga from Heimskringla, Njal's Saga.

Credits

5

LIT 242A Renaissance Woman/Renaissance Man

Explores the European inheritance of definitions of woman (and by implication, man), through a study of key literary texts and historical documents from the early modern period. Emphasis on Italian and English texts; work in other European languages welcome.

Credits

5

LIT 242B Queering the Renaissance

Seeks to understand the recent convergence in early modern scholarship between queer theory and Renaissance studies and to explore the definitions and articulations of queer theory as a mode of textual criticism and practice.

Credits

5

Instructor

Carla Freccero

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

LIT 243C Early Modern Italian Women Writers

In early modern Italy several factors converged to foster a boom in women's writing and publication. Course addresses context and content of these writings, dealing with key theoretical and historical issues surrounding women's entry into authorship in Europe. Knowledge of Italian not required.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 244 Libertinism

Libertinism as a literary, philosophical, ethical, and cultural movement in England and France, 1650-1800. Three distinct but overlapping definitions of libertinism: religious atheism, philosophical materialism, and sexual license. Readings include Moliere, Behn, Rochester, Montesquieu, Diderot, Cleland, La Clos, and Sade.

Credits

5

LIT 245 Italian Epic

Examines Italy's epic tradition against backdrop of its political and cultural history. Readings may include (subject to availability) Pulci's Morgante, Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata. Reading knowledge of Italian highly recommended.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 252 Postcolonial Theory, Premodern Texts

What are the advantages and limitations of using postcolonial theory to study the Latin Middle Ages (twelfth–fifteenth centuries)? Topics include changing modes of cultural contact (commerce, crusade), the representation of internal minorities (Jews, heretics, slaves), and the emergence of nationalist thinking.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 253 Globalization and Localization of Cultural Identity

Deals with some reigning models of global/local dialectics, with literary and filmic texts as examples and challenges to these dominant theoretical frameworks. Also discusses tactics and emergences of transnational cultural studies in Asian-Pacific contexts.

Credits

5

LIT 282E Modern French/Francophone Philosophies of Difference

Examines select modern French/Francophone philosophical and psychoanalytic discussions of difference in the work of Lacan, Fanon, Irigaray, Derrida, and Deleuze and their influence on current critical theory. Texts are studied in French although students may use translations.

Credits

5

Instructor

Carla Freccero

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

LIT 285A Italian Autobiography

Examines various critical perspectives on the writing of autobiography in Italy, including issues of gender; the construction of the self; theories of representation, narratology, and lyric form; political context. Principal readings in Italian: Dante, Petrarch, Renaissance female poets, Ugo Foscolo, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi. Selected readings from St. Augustine, Rousseau, R. Barthes.

Credits

5

LIT 285B Modern Italian Poetry

Study of the development of the Italian lyric from Romanticism to the present, with close stylistic and thematic analyses of the works of Leopardi, D'Annunzio, Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Pavese, and Montale.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 285C Studies in the Italian Novel: Postmodern

Close reading of several texts that participate in Italian post-modern writing. Discussion of the postmodern return to narrative and its emphasis on readers; the attenuation of grand narratives of history, politics, and science; the functions of pastiche and play; self-reflexivity. Readings and discussion conducted in Italian.

Credits

5

LIT 285D Literature and Fascism

Addresses Italy's literature and film of the postwar period, with emphasis on the use of these media in the nation's attempt to come to grips with its experience in fascism and the Resistance.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter

LIT 285E Boccaccio

Critical study of the Decameron.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 285F Machiavelli and Italian Humanism

Study of the literary and political works of one of the most influential political thinkers of modernity. Readings include The Prince, selections from the Discourse and from Machiavelli's letters, at least one of Machiavelli's comedies, and his misogynist novella, Belfagor.Course taught in Italian.

Credits

5

LIT 285G Petrarch

Close reading of the poetry of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374); examination of his construction of a modern lyric subjectivity and a poetics of desire.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 286 Roman Poetry

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

LIT 288A Autobiography in the Spanish Renaissance

Study of the phenomenon of the boom of a literary genre in Renaissance Spain: the autobiography. Why do soldiers, conquerors, picaros, and monks reveal their selves and their life experiences? What are common aspects and what do these texts reveal about the historic reality?

Credits

5

LIT 288B Topics in Spanish Golden Age Literature

Focuses on different genres of the Renaissance period that flourished before the creation of Cervantes' Don Quijote. The course topic changes; see the Schedule of Classes for the current topic.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jorge Aladro Font

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 288D Prose Works of Cervantes

Study of the prose works of Cervantes (excluding his masterpiece Don Quixote) in order to understand the sociohistorical implications, and his ideology and style, which ultimately leads to a better understanding of Don Quixote. The texts studied give a panorama of the literary genres (pastoral novel, picaresque novel, etc.) during the Golden Age period and, simultaneously, serve as an introduction to the literature of Renaissance Spain.

Credits

5

LIT 288E Eros y mistica

In-depth examination of mysticism: Jewish, Christian, and Arabic; and of eroticism. Also looks at the idea of union in mysticism and eroticism.

Credits

5

LIT 288G Cultura, nacionalismo y estado en el siglo XIX latinoamericano

Explores three related problematics: emergence of literature as a specialized social discourse, nationalism and education, coloniality and postcoloniality. Important questions: what are the national language and culture, what is the gender/genre of the nation.

Credits

5

LIT 288H Nineteenth- and 20th-Century Spanish American Novels

By reading literary, critical, and theoretical texts, the seminar explores the various courses mapped by the genre in Spanish America since 1816 to the present. However, because of its board chronological range, it is done by focusing on selected topics and/or periods. May be repeated for credit as seminar topic varies.

Credits

5

LIT 288I Novelist as Critic

Since its origins, the novel in Spanish America has been one of the strongest vehicles for social protest and identity quest. Concentrates on novel theories as expressed by Spanish American novelists from the 19th through 20th century, showing the development and uniqueness of the genre in Spanish America. Novelists include: de Lizardi, Gómez de Avellaneda, Isaacs, Azuela, Gallegos, Asturias, Carpentier, Bombal, Castellanos, García Marquez, Fuentes, Puig, Vargas Llosa, Sarduy, Ferré, Barnet, Allende.

Credits

5

LIT 288J Twentieth-Century Spanish American Essay

A study of the essay in Spanish America from Sarmiento to the present which has fundamentally concentrated on problems of national or cultural identity. Authors include Martínez, Estrada, Mariátegui, Paz Castellanos, Salazar Bondy, Benedetti, Poniatowska, J.L. Gonzalez, Retamar, Monsivais, Ferré.

Credits

5

LIT 288K Twentieth-Century Spanish American Poetry

Addresses the ways in which poets and poetic movements have responded aesthetically to the region's (Latin America) geography of social, political and cultural experience. Trace the private and public voices who responded imaginatively creating a new poetics. Major movements such as modernismo, poesía pura las vanguardias, la anti-poesía poesía conversacional, pos-vanguardismo, and their major exponents are studied, as well as other poetic voices previously overlooked or underestimated.

Credits

5

LIT 288L Literature of the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean

By reading Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican texts, explores questions of modernity and postmodernity of cultural, political, gender, and racial identities, while also addressing the position of Caribbean literatures within the Latin American literary canon.

Credits

5

LIT 288N Literature and the African Diaspora in Latin America

Explores the literary creation of authors of African descent in Latin America. In addition to the study of Island, or Plantation literatures/societies, this course also derives into areas of the South American Pacific Rim where, by virtue of its natural resources, economics, and mode of colonization, a different kind of Afro-American literature, culture, and society has been produced. Students must be fluent in Spanish.

Credits

5

LIT 288Q Gender and Representation: Contemporary Mexican Women Writers

Modern Mexican women writers' struggle for interpretive power. Concentrating on autobiographical fictions, texts are read against Latin American feminist and cultural theories. Special attention is given to the particular problematics of gender, nation, and narration in postrevolutionary Mexico.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

LIT 288R Modernism and Postmodernism: The Debate in Latin America

Addresses the problematics of these concepts as they relate to literary and cultural production in Latin America.

Credits

5

Instructor

Norma Klahn

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

LIT 288T Latin American Film and Cultural Theory

An examination of Latin American and Latino films in connection with relevant social and cultural issues and theories. Reading knowledge of Spanish is required.

Credits

5

Instructor

Juan Poblete

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Spring

LIT 288V Reconstructing Spain

Construction of new discourses of Spanishness after 1975, their negotiation in the context of European integration/globalization and against historical memories.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jorge Aladro Font

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall

LIT 288X Historica de la lectura y los lectores: recepcion y consumo cultural en el mundo Latino Americano

What is the role of reading in the theoretical revisions encompassed under the rubric of Latin American Cultural Studies? What changes and contributions have brought about the Cultural Studies emphasis on key words such as production-reception, consumption, resemantization, and reappropriation? These questions provide a framework for a historical-theoretical reconstruction of the place of reading and readers in Latin American cultural history.

Credits

5

Quarter offered

Winter