University Bulletin (2011-2012)

COML 92a Internship and Analysis in Comparative Literature
Usually offered every year.
Staff

COML 97a Senior Essay
Offers students an opportunity to produce a senior essay under the direction of an individual instructor. Usually offered every fall.
Staff

COML 98a Independent Study
May be taken only by majors, with the written permission of the advising head and the chair of the department.
Readings and reports under faculty supervision. Offered as needed.
Staff

COML 98b Independent Study
May be taken only by majors, with the written permission of the advising head and the chair of the department.
Reading and reports under faculty supervision. Offered as needed.
Staff

COML 99d Senior Thesis
May be taken only with the permission of the advising head.
This is a full-year course that must be taken by all senior majors in comparative literature who wish to undertake honors work. Usually offered every year.
Staff

COML 100a Comparing Literatures: Theory and Practice
[ hum wi ]
Core course for COML major and minor.
What is common and what is different in literatures of different cultures and times? How do literary ideas move from one culture to another? In this course students read theoretical texts, as well as literary works from around the world. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Powelstock

COML 104a Revisions, Rewrites and Remakes: From the Classical Period to the Present
[ hum oc ]
Analyzes canonical works that have been parodied, criticized or happily re-interpreted by later artists. By viewing and listening to these transformations, we come to a deeper understanding of the original artist and also gain insight into the cultures that elicited subsequent changes. Canonical writers include: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe with modern interpretations by Kundera, Beckett, and Anouilh. We will also look at works in the visual and cinematographic arts: "Picasso Looks at Degas" and John Sturges reconsiders Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai." Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ratner (Romance Studies)

COML 115b Fictions of Liberty: Europe in a Revolutionary Age
[ hum ]
The "Age of Enlightenment" fostered new notions of human rights that found their tumultuous proving ground in the French Revolution. Through writings from several genres and nations, this course explores some of the political, economic, religious, racial, and sexual "fictions of liberty" that have shaped our own time. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Lanser

COML 117a Magical Realism and Modern Myth
[ hum ]
An exploration of magical realism, as well as the enduring importance of myth, in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction and film from the United States, Latin American, and beyond. authors include Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie; films include Wings of Desire and Hero. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

COML 120b Dangerous Writers and Writers in Danger
[ hum ]
Examines the works of modern, twentieth-century writers from different areas of the world who have suffered exile, imprisonment, or death for their free thinking. Writers include: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Wole Soyinka, Gao Xinjan, Breyten Breytenbach, Reynoldo Arenas, and Salman Rushdie. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ratner

COML 122b Writing Home and Abroad: Literature by Women of Color
[ hum nw ]
Examines literature (prose, poetry, and memoirs) written by women of color across a wide spectrum of geographical and cultural sites. Literature written within the confines of the "home country" in the vernacular, as well as in English in immigrant locales, is read. The intersections of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class as contained by the larger institutions of government, religion, nationalism, and sectarian politics are examined. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Singh

COML 123a Perfect Love?
[ hum ]
Analyzes how the desire to achieve a "perfect form of love," defined as one that denies the body in favor of a more spiritual attachment, can lead to illness and highly unhealthy behavior in literary texts and modern film. Filmmakers and authors studied include Wang-Kar Wai, Marguerite de Navarre, Boccaccio, Chrétien de Troyes, and Hawthorne. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

COML 135a Before the Law: Justice in Literature and Film
[ hum ]
Examines works of fiction and film as a means of addressing the problem of justice, highlighting by the same token the symbolic fabric of the law and the performative elements of legal institutions. We will focus on cultural expressions from Europe and Latin America that address the problem of the state and its subjects in a context of modernity broadly defined. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Rosenberg

COML 144b The Outsider as Artist and Lover
[ hum ]
Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, Kafka, and Simone Weil exemplify the struggle to achieve meaning through literature, but they believed that art or God required them to renounce love and marriage. Buber's analysis of "dialogue" will clarify the interrelation of creativity, faith, and human intimacy in their short stories, prose poems, essays, and philosophical and autobiographical writings. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

COML 146b Classical East Asian Poetics
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to the classical poetic forms of China, Japan, and Korea. Special consideration is paid to issues of canonization, classical theories of literature, and the development of multilingual literary traditions. All readings are in English. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

COML 150b Critique of Erotic Reason
[ hum ]
May not be repeated for credit by students who took HUM 125a in spring 2008.
Explores transformations in erotic sensibilities in the novel from the early nineteenth century to the present. Works by Goethe, Austen, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, Bronte, Chekhov, Garcia-Marquez, Kundera, and Cormac McCarthy. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

COML 160a Contemporary East European Literature
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English.
Examines works of major East European (Polish, Czech, Russian, and other) authors in the historical context of late Communist and post-Communist experience. Special attention to reading for artistic qualities and engagement of historical and political problems. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

COML 165a Reading, Writing, and Teaching across Cultures
[ hum nw wi ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Examines contemporary literary representations of literacy, schooling, and language from a cross-cultural perspective. Students also analyze their own educational trajectories and experiences with writing and reading. Students have the opportunity to work directly on projects in Haiti and Lesotho designed to encourage the development and distribution of picture books for young children in their home languages. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hale

COML 166b Literacy, Language and Culture
[ hum nw ]
This is an experiential learning course.
Considers emergent literacy in cultures where different languages are spoken at home and school. Students have the opportunity to work directly on projects in Haiti and Lesotho designed to encourage the development and distribution of picture books for young children in their home languages. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hale

COML 168a Things Fall Apart: The Novel and Postcolonial Anarchy
[ hum ]
Explores the shared history of British Imperialism and examines the postcolonial novel's response to the breakdown of colonial power and the advent of the postcolonial state. We will read novels from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Singh

COML 179a Life Stories, Spiritual and Profane
[ hum ]
Examines modern life stories (such as biographies, autobiographies, journals, fiction) concerning personal identity in relation to the search for God, mysticism and anguish, conversion, moral action, and intimate love. Augustine's Confessions and Teresa of Avila's Life provide models for contemprary writers such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

COML 185a Dickens and Dostoevsky
[ hum ]
Considers such issues as narrative, literary realism, and the manipulation of the grotesque and the sublime in representative works of Dickens and Dostoevsky. Because Dostoevsky was an avid reader of Dickens, class addresses questions of influence, particularly with regard to their shared thematic interests. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Miller

COML 190b Fictional Thinking
[ hum ]
"We can only think, in language, because language is and yet is not our voice," writes Slavoj Zizek. Studies how fictional characters in James, Proust, Woolf and others think before is and for us -- and each other. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ARBC 103a Advanced Literary Arabic I
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ARBC 40b or the equivalent. Four class-hours per week.
Designed to help the student attain an advanced proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding. The syllabus includes selections from classical and modern texts representing a variety of styles and genres. Usually offered every year.
Staff

ARBC 103b Advanced Literary Arabic II
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ARBC 103a or the equivalent. Four class-hours per week.
Continuation of ARBC 103a. Usually offered every year.
Staff

CHIN 120a Readings in Contemporary Chinese Literature: Advanced Chinese Language
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: CHIN 105a or equivalent.
For advanced students of Chinese, an introduction to contemporary Chinese short stories from the 1990s and later. Focuses on significant expansion of vocabulary and grammar, and on providing students an opportunity to develop and polish both oral and written skills through class discussion, presentations, and writing assignments. Usually offered every fall.
Staff

CHIN 120b Readings in Contemporary Chinese Literature: Advanced Chinese Language II
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: CHIN 120a or equivalent.
Continuation of CHIN 120a. Study of contemporary Chinese short stories from the 1990s and later. These stories not only represent new literary themes and linguistic expressions, but also reflect the modernization, commercialization, and urbanization that is transforming China. The course improves students' knowledge of the language, as well as enhancing their understanding of Chinese society and culture. Usually offered every spring.
Staff

FREN 111a The Republic
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
The "Republic" analyzes how the republican ideal of the citizen devoid of religious, ethnic, or gender identity has fared in different Francophone political milieux. Course involves understanding how political institutions such as constitutions, parliaments, and court systems interact with reality of modern societies in which religious, ethnic, and gender identities play important roles. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 113a Great French Novels
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Power, passion, and creativity in the French novel. Major novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Balzac, Stendhal, George Sand, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust reflect France's social and political upheavals. Topics include psychological analysis, revolution and class conflicts, male and female relationships, and the creative process. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 114b Quest for the Absolute
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Imagination, the drug experience, even madness can convey absolute meaning. We read creative journeys in prose and poetry by Balzac, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Maria Krysinska, Senghor, Bonnefoy to explore topics of good and evil; racial and gender identity; love and intimacy; spiritual faith. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 120a The Middle Ages: Before France Was France
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Before the creation of the French nation-state in the sixteenth century, what we know as France today was a tapestry of feudal and postfeudal states. Modern students often find medieval culture much more exotic than many modern foreign cultures. We will try to understand and appreciate the alterity of the Middle Ages in works such as eleventh-century hagiographies, the Romance of the Rose, the knightly romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the poetry of the troubadours, Christine de Pizan, and François Villon. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 122b The Renaissance: When France Became France
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
The creation of the modern nation-state in the sixteenth century was inextricably linked to the literature and art of the period. The defense of French language and culture was the battle cry of the cultural vanguard of the Renaissance. The political and religious turmoil of the period is matched only by the intensity and beauty of its artistic creations. Works studied include Rabelais' Gargantua, Montaigne's Essays, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, as well as the poetry of Ronsard, du Bellay, and Louise Labé. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 130a Heart and Mind in French Classicism
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
An examination of the combat of heart, mind, and social convention in seventeenth-century masterpieces—Molière’s comedies, Corneille and Racine’s tragedies, Pascal’s Pensées, and the psychological novel La princesse de Clèves. Topics include the conflict of love and duty, social class, skepticism and religious faith, gender roles. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 133b Visions of Change in the Enlightenment
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Studies philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. They defined a new framework for thinking about human civilization and progress based on reason and knowledge. Longstanding notions of the universal relevance and truth of their ideas are challenged by our awareness of the diversity of cultures in the emerging global order. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret

FREN 135a Rebellion Against Romanticism
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Liberation and selfhood in nineteenth-century France: short stories, novels, poetry, and theater. Topics include love and intimacy, the struggle for identity, gender roles, myth and folklore, religion and secularization. Authors may include Lamartine, Hugo, Desbordes-Valmore, Musset, Nerval, Sand, and Balzac. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kaplan

FREN 137a Literary Responses to Mass Violence
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Studies writers’ responses to humanitarian and political crises of the past hundred years, e.g., Camus’ La peste, Duras’ Hiroshima mon amour, Beckett’s Catastrophe, Diop’s Murambi, Sijie’s Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, and Laferrière’s Tout bouge autour de moi. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Hale

FREN 142b City and the Book
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Analyzes the symbolic appearance of the city in French literature and film from the Middle Ages to the present day. The representation of the city in literature and film is contextualized in theoretical writings of urbanists and philosophers. Literary texts include medieval fabliaux, Gargantua (Rabelais) and Nana (Zola) as well as theoretical texts by Descartes, Ledoux, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, and Paul Virillo. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Randall

FREN 155b Contemporary Theater: Literature or Performance?
[ fl hum ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Reading and in-class performance of plays ranging from Jarry’s Ubu roi and Beckett’s Godot to more traditional texts by Sartre and Giraudoux. Concludes with Yasmina Reza’s Le Dieu du carnage. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Hale

FREN 165b Subsaharan Africa and the French Language
[ fl hum nw ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Studies writing in French in Subsaharan Africa, with particular emphasis upon its cultural and historical contexts. Topics include Negritude, African languages, defining "tradition," oral and written literature, Islam, film, and gender. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Hale

FREN 186b Literature and Politics
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
We will be interested in how the literary is political and the political literary. We will organize the class around the relationship of the individual and the community. Texts include: Montaigne’s Essais, Corneille’s Horace, Genet’s Les nègres, Arendt’s What is Politics?, Dumont’s Essays on Individualism, Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Randall

GECS 100a German Literature, Music, and Film
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation. This is an experiential learning course.
This seminar offers a basic look into the ways in which German music, literature, and film are intertwined--with one another and with non-German art. Beginning with Mozart's Don Giovanni and Goethe's Faust, students study some of the texts that are basic to both the German and the larger Western tradition. Also includes works by Beethoven, Schiller, Buchner, Kafka, Schoenberg, Mahler, Mann, Rilke, and Celan. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Dowden

GER 120a German Enlightenment and Classicism
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: GER 39a, A- or better in GER 30a, or the equivalent.
Careful reading and discussion (in German) of some of the most moving dramatic scenes and lyrical poems written by Lessing, Klopstock, Lenz, Goethe, Schiller, Hölderlin, and others will provide an overview of those fertile literary and intellectual movements--enlightenment, storm and stress, and idealism--that eventually culminated in German classicism. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GER 121a Der Eros und das Wort: Lyrik, Prosa, Drama
[ hum ]
Focuses on the prose, poetry, and drama of love in German literature since Goethe. Workes by Goethe, Kleist, Novalis, Tieck, Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Treichel, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

GER 140a Bertolt Brecht und das Theater des 20.Jahrhunderts
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: GER 103a or equivalent. Conducted in German.
Examines the role of theater and drama as "moral institution" and entertainment. How does theater hold postwar Germans accountable for remembering the past and promoting social justice? Students will also work collaboratively on a performance project. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering

GER 181a Franz Kafka's Erzählungen
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: GER 105a is recommended.
A detailed exploration of Kafka's works, life, and thought. Emphasis will be given to his place in the larger scheme of literary modernism. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

GRK 115b Ancient Greek Drama
[ fl hum ]
The plays of Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Sophocles, in Greek. A different playwright is studied each year. See Schedule of Classes for current topic. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Muellner

GRK 120b Greek Prose Authors
[ fl hum ]
Selections from Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and other prose authors, in Greek. See Schedule of Classes for current topic. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Muellner

HBRW 122a Introduction to Classical Hebrew I
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: Any 40-level Hebrew course or the equivalent, except HBRW 41a (formerly HBRW 42a), as approved by the director of the Hebrew language program. Four class hours per week.
Concentrates on the study of biblical and classical Hebrew literary works, such as epigraphy, rabbinic, as well as selections from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Written and oral expression in modern Hebrew are also stressed.
Staff

HBRW 122b Introduction to Classical Hebrew II
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: Any 40-level Hebrew course or the equivalent, except HBRW 41a, as approved by the director of the Hebrew language program. Four class hours per week.
An intermediate- to mid/high-level course that focuses on comparing grammatical, textual, and lexical forms and ideas in classical Hebrew texts ranging from the biblical literature to the Dead Sea Scrolls (1000 BCE to 68 CE). Written and oral expression in modern Hebrew are also stressed.
Staff

HBRW 123a Creative Reading and Writing in Hebrew I
[ fl hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: Any 40-level Hebrew course or the equivalent, as determined by the director of the Hebrew language program. Four class hours per week.
An intermediate- to mid/high-level course, which focuses on modern Hebrew prose and poetry stressing major trends. Students are expected to acquire better fluency in reading, writing, and conversation. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 123b Creative Reading and Writing in Hebrew II
[ fl hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: Any 40-level Hebrew course or its equivalent, as determined by the director of the Hebrew language program. Four class hours per week.
An intermediate- to mid/high-level course that focuses on the representation of the Holocaust and the generational relationships in modern Hebrew prose and poetry. Students are expected to acquire better fluency in reading, writing, and conversation. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 143a Advanced Survey of Hebrew and Israeli Literature I
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: Four semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours per week.
An advanced course that enhances advanced language skills through a survey of early Israeli literature and poetry (1950-1975) while stressing the various trends and reactions to different aspects of Israeli daily life during this period. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 143b Advanced Survey of Hebrew and Israeli Literature II
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: Four semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours per week.
An advanced-level course that enhances advanced language and literary skills. Surveys the later Israeli literature and poetry (1975-present). Stresses the various trends and reactions to different aspects of Israeli daily life during this period. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 144a Hebrew through Plays and Drama
[ ca fl hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: Four semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours and two additional weekly hours of lab work are required.
Helps improve Hebrew language skills at the intermediate-high/advanced-level by focusing on various creative aspects such as improvisations, drama, performance, and other acting techniques such as movement, imagination, and other basic skills necessary to act out scenes from various plays in the Hebrew language. Writing assignments and self-critique enhance the students' skills in language acquisition. The course culminates in the writing of one-act plays in Hebrew along with a theatrical performance and production. Usually offered every year in the fall.
Ms. Azoulay

HBRW 146a The Voices of Jerusalem
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: Four semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours per week. This is an experiential learning course.
Aims to develop students' language proficiency through analysis of selected materials that depict the unique tradition, literature and poetry, history, politics, art, and other features related to Jerusalem. Usually offered every second year in the fall.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 164b Israeli Theater
[ ca fl hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: Five semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours and two lab hours per week.
An advanced course that enhances advanced language skills through reading and analysis of plays. The student's creativity is developed through participation in acting and creative writing lab. In reading plays, students can also participate in Hebrew acting lab. Usually offered every second year in the fall.
Ms. Azoulay

HBRW 166b Portrait of the Israeli Woman
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: Five semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours per week.
An advanced culture course that enhances advanced language skills through examination of the Israeli woman's role, image, and unique voice reflected in Israeli literature, history, tradition, and art. Usually offered every second year in the fall.
Ms. Hascal

HBRW 170a Take I: Hebrew through Israeli Cinema
[ fl hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course. Prerequisite: Five semesters of Hebrew or permission of the instructor. Four class hours per week.
An advanced culture course that focuses on the various aspects of Israeli society as they are portrayed in Israeli films and television. In addition to viewing films, the students will be asked to read Hebrew background materials, to participate in class discussions, and to write in Hebrew about the films. Usually offered every spring.
Ms. Azoulay

HISP 111b Introduction to Latin American Literature and Culture
[ fl hum nw ]
Prerequisite: HISP 106b, or HISP 108a, or permission of the instructor.
The goal of this course is to recognize trends in Latin American literary and cultural production. Examines canonical Latin American texts (poems, short stories, chronicles, and a novel) from the time of the conquest to modernity. Emphasis is placed on problems of cultural definition and identity construction as they are elaborated in literary discourse. Looks at continuities and ruptures in major themes (coloniality and emancipation, modernismo and modernity, indigenismo, hybridity and mestizaje, nationalisms, Pan-Americanism, etc.) throughout Latin American intellectual history. Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Rosenberg or Mr. Arellano

HISP 120b Don Quijote
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
A reading for fun and critical insight into what is often called "the first modern novel." Discusses some reasons for its reputation as a major influence on fiction and films throughout the Western world. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 125b Literary Women in Early Modern Spain
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines works by and about women in early modern Spain, with particular attention to engagements with and subversions of patriarchal culture in theater, prose, and poetry. Writers include Caro, Zayas, Cervantes, and Calderón. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Fox

HISP 140a Topics in Poetry
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Topics vary from year to year, but may focus on different periods, poets, or poetics from both sides of the Atlantic. Study may include jarchas, Garcilaso de la Vega, Bécquer, the Generation of '98 or '27, Neruda, Vallejo, Rosario Castellanos, Octavio Paz, Huidobro, Borges. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberg

HISP 163a The Latin American Boom and Beyond
[ fl hum nw ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. Course may be repeated for credit.
Examines texts of the Latin American "boom" as well as contemporary narrative trends. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Arellano

HISP 164b Studies in Latin American Literature
[ fl hum nw wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. Course may be repeated for credit.
A comparative and critical study of main trends, ideas, and cultural formations in Latin America. Topics vary year to year and have included fiction and history in Latin American literature, nation and narration, Latin American autobiography, art and revolution in Latin America, and humor in Latin America. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Rosenberg or Mr. Arellano

HISP 185b España 200X
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisites: HISP 109b, HISP 110a, HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Looks at cultural production and its context in Spain for an entire calendar year. The goal is to familiarize students with what has been read and watched in Spain most recently and to understand it in terms of contemporary politics and society. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Mandrell

HISP 198a Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 110a or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor. This is an experiential learning course.
A research seminar in which each student has the opportunity to become an “expert” in a Hispanic literary or cultural text/topic that captures her or his imagination, whether inspired by a study abroad experience; an earlier class in Hispanic Studies; a community-engaged learning experience; etc. Instruction in literary/cultural theory, researching a subject, and analytical skills necessary for developing a scholarly argument. Students present research in progress and write a research paper of significant length. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Rosenberg, Ms. Fox, or Mr. Arellano

ITAL 120b Modern Italian Literature
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ITAL 30a or the equivalent.
Focuses on the literature of twentieth-century writers such as Moravia, Pavese, and Pirandello, as well as on several contemporary figures, with emphasis on the theme of historical, individual, and familial identity within the context of traumatic socio-economic upheaval and transformative cultural events. Several films based on these works will also be examined, with emphasis on an analysis of cinematic innovation. Conducted in Italian. Usually offered every other year.
Ms. Servino

ITAL 128a Mapping Modern Italian Culture: Inherited Conflicts
[ fl hum oc ]
Prerequisites: ITAL 105a or 106a. Conducted in Italian with Italian texts.
Covers a broad range of cultural topics that exemplify creative responses to historical events and social dilemmas that have shaped contemporary Italian culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Servino

JAPN 120b Readings in Modern Japanese Literature
[ fl hum nw wi ]
Prerequisite: JAPN 120a or the equivalent.
Provides advanced students of Japanese with broad introduction to contemporary Japanese literary work that is widely read in Japan. Focuses on significant expansion of vocabulary and grammar improving students' knowledge of the language as well as enhancing their understanding of Japanese culture and society. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Nakano

LAT 114b Latin Prose Authors
[ fl hum ]
A close study of Cicero and other prose authors. Offered on request.
Staff

LAT 115a Roman Drama
[ fl hum ]
Selected plays of Plautus and Terence, in Latin. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 116b Roman Satire
[ fl hum ]
The satires of Horace and Juvenal, in Latin. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 117a Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
[ fl hum ]
Close reading (in Latin) and discussion of poetic and philosophical dimensions of the poem. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 118a Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry
[ fl hum ]
Selections from Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, in Latin. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 118b Roman Historians
[ fl hum ]
Selections from the histories of Julius Caesar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus, in Latin. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Walker

LAT 119b Ovid: Metamorphoses
[ fl hum ]
Selections from Ovid's mythological-poetic history of the universe, in Latin. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 120a Vergil
[ fl hum ]
Selections from Vergil's Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid in Latin. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Johnston

LAT 125a Medieval Latin
[ fl hum ]
Surveys medieval Latin prose and poetry from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries and their influence on subsequent English, French, and Italian literature. Materials will be studied in the original Latin and English. Offered on request.
Ms. Johnston or Ms. Walker

RUS 150b Advanced Russian Language through Literature (in Russian)
[ fl hum oc ]
Prerequisite: RUS 29b, RUS 40b or RUS 50b with a grade of C- or higher, or the equivalent as determined by placement examination. Taught in Russian. Course my be repeated for credit with instructor's permission.
A seminar for intermediate to advanced students of Russian, focusing on the close study of Russian literature in the original Russian and the development of Russian oral and writted language skills needed for the close reading and discussion of literature. Topics vary from year to year but may include 20th-century prose, folklore, contemporary prose, or studying and performing a play. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Dubinina

RUS 153a Russian Poetry and Prose in Russian: Undergraduate Seminar
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: RUS 29b, RUS 40b or RUS 50b with a grade of C- or higher, or the equivalent as determined by placement examination. Taught in Russian.
An undergraduate seminar focusing on the advanced study of Russian literataure in the original Russian and development of Russian oral and written language skills needed to analyze and discuss poetry. Includes a selection of the very best Russian poetry and prose of the nineteenth century. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

HUM 125a (Topics in the Humanities) may be considered as a cross-listed course, depending on the topic. Students should contact the undergraduate advising head before registering.

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 132b Introduction to African Literature
[ hum nw ss wi ]
Examines the cultural production of African writers and filmmakers and their critiques of the postcolonial state. Topics include their exploration of gender, sexuality, language choice, the pressures placed on "authentic" identities by diasporic communities, and the conflicting claims of tradition and modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ANTH 105a Myth and Ritual
[ nw ss ]
Studies myth and ritual as two interlocking modes of cultural symbolism. Evaluates theoretical approaches to myth by looking at creation and political myths. Examines performative, processual, and spatial models of ritual analysis through study of initiation, sacrifice, and funerals. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schattschneider

CLAS 166a Medieval Literature: A Millennium of God, Sex, and Death
[ hum wi ]
A survey of medieval Latin literature in translation, beginning with the fourth-century church fathers and ending with the early Renaissance. Includes Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Egeria, Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Alcuin, Einhard, Hroswitha, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Hildegard, Anselm, and others. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Walker

CLAS 170a Classical Mythology
[ hum ]
An introduction to Greek and Roman mythology. Considers ancient song cultures, and the relationship between myth, drama, and religion. Also explores visual representations of myth. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Muellner

EAS 175a Masterpieces of Chinese Literature
[ hum ]
This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken COML 175a in previous years.
Surveys Chinese literature from the classical era through the eighteenth century. Readings are in English translation and include a wide range of genres, with particular emphasis on the great Chinese novels. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ECS 100a European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Modernism
[ hum wi ]
Explores the interrelationship of literature, music, painting, philosophy, and other arts in the era of high modernism. Works by Artaud, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Mann, Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Kandinsky, Schiele, Beckett, Brecht, Adorno, Sartre, Heidegger, and others. Usually offered every fall semester.
Mr. Dowden

ECS 100b European Cultural Studies Proseminar: Making of European Modernity
[ hum wi ]
Investigates how the paradigm of what we know as modernity came into being. We will look at the works of writers and philosophers such as Descartes, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Petrarch, Ficino, Rabelais, and Montaigne. Artwork from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will be used to understand better what "the modern" means. Usually offered every spring semester.
Mr. Randall

ENG 10a Canonical Precursors: Genesis, Homer, Sappho, Ovid, Virgil
[ hum ]
This course may not be repeated for credit by students who have taken HUM 10a in previous years.
Helps prepare majors for study of most premodern and even modern literature in English through readings of major texts central to a literary education for writers in English from the Middle Ages through modernism. Genesis, Iliad, Odyssey, Sappho's lyrics, Aeneid, Metamorphoses. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell or Mr. Flesch

ENG 37b Modern Drama
[ hum ]
An intensive study of British, U.S., and European drama of the last hundred years. Topics include new definitions of tragedy, changing sex/gender roles and the stage, the well-made play, the "angry" play, theater of the absurd. Usually offered every fourth year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 40b The Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics
[ hum wi ]
This is an experiential learning course.
How old is the short story? It may go back to the Stone Age, Aesop's fables, or medieval saints' lives, but some credit Edgar Allan Poe and the Scottish shepherd James Hogg. This class takes an in-depth look at three key centers of the genre: Edinburgh, New York, and Moscow. Authors include Melville, Hawthorne, Dickens, Gogol, and Chekov. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 50a Love Poetry from Sappho to Neruda
[ hum ]
This course explores the relationship between love and poetry. Starts with the ancient Greek poet Sappho and proceeds through the centuries, reading lyrics by Catullus, Ovid, Propertius, Petrarch, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Rossetti, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Targoff

ENG 68a The Political Novel
[ hum wi ]
How do novels change and how are they changed by politics? From the satires of Eastern Europe (Kafka and Milan Kundera, Koestler's Darkness at Noon) to fiery American calls to action on racial issues (Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man); from utopia to postcolonial disaster (Things Fall Apart). Film screenings included. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Plotz

ENG 77b Literatures of Global English
[ hum nw ]
Survey of world Anglophone literatures with attention to writers' literary responses to aspects of English as a global language with a colonial history. Focus on Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Caribbean, North America. Writers may include Rushdie, Coetzee, Kincaid, Atwood, Anzaldua. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 80b The Tale
[ hum wi ]
The oral form of the story; also a non-realist modern literary genre. Students study and create myths, ballads, folktales, ritual drama, and ethnographic approaches to the transmission of tales, including Genesis, Metamorphosis, fairy tales, pre-Columbian myths, Poe, Angela Carter. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]
About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 114b Gender and the Rise of the Novel in England and France
[ hum ]
Explores the emergence of the novel as a modern genre in the eighteenth century, asking why the novel arises first in England and France, and what the new genre's preoccupations with women and gender can teach us about European society, culture, and literature. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Lanser

ENG 121a Sex and Culture
[ hum ]
An exploration of the virtually unlimited explanatory power attributed to sexuality in the modern world. "Texts" include examples from literature, film, television, pornography, sexology, and theory. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Morrison

ENG 123a Dream Visions: Genre, History, and the Mysterious
[ hum ]
A study of the mysterious function of imaginary dreams in medieval and Renaissance writing, along with actual dream dictionaries and dream transcriptions of the period. Visions of Hell, prophetic dreams, apocalypse, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Nashe, and others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 127a The Novel in India
[ hum nw wi ]
Survey of the novel and short story of the Indian subcontinent, their formal experiments in context of nationalism and postcolonial history. Authors may include Tagore, Anand, Manto, Desani, Narayan, Desai, Devi, Rushdie, Roy, Mistry, and Chaudhuri. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 128a Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a or ENG 11a.
British, European, and American works depicting alternate, often "better" worlds, including More's Utopia, Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, Voltaire's Candide, Casanova's Icosameron, selections from Charles Fourier, Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star, Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis: Dawn, Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin! Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 138a Making Modern Subjects: Empire, Citizenship, Intimacy
[ hum ]
Considers inflections of "the modern" across the Americas, allowing us to compare models and strategies at a historical moment when shifts from slavery to "freedom" and from Europe to the U.S.A., frame anxieties about empire, citizenship, technology, vernaculars, and aesthetics. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 144b The Body as Text
[ hum wi ]
How are our bodies the material for our presentations of self and our interactions with others? Examines contemporary theories and histories of the body against literary, philosophical, political, and performance texts of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 152b Arthurian Literature
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: ENG 1a, ENG 10a, HUM 10a or ENG 11a.
A survey of (mostly) medieval treatments of the legendary material associated with King Arthur and his court, in several genres: bardic poetry, history, romance, prose narrative. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Campbell

ENG 162a Totalitarian Fictions
[ hum ]
Investigates global dictator novels, with attention to formal issues surrounding the novel's ability to represent illiberal arrangements of power. Authors include Garcia Marquez, Achebe, and Junot Diaz. Films include "The Last King of Scotland" and Oliver Stone's "W". Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 167a Decolonizing Fictions
[ hum nw ]
An introduction to basic concepts in postcolonial studies using selected literary works from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Specific themes covered include the colonial encounter; colonial education and the use of English; nationalism; gender, violence, and the body; and postcolonial diasporas. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 171a The History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Postmodernism
[ hum ]
Explores major documents in the history of criticism from Plato to the present. Texts will be read as representative moments in the history of criticism and as documents of self-sufficient literary and intellectual interest. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Morrison or Ms. Quinney

ENG 181a Making Sex, Performing Gender
[ hum ]
Recommended preparation: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.
Gender and sexuality studied as sets of performed traits and cues for interactions among social actors. Readings explore the possibility that differently organized gender and sexual practices are possible for men and women. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 197b Within the Veil: African-American and Muslim Women's Writing
[ hum ]
In twentieth-century United States culture, the veil has become a powerful metaphor, signifying initially the interior of African-American community and the lives of Muslims globally. This course investigates issues of identity, imperialism, cultural loyalty, and spirituality by looking at and linking contemporary writing by African-American and Muslim women. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

FA 141b The Formation of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 40b in prior years.
The origins and development of the synagogue, church, mosque, and related arts in the first millennium CE. Emphasis on the debate among these three great religions about the proper form and function of art and architecture. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. McClendon

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Examines how alienation, which is often understood as exemplifying western modernity, manifests itself in literary works and films from throughout the Francophone world and French history. We will look at authors such as Assia Djebar, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Mohammed Dib, Albert Camus, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre Corneille, and Molière. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Randall

FYS 15a Journeys to Enlightenment
[ hum wi ]
Literature often symbolizes the meaning of existence as a journey from error to truth, from affliction to freedom and enlightenment. Works by Dante, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Blake, Baudelaire, Hesse, and Hurston illustrate visions of human existence that have been entertained from the Middle Ages to the present.
Mr. Kaplan (Romance Studies)

GECS 130b The Princess and the Golem: Fairy Tales
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English.
An introduction to the genre of fairy tale in German literature, focusing especially on the narratives collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, but also exploring the Kunstmärchen and calendar stories composed by German writers from Romanticism into the twentieth century. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 167a German Cinema: Vamps and Angels
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
From silent film to Leni Riefenstahl and Nazi cinema, from postwar cinema in the East and West to new German film after unification, this course traces aesthetic strategies, reflections on history, memory, subjectivity, and political, cultural, and film-historical contexts with an emphasis on gender issues. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. von Mering

GECS 180b European Modernism and the German Novel
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
A study of selected novelists writing after Nietzsche and before the end of World War II. Explores the culture, concept, and development of European modernism in works by Broch, Canetti, Döblin, Jünger, Kafka, Mann, Musil, Rilke, and Roth. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Dowden

HECS 169a Travel Writing and the Americas: Columbus's Legacy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English translation.
Following the arrival of Columbus, the continent later known as America engaged with other continents in a mutual process of cultural, historical, geographical, and economic representation. The development of some of those representations is explored, beginning with travel writing and ending with recent images of the encounter. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

HISP 160a Culture and Social Change in Latin America
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
We will examine the relationship between art (including literature, film, and fine arts) and society in Latin America during the twentieth century. We will use significant examples drawn from three major socio-historical eras: the political and artistic vanguards of the 1920s (with particular attention to the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath); the 1960s and the cultural significance of the Cuban Revolution; and the 1990s period of transition to democracy and emergence of identity and minority-based social movements, with a renewed significance of artistic and literary languages. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberg

HISP 193b Topics in Cinema
[ hum wi ]
Open to all students; conducted in English. Course may be repeated for credit.
Topics vary from year to year but might include consideration of a specific director, an outline of the history of a national cinema, a particular moment in film history, or Hollywood cinema in Spanish. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Mandrell or Mr. Rosenberg

HISP 195a Latinos in the United States: Perspectives from Literature, Film, and Performance
[ hum ]
Open to all students; conducted in English.
Comparative overview of Latino literature and film in the United States. Particular attention paid to how race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and concepts of "nation" become intertwined within texts. Topics include explorations of language, autobiography and memory, and intertexuality. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Reyes

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
May not be taken by students who have taken FYS 18a in prior years.
Foundational texts of the Western canon: the Bible, Homer, Vergil, and Dante. Thematic emphases and supplementary texts vary from year to year.
Staff

IECS 140a Dante's Divine Comedy
[ hum ]
Open to all students. Conducted in English with readings in English
translation.
A close study of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso as a symbolic vision of reality reflecting the culture and the political, philosophical, and theological thought of the Middle Ages. Readings to include the Vita Nuova, the Aeneid (Bk. 6), and selections from the Bible, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and St. Thomas' Summa Theologicae. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lansing

JAPN 130a The Literature of Multicultural Japan
[ hum nw ]
"Multicultural" may not be an adjective that many associate with Japan, but as we will find in this class, Japan's modern literary and cinematic tradition is rich with works by and about resident Koreans, Ainu, Okinawans, outcasts, and sexual and other marginalized minorities. Why then does the image of a monocultural Japan remain so resilient? Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

JAPN 135a Screening National Images: Japanese Film and Anime in Global Context
[ hum nw ]
All films and readings are in English.
An introduction to some major directors and works of postwar Japanese film and anime with special attention to such issues as genre, medium, adaptation, narrative, and the circulation of national images in the global setting. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

NEJS 124a Arabic Literature, Hebrew Literature (500-1500)
[ hum ]
A comparative study of Arabic and Hebrew literature from before the rise of Islam through the fifteenth century. Studies major trends in Arabic poetry and fiction and how Jewish authors utilized Arabic motifs in their Hebrew writings, both secular and sacred, and sometimes wrote in Arabic themselves. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 140b Early Modern Jewish History
[ hum ]
Examines Jewish history and culture in early modern Europe: mass conversions on the Iberian peninsula, migrations, reconversions back to Judaism, the printing revolution, the Reformation and Counter Reformation, ghettos, gender, family, everyday life, material culture, communal structure, rabbinical culture, mysticism, magic, science, messianic movements, Hasidism, mercantilism, and early modern challenges to Judaism.
Ms. Freeze

NEJS 171a Modern Jewish Literatures: Text, Image and Context
[ hum wi ]
Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature and film. Taking a comparative approach, it addresses major themes in contemporary Jewish culture, interrogates the "Jewishness" of the works and considers issues of language, poetics, and culture significant to Jewish identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Kellman

NEJS 175b Responses to the Holocaust in Literature
[ hum ]
The Holocaust has generated a rich and varied body of literary representations of this crucial event in modern history. This course studies significant examples of such representations, dwelling on their historical, cultural, and psychological aspects. The aesthetic and moral problems of representation are raised in each case. Authors examined include Wiesel, Levi, Appelfeld, Spiegelman, Celan, and Pagis. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 177a The Holocaust in Israeli and Jewish Literature
[ hum ]
A broad survey of Holocaust writings in Modern Jewish literature. Examines the psychological, social, moral, and aesthetic challenges involved in representing the Holocaust in Israeli, American, and European context through literary texts, theoretical research, works of art, and film. Taught in English. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Szobel

NEJS 178a Love, Sex, and Power in Israeli Culture
[ hum ]
Taught in Hebrew. Prerequisite: HBRW 141a, 143a, 144a, or 146a or permission of the instructor.
Explores questions of romance, gender, marriage, and jealousy in the Israeli context by offering a feminist and psychoanalytic reading of Hebrew texts, works of art, and film. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Szobel

NEJS 179a Jewish Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: HBRW 40a, NEJS 10a, or equivalent.
An introduction to the Hebrew literature of Spain, Germany, and Italy during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Focus on Sephardic literature and on the continuities and discontinuities of Hebrew belles-lettres, giving attention to the impact of Arabic and European literature on Jewish authors. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 180a Love and Passion in Medieval Jewish Literature and Thought
[ hum ]
An exploration of the love theme in Jewish poetry, fiction, exegesis, and philosophical literature, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Jewish texts from Palestine, Spain (Sefarad), France, and Italy are compared with texts in Arabic, Spanish, French, and Italian. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Decter

NEJS 181a Jews on Screen: "Cohen's Fire Sale" to the Coen Brothers
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
Survey course focusing on moving images of Jews and Jewish life in fiction and factual films. Includes early Russian and American silents, home movies of European Jews, Yiddish feature films, Israeli cinema, independent films, and Hollywood classics. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Rivo

NEJS 181b Film and the Holocaust
[ hum ]
Open to all students.
Examines the medium of film, propaganda, documentary, and narrative fiction relevant to the history of the Holocaust. The use of film to shape, justify, document, interpret, and imagine the Holocaust. Beginning with the films produced by the Third Reich, the course includes films produced immediately after the events, as well as contemporary feature films. The focus will be how the film medium, as a medium, works to (re)present meaning(s). Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Rivo

SAS 101a South Asian Women Writers
[ hum nw ]
Includes literature by South Asian women writers such as Amrita Pritam, Ismat Chugtai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamila Shamsie, Tahmina Anam, and Chandini Lokuge. Some of the works were originally written in English, while others have been translated from the vernacular. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Singh

SAS 110b South Asian Postcolonial Writers
[ hum nw ]
Examines the postcolonial novel written in English within the shared history of colonialism, specifically British imperialism, for South Asia. Writers include R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Mohsin Hamid, Romesh Gunesekera and Daniyal Mueenudin. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Singh

SAS 140a We Who Are at Home Everywhere: Narratives from the South Asian Diaspora
[ hum ]
Looks at narratives from various locations of the South Asian Diaspora, while paying close attention to the emergence of an immigrant South Asian public culture. Examines novels, poetry, short stories, film, and music in order to further an understanding of South Asian immigrant culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Singh

THA 80a History of Theater Design: Classical Period to 1900
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 160a in prior years.
A survey of scenic design: costume, theater spectacle, visual theater from the Renaissance to 1900. Usually offered every year.
Staff

THA 115b The Avant-Gardes in Performance
[ ca hum ]
Explores the avant-garde movements including symbolism, decadence, futurism, constructivism, Dada, surrealism, expressionism, existentialism, pop art and happenings, performance art, minimalism, and postmodernism as alternative forms of expression that challenge mainstream art. Attention is paid to the interactions among theater, painting, dance, music, and film. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Holmberg

THA 133b Acting IV: Acting the Classics
[ ca ]
Prerequisite: THA 133a. This is an experiential learning course. May not be taken for credit by students who took THA 33b in prior years.
A continuation of THA 133a with work on more complex classical texts, including Shakespeare and the Greeks. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Morrison

THA 185b Dramatic Structure: Analysis and Application
[ ca ]
Students read works from the Greeks to the present, analyzing a variety of dramatic structures as a means of deriving meaning from plays. Texts include works by Aristotle, Aeschylus, Seneca, Hegel, Racine, Sarah Kane, Lope de Vega, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Pinter, Richard Greenberg, Caryl Churchill, Arthur Schnitzler, David Hare, Sergi Belbel, Joe Orton, and Kuan Han-ch'ing. Students will have the opportunity to write a play modeled after one of the structures studied in class. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. McKittrick