University Bulletin (2014-2015)

COML 92a Internship and Analysis in Comparative Literature and Culture
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 Undergraduate Advising Head.
This is a full-year course that must be taken by all senior majors in Comparative Literature and Culture who wish to undertake honors work. Usually offered every year.
Staff

COML 100a Comparing Literatures and Cultures: 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.
Staff

COML 103b Madness and Folly in Renaissance Literature
[ hum wi ]
A study of the theme of madness and folly as exemplified by the major writers of the Renaissance, including Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Petrarch, and Cervantes. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Lansing

COML 109b The Art of Living: Imagination and the Just Life
[ hum wi ]
Formerly offered as FYS 68b.
Can one live well without living justly? Live justly without living well? What does justice ask of us? From Plato to Zhuangzi to Nabokov's Lolita, we examine the subjective preconditions for living justly; knowledge, imagination, love, empathy, freedom and responsibility. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Powelstock

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 wi ]
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 121b Tragedy and the Tragic
[ hum ]
Explores the genre of tragedy and the concept of the tragic in Western literature. Readings from Aristotle, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, Büchner, Nietzsche, Nelly Sachs, Celan and others. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Dowden

COML 150b Critique of Erotic Reason
[ hum ]
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 164b Reading Screenplays
[ hum ]
Focuses on the secret life of the film script in Hollywood and world cinema. Before a movie can be made, it needs to be scripted. The course links the reading of screenplays in an academic context to script-development practices in the film industry. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Arellano

COML 165a Reading, Writing, and Teaching across Cultures
[ hum nw wi ]
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. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Hale

COML 166b Literacy, Language and Culture
[ hum nw ]
Examines contemporary cross-cultural literary representations of the relationships among languages and cultures. We will read texts such as Hoffman's Lost in Translation, Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, and Ngugi's Decolonising the Mind as well as poetry and essays from Haiti, French Guyana, the Navajo Nation and a variety of immigrant communities in the US. Questions we will consider include: Does language carry culture? When is language an instrument of power? What's the difference between learning to speak and/or write a particular language? What happens when children must learn a new language when they enter school? Students will share their own richly diverse linguistic experiences. Usually offered every year.
Staff

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/ENG 140b Children's Literature and Constructions of Childhood
[ hum ]
Explores whether children's literature has sought to civilize or to subvert, to moralize or to enchant, forming a bedrock for adult sensibility. Childhood reading reflects the unresolved complexity of the experience of childhood itself as well as larger cultural shifts around the globe in values and beliefs. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Miller

COML/ENG 141b Literature and Time
[ hum ]
Explores the human experience of temporality and reflection upon it. Texts include: Waiting for Godot, To the Lighthouse and Combray, along with philosophical speculation by Aristotle, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as well as two films, La Jeteé and 12 Monkeys. Themes covered by this course include: memory, nostalgia, anxiety, ethics, eternity, and time travel. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Quinney

COML/THA 139b Enclosures: Contemporary Fictions and Imagined Spaces
[ ca hum ]
Considers literary and metaphorical enclosures and the way they can be interpreted and translated into different kinds of visual spaces. Working with contemporary fiction from different places and cultures, we will consider the role and meaning of enclosures and then discuss how we might interpret various forms of enclosures in visual terms. Students will have the opportunity to write critically and to create verbally and visually. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anderson and Mr. Mandrell

ARBC 103a Lower Advanced Arabic
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: ARBC 40b or the equivalent. Four class-hours per week.
Designed to help the student attain advanced proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and understanding. The syllabus includes selections from modern texts representing a variety of styles and genres, advanced composition, and sustained development of oral-aural proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic. A grade of C- or higher in ARBC 103a is required to take ARBC 103b. Usually offered every year.
Mr. El-Tobgui

ARBC 103b Middle Advanced Arabic: Contemporary Arab Media
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: A grade of C- or higher in ARBC 103a or the equivalent. Four class hours per week.
Continuation of ARBC 103a. Intensive honing of all four language skills and vocabulary building with concentration on the written and spoken media of the contemporary Arab world. Special emphasis on the use of connectors for effective oral and written communication. Systematic review and reinforcement of major grammatical topics. 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 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Harder, Mr. Randall or 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 122b The Renaissance: When France Became France
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
At a moment when the modern nation-state is perhaps coming to an end in supranational institutions like the European Union, it is important to look at how that nation-state came into being in the sixteenth century. During a time of both political and religious turmoil and intense artistic creation, writers of the Renaissance created works that helped define us as both public and private individuals. 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 133b Visions of Change in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Examines how 18th century French literature generated new frames of thinking and how these visions influenced contemporary values in such areas as religion, politics, society, education, and the family. Readings from Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot. Usually offered every fourth year.
Ms. Voiret

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.
Staff

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, Pantagruel (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 ]
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 third year.
Staff

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.
Staff

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

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 123a Creative Reading and Writing in Hebrew I
[ fl hum wi ]
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.
Mr. Ofengenden

HBRW 123b Creative Reading and Writing in Hebrew II
[ fl hum wi ]
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.
Mr. Ofengenden

HBRW 144a Hebrew through Plays and Drama
[ ca fl hum wi ]
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.
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 ]
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 ]
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.
Mr. Ofengenden

HISP 111b Introduction to Latin American Literature and Culture
[ fl hum nw ]
Prerequisite: HISP 106b, or HISP 108a, or permission of the instructor.
Examines key Latin American texts of different genres (poems, short stories and excerpts from novels, chronicles, comics, screenplays, cyberfiction) and from different time periods from the conquest to modernity. This class places emphasis on problems of cultural definition and identity construction as they are elaborated in literary discourse. Identifying major themes (coloniality and emancipation, modernismo and modernity, indigenismo, hybridity and mestizaje, nationalisms, Pan-Americanism, etc.) we will trace continuities and ruptures 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 Tirso de Molina. 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. Mandrell

HISP 160a Culture and Social Change in Latin America
[ fl hum nw wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines the relationship between the arts (including literature, film, and fine arts) and society in Latin America during the twentieth century by focusing on three historical conjunctures when this relationship was particularly rich: the political and artistic vanguards of the 1920s (with particular attention to the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath); the 1960s, marked by the historical turning point of the Cuban Revolution; and the decade of the 1990s, characterized by the transition to democracy, the emergence of human rights and other social movements. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberg

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

HISP 185b España 20XX
[ 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 Experiential Research Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 110a or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
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, inspired by a study abroad experience; an earlier class in Hispanic Studies; community-engaged learning; 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, 105a, 106a, or the equivalent.
Focuses on the literature of twentieth-century writers such as Sciascia, Lampedusa, Calvino, and Moravia as well as contemporary writers, such as Baricco, Tamaro, Mazzantini, and Giordano 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 and significant range of cultural topics that exemplify creative responses to historical events and social dilemmas that have shaped contemporary Italian culture including economic changes, the new face of immigration in Italy, and the social fight against the Mafia and Camorra through literature and cinema. 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

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

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 (heritage speakers): RUS 29b, or RUS 50b with a grade of C- or higher, or the equivalent as determined by placement examination. Prerequisite (non-heritage speakers): RUS 40b or the equivalent. 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 written 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

RUS 160b Russian/Soviet Jews: Dual Identities in Text, Image and Music
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: Advanced Russian language skills.
Introduces students to a number of Russian Jewish artists and writers who created in the Russian language and who made significant contributions to 20th-century Soviet and Russian literature, cinema, theater, and music. Through analyses and discussions of texts, images and music created by Russian-speaking Jews, students will explore the role Russian Jews played in shaping the Soviet and modern Russian culture. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Dubinina

These are examples of comparative courses that may be counted toward category (D) of the major and minor requirements if they are approved by the UAH as appropriate to each student’s course of study. Courses with comparative content not listed here may be counted with approval of the UAH. In all cases, students' selection of courses in this category must be discussed with the UAH.

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

CHIN 136b Chinese Modernism in International Context
[ hum nw ]
Taught in English.
Examines the origins, recurrences, and metamorphosis of modernistic styles and movements in twentieth-century Chinese literature, film, fine art, and intellectual discourses. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Wang

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

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 110a Thinking about Infinity
[ hum ]
Explores the attempts of the finite human mind to think about infinity. Readings in mathematics, history of science, philosophy, literature, and art, including Euclid, Plato, Cantor, Poincaré, Einstein, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Wordsworth, Shelley, Joyce, Beckett, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Flesch

ENG 37b Modern Drama: Theatres of Rupture, Resistance, and Engagement
[ hum ]
How did theatre artists take “the modern” as a goal to be realized in the future and a crisis to be managed in the present? Playwrights include Ibsen, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw, Synge, Glaspell, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Pinter, Fugard, Fornes, Hwang, Churchill, Kushner, and Parks. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

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 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 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 ]
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 ]
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 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 wi ]
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

FREN 110a Cultural Representations
[ fl hum wi ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
A foundation course in French and Francophone culture, analyzing texts and other cultural phenomena such as film, painting, music, and politics. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Harder, Mr. Randall or Staff

FYS 44a JustBooks: Tragedy, Right vs. Right?
[ hum ]
Most stories are about good vs. evil. Even if they end unhappily, we know what the happy alternative would be. But tragedy often seems about elemental, irresolvable conflict. Is such conflict inevitable? Can there be just solutions to tragic situations? Offered as part of the JustBooks program.
Ms. Quinney (English)

FYS 49a JustBooks: Justice, Truth, Enlightenment
[ hum wi ]
Examines works from different historical periods depicting the journey of an individual from ignorance to enlightenment, from sin to redemption, from suffering to joy. We explore novels, a tragedy, epic poetry, lyric poetry, ironic modern fables, and ask such questions as: What is free will? What are good and evil? What does it mean to be human? What is the nature of the self? How is it possible to love and be loved? How does one achieve self-knowledge and self-liberation? What is the meaning of God in human experience? Offered as part of the JustBooks program.
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 wi ]
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

HISP 160a Culture and Social Change in Latin America
[ fl hum nw wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b, or HISP 110a, or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines the relationship between the arts (including literature, film, and fine arts) and society in Latin America during the twentieth century by focusing on three historical conjunctures when this relationship was particularly rich: the political and artistic vanguards of the 1920s (with particular attention to the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath); the 1960s, marked by the historical turning point of the Cuban Revolution; and the decade of the 1990s, characterized by the transition to democracy, the emergence of human rights and other social movements. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberg

HISP 194b Borderland Literature and Visual Culture in Latin America and the United States
[ hum nw wi ]
Open to all students; conducted in English.
Examines literature, visual art, and cinema produced at the intersection between North and South America, focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border, the Southern United States, and immigrant Latino communities. We consider works by William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, Roberto Bolaño, Coco Fusco, Lourdes Portillo, and Luis Valdez, among others. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Arellano

HISP 196a Topics in Latina/o Literature and Culture
[ hum ]
May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.
Offers students the opportunity for in-depth study of a particular aspect of the diverse literary and cultural production of U.S. latinas and latinos. Topics will vary from year to year but may include autobiography, detective fiction, or historical fiction. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Mandrell

HUM 10a The Western Canon
[ hum ]
May not be taken by students who have taken ENG 10a or 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

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.
Mr. Sheppard

NEJS 171a Modern Jewish Literatures: Text, Image and Context
[ hum wi ]
Introduces important works of modern Jewish literature, graphic fiction, 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 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 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

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 second 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 third year.
Ms. Singh

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 the Classics
[ ca ]
Prerequisite: THA 133a. 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