World Literature

Courses in world literature are designed to enable students to pursue their interests in literature beyond linguistic, cultural, or departmental boundaries. Classes and readings are in English, but students with foreign language proficiency are encouraged to read in the original language. The courses are taught by the members of the foreign languages and literatures and Spanish departments. The material may be drawn from various literatures such as Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

The minor in World Literature: A minimum of 20 credits in world literature to include at least three courses numbered above 300 and at least one course numbered below 300.

200 The Literature of Peace
4; not offered 2012-13

Reading and discussion of a group of religious peace activists of the 20th century (Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Daniel Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Bernie Glassman) and of the religious texts that inspired their nonviolent theories. Some films and videos will be incorporated into the class. Several papers; oral presentations in class; no exams. Open to all students.

201-204 Special Topics in World Literature, Intermediate Level
4

Courses under this category explore selected topics in world literature at the intermediate level.

222 Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature and Culture
4; not offered 2012-13

This course examines selected works of Japanese literature from the 1880s to the 1940s. The aim of this course is to equip students with a firm understanding of Japanese literary and cultural history. In order to bring the literary works into a relationship with one another and critique their varying functions within larger cultural discourses of the time, we will read the texts under three consecutive themes: “Entering Modernity and the Making of the Novel,” “Writing the Universal ‘I’ in Taishô Cosmopolitanism,” and “Overcoming Modernity and Return to Japan Movement.” For this purpose, in conjunction with primary sources, we also will read works in the fields of history, literary criticism, and cultural studies. Along with these general themes, other issues to be considered include the shifting concepts of literature, language, national identity, gender, and subjectivity. Taught in English.

303 German Film and the Frankfurt School
4; not offered 2012-13

In this course, we will review the masterpieces of German-language cinema, beginning with such expressionist works of art as Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Murnau’s Nosferatu, Lang’s Metropolis, and Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform. We also will study Nazi film, particularly Leni Riefenstahl’s work. Among the postwar directors that we study will be Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders. Queer German filmmakers such as Praunheim and Treut will receive special attention. The course will conclude with recent critical and popular successes such as Run Lola Run and The Lives of Others. As a critical lens, we will rely heavily on psychoanalytic and Frankfurt School criticism, focusing on writings by Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Theodor Adorno. In addition to class meetings, a weekly video screening of approximately two hours is required. All discussion in English. Students taking the course for German credit will be expected to watch the films without subtitles and complete written assignments in German; students taking the course for credit in world literature will generally watch films with subtitles and write in English. May be elected as German 303.

313 East German Literature and Film
4; not offered 2012-13

When the film The Lives of Others won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2007, its attention to the conflicts between artistic expression and state repression in East Germany’s one-party socialist dictatorship contrasted with recent films and books that emphasized nostalgia for life in the East German state (“Ostalgie”). In this course, we will examine literature, film, and other artistic and cultural production in the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or DDR) in the context of political movements and governmental control, from the state’s establishment in 1949 until its reunification with West Germany in 1990. We also will study the post-Berlin Wall phenomenon of Ostalgie as we consider the relevance and resonance of DDR culture in a unified Germany. Authors may include Bertolt Brecht, Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf, Brigitte Reimann, Stefan Heym, Wolf Biermann, and Heiner Müller. Filmmakers may include Wolfgang Staudte, Konrad Wolf, Kurt Maetzig, and Frank Beyer. May be elected as German 313.

317 Classical Chinese Drama
4; not offered 2012-13

Classical Chinese drama from the 13th century Yuan drama to the present Peking Opera. Plays selected from the Yuan, Ming, and Ching dynasties for reading and analysis. Chinese theatrical conventions such as masks, facial makeup, costumes, acting, and staging are introduced and discussed before and after viewing several Peking Opera video tapes.

319 Environmentalism and Nature in German Culture
4; not offered 2012-13

Nature has played an essential role in German culture and the German imagination, from the fairy tale to the modern environmental movement. In this course we’ll explore various manifestations of these interests from Romantic literature to contemporary performance art and installations. We’ll examine the works of poets, novelists, dramatists, philosophers, musicians, and artists, as well as the effects of these works on movements such as Heimatkunde from the 19th century to the present, Schleiermacher’s religion of the soil, the artist colony at Monte Verità, land reform of the 1920s, nationalism, the restoration versus reconstruction debate, the growth of the Green Party, environmentalism in East and West Germany and modern sustainability programs. Requirements: Preparation of readings for class discussion, one or two class presentations, and two papers. Students wishing to take this course for German credit must register for German 319 and complete readings and written assignments in German. May be elected as German 319.

320 Race, Trauma, Narrative
4; not offered 2012-13

This course examines the concept of racial trauma in contemporary literature and literary theory. Often described as a hallmark of modern life, trauma has attracted critical attention as a limit case through which to explore the nature of language, memory and the self, and the ethical and political implications of representing violence. Taking postcolonial French texts as a point of departure, this course asks how race and trauma intersect, and how their study illuminates relationships between the personal and the collective; the historical and the transhistorical; narrative genre and transmission; and witnessing, writing and power. May be taken for credit toward the French major.

325 Imagining Community through Contemporary Japanese Fiction and Film
x, 4 Shigeto

In this course we will explore selected works of Japanese fiction and film created during the “postmodern” period (from 1980 to the present.) During this period, the sense of belonging to a traditional community such as nation and family is said to have weakened—or perhaps dissipated altogether— in Japan. The overarching question we engage with is what kinds of different communities and subjectivities are imagined in and through literary and filmic texts during this period. Hence, we will not treat these works merely as representations of contemporary Japanese society but also as the sites where creative efforts to imagine different forms of community are unfolding. We will conduct close readings of each literary and filmic text and examine their varying functions within their socio-historical context particularly the economic bubble and subsequent recession. In order to do a contextual reading, along with assigned fiction and filmic texts, we will read works from such fields as cultural studies, anthropology, and critical theory. In so doing, students will be expected to constantly question their assumptions about contemporary Japanese culture and society.

326 The Femme Fatale: the Question of “Woman” in Modern Japanese Fiction
4; not offered 2012-13

Women have often been represented as idealized, seductive, and dangerous femme fatales in Japanese literature. In this course we shall trace and analyze various literary configurations of femme fatales specifically in the context of late 19th century and 20th century Japan. The questions we shall engage with will include: what are the implications of the femme fatale in the construction of male subjectivity and what constitutes a modern subject? We shall also investigate how some literary works, particularly those written by women writers, offer understandings of female subjectivity that are irreducible to an idealized object of male desire or to a marginalized figure lacking full-fledged selfhood. The writers whose works we will read include Mori Ôgai, Izumi Kyôka, Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, Kawabata Yasunari, and Enchi Fumiko. We will bring primary works of fiction into dialogue with supplementary critical and theoretical materials. May be elected as Gender Studies 326.

327 Masterworks of Classical Japanese Literature
4; not offered 2012-2013

Japanese prose and poetry from the eighth through the 19th centuries. Works include The Manyoshu, Japan’s earliest poetic anthology; The Tale of Genji, the first novel in the world to be written by a woman; The Tale of the Heike, describing the rise of the samurai ethic; the poems of Saigyo and Ryokan; and the haiku of Basho and Buson.

328 Haiku and Nature in Japan
4; not offered 2012-13

This course will enter the haiku / haikai world by reading poems and essays by two haiku poets, Basho (1644-1694) and Issa (1763-1827), and stories by Japan’s first Nobel Prize winning novelist, Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972). The course will explore the nexus between Haiku and Mahayana Buddhist thought and trace how writers and poets and monks shared a literary and religio-aesthetic vocabulary to express an insight into the human condition, the nature of reality, time and eternity, world and nature. Environmental studies students may use this course to satisfy humanities distribution requirements in the major. Environmental humanities students may use this course as one of the three elective courses required for their major.

329 Familias y Fronteras: Contemporary Chicana Literature
4; not offered 2012-13

A critical examination of literary and cultural production by self-identified Chicana authors, including fiction, autobiography, poetry, art, film, and performance. Themes discussed will include identity construction, gender and sexuality, performativity, literary criticism and theory. Authors studied may include Sandra Cisneros, Helena María Viramontes, Cherrie Moraga, Josie Mendez-Negrete, Lourdes Portillo, and Ana Castillo. Evaluation will be based on class participation, presentations, a group performative project, and a final research paper tailored to students’ majors and interests. This course satisfies the U.S. Latino and Latina Literature and Culture requirement for the major in Spanish Literatures and Cultures. Course is taught in English with stress on oral discussion. May be elected as Spanish 447.

330 Introduction to Chinese Film
4; not offered 2012-13

What is Chinese cinema and what is Chinese cinema? We will explore this question through an introduction of major authors, genres, and cinematic movements in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan from the 1930s to the present. Combining textual analysis and readings in socio-cultural background, this course examines what has shaped Chinese film industry and screen imagery. Among other things, it will focus on: the genre structuring of Chinese films in relation to Hollywood and European cinemas and the ways nation, gender, social and private space are imagined and constructed on the silver screen. All films are subtitled in English. No prerequisite in Chinese language is required. This course should be of interest to students in Cinema Studies, Asian Studies, Comparative Literature, Media Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

338 Undoing the Japanese National Narrative through Literature and Film
4; not offered 2012-13

In this course we focus on the literary works and films of Japan’s post-WWII period from the mid-1940s through the 1970s and explore the ways in which writers and filmmakers responded to the social and cultural transformations brought about by war, defeat, occupation, and recovery. The main questions to be addressed include: How did writers and filmmakers engage with the question of war responsibility in and through their works? What does it mean to “take responsibility for war”? How do their works, at both levels of form and content, critique and undo the official national narrative that largely coincided with the modernization theory put forth in the early 1960s? How long does the “postwar” last? Taught in English.

339 Green: Eco-Literature in the Americas
4; not offered 2012-13

This seminar addresses different aspects of nature and the environment as represented in fictional and nonfictional texts from the different regions of this Hemisphere. The seminar seeks to address environmental issues in literature in a comparative manner and therefore will examine texts from a variety of literary traditions. Topics to be discussed include: construction and decay, border issues, urban and rural spaces, utopia and dystopia, and natural history and narration. Writers to be studied may include: Borges, Mike Davis, DeLillo, Faulkner, García Márquez, Hemingway, Sonia Nazario, Mary Oliver, Rulfo, Saer, and Sam Witt. This course satisfies the U.S. Latino and Latina literature and culture requirement for the major in Spanish literatures and cultures. Course taught in English. May be elected as Spanish 437.

343 Women Writers in Imperial China: In Search of the “Real” Female Voice
x, 4 Hu

Despite the dominance of men as authors, subjects, and readers of literature throughout the two millennia of imperial China (221 BCE-1911 CE), this same period also saw the emergence and development of a rich tradition of women’s literature. In this course, we will discuss what kinds of women wrote literary works, and how the marginal status of women’s literature affected the genres women wrote in and the subjects with which they could deal. As China’s male literature came to develop its own tradition of writing in the voice of women, we will pay special attention to the questions of how women found their own voice despite this pre-existing feminine tradition. Literary works from different historical periods will service as a means to learn about the changing historical and social conditions behind women’s writing. We will also put some long-existing assumptions about pre-modern Chinese women and Chinese society into critical scrutiny.

349 China through the Cinematic Eye
4; not offered 2012-13

This course examines contemporary Chinese language cinematic works that are well-known to general audiences or critically acclaimed at film festivals. We will discuss popular as well as arthouse films, either by one auteur (director) who has taken on multiple roles or by selected directors from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas. Thematic and generic aspects of the film will be discussed in relation to evolving images of China discretely constructed for domestic or international audiences. All films are subtitled in English.

350 The Holocaust: Documentations and Representations
4; not offered 2012-13

What can we say now about the Holocaust? What has it meant to bear witness, to document, to remember, from the time of the Second World War until today? In this course we will explore answers to these questions in texts from a variety of genres, including history, diary, memoir, poetry, fiction, and film. These texts will treat Jewish life in Germany and Austria from Hitler’s rise to power until the war’s end, Jewish experiences in Eastern European ghettos and camps, and post-Holocaust writing on coming to terms (or not) with the past, and ways in which that past is represented. Readings may include works by Victor Klemperer, Ilse Aichinger, Ruth Klüger, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Peter Weiss, and Bernhard Schlink, as well as historical and theoretical analyses. Students taking the course for German credit must register for German 350, and will be expected to complete writing assignments and all available reading assignments in German. May be elected as German 350.

357 The Story of the Stone (or Dream of the Red Chamber)
4; not offered 2012-13

Also titled The Twelve Ladies of Jinling, this 120-chapter masterpiece written in the 18th century is China’s most famous and generally considered its greatest novel. Its appreciation of well-educated and talented women is unprecedented in Chinese history. This novel chronicles the rise and fall of an aristocratic family of hundreds of characters living in a huge garden inside a mansion complex. We see how the major characters, mostly in their teens, eat, drink, study, write poetry, play games, watch plays performed by the family’s troupe, and manage the household. This course studies gender issues (including homosexuality), philosophy and religion (Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism as presented in the novel), as well as traditional Chinese narrative. Two short papers and a final paper.

359 China’s Brave New World: Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature
4, x He

An introduction to Chinese literature from the early 20th century to the present. In China the written word was traditionally treated as a link between people who were otherwise divided by mutually unintelligible dialects. The institution of a new modern vernacular in the 20th century therefore constituted an inaugural moment in modern Chinese history, opening up literature to a much larger audience for the imagination of a new China. How would Chinese literature shape and be shaped by the imagination of the new China? How would modernity/revolution be naturalized through native traditions (such as martial arts genres and ecological romanticism)? How would women, youth, and established artists find a place in larger dialogues? We will discuss these questions through reading major works and literary movements in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The course is conducted in English. No prerequisite in Chinese language is required.

367-370 Special Authors in World Literature
4

A course designed to permit the study of individual significant authors in world literature.

371 Dramatic Literature: Medieval through Eighteenth Century
4; not offered 2012-13

A course in the history and development of Western drama from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. Dramatists to be studied may include the Wakefield Master, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Lope de Vega, Molière, Racine, Congreve, Beaumarchais, and Sheridan. May be elected as English 371 or Theatre 371. Offered in alternate years.

372 Literature of the Modern Theatre
4; not offered 2012-13

A study of the directions modern drama has taken from the 19th century to the present. Dramatists to be studied may include Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Pirandello, O’Neill, Brecht, and Pinter. May be elected as English 372 or Theatre 372. Offered in alternate years.

377 Ancient Theatre
4, x Vandiver

The origin and development of ancient theatre, especially of Greek tragedy, through a close reading of ancient plays in English translation. In addition to ancient plays, we will read modern critical responses to those plays. May be elected as Classics 377 or Theatre 377. Open to all students. Offered in alternate years.

381-386 Special Topics in Cinema
4

A course designed to permit the study of special topics in the area of world cinema. Topics might include the work of an individual director or of several directors, national surveys, film as social, political, and cultural history, or critical approaches. Any current offerings follow.

381 ST: French National Cinemas
4, x Hurlburt

What constitutes a “national” cinema? The classification of cinematic production according to national origin continues to function as an underlying organizational principle of film history texts. “National” cinema, however, simultaneously reflects and produces national (cultural) identities. The concept of national cinema thus encompasses both films that attempt to define a singular, unique cultural identity and films that actively resist such definitions. This course will examine the aesthetic, economic, geographic, linguistic and legislative boundaries defining French national cinemas. Topics will include censorship, reception, colonial cinema, cinematic remakes and literary adaptation and the French response to Hollywood. Not open to first-year students. Distribution area: humanities or cultural pluralism.

387-390 Special Studies in World Literature
4

Selected problems of developments in a non-English literature. Such topics as Medieval Courtly Literature, Scandinavian Drama, European Romanticism, Twentieth Century German Fiction, Existentialism, the Enlightenment, the Picaresque and Symbolism may be studied. All material will be read in English translation.

391, 392 Independent Study
1-3, 1-3 Staff

Directed reading and preparation of a critical paper or papers on a topic suggested by the student. The project must be approved by the staff. The number of students accepted for this course will depend on the availability of the staff. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

395 Contemporary Literary Theory
4; not offered 2012-13

This course will expose students to the major contemporary theoretical approaches to literary studies. We will examine a broad array of critical schools and perspectives, including reader-response theory, feminism, poststructuralism, and postcolonial studies. We will pay special attention to the recent “Ethical Turn” in literary studies influenced by the works of French philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. May be taken for credit toward the French major.