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 department. 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.
120 Myth, Folktale and Children’s Literature
4; not offered 2009-10
Study of international myths, folktales, and children’s literature. Several approaches such as literary, graphic, structuralist, folklorist, psychological, and gendered will be applied to the study of African, American, Asian, and European tales and books for children from the adult’s viewpoint. Two papers and a final examination will be required.
200 The Literature of Peace
4; not offered 2009-10
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.
227 Chinese Folk Literature
4; not offered 2009-10
Introduces students to literary works that reflect Chinese folk beliefs to help develop an understanding of Chinese popular culture. Readings include ballads, narrative poems, short stories, novels, and plays. Through analysis of these literary works in the long span of Chinese history, students study crucial aspects of an old Asian culture. Modern theories of cultural studies, when appropriate, are applied to the examination of specific literary works. Open to all students.
300 The Fairy Tale
4; not offered 2009-10
In this course, we will study one of the most appealing and enigmatic literary forms in human history: the fairy tale. Although focused on the German tradition and the tales of the Brothers Grimm, we will strive for a sense of the international and intercultural context of the tales. We will approach the tales from a variety of perspectives — structuralist, historical, sociological, and feminist, among others. In addition to the more traditional folk tales, we also will study some of the art tales written by authors such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde. All discussion in English. May be elected for credit in German or World Literature. Students taking the course for German credit will be expected to read the tales of the Brothers Grimm in German and write written assignments in German; students taking the course for credit in World Literature will read and write in English. Prerequisites: any of the following: German 250, or any 300-level German course, placement exam, or consent of instructor.
303 German Film and the Frankfurt School
4; not offered 2009-10
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 or rhetoric and film studies will generally watch films with subtitles and write in English. May be elected as German or Rhetoric and Film Studies 303.
317 Classical Chinese Drama
4; not offered 2009-10
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.
318 Modern Chinese Literature
4; not offered 2009-10
Chinese poetry, drama, and fiction since the beginning of the 20th century. Studying writings from both mainland China and Taiwan. Knowledge of premodern Chinese literature is not required.
320 Race, Trauma, Narrative
4, x Simek
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.
327 Masterworks of Classical Japanese Literature
4; not offered 2009-10
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 2009-10
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 2009-10
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
x, 4 He
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 1980s to the present. Films selected for discussion include works by major film authors such as Zhang Yimo, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Ang Lee, and Wang Karwai who are widely known to general audience in America and a younger generation of directors such as Wang Xiaoshuai, Jiao Zhangke and Wanmacaidan (a Tibetan director based in Beijing) who are better known at film festivals and by film critics. 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. May be elected as Rhetoric and Film Studies 368B.
339 Green: Eco-Literature in the Americas
4; not offered 2009-10
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.
342 Topics in Francophone Literature
4; not offered 2009-10
The French language and culture were imposed to varying degrees on populations across the globe over the course of France’s 17th-19th century imperial expansion. This course is designed to permit the study of individual literary movements, genres, authors, and critical approaches pertinent to the Francophone literary traditions that emerged from this contact between cultures. May be taken for credit toward the French major.
357 The Story of the Stone (or Dream of the Red Chamber)
4; not offered 2009-10
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.
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, x N. Simon
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
x, 4 N. Simon
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; not offered 2009-10
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.
381A ST: Chinese Popular Fiction or What Is Big about “Small Talk”?
4, x He
This course explores popular fiction, known as “small talk” in China. Fiction initially circulated unofficially (as differentiated from Confucian classics) until the late imperial period. It has since grown much larger, and eventually become the predominant genre in Chinese literary culture. Indeed, we can speak of “small talk” as the larger form of Chinese literature. In this course, we will investigate a number of important questions arising from this history. What has made popular Chinese fiction popular at different time periods from the late imperial to the Republic period? How does the popular fiction criticize socio-cultural conventions while entertaining the reader? How has it approached gender roles? And how does it expand the imagination beyond the everyday and the parameters of elitist aesthetics? Readings will be drawn from popular genres such as martial arts fiction, fantasy tales, and social novels. In addition to examining popular fiction in the Chinese context, we will also touch upon creative borrowing by Western writers. No prior knowledge of Chinese language or literature is required.
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.
388A ST: Giants of the French Enlightenment: Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot
x, 4 Iverson
This course will focus on the French Enlightenment, a period that indelibly marked the development of Western social, political and scientific thought. Readings will include a broad range of primary works by Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, including theatrical works, novels, dialogues, and philosophy and political treatises. We will also consider the particular historical and cultural circumstances that made it possible for intellectual figures to shape public opinion and influence public affairs during this time. At the conclusion of the course, we will reflect on recent (largely negative) assessments of the Enlightenment legacy. Course assignments will include papers and presentations. This course may be counted for the French major as one of two 400-level courses taught in English. May be elected as French 488A.
388B ST: Kafka and the Modern World
x, 4 Blau
How do Franz Kafka’s writings shape the way that we understand the modern world? In this course, students will explore Kafka’s world through readings of his stories, novels, parables, letters, and diaries, and will contextualize these with secondary sources on his life and writing. Students also will investigate the influence Kafka has had on 20th and 21st century cultural production. Texts will include a selection of Kafka’s short stories, letters, and diary entries, The Trial, The Castle, biographical and literary-critical treatments of Kafka, and contemporary adaptations and appropriations of Kafkan themes and the Kafkaesque. Students taking the course for credit in world literature will read and write in English; students enrolled in this course under German must meet the German prerequisites and will be expected to complete the reading and writing assignments in German. Prerequisites: any of the following: German 250 or any 300-level German course, placement exam, or consent of instructor. May be elected as German 388B.
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 2009-10
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.
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