Spring 2022 Course Schedule

Spring 2022 Course Schedule

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*The Spring 2022 course schedule is subject to change. Please check CAESAR for all up to date course information, including day/times, course descriptions, and mode of instruction.

Spring 2022 course descriptions

Please check CAESAR for full course descriptions, including required texts and modes of instruction.

Spring 2022

COMP_LIT 201-0-20 - Reading World Literature: Planetary Readings
This course introduces students to a diverse range of important works of world literature and the central debates and questions about the idea of world literature. We will explore the interface of global ecological developments and the circulation of world literature. How does a text qualify to be part of “world literature”? What does the reader bring to the text to make it a “world literature” text? What are the similarities/differences between “world literature,” on the one hand, and “world music” and “world cinema” on the other? In what ways can literature be compared to the environment? How can we preserve endangered literary texts and global languages? How does world literature respond to problems that face the world at large (e.g., global pandemics, world wars, and climate change, etc.)? How appropriate is the term “world literature” as a descriptor of planetary literary production and circulation? What are the best methods of reading world literature today? We will try to answer some of these questions and others that arise during class and one-on-one meetings.

Discussing and writing about a variety of theories of world literature, we will assess the merits of different approaches (e.g., distant reading, close reading etc.) in the encounter with specific texts from various parts of the planet. Furthermore, we will study how a local text is affected by worldwide movements and how it affects other texts, such that it is best be understood comparatively on a planetary scale. Theory materials will comprise commentaries on world literature and world literary ecologies from different literary backgrounds. Theorists read in the course will include Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, David Damrosch, Emily Apter, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Franco Moretti, and Gayatri Spivak.

COMP_LIT 202-0-20 - Interpreting Culture: South Korean Fictions, Films, and Webtoons of Disaster
What does one talk about when one talks about disasters? Whose world ends in “end of the world” narratives? This course invites students to read and watch South Korean and diasporic narratives centered around disasters, both real and fictional, to engage questions of politics, representation, and inequalities that shape disaster narratives. Ranging from disasters of the past to more contemporary ones such as pandemics and Sewol ferry, the disasters examined in this course have sparked complex conversations surrounding a more just society and the doomed end of the “normal.” Engaging scholarship on disasters, speculative fictions, critical race theory, and gender studies, the course introduces students to the varied academic and cultural responses to disasters and the underlying stakes that drive these responses. Students will be assigned a variety of texts to analyze, such as film, novels, webtoons, and news, as well as choosing a disaster narrative of their own interest to examine. No prior knowledge of Korean culture or language are required to take this course. Students are expected to actively participate in class and work in groups on collaborative projects. Assignments will consist of short essays and a creative final project.

COMP_LIT 202-0-21 - Interpreting Culture: 20th Century Russian Literature
This course is a general survey of early 20 century Russian Literature, focused on the interconnections between new ideas in culture and politics. Texts include great Modernist novels Peterburg (1913) by Andrei Bely, Master and Margarita (1940) by Mikhail Bulgakov, and Evgeny Zamiatin’s We (1921); poetry by Aleksandr Blok, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. These major literary works are discussed in the broad Russian and European cultural and historical context. Students are introduced to the thrills and challenges of reading Russian modernist novels.

COMP_LIT 202-0-22 - Interpreting Culture: Heart of Europe: Poland in the Twentieth Century
Over the last century, Poland has undergone an extraordinary range of transformations and traumas: the end of partition among three empires (Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian) leading to the brief period of interwar independence; Nazi conquest, and the virtual elimination of Poland's Jewish population; Soviet subjugation; Solidarity and the revolt against Soviet rule; martial law; and in 1989, independence once again. Poland's shifting borders and the complex history and politics they represent provide a unique point of entry into modern European history. In this course, we will explore the distinctive ways in which history and culture combine in a colonized nation at Europe's heart by way of novels, films, essays, memoirs, journalism, and poetry. Authors to be read will include Nobel Laureates Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, and Olga Tokarczuk.

COMP_LIT 301-0-20 - Studies in World Literature: Ancient Greek Drama and Its Reception
The scripts and fragments from plays produced in fifth-century BCE Athens in honor of Dionysos, god of wine and theater, are among the most enduring and powerful legacies of ancient Greek culture. Since their rediscovery in the early modern period, directors, translators, and adaptors have repeatedly turned to the poetry of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to reflect on political, ethical, social, and theological issues of their time. More recently, the plays have proved fertile ground for directors eager to imagine alternative ways of thinking about race, gender, and class. In this course, we will read a selection of Athenian tragedies, with special emphasis on their form, ancient performance context, and themes, as well as select examples of their contemporary reception for diverse audiences. All readings will be in translation, and students will be encouraged to work in groups to perform and develop creative responses to individual scenes.

COMP_LIT 301-0-21 - Studies in World Literature: Animal, Animism, Animality
This course focuses on the representations of animals, animism, and animality in select African texts to examine the major developments in African literatures. While discussing various theoretical statements, we will assess the place of the non-human in the African thought. We will discuss work by well-known authors (e.g., Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, J.M. Coetzee, Abulrazak Gurnah, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o), fiction and poetry by important but neglected authors (e.g., Saida Hagi-Dirie Herzi and Henry ole Kulet), and works by emergent writers who deploy animality as a trope to explore the relationship between the human and the non-human. Subtopics will include ecology, biopolitics, slavery, race, diaspora, intra-African immigration, science fiction, queerness, and ubuntu. Theoretical texts include works by Wangari Maathai, Achille Mbembe, Rosi Braidotti, Harry Garuba, Kyle White, Frantz Fanon, and Cajetan Iheka.

COMP_LIT 303-0-20 - Movements and Periods: Figurations of Jesus in German-Jewish Literature
Jesus is certainly a central figure for Christianity and usually thoughtto mark decisive differences between the religions: the idea of anembodied God is as alien to Judaism as the concept of trinity or thebelief in a substitutionary sacrificial death. Considering this, it seemsvery remarkable that at a closer look, figurations of Jesus abound inJewish literature. In the seminar we will concentrate on the realm ofGerman language texts from the 18th century to the present dealingwith Jesus or related symbols like the cross or scenes of the Passionand Crucifixion. Not surprisingly, in Christian as well as Jewishcontexts mixing religious symbolism in literature and art repeatedlyprovoked scandals. Authors like Carl Einstein were fined forblaspheming Christ, while others like Stefan Zweig, Alfred D blin orFranz Werfel were accused of having betrayed Judaism.
One hypothesis concerning this corpus of texts is that by adoptingcentral narratives and images of the Christian majority society theyclaim Jewish participation and explore its limits. By focusing onJesus as a Jew many of these texts rewrite and transform dominantChristian perspectives and expose their inherent violence. If theypresent the martyred Jesus explicitly as a Jew e.g., connections topersecutions, pogroms and genocide are evoked. At the same time,questions concerning a shared history and modes of respect despitedifference are raised. We will discuss how texts problematizeassimilation and also try to understand the role of (trans-)figurationsof Jesus in 20th Jewish literature about war, the Shoah and themodes of memory.

COMP_LIT 303-0-21 - Movements and Periods: Finance Fictions: The Japanese "Economic Novel"
When asked in 1985 why he writes “economic novels” (keizai shōsetsu), the popular novelist Kajiyama Toshiyuki responded: “Why should we limit our literary subjects to love affairs and things like that? There’s romance in money: people are living in the much muddier swamp of capitalism.” By making this “muddy swamp” of capitalism legible for a wide range of audiences, the economic novel has become one of the most popular literary genres in postwar Japan. Since their inception in the late 1950s, economic novels have sold as well as, if not better, than mysteries and twice as well as the more high-brow form of “pure literature” (jun bungaku). Centering on the economic realities of life under capitalism, economic novels portray the workings of financial corruption, the mechanics of production and distribution, and the experience of laboring within one of the largest consumer economies in the world. This course traces this genre from its origins in 1957 to the contemporary moment. Reading works by early practitioners of the form to its more recent inflections in the literature of writers like Oyamada Hiroko (The Factory), Tsumuro Kikuko (There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job), and Murata Sayaka (Convenience Store Woman), we will examine the relationship between literature and the transformations in Japan’s capitalist economy. We will consider, among other topics, how this genre depicts changes in the workplace and forms of labor, systemic modes of economic exploitation, the psychological and emotional experience of debt in a financialized economy, and the gendering of particular types of work. Guiding our inquiry will be an overarching question: what are the connections between literary and economic form?

COMP_LIT 305-0-20- Studies in Film, Media, and Visual Culture: Audio Drama
This course will introduce students to a poorly understood art form that has been reborn many times, including today in the light of pandemic restrictions on theatrical production just recently: audio drama. In the middle decades of the 20th century, radio plays were among the most popular forms of fiction in many parts of the world. Legends have come down about thrillers of the 1930s, but these remain framed inside narratives of nostalgia, and are not representative of the broad work of experimental writers in the medium. In this class, you will learn how radio dramas were made in three historical periods: classic American (1937-54); mid-century British (1954-1974) and contemporary podcast traditions, with additional focus on audio dramas in the global south, including South Africa and India. We will explore the cultural and political background of each of these contexts, practice how to “read” a radio play, and ask about how the form interacts with various media, and expressive agendas. 

COMP_LIT 305-0-21- Studies in Film, Media, and Visual Culture: The Brazilian Documentary Tradition in Literature
Generally describe the class here. Include assignment and project information, if desired.
This course will explore selected themes and aesthetic trends in Brazilian literature and film (but mostly film) produced in the 21st century. We will be particularly interested in discussing how in the last two decades a number of Brazilian films have blurred the boundaries between fiction and documentary, with an increasing emphasis on social and historical issues. In order to do so, we will first study the development of realism in literature throughout the 20th century. Although we will pay some attention to film techniques, our major concern will be with narrative strategies, ideological content and the ethics of representation. Although there will inevitably be days in which I will lecture, we will rely heavily on class discussion in a seminar format. Students will have the opportunity to do their readings and write their papers in English or Portuguese. Readings: Barren Lives, by Graciliano Ramos; The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector; A selection of articles (CANVAS). NOTE: THIS COURSE MAY COUNT FOR THE MAJOR OR MINOR IN SPANISH.

COMP_LIT 305-0-22- Studies in Film, Media, and Visual Culture: Japanese Cinema II: From New Waves to the Present
This course offers a history of Japanese cinema from the beginning of the New Wave movements in the mid-1950s to the present moment. We will consider how cinema has reflected historical moments and shaped cultural discourses in this period. Focusing on films that raise disciplinary questions related to both the cinematic medium and Japan, we will examine, among other topics: the relationship between cinema and the era of high economic growth, the decline of the studio system, postmodernism, and cinematic responses to the post-bubble economic recession. We will also study the shifting position of directors within the broader economic and institutional contexts of Japanese cinema and its global circulation. Students will learn how to critically analyze various films from multiple theoretical perspectives while gaining an understanding of the major figures and trends in the history of postwar Japanese cinema.

COMP_LIT 307-0-1 - Studies in Gender, Sexuality & Representation: Feminist, Queer, Crip: South Korea and Its Discontents
This course examines contemporary discussions on the topics of gender, sexuality, and disability in South Korea. The past decade has seen an explosion of popular interest in feminism in South Korea. Along with this were competing debates on social and economic inequalities and legislations, as well as debates on gender identity, everyday experiences of discrimination, and overlooked sites of intersectional violence. From the Gangnam station murder to the #Me Too movement, South Korean cultural industry’s rise into the global stage through K-Pop has coincided with intense debates at home and abroad about the experience of gendered citizenship and various forms of marginalization. As the scholar Alison Kafer has poignantly shown, thinking through the entanglements of feminist, queer, and disability concerns is important to rethinking exclusionary claims and their attendant problems. Students will look at some of the major points of debate and events that have ignited the increased interest, engaging literary and popular cultural texts, news articles, and scholarship on feminist, queer, and crip theories. At the same time, these recent debates are not necessarily unique or new. To address such, the course will also consider the broader historical context of militarization, colonialism, and the Korean diaspora that have shaped these debates. No prerequisite knowledge of the Korean language or culture is necessary. As a discussion-based seminar with papers, the course encourages students to hone their critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills.

COMP_LIT 320-SA-20 - Critical Theory and Literary Studies: Kafka's Uncanny "Animals"
All kinds of strange creatures populate Kafka's narratives: not just humans, and not just recognizable animals, but beings that are difficult to categorize: animate, inanimate, natural, artificial, and hybrids of all sorts. To complicate things further, all of these beings are in constant movement, often revealing themselves to be different from what they initially were taken to be. But what they all have in common is a very special and difficult-to-define relationship to the narrative in and through which they appear. This course seeks to focus specifically on the relation between the narrative and the "animals" and quasi-animals that are often its subject. Ultimately it seeks to pose the question of the role of the reader and of reading in relating to what seems both irreducibly strange and yet uncannily familiar - what we call "animals".

COMP_LIT 390-0-20 - Special Topics in Comparative Literature: Images of the Shtetl
In collective memory the shtetl (small Jewish town) has become enshrined as the symbolic space par excellence of close-knit, Jewish community in Eastern Europe; it is against the backdrop of this idealized shtetl that the international blockbuster Fiddler on the Roof is enacted. The shtetl is the central locus and focus of Modern Yiddish Literature; Fiddler on the Roof itself was based on a Sholem Aleichem story. In this seminar we shall explore the spectrum of representations of the shtetl in Yiddish literature from the nineteenth century to the post-Holocaust period. We shall also focus on artistic and photographic depictions of the shtetl: Chagall and Roman Vishniac in particular. The course will include a screening of Fiddler on the Roof followed by a discussion of this film based upon a comparison with the text upon which it is based, Tevye the Milkman.

COMP_LIT 390-0-21 - Special Topics in Comparative Literature: Shakespeare and Music
This course offers students the opportunity to explore some of the many intersections between Shakespearean drama and music from the late sixteenth century through the early twenty-first in many sorts of performance of the plays themselves, and also in adaptations into opera, ballet,  musical theatre, film, and instrumental music. Textual languages include English, French, Italian, Japanese and students' choice of others. Given the character and complexity of the material, and the multimedia and interdisciplinary natures of Shakespeare-inspired musical works and scholarship, this course is open to students whose primary interest or field of study is comparative literature, film, English, performance studies, music, or theatre.

COMP_LIT 412-0-20 - Literary Studies Colloquium: Theory Sequence: Translation in Theory and Practice
This class is built on the premise that translation is a central concern, albeit one too often taken for granted, in the work of literary, cultural, or historical scholarship in any language. In this class we will explore both the foundational texts of translation theory (e.g. Benjamin, Jakobson), as more current approaches to subjects like translation and world literature, translating minoritized voices, queer theory and translation, and ‘untranslatability.’ Class discussions will consider not only how to “do” translation, as well as considerations of its ethics and politics, but also how to read and teach works in translation. Finally, the course will also function as a translation workshop: all students will work over the course of the quarter on a translation of their own into English that they will workshop with the class.

COMP_LIT 481-0-20 - Studies in Literary Theory: Visualizing Radicalism
This course focuses on the theory and practice of Socialist Realism dogma in literature and beyond. We will examine Socialist Realism in contrast to the most innovative and experimental forms of modernism and avant-garde visual and literary narratives (from prose and poetry to political posters and commercial advertisements) forged in a crucible of intense political and cultural interaction in Russia and Europe in 1920- 1930-s. We focus on the ways the images and metaphors have been used as carriers of cultural value and ideological meaning, exploring such issues as word and image, gender and nationality, aesthetics and psychology, politics and propaganda. Since the course topic involves such disciplines as visual art, literature, cultural theory, and philosophy, readings include modern and contemporary aesthetic theories (Shklovsky, Gyorgy Lukacs, Boris Groys) and twentieth-century political and ethical philosophy (Gramsci, Ortega-i-Gasset, Walter Benjamin et al.), and psychology (Freud, Edward Bernays).

COMP_LIT 486-0-20 - The Politics of Seduction and Consent: Literature, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy
In the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, what is left of seduction? As its etymological derivation from the Latin seducere makes evident, seduction signifies the threat of being led astray, suggesting a problematic reorganization of boundaries, activity and passivity, power, and vulnerability. How have literature, psychoanalysis and philosophy responded to the drama of dissymmetry and otherness? To what extent does seduction affirm an inequitable logic when it comes to age, gender, and race? Does seduction always imply violence? How can we define the notion of consent, and can it offer not only legal redress but ethical care? To what extent can justice regulate sex, fantasies, and desires? To what extent has psychoanalysis problematically altered our notions of guilt and innocence when it comes to seduction? Throughout this seminar, we aim to confront these questions by revisiting primal scenes of seduction and consent in a broad range of literary, psychoanalytical, legal, and philosophical texts from Europe and the USA. Works covered will include texts by Springora, Kouchner, Nabokov, Freud, Ferenczi, Laplanche, Srinivasan, Hartman, Butler, Nussbaum, Alcoff, Kukla, and Dougherty.

COMP_LIT 488-0-20 - Special Topics in Comparative Literature: Study in French Philosophy: Biopolitics
This course addresses the emergence of sexuality as a philosophical theme within a number of currents of French philosophy, focussing on the feminist existentialist phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the post-Marxist decolonialism of Frantz Fanon in A Dying Colonialism, the genealogical critique of Michel Foucault, and the latter's decolonial revision within the biopolitical analyses of the Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez.

The course has three main aims. We will critically compare and appraise the different methodologies, aims, concepts of power, and interpretive politics within these analyses of sexuality and/or the family as contingent formations. We will give attention to several recent publications by the philosophers under consideration that have prompted contemporary revision of established interpretations of these bodies of work. And we will ask how the work of Beauvoir, Fanon, Foucault and Castro-Gómez continues to be resituated today within a number of fields including contemporary critical theory, decolonial theory, critical race studies, and gender and sexualities studies. We will ask: what new concepts have now emerged from these transits and translations of mid twentieth-century theory?

GAMS 420-3-20 - Global and Avant-Garde Studies Colloquium

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