Graduate
Courses
200.
Methodology of Comparative Literature. (6)
Seminar, four hours. Study of methodology of comparative
literature and theory of literature.
202.
Classical Tradition: Epic, Tragedy, or Comedy. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of
Greek, Latin, or Italian. Analysis of Greek and Roman works
and their re-creations in Renaissance and modern periods.
Emphasis on how poets build on work of their predecessors.
Reading may range from
Iliad or
Odyssey to tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides or satires
by Aristophanes .
S/U or letter grading.
C205.
Comic Vision. (4)
Lecture, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Literary masterpieces, both
dramatic and nondramatic, selected to demonstrate varieties
of comic expression. May be concurrently scheduled with
course C105. Graduate students required to prepare papers
based on texts read in original languages and to meet as a
group one additional hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
206.
Archetypal Heroes in Literature. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Survey and analysis of
function and appearance of such archetypal heroes as
Achilles, Ulysses, Prometheus, Oedipus, and Orpheus in
literature from antiquity to the modern period. S/U or
letter grading.
C222.
Renaissance Drama. (4)
Lecture, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Broad introduction to subject
matter and types of plays in the Renaissance, with
consideration of historical and literary influences on the
plays. Readings include works of such dramatists as Tasso,
Machiavelli, Lope de Vega, Racine, Jonson, Shakespeare. May
be concurrently scheduled with course C122. Graduate
students required to prepare papers based on texts read in
original languages and to meet as a group one additional
hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
C252.
Symbolism and Decadence. (5)
Seminar, four hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of
French. Study of symbolist and decadent movements in 19th-
and 20th-century English and French poetry and prose,
including authors such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine,
Mallarmé, Wilde, Yeats, and Eliot. May be concurrently
scheduled with course C152. Graduate students required to
prepare papers based on texts read in original languages and
may meet as a group one additional hour each week. S/U or
letter grading.
C253.
Post-Symbolist Poetry and Poetics. (5)
Seminar, four hours. Study of specific poets and poetics
related to them during first half of the 20th century. Texts
may include poets such as W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S.
Eliot, Paul Valéry, R.M. Rilke, Gunnar Ekelöf, and Wallace
Stevens. May be concurrently scheduled with course C153.
Graduate students may meet as a group one additional hour
each week. S/U or letter grading.
C255.
Hemispheric Exchanges. (5)
Lecture, three hours. In "Reading North by South," Neil
Larsen claims that North American interest in Latin American
Boom literature was of sinister intent, being largely
product of U.S. Cold War politics, investing in fiction that
could produce images of areas ripe for development. From
poetry perspective, dynamic was quite different. In the
1930s, North American poets became involved in labor of
love, reading, circulating, and translating recent or
contemporaneous poetry by their counterparts to south,
producing lingua franca with unexplored consequences for
poetry north and south of border. Study of poetry
translations by writers from both hemispheres and
examination of consequences of these preliminary
translations for later development of poetry on both sides
of continental divide. Concurrently scheduled with course
C155. Graduate students may meet as a group one additional
hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
C256.
Fantastic Fictions. (4)
(Formerly numbered C267.) Seminar, three hours. Time and
again in modern literature, corpses become conduits or
catalysts for revelation. What are ghosts that fiction
frequently cannot put to rest, and what is their connection
to national history or nation language or narrative?
Readings from James Joyce, John Banville, Henry James, Toni
Morrison, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Juan Carlos Onetti, Juan
Rulfo, and Carlos Fuentes, with films by Alejandro Amenabar,
Andrei Tarkovsky, and Kenji Mizoguchi. May be concurrently
scheduled with course C156. Graduate students have
additional meetings and theoretical readings by Benjamin,
Freud, Barthes, Derrida, Rabate, Rickels, and Caruth. S/U or
letter grading.
C257.
Memory and Forgetting. (5)
Seminar, four hours. Reading of theoretical accounts of
nature of traumatic memory and consideration of relationship
between memory and history, meanings of both writing and
reading about traumatic events, and discussion of ethical
(personal and communal) commitment to memory. Reading of
memoirs of survivors and questioning of importance of
authenticity in regard to representations of past. Is memory
necessarily based on actual past? What is role of testimony
in maintenance of collective memory? How is value of
testimony judged? What are criteria on which authenticity is
claimed? Concurrently scheduled with course C157. Graduate
students required to give 20-minute presentation as basis
for seminar paper. S/U or letter grading.
C260.
Literature and Visual Arts. (4)
Lecture, three hours. Knowledge of art history valuable but
not required. Assuming that literature and visual arts are
in some degree expressions of cultural and philosophical
patterns of eras, study of relationships between writers and
movements in painting, architecture, and sculpture.
Interdisciplinary investigation of similarities and
differences between plastic and verbal arts in comparative
study. May be repeated for credit with instructor and/or
topic change. May be concurrently scheduled with course
C160. Graduate students required to read works in original
languages. S/U or letter grading.
C261.
Fiction and History. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Analysis of use of historical events,
situations, and characters in literary works of the
Renaissance and/or modern period. Texts and individual
assignments range from Renaissance historical narratives
(Italian humanists, Machiavelli) to 19th- and 20th-century
novels by authors such as Stendhal, Verga, Tomasi di
Lampedusa, Carpentier, and Kundera. Use of fictional methods
by historians. Emphasis on how aesthetic, ideological, and
political factors influence authors' choice and use of
historical material. May be concurrently scheduled with
course C161. Graduate students required to prepare papers
based on texts read in original languages. S/U or letter
grading.
C263.
Crisis of Consciousness in Modern Literature. (5)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Study of modern European and
American works that are concerned both in subject matter and
artistic methods with growing self-consciousness of human
beings and their society, with focus on works of Kafka,
Rilke, Woolf, Sartre, and Stevens. May be concurrently
scheduled with course C163. Graduate students required to
prepare papers based on texts read in original languages and
to meet as a group one additional hour each week. S/U or
letter grading.
C264.
Modern Continental Novel. (5)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of at
least one appropriate foreign language. Study of modern
European novel's development from the 19th to 21st
centuries. Use of authors such as Hardy, Strindberg,
Lagerkvist, Gide, Proust, Mann, Joyce, Kafka, Woolf, Nabokov,
Grass, Christa Wolf, and Enquist to focus on development of
themes such as shifting authority, gender conflicts, change
versus stability, formal experimentation, and
self-consciousness in narrative. May be concurrently
scheduled with course C164. Graduate students required to
prepare papers based on texts read in original languages
whenever possible and to meet one additional hour each week.
S/U or letter grading.
266.
Writing and the Photographic Image. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Designed for graduate
students. Investigation of intertextual relations between
writing and photography in American and European contexts.
Study rests on premise that a photograph enters public
domain framed by writing and discourse and that, in turn,
some forms of writing are framed by photographic modes of
representation. S/U or letter grading.
CM270. Alternate Traditions: In Search of Female Voices in
Contemporary Literature. (5)
(Formerly numbered C270.) (Same as Women's Studies CM270.)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Investigation of narrative
texts by contemporary French, German, English, American,
Spanish American, African, and Asian women writers from
cross-cultural perspective. Common themes, problems, and
techniques. May be concurrently scheduled with course CM170.
Graduate students required to prepare papers based on texts
read in original languages whenever possible. S/U or letter
grading.
271.
Imaginary Women. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Examination of archetypal
female figures in classical/traditional literatures and
their reincarnations in modern African American,
Anglo-American, Asian American, European, Native American,
and Spanish-American literatures. Particular emphasis on
position of women in the cultures and ideology of the
authors. S/U or letter grading.
C272.
The Postmodern Novel. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Study of the postmodern novel
as it developed out of modernism. Postmodernism defined in
three different ways -- philosophically, scientifically, and
economically. Emphasis on relationship of recent novels to
theories of structuralism and poststructuralism. Readings
include authors such as Borges, Beckett, Nabokov, Pynchon,
Fuentes, Grass, Böll, and Calvino. Concurrently scheduled
with course C172. Graduate students required to meet as a
group one additional hour each week. S/U or letter grading.
C273.
Postmodernism and the Third World. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Exploration of intersection
between concepts of postmodernism and Third World culture
and politics, including topics such as post-Marxism and
revolution; historical thought; gender, ethnicity,
imperialism, and their relationship to cultural politics;
and recent Latin American literary production. Concurrently
scheduled with course C173. S/U or letter grading.
M274.
Theorizing the Third World. (4)
(Same as Asian American Studies M261.) Seminar, three hours.
Investigation of politics of power, gender, and race in
complex relationships between the so-called First World and
Third World, using both theoretical and textual approaches.
S/U or letter grading.
275.
Nationalism and Immigration Today. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Designed for graduate
students. Literary and social discourses on issues of
nationalism, immigration, and the politics of identity in
our postcolonial era, with consideration of broad range of
texts (aesthetic representations, theoretical reflections,
and legal documents). S/U or letter grading.
M276.
Reading Modern Bodies. (4)
(Same as Japanese M276.) Seminar, three hours. Designed for
graduate students. Exploration of construction of human body
through various modern technologies and discourses,
including those of disease, diet, race, gender, and
sexuality. Examination of texts from variety of locales,
with particular emphasis on Japan. S/U or letter grading.
277.
Caribbean Literature: From Negritude to Diaspora. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Historical approach to modern
Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature, retracing
search for cultural identity, beginning with negritude
movement's claim to Africa as expressed in Aime Cesaire's
classic poem
Cahier d'un retour au pays natal
and ending with consideration of dispersion of identities in
work of writers and intellectuals who contend with problem
of diasporic Caribbean culture. S/U or letter grading.
C278.
India Ink: Literature and Culture of Modern South Asia. (5)
Seminar, three hours. Survey of significant issues in
history of 20th-century Indian literature and culture. Great
works of modern Indian culture by such figures as
Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and U.R.
Anantha Murthy, including novels, short stories, poetry,
films, music, and works in cultural criticism and historical
scholarship. Central and defining issue for 20th-century
Indian culture is experience of British colonial rule and
massive cultural and material changes that accompanied it.
Exploration of manner in which literature and culture have
developed in interaction with powerful social forces, such
as struggle for national independence from Britain under
leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and expansion of Indian diaspora.
Concurrently scheduled with course C178. S/U grading.
279.
Subaltern Studies: Colonial Histories and Cultural Critique.
(5)
Seminar, three hours. Examination of certain links between
practice of cultural criticism and problems in
historiography of colonial and postcolonial societies. Use
of key texts by members of Subaltern Studies collective of
Indian historians to explore some central issues arising
from this relationship. What kind of interdisciplinary space
is produced by dialog of history and literary and cultural
theory? Attention to literary texts to practice such
interdisciplinary criticism. Nature of "modernity" in
colonial setting. What is nature of bourgeoisie in colonial
society? What kind of modernization does it seek? What is
relationship of modern metropolitan bourgeoisie to
indigenous one? S/U or letter grading.
280.
Latin American Literature in Comparative Contexts. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
foreign language. In-depth study of one topic of Latin
American literature in a comparative context. May be
repeated for credit. S/U or letter grading.
284.
Theories of Translation. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Examination of various approaches to
concept of translation and to its significance for literary
studies. Readings include authors such as Matthew Arnold,
Walter Benjamin, George Steiner, and Susan Bassnett. S/U or
letter grading.
285.
Translation Workshop. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: solid reading knowledge
of at least one foreign language. Open to qualified
undergraduates with proper language preparation. Theory and
practice of literary translation. Analyses of significant
theoretical contributions to the field. Weekly exercises in
translation technique with genres, periods, and authors at
discretion of participants. S/U or letter grading.
C287.
Reading across Culture. (5)
Seminar, three hours. What is it we do when we try to
understand words, habits, gestures, and beliefs not our own?
Do we understand something foreign to us by immersing
ourselves in it or by standing apart? Does ability to
understand something foreign imply taking universal
standpoint? Can we make judgments about beliefs other than
our own? Questions of cultural interpretation have long
history in both Western and non-Western cultures. Discussion
of history of questions about cross-cultural interpretation
and comparative interpretation of cultures in both
comparative literature and cultural anthropology. Reading of
some very complex and influential works by such writers as
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Amitav Ghosh, James Clifford, Edward
Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Erich Auerbach. Concurrently
scheduled with course C187. S/U or letter grading.
289.
Theory of Film and Literature. (5)
Seminar, three hours; film
screening, two hours. Study of redefinition and aims of
theories of film and literature. Approaches vary by
instructor (e.g., postcoloniality, psychoanalysis,
semiotics, transnationalism, gender theory). S/U or letter
grading.
290.
Contemporary Theories of Criticism. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Requisite: course 200. Advanced course
in theory of literature focusing on structuralist,
psychoanalytic, and Marxist approaches. S/U or letter
grading.
291.
Problems in Theory of Literature. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of
French or German. Requisite: course 290. Study of specific
topics in theory of literature for advanced students in
criticism and literary theory. May be repeated for credit.
S/U or letter grading.
292.
Theories of Empire. (4)
Seminar, three hours. History of theorizations of modern
imperialism and colonialism since relevant writings of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels. Examination of number of landmark
theories of empire and consideration of whether or not they
may be said to constitute coherent tradition or line of
theoretical development. Question of resistance to imperial
rule and role it plays in these theoretical accounts. S/U or
letter grading.
M294.
Seminar: Literary Theory. (5)
(Same as Asian M251, English M270, French M270, German M270,
Italian M270, Scandinavian M270, and Spanish M294.) Seminar,
three hours. Advanced interdisciplinary seminar to explore
philosophical, historical, and critical foundations of
literary theory as well as current issues in literary and
cultural studies. S/U or letter grading.
297.
Death and the Limits of Representation. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Examination of fundamental
shifts in the relationship that obtains between thinking and
death which are closely tied to rethinking of the status and
structure of representation. May be repeated once for
credit. S/U or letter grading.
299.
Aesthetics and Literature. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Preparation: reading knowledge of one
appropriate foreign language. Study of literary theory
through exploration of approaches to literature by
philosophers grounded on analytic tradition. Careful
attention to concepts of truth, meaning, expression,
representation, metaphor, fiction, and literature. Letter
grading.
375.
Teaching Apprentice Practicum. (1 to 4)
Seminar, to be arranged. Preparation: apprentice personnel
employment as teaching assistant, associate, or fellow.
Teaching apprenticeship under active guidance and
supervision of regular faculty member responsible for
curriculum and instruction at the University. May be
repeated for credit. S/U grading.
495.
Preparation for Teaching Literature and Composition. (4)
Seminar, three hours. Seminar on problems and methods of
presenting literary texts as exemplary materials in the
teaching of composition. Deals with theory and classroom
practice and involves individual counseling and faculty
evaluation of teaching assistants' performance. May not be
applied toward M.A. course requirements. S/U grading.
596.
Directed Individual Study or Research. (2 to 12)
Limited to graduate comparative literature students.
Necessary for students in comparative literature who need
additional individual study and research. May be repeated
for credit. S/U grading.
596X.
Directed Individual Study. (2 to 4)
Preparation for foreign language examination. S/U grading.
597.
Preparation for M.A. and Ph.D. Examinations. (2 to 12)
Limited to graduate students. Preparation for M.A.
comprehensive examination or Ph.D. qualifying examinations.
May be repeated for credit. S/U grading.
599.
Research for Ph.D. Dissertation. (2 to 12)
Limited to Ph.D. students. Research for and preparation of
Ph.D. dissertation. May be repeated for credit. S/U grading.
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