CL 10, What is Comparative Literature?
Male Friendship
Prof. Lawrence Kritzman – 10A
This course examines representations of male relationships in literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and film. Ranging from classical texts such as the Bible and Cicero’s “De Amicitia,” to the cinema of Almodovar and Truffaut, we will study the rhetorical and social construction of male friendship and its relationship to gender, class and cultural politics. Texts will be drawn from the following literary and critical works: Aristotle, Martial, Montaigne, Balzac, Twain, Whitman, Nietzche, Freud, D.H. Lawrence, Waugh, Ben Jalloun, Alan Bennett, and Derrida.
CL 19 Translation: Theory and Practice
Prof. Margaret Williamson – 12 hour
This course has a theoretical and a practical component. We will analyze translations of literary works and sample the diverse field of translation theory. At the same time, each student will work on a translation project and participate in workshops on student translations. Reading knowledge of a foreign language is required: at least intermediate competence is recommended. Interested students who are unsure of their language preparation should contact the instructor.
CL 21 Topics in Medieval Literatures
Tristan and Isolt
Prof.Monika Otter – 11 hour
One of the most famous and most provocative love stories of medieval Europe, the romance of Tristan and Isolt raises questions about love, passion and the social order; the relations between men and women; loyalty and self-interest; truth, lies, wit and improvisation; and, ultimately, the nature of art and fiction. We will consider different versions of the Tristan story, medieval and modern, as well as related Arthurian and Celtic tales and Tristan-related art and music.
CL 42, Topics in Popular Culture
Exhibiting Culture: The World Fairs, 1850-2008
Prof. Michelle Warren – 10A
This course examines the intersection of politics, literature, and popular culture in the phenomenon of the "world fair." Fairs exhibit for millions of visitors ideas that also circulate in more rarified quarters. How are ideas of race, gender, nation, and history rendered in the design of exhibits? Materials for the course include: historical records of the fairs in Britain, the United States, and France; literature, films and music that reference the fairs; readings in cultural, visual, and architectural theory.
CL 49, Special Topics
Godzilla's Revenge: Anime, Manga, J-Pop and Cultural Identities in Modern Japan (Id. to JPN 61)
Prof. James Dorsey -12 hour
A vague suspicion that Japan's ultimately disastrous war effort had been fueled by both the culture of the elite meant that popular culture took on a new significance after WW II. This course will explore the evolution of this popular culture through the changing technologies of representation, from the manga (comic books), film, pulp fiction and popular music of the early postwar years through the animation, tv programming, and video games of present times. Topics to be addressed include the dynamics between high- and low-brow genres; the delineation of race, gender, and national identity in popular culture; the nature of culture in post-industrial consumer capitalism.
CL 54, Jewish Literatures
Middle Eastern Memoirs/Autobiographies and the Construction of Collective Memory: Arabs and Jews Narrate Life-Stories (Id. to JWST 81/ENGL 62.2)
Prof. Carol Bardenstein – 10A
This course will examine memoirs and autobiographies from the Middle East, with emphasis on Palestinian and Israeli memoirs. We will examine the different modalities of autobiographical writing while analyzing the relationships and tensions between “the individual and the collective.” We will look at the ways that particular experiences and positionalities are viewed as delineating a collective and how they shape narration and representation in autobiographical forms. Authors include Oz, Said, Appelfeld, Be’er, Matalaon, Shehedeh, Aciman, Kashua and Sakakini.
CL 55, Asian Literatures
Introduction to Modern Korean Literature (Identical to Korean 61)
Prof. Christopher Hanscom – 10A
The course will focus on providing an introductory overview of twentieth and twenty-first century Korean literature, aiming to approach Korean texts through the use of broadly applicable critical concepts and in opening up comparisons with other Asian literatures. Topics addressed will include: national literatures, genre, historical trauma and reconciliation, diaspora, and autobiography. No Korean language ability is required; no background knowledge in Korean history or culture is assumed.
CL 65, Literature and Science
A Matter of Time (Id to Math 5)
Profs. Dwight Lahr and Beatriz Pastor -10 hour
Everybody knows about time. Our everyday language bears witness to the centrality of time with scores of words and expressions that refer to it as a measure, a frame of reference, or an ordering factor for our lives, feelings, dreams, and histories. Playing with time has been a favorite game in works of high culture—from the Greek sophists to cubism—and in popular culture—from H.G. Wells to Monty Python. And time is at the center of one of the most revolutionary scientific theories of all time: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In this course we will use mathematics, literature, and the arts to travel through history, to explore and understand Time as a key concept and reality in the development of Western culture and in our own twentieth -century view of ourselves and the world.
CL 73/101, Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory
Modernity and Postmodernity in a Transatlantic Perspective
Prof. Klaus J. Milich – 2A
Why did postmodernity become a cultural dominant in the United States but not in Europe, and why did poststructuralism become more prominent in the American academy than in the French? Exploring the meanings of modernity, postmodernity, or the avant-garde in the works of Arnold, Huxley, Adorno, Marcuse, Trilling, Howe, Sontag, Fiedler, Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, Lyotard, Jameson, and others, we shall discuss how these and other ostensibly universal terms inflect concepts of culture on both sides of the Atlantic, and accrue specific meanings in the society in which they appear.
