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Rites of Passage
Examines a seemingly universal theme-coming of age-by focusing on texts from disparate periods and cultures. Proposes that notions of "growing up" are profoundly inflected by issues of class, gender and race, and that the literary representation of these matters changes drastically over time. Texts from the Middle Ages to the present; authors drawn from Chrétien de Troyes, Quevedo, Prévost, Balzac, Brontë, Twain, Faulkner, Vesaas, Rhys, Satrapi and Foer. Enrollment limited to 20 first year students. FYS
- Primary Instructor
- Weinstein
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Murder Ink: Narratives of Crime, Discovery, and Identity
Examines the narrative of detection, beginning with the great dramatic whodunit (and mystery of identity) Oedipus Rex. Literary texts which follow a trail of knowledge, whether to establish a fact (who killed Laius?) or reveal an identity (who is Oedipus?) follow in Sophocles' footsteps. We read Sophocles' intellectual children. Readings include: Hamlet, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Woman in White, and other classic novels and plays. We also analyse seminal films of the genre, including Laura and Vertigo. Will include the twentieth-century detective story, with particular attention to women writers and the genre of the female private eye.
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Cultures of Colonialism: Palestine/Israel
Examines the history and literary production of the Israeli-Palestinian colonial encounter from 1948 to the present. Aims to delineate the deep links between domestic culture and colonialism in Israel-Palestine by raising questions about statehood, dispossession, and exclusion in the imaginaries of both peoples and by examining novels in relation to the ethical and political imperatives of settler-colonial dynamics. Authors include: David Grossman, Emile Habibi, Jabra I. Jabra, Sahar Khalifah, Kanafani, Amos Oz, and A. B. Yehoshua. Sophomore seminar. Enrollment limited to 20 sophomores.
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Tales and Talemakers of the Non-Western World
Examines many forms of storytelling in Asia, from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Arabian Nights Entertainments to works of history and fiction in China and Japan. The material is intended to follow the evolution of non-western narratives from mythological, historical and fictional sources in a variety of cultural contexts. Topics will include myth and ritual, the problem of epic, tales of love and the fantastic, etc.
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Civilization and Its Discontents
Investigates the age-old tension between order and chaos as a central dynamic in the making and interpretation of literature. Texts will be drawn from drama, fiction and poetry from Antiquity to the present. Authors include Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, Beckett, Prevost, Bronte, Faulkner, Morrison, Blake, Whitman, Dickinson, and Rich.
- Primary Instructor
- Weinstein
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Believers, Agnostics, and Atheists in Contemporary Fiction (JUDS 0050A)
Interested students must register for JUDS 0050A (CRN 15619).
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Desire and Sexuality in Arabic Literature
Explores representations of desire and sexuality in classical and modern Arabic literature. We will also look at visual and literary texts from the European orientalist tradition. Themes include religion and gender relations, homosexuality, marriage and the family, and the legacy of medieval Arabic poetic, folkloric, legal, and medical engagements with the body. Readings by Salih, Darwish, Djebbar and others.
- Primary Instructor
- Creswell
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Stigma
Some people must navigate through life with damaged or spoiled identities, or with identities that are liable at any moment to be exposed as damaged or spoiled. To understand more deeply the diverse forms of stigmatizing and stigmatized behavior, we will read classic works of social science (Du Bois, Goffman, Cobb and Sennett, Chow) in conjunction with significant works of fiction (Hawthorne, Eliot, Hardy, Fontane, Hughes, Faulkner).
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Mediterranean Cities
Athens, Istanbul, Alexandria: three iconic cities of the Levant that will serve as points of reference in a focused exploration of East Mediterranean history and culture. Reads and discusses a number of texts that span several decades and a wide range of styles and genres – from realism to postmodernism and from autobiography to thriller – but exhibit a common interest in the urban landscape and its relationship to basic aspects of human existence: identity and ideology, memory and desire, isolation and connection, hope and fear, life and death. Authors include Theotokas, Seferis, Taktsis, Durrell, Mahfouz, Kharrat, Tanpinar, Shafak, Altun.
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Statelessness and Global Media: Citizens, Foreigners, Aliens (MCM 0901K)
Interested students must register for MCM 0901K (CRN 15909).
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Introduction to the Theory of Literature
An historical introduction to problems of literary theory from the classical to the postmodern. Issues to be examined include mimesis, rhetoric, hermeneutics, history, psychoanalysis, formalisms and ideological criticism (questions of race, gender, sexuality, postcolonialism). Primarily for advanced undergraduates. Lectures, discussions; several short papers.
- Primary Instructor
- Bernstein
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Between Gods and Beasts: The Renaissance Ovid (ENGL 1360S)
Interested students must register for ENGL 1360S (CRN 14586).
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Shakespeare and Philosophy
Explores the relationship between Shakespeare and philosophy. Readings include philosophers who have written about Shakespeare (Hegel, Nietzsche, Cavell, and others), as well as philosophers who may illuminate interpretive problems in Shakespeare (Plato, Seneca, Spinoza, and others).
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Drama and Debt
Explores the representation of debt in drama. The way we talk about debt is difficult to disentangle from the way we talk about other social obligations. For this reason the category of debt can illuminate profound human questions in a work of art. Secondary readings include David Graeber, Marc Shell, and Richard Seaford. Works of art may include Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Ibsen. Enrollment limited to 20.
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Poetry of Europe: Montale, Celan, Hill
The fifty years between the Second World War and the formation of the European Union was a period in which the meaning of "Europe" was placed under great strain. The class will examine the strains and debates about Europe within the lyric poetry of several literary traditions. It will take the form of close historical, formal, and critical readings of three books of poems in their entirety: Montale's The Storm and Others (1956), Celan's No-One's Rose (1963), and Hill's Canaan (1997). Enrollment limited to 25.
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Voices of Romanticism
Readings of lyric poetry in the European Romantic tradition. Focus on problems of lyric subjectivity and representation, and the rhetoric of "voice." Emphasis on formal features of poetry. The course will be based on close reading and frequent writing assignments. Readings from Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Novalis, Hugo, Nerval, Lamartine, Baudelaire and others. Knowledge of French or German required, or by permission.
- Primary Instructor
- Bernstein
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The Poetry of Decolonization
What is the role of poetry in the struggle for decolonization? How does this poetry re-imagine the native landscape and retell the story of the nation? This course will be centrally concerned with poets from the Americas, Ireland, and the Middle East. We will ask how these poets propose to speak for a wider community, what sorts of solidarities they imagine, and what room they leave for critique. With readings by Whitman, Neruda, Yeats, Heaney, and Darwish; critical readings by Said, Butler, and Hoffman.
- Primary Instructor
- Creswell
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Killer Love: Passion and Crime in Fiction and Film
Discusses textual and cinematic representations of criminal passion and its ambiguous relationship to religious, moral, and social norms. We will focus on extreme forms of intimacy both as a thematic choice of cultural production and as a symbolic medium of communication. Why is it that art so often explores unsanctioned emotions and deviant behaviors? What is at stake when narratives capitalize on violent manifestations of desire? In what ways is the semantics of excessive love related to conceptions of subjectivity, sociability, and sexuality? What role does it play in the creative process itself?
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1948 Photo Album: From Palestine To Israel
Why do we name the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" as we do? The purpose of this class is to use photographs – alongside historical and literary documents--to question the framework of a "national conflict" and study its emergence as a given, unquestioned and axiomatic scheme for any historical narrative of that period. Reading archival material and post-colonial and photography theories, each week we shall study one photograph taken in 1948, reconstructing the photography event as well as its myriad relations among the protagonists involved and its after life as an archived image, to include photographed persons, photographers, editors, journalists, politicians, and more.
- Primary Instructor
- Azoulay
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Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN 1340N)
Interested students must register for GRMN 1340N (CRN 15303).
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Freud: Writer and Reader
A broad survey of Freud's writings, with particular emphasis on psychoanalysis' relevance to literary theory and cultural analysis. Readings include Freud's major works, as well as secondary sources focused on applications to literary studies.
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
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Reading Revolution, Representations of Cuba, 1959-The Present
Considers the cultural and ideological impact of the Cuban revolution inside and outside Cuba. Starting in the 1960s, reads Latin American "boom" novels, European theorists and U.S. civil rights activists. Moving to today, addresses post-Soviet Cuba's literary production and the impact of new technologies on culture, as well as political change under Raúl Castro. Fiction, film and essays by Castro, Sartre, García Márquez, Reinaldo Arenas, Antonio José Ponte, Fernando Pérez and others. Excellent preparation for the Brown-in-Cuba program. DVPS
- Primary Instructor
- Whitfield
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Queer Relations: Aesthetics and Sexuality (ENGL 1900R)
Interested students must register for ENGL 1900R (CRN 14620).
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The Colonial and the Postcolonial Marvelous
A celebration and critique of the marvelous in Spanish American and related literatures (French Caribbean, Brazilian). We follow the marvelous from European exoticizing of the New World during the colonial period to its postcolonial incarnations in "magical realism" and beyond. We attend particularly to the politics and marketing of the marvelous in writers including Columbus, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Esquivel, Carpentier, García Márquez, and Chamoiseau. Readings in English, though you may read texts in the original French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
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Berlin: Dissonance, Division, Revision
In the twentieth century, Berlin was the city where Western political conflict took its most dramatically visible form. This course studies the history, culture, and literature of Berlin, focusing in particular on the seven decades between the failed 1919 revolution and the fall of the Wall in 1989. Literature and cinema will be emphasized (Benjamin, Döblin, Isherwood, Kästner, and other authors; several films from the silent era onward), but attention will also be paid to political history, to the history of art and cabaret, and to Berlin's architecture and urban space.
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
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The Problem of the Vernacular
It has been said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Under what conditions do dialects, vernaculars, creoles, and slangs become mediums for literary and artistic expression? How have writers in different cultures managed the relationship between their "official" national languages and their more intimate mother tongues? This course will explore this problem in a variety of literary traditions, including Chinese, Arabic, Hindi-Urdu, Greek, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin and the Romance vernaculars, and a variety of modern European languages.
- Primary Instructor
- Muhanna
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Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN 1340N)
Interested students must register for GRMN 1340N (CRN 15303).
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Individual Independent Study
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Ahearn
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bernstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Creswell
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Muhanna
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- McLaughlin
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Riva
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Panou
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Whitfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Koul
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bensmaia
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Evdokimova
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Foley
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gander
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gluck
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Golub
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Haynes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Konstan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Levy
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Merrim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Pucci
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saint-Amand
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saval
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Sng
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Valente
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Viswanathan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Waldrop
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Weinstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Senior Thesis Preparation
Special work or preparation of honors theses under the supervision of a member of the staff. Open to honors students and to others. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Ahearn
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Mazzucchelli
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bensmaia
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bernstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Creswell
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bou
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Muhanna
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Celik
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Panou
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Swensen
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Golub
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Harper
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Haynes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Keach
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Konstan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Koul
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Krause
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Landow
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Levitsky
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Levy
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Maso
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Merrim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Oldcorn
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Poore
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Pucci
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Ortega
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Reichman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Riva
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saint-Amand
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Scholes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Schultz
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Seifert
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saval
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Valente
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Vieira
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Viswanathan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Waldrop
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Wang
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Warren
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Weinstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Nabers
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Whitfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Evdokimova
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Gander
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Izzo
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Perry
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Clayton
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Sng
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Exchange Scholar Program
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
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Rethinking the Bildungsroman
Studies the history and theoretical complications of the idea of the Bildungsroman and "Bildung". The first meetings will unpack the notion of aesthetic education through close readings of Schiller's aesthetics and Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister. We'll then go on to examine some classic 19th-century German, French, and English novels (Père Goriot, Middlemarch, L'education sentimentale), plus one or two less well-known novels such as Der grüne Heinrich, and one or two 20th century novels such as Der Zauberberg. Secondary readings will engage a variety of theoretical issues and approaches (deconstructive, feminist, Foucauldian, postcolonial).
- Primary Instructor
- Redfield
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Deleuze, Rancière, Literature, Film: The Logic of Connection (ENGL 2900S)
Interested students must register for ENGL 2900S (CRN 14811).
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Inheriting (in) Modernity (GRMN 2660S)
Interested students must register for GRMN 2660S (CRN 16326).
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Literary Translation
Study and practice of translation as art and a potent form of literary criticism. Translation is an act of interpretation, which informs the language of the translator and the text as a whole: context, intent, and language. Discussion will include the impact of cultural difference, tone and time on translation, and the role of analytical as well as intuitive understanding of the original in the translator's endeavor.
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Cultural Capitals: Early Modern London and Paris
We will consider the problem of cultural capital in the two most important western capitals of the seventeenth century, early modern London and Paris. What was the impact of changing demographic, spatial and economic practices on literary representation? How do cities function as capitals and as sites of conflicting political, economic, religious and cultural communities? How was urban space represented? What did metropolitan readers read? How did urbanization change notions of status, gender, and sexuality in the early modern city and how were those changes manifested in cultural production?
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"This is what you were born for": Optimism and Futurity (ENGL 2561F)
Interested students must register for ENGL 2561F (CRN 14807).
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Reading and Research
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Ahearn
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saval
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bernstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Creswell
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Bou
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Whitfield
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Muhanna
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Haynes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Konstan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Levy
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- McLaughlin
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Merrim
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Monteiro
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Moulton
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Pucci
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Panou
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Rooney
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Newman
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Saint-Amand
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Scholes
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Valente
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Viswanathan
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Weinstein
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the Registration Fee to continue active enrollment while preparing a thesis.
- Schedule Code
- E: Grad Enrollment Fee/Dist Prep
