Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

THE WORLD, THE TEXT, AND THE CRITIC I (CL1025)

Considers closely three moments when the practice of writing changed radically in response to historical and cultural processes, from Ancient Greece to 1800 (specific contents change each year). Investigates the forces that inform creative imagination and cultural production. Places those moments and those forces within a geographical and historical map of literary production, and introduces the tools of literary analysis.

THE WORLD, THE TEXT, AND THE CRITIC II (CL1050)

This team-taught course opens up a historical panorama of European literature stretching from the 18th to the 21st century. It does not pretend to provide a survey of this period but rather showcases a selection of significant moments and locations when literary genres changed or new genres appeared. The idea is to open as many doors as possible onto the rich complexity of comparative literary history. In order to help students orient themselves within various histories of generic mutations and emergences, the professors have put together a vocabulary of key literary critical terms in the fields of narrative structure, style, and rhetoric.

FIRSTBRIDGE IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE (CL1099)

Firstbridge courses are offered to degree seeking freshmen and registration is done via webform in pre-arrival checklist.

CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEORY (CL2006)

Introduces the methodology of Gender Studies and the theory upon which it is based. Examines contemporary debates across a range of issues now felt to be of world-wide feminist interest: sexuality, reproduction, production, writing, representation, culture, race, and politics. Encourages responsible theorizing across disciplines and cultures.

PARIS THROUGH ITS BOOKS (CL2010)

Examines how experiences of Paris have been committed to the page from the first century to the present. Considers the uses and effects of overviews, street-level accounts, and underground approaches to describing the city and its inhabitants. Includes visits to the sewers and museums, revolutionary sites and archives, with multiple members of the comparative literature faculty speaking on their areas of expertise.
http://www.aup.edu/paris-through-its-books

THE ART OF SCREENWRITING (CL2028)

In Art of Screenwriting students consider the elements necessary for successful screenwriting practices, with close attention to the theory of screenwriting as influenced by other arts. In particular, a close emphasis of the course is on the art of narrative and the central role played by adaptation of novels in screenwriting practice. Character development, structure, dialogue and conflict are analyzed through exemplary scripting such as in the works of Jane Campion, Roman Polanski and others. The course culminates in a hands-on guided approach to scriptwriting by students.

TOUCHSTONES OF WORLD LITERATURE (CL2033)

Using Asia as a geographic rather than a linguistic or cultural marker, this course provides a survey of landmark literary texts drawn from some four millennia of creative activity on the continent, beginning with the earliest surbviving literary epic from Mesopotamia and including classics from ancient India, Arabia, Persia, Japan, and China, to the Ottoman Empire.

ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE 1800 (CL2051)

Begins with Old English literary texts, then examines selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the conventions of Middle English drama and lyrics, earlier Renaissance styles of lyric poetry (Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney), and then Shakespeare's sonnets and a major Shakespeare play. Reviews the dominant styles of Metaphysical and Cavalier poetry (Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Crashaw, Suckling, Waller, Milton).