Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

MODERN SEXUALITIES IN THE PROCESS OF WRITING (CL3076)

Considers a range of literary writing in which experimental prose and challenging depictions of sex have together defined a particularly subversive force. Reads these works against the development of particularly modern arieties of sexual identity and sexual behavior. Includes works by Genet, Nabokov, Orton, Bataille, Kathy Acker, Nella Larsen, among others.

BRECHT & FILM (CL3080)

We examine Brecht's application of his theories and plays to his work in German and Hollywood cinema. We consider his collaborations with Fritz Lang, Charles Laughton, G.W. Pabst, Lotte Eisner and others. We also analyze his influence on later filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Hans Jurgen Syberberg and R.W. Fassbinder and his contributions to film theory.

POST-COLONIAL LIT. & THEORY (CL3081)

Explores literary works from Africa, Asia, India, Latin American, Ireland and/or the Caribbean alongside classics from the Western canon that address key colonial and post-colonial issues and concepts: imperialism, nationalism, globalization, empire, resistance writing, feminism, hybridity, border-crossing, exile and cultural translation. Introduces major voices in post-colonial literary and cultural studies, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak.

PROUST & THE ARTS (CL3082)

This course deals with one of the greatest novelists, and one of the major novels, of all time: Marcel Proust, and his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. We will read in detail the first two volumes of his novel, Swann’s Way, and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. In addition, we will read extracts from the remainder of the novel that pertain to our chief topics in the course. Proust’s views on time and memory, on love and impossibility, on expectation and disappointment, on knowledge and jealousy, on permanence and the intermittences of the human heart and personality, will all be discussed. Proust had a vast knowledge of visual art, and draws upon paintings to illustrate his aesthetic; he was also deeply knowledgeable about music which plays a key role in Swann’s Way through the composer Vinteuil. We shall consider the paintings that are important in the novel and listen to the music that influenced Proust. Study trips will form a part of this course: to Paris museums and buildings where Proust will himself have seen the art he presents; to the Musée Carnavalet where Proust’s bedroom is housed; and to more recent museums such as the Musée d’Orsay which houses much of the painting of Proust’s period (and the period about which he writes). If possible, a trip will be taken to Illiers (now renamed Illiers-Combray), which was the model for Combray where the first book of the novel is set.

THE BIBLE (CL3089)

This course intends to help students better understand the Bible's influence on literature and cultural history through a primary and secondary approach: reading the Bible (preferably The King James Version); reading the history of the biblical period (introductions and annotations of the New Oxford Annotated Bible). Readings shall cover the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. No prerequisites.

TOPICS IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE (CL3091)

Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty.

INTERNSHIP (CL3098)

Internships may be taken for 1 or 4 credits. Students may do more than one internship, but internship credit cannot cumulatively total more than 4 credits.

THE POETIC EXPERIENCE: A WRITING WORKSHOP (CL3100)

Through writing poetry and analyzing examples, students become familiar with poetic forms and techniques. This workshop, led by a publishing writer, includes weekly peer critique of poems written for the course. Students explore what makes a poem moving, evocative, and imbued with a sense of music, no matter what the approach: lyric, narrative, surreal, or experimental.May be taken twice for credit.

IMPERIAL ROME: PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, SOCIETY (CL3114)

Studies the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire. Readings will include: Seneca, star prose writer and poet of tragedies that impressed Shakespeare; Lucanus’ anti-Aeneid; Petronius’ Satyrica, the first Latin novel; Tacitus, the dark historian; witty epigrams and biting satire; a speech On Magic; the Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, one an ex-slave, the other an emperor; and Plutarch’s account of Antony's love for Cleopatra.

KEY TEXTS: SOCRATES, SOPHISTS, AND THE STAGE (CL3116)

A grand tour of 5th cent. BCE Athens, a fascinating time of intellectual unrest and innovation. Readings include the founding fathers of drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Old Comedy (Aristophanes), fragments of the Greek sophists, the historiographers Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and early Platonic dialogues, such as the Apology and the Phaedo.