In this class, we study the richness and diversity of poetry, novels, and memoirs written by African women. The course expands students' understanding of the long history of women's writing across Africa and a range of languages. It focuses on their achievements while foregrounding questions of aesthetics and style. As an antidote to misconceptions of African women as silent, students analyze African women's self-representations and how they theorize social relations within and across ethnic groups, generations, classes, and genders. The course increase students' ability to think, speak, and write critically about gender.

"What is a Classic?" asks what goes into the making of a classic text. It focuses on four, monumental poems from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Gilgamesh, which are discussed through comparison across traditions, ranging as far as Chinese poetry. Students will consider possible definitions and constituents of a classic, while also reflecting on the processes of chance, valorization, and exclusion that go into the formation of a canon. Topics will include transmission, commentary, translation, religion, race, colonization, empire, and world literature.

While there is no single definition of socialism, the class introduces the historic diversity of socialist thinking. We ask: What is the "social" in socialism? How does socialism relate to communism and capitalism? How does it define democracy, equality, freedom, individuality, and collectivity? Are socialist ethics connected to religious traditions such as Christianity and Islam that teach human equality? How may we understand injustices committed in socialism's name alongside its striving for social justice? We read classic texts of socialist theory and practice to reveal its roots in literature and philosophy as well as social movements.

This course explores oral traditions and oral literary genres (in English translation) of the Slavic and East European world, both past and present, including traditions that draw from the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish East European communities. Topics include traditional rituals (life-cycle and seasonal) and folklore associated with them, sung and spoken oral traditional narrative: poetry (epic and ballad) and prose (folktale and legend), and contemporary forms of traditional and popular culture. Discussion and analysis will focus on the role and meaning of Slavic and East European oral traditions as forms of expressive culture.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Japanese films held the attention of large international audiences, seeming to parallel the emergence of Japan from the disasters of the Pacific War and its aftermath. Recognition in film competitions drove directors such as Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi to international stardom, and reflected back upon the domestic box office. This course will engage with several of these major films to learn how they interrogated the ethical and moral complexity of postwar Japan and its broader international significance. Comparisons with Hollywood, French and Italian films of the era.

Poetry can be seen as a mode of reflection on history and, very often, as an act of resistance to it. This course will examine works written in Europe, Latin America and the US during the 20th and 21st centuries in different languages and historical contexts. We will explore their oppositional and also their liberatory effects: their ability to evoke their times, to disrupt our usual understandings while offering new political, artistic and ethical perspectives. The course will pay special attention to the work of René Char and Paul Celan, as ideal points of focus for questions of language and resistance.

This course is an introduction to contemporary Latin American and Caribbean literature and visual arts. Placing emphasis on the changing relationships between aesthetics and politics, and subalternity and 'representation,' it analyzes genres and styles that emerge with new forms of imagining the relations between culture and politics since the 1960s. Class taught in English; readings and written assignments can be done in English or Spanish.

In cooperation with the Sundance and the Berlin Film Festivals, our workshop will investigate the crisis of film production, distribution and canonization made acute by the Pandemic as well as divisive culture wars. We will uncover how the formation of film canons is informed by the ebb and flow of the civil rights movement. Our focus will be on stories of injustice filmed by women and Afro-American artists. The seminar work will consist of making short digital presentations and scholarly film-montage essays. The class will record Zoom interviews with critically acclaimed filmmakers, film festival directors and leaders of the film industry.

The idea that the poet "created a world" was a commonplace of Renaissance literary criticism. In this course we will be thinking about how poetry's worldmaking powers responded to changing ideas of what makes up the world - from revolutionary visions of the cosmos to new conceptions of the nature of matter and life - as well as to the new technologies which made these discoveries possible. How do the "creative" qualities of literature interact with an emerging scientific emphasis on facts and "things as they are"? We will consider these and similar questions in the different contexts of early modern Italy and England.

Post-2000 Israeli cinema offers powerful representations of the local and global forces shaping life in contemporary Israeli society. In this course, through analysis of twelve recent cinematic masterpieces, you'll develop your own vision for a film. We'll discuss both artistic choices and social questions including Israeli women's rights, Arab-Jewish relations, and religious-secular tensions. Weekly assignments culminate in your original screenplay exploring an aspect of contemporary Israeli society. Class time is split between synchronous discussions and asynchronous practicum activities. All films and texts are in English translation.

Thomas Mann's two great novels, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus, are more relevant to the present moment than one could wish. These deep and often disturbing meditations on the cultural roots of both World Wars prominently feature epidemics both medical (tuberculosis, syphilis) and political (nationalist aggression and the rise of fascism) in nature. These kaleidoscopic, surprisingly funny works encompass music, art, philosophy, translation, science, pedagogy, and human sexuality as well as history. We will explore the role of Mann's queerness in his fiction, beginning with Death in Venice. Student interests will shape course emphases.

This course studies literature dealing with contemporary regimes of violence and forced migration in the Americas. Focusing on the passage from the Cold War to the War on Drugs, it analyzes the history of the current "migration crisis" in relation to structural adjustments, regimes of accumulation, border patrolling, and immigrant incarceration. Working with poetry, narrative, essays, and film, it explores the ways in which artistic interventions and cultural imagination have become crucial spaces for creating systems of legibility and resistance that reflect on the migrant experience and the historicity of multiple injustices.

Global publishing today - both book and digital - is one of the major ways that ideas and culture, hegemony and resistance, all cross borders. Essential to its effects are research, translation, media, and migration. How has the publishing industry contributed to "thinking globally" and led to widespread cultural transformations? In what ways and to what extent has it remained national or regional, focusing largely on the US and Europe? How are current crises around race, economics, and global health affecting the industry today? This course takes both a theoretical and also a more practical look at these and related questions.

The advent of the Internet shut down the feminist "Porn Wars" debates 25 years ago, yet created conditions of possibility for a recent revival of debate on pornography at the intersections of philosophy, literary theory and history, social science, legal studies, and gender studies. At stake, beyond gender and sexual politics, are the broader politics of representation, dissemination, and "speech." We address these by discussing works from multiple fields, emphasizing literary studies and philosophy. Readings, beyond those listed below, include essays by G.S. Rubin, K.A. MacKinnon, N. Strossen, A. de Botton, J.J. Fischel, and S. Zizek.

Bernard Stiegler's (1952-2020) writing is driven by the question of technology in the longue durée of social development, philosophical speculation, and political economy. In an unprecedented elaboration of the implications of understanding the human as a technical entity, Stiegler confronts predicaments concerning practices of education, transformations of "disruptive" capitalism, effects of computational automation on employment, the psyche and the capacity for reason, and the outlook for a world defined by the anthropocene. We read Stiegler's most important work and relevant philosophical and topical texts (from Plato to Greta Thunberg).

Through a comparative focus on the concepts of dialectic and difference, we read some of the formative theoretical, critical and philosophical works which continue to inform interdisciplinary critical theory today. Works by Lukács, Adorno, Jameson, Freud, Heidegger, Husserl, Derrida, Arendt, de Man and Benjamin are included among the texts we read.

This course probes the intersection of world literature and translation, in relation to conditions of multilingualism, processes of cultural transfer, and the consolidation/contestation of national literary traditions. In reading key texts from the debates around the concept and practice of world literature, we will ask whether its universalizing drive can be reconciled with literary/scholarly investments in inaccessibility, locality, and specificity, and what role translation plays in these formations. Throughout, we will consider the implications of these debates for our own work as scholars.

Weekly three-hour seminar. The seminar focuses closely on selected plays from the repertory of noh drama, with attention to related texts regarding training, aesthetic values, patronage and the materialities of performance (masks, costumes, props, the stage, etc.)

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

This course examines "dangerous bodies" - bodies that transgress existing gender and racial norms in Chinese and Sinophone cultures. Situated at the intersection of literary, film, performance, gender and ethnic studies, this course provides an introduction to the shifting social meanings of the body in relation to historical masculinity, femininity, and Chineseness. We examine different cross-dressed figures, ranging from Mulan, cross-dressed male opera singer, WWII Japanese/Chinese spy, to experimental queer cinema, in a study that unpacks whether these transgressive bodies represent social change or a tool for restoring traditional norms.

In this seminar we closely study ancient and medieval Chinese poetry, with emphasis on the formative stages of the Chinese textual tradition. While all texts will be read in translation, we also explore the ways in which the classical Chinese language shaped this poetry in its unique characteristics and possibilities of expression. In addition, we discuss in depth key texts of Chinese literary thought in their aesthetic, philosophical, social, and historical dimensions. Knowledge of the Chinese language is neither required nor expected.

This course introduces students to twenty-first-century Asian women writers (Japan, Korea, China) whose works achieved global popularity through translation in the past two decades. Written by writers living in East Asian countries dealing with capitalist developments, financial crises, and neoliberal free trade agreements, the texts collectively suggest the global interest and transmission of women's rights and LGBTQ movements in Asia and beyond. We explore, firstly, the meaning of "capitalism" as seen by the author in each text, and secondly, a commodified urban-based cosmopolitan culture that depends on the continued orientalism of Asia.

An overview of three of the most influential writers in the twentieth century, focusing on selected masterpieces. All three were fascinated by similar topics: dreams and memory; sexuality; Judaism. All three lived during traumatic historical periods. Proust during WWI; Freud during WWII; and Borges during Peronismo. Seminar will explore the relationship between literature modernism, politics, and religion.

This course focuses on major issues raised by but also extending beyond Holocaust survivor testimony, including genres of witnessing, the communication of trauma, the ethical implications of artistic representation, conflicts between history and memory, the fate of individuality in collective upheaval, the condition of survival itself, and the crucial role played by reception in enabling and transmitting survivors' speech.

This course is a survey of classical and modern drama from Africa, China, India, Japan, and Latin America. Topics will include Noh and Kabuki, Beijing Opera, Sanskrit theater, Nigerian masquerades and a variety of selections from the rich modern Indian and Latin American canons.

Taking our point of departure from Walter Benjamin's artwork essay, we trace the way in which photographers and artists from the late 1970s to the present have asked us to understand their work as resources for doing political work, as strategies of resistance and activism, as even training manuals on how to engage, rethink, and address some of the most urgent issues of our time. We consider works by, among others, Susan Meiselas, Allan Sekula, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Alfredo Jaar, Marcelo Brodsky, Walid Raad, Taryn Simon, Nikos Pilos, Isaac Julien, Claudia Andujar, and Fazal Sheikh.

Sea Level Rise, Islands and the Environmental Humanities explores how islanders, predominantly but not exclusively in the Pacific and the Caribbean, are experiencing sea level rise and engaging it in literature, arts and film. Students in the seminar will learn the environmental science and policy related to sea level rise. They will consider solutions being put forward to address the impacts, such as hard engineering (sea walls or artificial islands) or soft engineering (restoring coral or oyster reefs, mangrove marshes or wetlands). Additionally, students will engage literature, art and films by and about islanders and sea level rise.

Is literature a "science"? Can science be "literature"? This class reads literary, scientific, and philosophical texts from the Enlightenment and 19th century from the lens of both history of science and literature. We focus on France, Germany, and England, though we also look at scientific voyages beyond Europe. Other than published "works," we will engage with the rich material culture of drafts, notebooks, botanical specimens, illustrations, and research of all kinds that these fields produced. Our aim will be to deepen our understanding of the complex interrelations of practice and thought among the sciences, philosophy, and literature.

What's the point of education? What should anyone truly learn, why, and how? Who gets to attend school? Is it a right, a privilege, a duty, an investment, or a form of discipline? Do schools level the playing field or entrench inequalities? Should they fashion workers, citizens, or individuals? Moving from France to the US, and from the Enlightenment to the present, we look at the vexed but crucial relationship between education and democracy in novels, films, essays, and philosophy, examining both the emancipatory and repressive potential of modern schooling. Topics include: Brown, class, meritocracy, testing, and alternative pedagogies.

A study of the circulation of money in French fiction alongside the economic history of publishing and the financial position of writers in the period 1820-1880. The central figure is Balzac, but comparisons are also made with English and Russian fiction of the period. Students are asked to pursue individual research tasks within the field. The aim is to elucidate what has become obscured by changes in society, language, culture and the economy, and to restore some degree of clarity to the drama and romance of the money plots of many major works of 19C literature.

What defines life? And where is the boundary between its proper and improper instances, between the natural and the artificial? Taking up readings from philosophy, science, and literature that range from antiquity to contemporary nanotech, this seminar explores humanity's desire to become like the gods, fashioning species, companions, and slaves at will, even as these creations threaten to take on an uncanny life of their own. As we will see, establishing the threshold between natural and artificial life inevitably also raises questions about ethics, technology, aesthetics, gender and ecology.

When the machismo of fascism gets unbearable and #metoo comes into full swing, cries for the castration of patriarchy grow louder. This seminar investigates the concept of castration from literary, artistic, psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, postcolonial, and philosophical angles. We think through the question of how to counter a symbolic order that is so firmly organized around the phallus that any attempt at castration is reappropriated as proof of the transcendental value of the phallus. With guest speakers.

In the more than seventy years since India and Pakistan became independent countries, a vast amount of literature has been produced in Hindi/Urdu. We will read selected literary materials including fiction, poetry, and essays while also focusing on historical and literary contexts. Materials will represent a range of genres, topics, and trends. Literary texts will be supplemented with additional materials including film and documentary selections, music, and author interviews, etc. Literary sessions and workshops will be organized in connection with the course.

In this course we will explore various examples of "the dictator novel," attempting to make sense of the genre in its overlapping historical and world-literary contexts. Each week our focus will be on a specific novel, which is to be read alongside scholarly work and other writing as we consider the aesthetic, political, and cultural significance of this strikingly global literary form. We will strive to understand the complex relationship between literature and politics; more specifically, the representation of state power, authoritarian rule, and struggles for human freedom in--and through--cultural production. All readings are in English.

Second in the two-semester sequence on East Asian literary humanities, this course begins in the seventeenth century and covers a range of themes in the history, literature, and culture of Japan, Korea, and China until the contemporary period. Looking into the narratives of modernity, colonialism, urban culture, and war and disaster, we will see East Asia as a space for encounters, contestations, cultural currents and countercurrents. No knowledge of East Asian languages or history is required and first-year students are welcome to take the course.

This course offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the work of two renowned Greeks who lived almost two thousand years apart: the philosopher Socrates and the poet C.P. Cavafy. Do these figures, both famous for their use of irony, speak to or past each other across the millennia? In what does their irony lie and what rhetorical techniques contribute towards the creation of the voice of each? How do Socrates and Cavafy each buttress or challenge contemporary theories of truth, virtue, and ethics--of the good life? Does the nature and function of irony change depending on whether it appears in philosophy or in literature?

This course will introduce students to the richness and diversity of women's writing in India; it will open many windows into regional Indian societies, cultures, and subcultures; and it will allow students to examine social issues and cultural values from women's perspectives. By studying women's writings from at least ten major Indian languages (in English translation), students will be able to identify differences and disagreements among different canons as well as some common features among them that justify the category of Indian women's writing.

This course examines literature and film by South Asians in North America. Students will gain perspective on the experiences of immigration and diaspora through the themes of identity, memory, solidarity, and resistance. From early Sikh migration to the American West Coast, to Muslim identity in a post 9/11 world, how can South Asian American stories be read as symbolic of the American experience of gender, class, religion, and ethnicity more broadly? Students will hone their skills in reading primary materials, analyzing them within context, writing persuasively, and speaking clearly.

We start with Tolstoy's artistic stimuli and narrative strategies, explore the author's provocative visions of war, gender, sex, art, social institutions, death, and religion. The emphasis is placed here on the role of a written word in Tolstoy's search for truth and power. The main part is a close reading of his masterwork The War and Peace (1863-68) - a quintessence of both his artistic method and philosophical insights. Each student will be assigned to keep a "hero's diary" and speak on behalf of one or two major heroes of the epic (including the Spirit of History). The roles will be distributed in accordance with the will of fate.

Communism is long gone but its legacy continues to reverberate. And not only because of Cuba, China or North Korea. Inspired by utopian ideas of equality and universal brotherhood, communism was originally conceived as an ideological, socio-political, economic and cultural alternative to capitalism's crises. The attempt to build a new utopian world was costly and brutal: equality was quickly transformed into uniformity; brotherhood evolved into the Big Brother. The course provides an in-depth review of these contradictions between utopian motivations and oppressive practices in the Soviet Union.

Analysis of works of one of Russia's most important contemporary writers. Focus on major novels, including "Pushkin House," the 1st Russian postmodernist novel. We explore his wide-ranging concerns, such as psychology; philosophy; science; other arts (including jazz & cinema); people's relationship to other biological species; integrity & societal and psychological obstacles to it. We examine him as a Petersburg writer. Focus also on his relationship to time, history, & other writers; his place in Russian & Soviet literature & culture.

The first part of the class deals with a general survey and description (physiology) of Russian realism as a cultural movement. In the second part, we focus on Russian Realists' ideological struggle against Romantic values and an unpredicted result of this struggle -- "spectralization" of social and political realities they claimed to mirror in their works and creation of the image of Russia as a house haunted by numerous apparitions: ghosts of the past and guests from the future, tormented women and suffering children, afflicted peasants and demonic nihilists, secret societies and religious sects.

Theater relies on the physical and emotional vulnerability of live bodies to experience the pity and terror that plague, war, systemic injustice, and more ordinary forms of disease and death inflict. As we face the twin pandemics of our own time, what can "plague drama" (prompted by outbreaks of typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, AIDS, etc.) tell us about how writers use literal and metaphorical diseases to give shape to a given cultural moment? We'll look at a wide variety of mostly theatrical texts to explore how playwrights use the medium of the theater to literally embody and thus make visible physical, social, and metaphysical "dis-ease".

Why do some BIPOC dramatists (from the US and Canada) choose to adapt/revise/re-envision/deconstruct/rewrite/appropriate canonical texts from the Western theatrical tradition. While their choices might be accused of recentering and reinforcing "white" narratives that often marginalize and/or exoticize racial and ethnic others, we might also see this risky venture as a useful strategy to write oneself into a tradition that is itself constantly being revised and reevaluated and to claim that tradition as one's own. What are the artistic, cultural, and economic "rewards" for deploying this method of playmaking? What are risks?

Academic work in disciplines across the humanities and humanistic social sciences are fueled in part by practices of translation, and many disciplines are moving toward a consideration of translation as scholarship in its own right. Yet few graduate students are trained practices of translation, either within their discipline or as an interdisciplinary node of intellectual engagement. This graduate translation workshop aims to help students from various departments hone a practice of translation that can stand on its own as a scholarly endeavor, while also deepening and enriching the other forms of research and writing in which they engage.