Spring

28830/38830 Psychoanalysis: Freud and Beyond

This course offers an introduction to psychoanalytic theory by surveying significant writings by Freud and by Freud's readers. We will explore Freud's various models of the psyche, his interventions into the theory of sexuality, and his writings on religion by tracking the development of key concepts like transference, the Oedipus complex, narcissism, melancholia, the unconscious, and the death drive, among others. How have these concepts evolved over the course of their deployment in 20th- and 21st-century critical and political projects like feminism and queer theory? How have major developments in psychoanalysis read Freud anew? And in what ways do these psychoanalytic projects respond to their historical conditions? Readers of Freud whom we will encounter may include Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Derrida, Butler, Spillers, Edelman, Dean, and Musser.

2025-2026 Spring

22688 /32688 Race, Gender, and Capitalism: Deconstructing and Demystifiying Disney

2025-2026 Spring

50101 Literary theories for comparatists

This course provides an overview of different methods, approaches and themes in the study of literary texts and traditions from comparative perspectives. Topics covered will include literary history, textual criticism, translation (theory and practice), book history, genre theory (e.g. the novel), narratology, literature and colonialism, “world literature” and new philologies. We will discuss these different approaches against the intellectual historical background from which they have emerged but also with reference to the texts with which participating students are working for their various projects, and literary texts from any language, time and geography are welcome. While the course is organized primarily from a literary studies perspective, it will also be of interest to students of history, anthropology and other disciplines dealing with ‘texts’.

2025-2026 Spring

24525/34525 Mengzi and Epictetus

(CLCV 24525, CLAS 34525 )

These two philosopher-teachers, Mengzi (Mencius) in 4th century BCE China and Epictetus in the 2nd century CE Greco-Roman world, both foregrounded an embodied ethics, and both were concerned with questions of living in harmony with nature, achieving freedom from external constraints, and dealing with the disruptive turbulence of passionate emotions. This course is a literary and philosophical comparative study of Mengzi’s writings alongside the Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus. Course readings are all in English, and no knowledge of classical Chinese or Greek language or philosophy is needed, but separate meetings can be scheduled for students interested in reading either of these texts in the original language.

2025-2026 Spring

CMLT 27620/CMLT 37620 Appropriation and Adaptation of Shakespeare in Colonial/Postcolonial Contexts

( ENGL 27620, ENGL 37620, NEHC 27620, NEHC 37620)

This course examines ways in which various works of Shakespeare have been appropriated and adapted in colonial/postcolonial contexts, with a special focus on Arabic and Palestinian literary and cultural productions. Students will be encouraged to examine the appropriation and adaptation of the works of Shakespeare through a close reading of the selected texts or excerpts. Students will have the opportunity to engage with important concepts such as intertextuality and influence while commenting on the author's admiration of Shakespeare's work or his or her challenge to him. All readings will be in English, although there might be an opportunity to discuss some of the texts in the original language (Arabic).

2024-2025 Spring

15007 Gender and Sexuality in World Civ III: Sex and Mysticism

(GNSE 15007, RLST 27607)

Can you have sex with God? And, if so, what then does sex mean? What, as a matter of fact, might spiritual sex mean for the cultivation of virtues like celibacy or virginity? While early Christianity and the Christian Middle Ages are often characterized by a disciplined asceticism, erotic desire was just as central to cultivating mystical love for God. In fact, the significance of the language of love, passion, loss, nuptial bliss, jubilation, and the body has rendered the Christian mystical tradition a useful resource for contemporary-and especially psychoanalytic-theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. This course will look both to the past and the present in order to explore the workings of pre- and postmodern desire and to draw connections between Christian mysticism and theories and practices of sex. Working across historical periods, we will read exemplary pieces of Christian mystical literature, psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary literature that draws from the medieval past.

2024-2025 Spring

37525 Rilke, Malte, Modernism

(GRMN 37525)

The concept of “modernism” embraces a number of artistic trends and movements that arose in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe (and beyond) and continued well into the twentieth century. The task of the seminar is to exfoliate core features of that concept by examining works of literature and visual art that are understood as “modernist” as well as works of criticism and philosophical contributions devoted to understanding what modernism is. As the seminar title indicates, the work of Rainer Maria Rilke will be an important point of reference. We will study his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as well as selected poems and essays. Since Paris is the locus of (much of) Rilke’s novel, we will look back to Baudelaire, especially his essay The Painter of Modern Life, while considering his much-discussed poem À une passante (To a passerby) along with relevant commentaries. Moreover, the fact that Rilke worked on the novel during a period when he was also deeply engaged with Cezanne’s painting affords an opportunity to consider certain paintings by Cézanne. Here we will be guided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s essay Cezanne’s Doubt, Robert Pippin’s study After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism (2014), and T.J. Clark’s recent book If these Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022). The course is conceived as a participatory (discussion-intensive) seminar, conducted at a graduate level. English translations will be provided for works in French and German, but seminar discussions will be dotted by references to the original works. Participation by interested undergraduates who have done advanced work in the arts and/or philosophy is possible but requires permission from the instructor.

 

David E. Wellbery
2024-2025 Spring

29947 Autotheory/Autofiction

(FNDL 29947)

A resurgence of contemporary life writing has been characterized by the terms “autotheory” and “autofiction.” These terms point to ways in which contemporary life writing complicates narrative presentations of selfhood by inflecting autobiography through generically estranged kinds of writing, theory and fiction. Narrative exposition may be further complicated by issues of gender insecurity and interwoven practices of reading and writing that invite non-narrative, meta-narrative, or intertextual exploration in the presentation of a life project. In this course we will examine contemporary exemplars of autotheory and autofiction in light of exemplars from earlier phases of modernity and pre-modernity in European and East Asian literature. All readings will be in English, although there will be an opportunity to discuss texts in French and Chinese in the original language.

2024-2025 Spring

24848 Sino-Soviet Relations

(EALC 24848)

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the history of the relationship between China and the Soviet Union, surveying both important historical sources and representative scholarship on the topic. For the Chinese side, we cover both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, we extend our timeline beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union to inquire how the historical Sino-Soviet alliance is being perceived in the present day. Our focus will primarily be on state-level politics and highbrow artistic-literary production, but we will also pay attention to the social history of the population living in the expansive border regions and the biography of important individuals. Students are expected to bring their own expertise and interest to the class by presenting on an individualized research topic, in addition to writing two short papers. All readings are in English.

Yueling Ji
2024-2025 Spring

25810/35810 Childhood and Fairy Tale in Bachelard, Benjamin, and Agamben

(ITAL 25800, ITAL 35800)

‘The child’ is a complex and fascinating notion that plays a crucial role in the writings of some of the major twentieth-century thinkers. The child is often linked to ‘fairy tale,’ as if one concept couldn’t exist without the other. What constitutes a fairy tale, what is the difference between fairy tale, myth, and allegory, and who is the real narrator and listener of fairy tales are questions that can only be addressed through a second, fundamental query: What is ‘the child’? What does ‘the child’ represent? What role does the imagination play in the formation of ‘the child’? These issues are especially significant in the writings of Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben. 

Readings will include: Bachelard, "Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos"; Bachelard, "Air and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Movement"; Bachelard, "The Flame of a Candle"; Benjamin, One-Way Street; Benjamin, “The Fireside Saga”; Benjamin, "Berlin Childhood around 1900"; Benjamin “Goethe’s Elective Affinities,”; Benjamin, "The Storyteller"; Agamben, "Infancy and History"; Agamben, "Profanations"; Agamben, "Pulcinella or Entertainment for Children"; Agamben, "Pinocchio". We will also read an ample selection of classic fairy tales from Giambattista Basile ("The Tale of Tales"), the seventeenth-century French conteuses, The Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, and Collodi’s "Pinocchio." Taught in English.

Armando Maggi
2024-2025 Spring
Subscribe to Spring