Winter

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

How do we account for the allure of fairy tales? For some, fairy tales count as sacred tales meant to enchant rather than edify. For others, they are cautionary tales, replete with obvious moral lessons. For the purposes of the course, we will assume that these critics are correct in their contention that fairy tales contain essential underlying meanings. We will conduct our own readings of fairy tales from the German Brothers Grimm, the Norwegians, Asbjørnsen and Moe and the Dane, Hans Christian Andersen, relying on our own critical skills as well as selected secondary readings.

While the collection of ancient texts found in modern Bibles appears fixed and is read by many people as a source of edification or theological insight, it has not always been this way. Though absent from most Bibles, there is an entire body of literature commonly known as "rewritten bible": early translations, retellings, or entirely new stories with familiar names and faces that update, retcon, or subvert their "biblical" sources. How might we understand these ancient forms of fan fiction? The class will introduce this corpus (including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) and its sources, production, and historical contexts. We will confront significant problems in understanding religious texts: how is it that some texts become authoritative while other very similar texts do not? Who gets to retell foundational religious narratives, and within what social or political constraints? What does it mean to relate to sacred texts as artistic prompts or imperfect points of departure? Can a biblical text be rewritten for an entirely different religious tradition? We will consider similar questions for contemporary religious practice, asking: how did rewriting the Bible get started, and has it stopped?

The course will consider translation—both theory and practice—in relation to queer studies, transgender studies, disability studies, and gender and women's studies. We will consider the intersections of translation with religion, postcolonialism, decolonialism, and feminist thought. Authors studied will include Monique Balbuena, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Kate Briggs, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and others. There will be workshops with guest translators. Students may undertake a final research paper or translation project. A minimum of reading knowledge with at least one non-English language is required.

Elective writing workshop for PhD students in Comparative Literature to develop and refine skills in various modes of writing, editing, and revision. Writing assignments may include developing conference papers, writing the dissertation prospectus, generating a chapter draft, reformulating a paper for submission as a journal article, and other professional writing development to prepare students for writing in the academy and communicating with readers. 

Why did a University of Chicago undergraduate student set out in 1949 for Pacific Palisades, California, to visit the Nobel-prize-winning author Thomas Mann?
Susan Sontag, who would become one of the most celebrated writers in the United States, wanted to speak with the author of the novel that had shaped her thinking more than any other: The Magic Mountain. This course will afford you the opportunity to study that work, one of the most provocative novels of modern literature. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is a window onto the entirety of modern European thought. It provides, at the same time, a telling perspective on the crisis of European culture prior to and following on World War I. In Thomas Mann’s phrase, The Magic Mountain is a time-novel: a novel about its time, but also a novel about human being in time. About life, death, reason, love, despair, and hope, against the background of European intellectual history. For anyone interested in the configuration of European intellectual life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Mann’s great (and challenging) novel is indispensable reading. Lectures will relate Mann’s novel to its great European counterparts, to the traditions of European thought from Voltaire to Georg Lukacs, from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Heidegger, from Marx to Max Weber. This is a lecture course, with discussion sections. All readings and lectures in English. (German-language discussion session available.)

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

CMST 28500/48500 strongly recommended

Le poète romantique éprouve une fascination pour la nuit, lieu des mystères et des passions cachées. La lune est l’élément sublime par excellence, déchirant la nuit, confondant mystère et grandiose. Le thème du clair de lune devient un thème de prédilection du Romantisme, et en particulier des peintres, des poètes et des compositeurs. A travers une étude des œuvres majeures du Romantisme français et allemand (poésies, tableaux, lieders et sonates), nous tenterons d’examiner les différentes phases de la lune, afin de comprendre la versatilité des enjeux et des topoï du Romantisme. C’est l’occasion de revoir des genres littéraires consacrés (le sonnet, la ballade) mais aussi des genres musicaux ou picturaux traditionnels du Romantisme (le paysage surplombant, le nocturne, le lied).

La lune entraîne le poète romantique dans une rêverie, et revêt tantôt un rôle consolateur (dans une symbiose parfaite avec la nature), tantôt un rôle mélancolique, le poète y voyant le symbole de la féminité et de l’être aimé. Parfois, le mystère de la lune qui avait d’abord frappé le poète laisse place à l’évocation de la mort ou d’une menace. Il arrive enfin que le poète se trouve embarqué dans un voyage extraordinaire : la lune devient alors le fantasme d’une destination surnaturelle et idéale. Nous adopterons également une perspective comparatiste dans ce cours, en examinant les liens entre texte et image, ou bien entre musique et contexte politique.

Taught in French. All of the German texts will be available in French translation.

This course examines the development of the Latin elegy from Catullus to Ovid. Our major themes are the use of motifs and topoi and their relationship to the problem of poetic persona.

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the 20th century, but his influence on film theory and practice and on cultural theory is also considerable. We will explore the range and variety of Brecht's work, from the Threepenny hit to the agitprop film Kühle Wampe) to classic parable plays, as well as Brecht heirs in German theatre and film (RW Fassbinder & Peter Weiss) theatre and film in Britain (Peter Brook & John McGrath), African theatre and film influenced by Brecht, and the NYC post-Occupy adaptation of Brecht’s Days of the Commune. (Drama, 1830-1940)

This course also includes a weekly screening session.