CMLT

The course will explore continuities of thought between the German language tradition of the Robinsonade and Anglo-American postapocalyptic fiction. At present, our syllabus proposes beginning with Robinson Crusoe itself, with the following weeks dedicated to Arno Schimdt’s Dark Mirrors, Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, and Max Frisch’s Man in the Holocene. We will also dedicate a week to Sophocles’ Philoctetes, viewed in the Romantic period as an ancient precursor of Defoe’s work, and to the video game The Alters, possibly in conjunction with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, or Octavia Butler’s Parable books. We will explore how the theme of recovered human capabilities interacts in these texts with ideas of mortalism, finitude, and attachment to place. All readings will be in English.

What is your mother tongue if you speak multiple languages, or if you can't write—or even speak—the language that defines your heritage? When language and identity don't align, how do you tell your story? This course explores how writers and filmmakers from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have confronted these questions. We examine writers like Assia Djebar, Mohamed Choukri, and Leïla Sebbar who write in the language of their colonizers, yet use it to reclaim identity and heritage. Their multilingual texts navigate between colonial education and vernacular traditions, between Arabic, Amazigh (Berber), and French. We explore how translation and self-translation shape their work, and what it means to write across languages when some remain unwritten or inaccessible. Cinema offers a different response to these linguistic tensions. Filmmakers like Abdellatif Kechiche and Leyla Bouzid turn to the screen to capture what written language cannot: the multilingual textures of everyday life, oral and written traditions, and immigrant identity in contemporary France. Their films show how diaspora reshapes communities on both sides of the Mediterranean, making belonging, displacement, and home perpetually unresolved. By situating these works within their historical contexts, this course illuminates how cultural production across literature and film continues to redefine identity for communities marked by colonialism, migration, and multilingualism. 

Note: Taught in English. Students registered for French credit will complete all primary source readings and written assignments in French.

What does it mean to call a book, a film, or an artwork “immersive”? What do we gain when we lose ourselves in a work of art, and what is it that we lose? Whereas Diderot lauded the feeling of “delicious repose” elicited from pastoral paintings, literary theorist Victor Shklovsky claimed that art exists “to return sensation to life, to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony.” Are these reactions opposed or related? What are the dangers of this kind of attraction in the age of mass spectacle or of its use for the ends of an autocratic or fascist ideology? In this seminar, we will examine literary, film and media theories of immersion in international perspective. Case studies in world cinema and literature, from 19th century second-person narratives to recent VR experiences. Students will introduce works from their own area of specialization over the course of the term. Advanced undergraduates may enroll with permission of the instructor.

In this course, we will read a selection of European crime fiction not only to be in a better position to judge Poe’s protestations, but more importantly, to familiarize ourselves with a selection of canonical writers as well as with the history and the characteristics of the genre. Why is crime fiction one of the most popular literary genres today? What is the relationship between the genre and society? We will consider – among other questions – the figure of the detective, the history of policing, different concepts of justice and guilt, the status of clues, indices, evidence. Materials will include Poe, Foucault, Ginzburg, Droste-Hülshoff, Christie, Doyle, Kleist, Eco among others as well as a selection of films. Readings and discussions in English.

Fundamental questions about the human condition are as old as time. First attested in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts conventionally labeled ‘wisdom literature’ dating from the third to the first millennia BCE, we can still relate to ancient musings about life, death, power, justice, and the relation between mortals and the divine. While they are often rooted in folk traditions, these contemplations find expression in diverse modes of literary expression, ranging from proverbs and instructions to fables and philosophical dialogues—all of which provide readers with some guidance on how to grapple with the challenges and uncertainty of the human experience. However, given the heterogeneity of the corpus, ‘wisdom literature’ is one of the most contested generic labels.

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar approaches wisdom texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia from a comparative perspective. We will explore how ‘wisdom literature’ traditions developed in these two interconnected regions, how the texts relate to their respective social and political contexts, in what material contexts they were written and read, and how they compare with ancient Greek and Hebrew, as well as later Arabic and Persian texts. In contrast with text-reading classes in Egyptology, Assyriology, and Sumerology, the seminar will focus on broader methodological and interpretive questions about this body of literature.

This course examines well-being and illness from transnational, decolonial and intersectional perspectives. Together, we will explore the various ways in which fiction and film can help challenge and expand our notions of what it means to be sick or healthy in complex circumstances. Some guiding threads: To what extent is illness an intensely personal experience, and to what extent does it draw in those around us - family members, friends, partners, medical practitioners, legal counsel? What renewed valences do concepts of autonomy, care and responsibility take when overshadowed by the spectre of disease? How might we ethically and productively relate the medical humanities to broader entangled concerns such as migration (both legal and clandestine), gender, class, race, community, queerness and neocolonialism? Beyond the justified responses of fear and anger, what are other ways to relate to death and mortality - ways that are infused with creativity and resilience? How does human "health" relate to planetary and interspecies well-being?

While journalists and historians work to uncover facts and present accurate accounts, the public imagination is captured by compelling stories, regardless of their accuracy. Where the first course in this sequence, Media and Power, focused on how media impact the spread of information, here we will consider how stories attract audiences and shape understanding, and thus inform the political arena and shape history. As in Media and Power, we will examine recent and current Russian and American events. Each week we will focus on a set of critical opposing narratives that are motivating political orientation and action, asking how they inflected by political and ethical perspectives, how they capture attention, how they are being used to legitimate authority, and how they are incorporated into larger frameworks of historical and political interpretation.

Class members will participate in creating the list of topics for discussion, which will include at least one topic that emerges during the quarter so that we can observe as the story takes shape in real time. The list of possible topics will include: 1) Trump vs. campus protesters. What happened at the encampments at UChicago and elsewhere? We were right here—so what do we know? What stories were told at the time, and what stories are being told now? 2) The Ukraine War: How has Russia used the story of the Great Patriotic War (WW2) to explain its actions in Ukraine? How have terms like genocide and war crime been used throughout the conflict? 3) 1619 vs 1620: How is the master narrative of American history being revised, and how is the counterattack on this effort being justified? 4) Public Economics: What are the current stories of the national economy, and how are they affecting policy and public behavior (consumer confidence, etc.)?

“Frenemies” since the Middle Ages, the literary traditions of Italy and France illustrate the productive tensions that can arise from cultural and geographic proximity. This course explores practices of rewriting and adaptation across the Alps through the lens of gender and sexuality. We will focus on two periods of literary flourishing: the early modern age, when Italy led Europe into the era we now call the Renaissance, and the dawn of literary modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when France stood out for its innovations. We will address topics such as: how do female authors adapt works originally written by men? how do treatments of masculinity change when they move from one cultural setting to another? what role does sexuality play in realist genres? how does the post-modern representation of love and femininity change across French and Italian works in the twenieth century? Authors and works may include fabliaux, chansons de geste, Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Christine de Pizan, Orlando furioso, Émile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Italo Calvino, Raymond Queneau. Theory readings will include Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and others.    

Class will be conducted in English. Those taking the class for ITAL or FREN credit will read works and complete assignments in French and/or Italian, as relevant. Counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

Arabic poetry has been a major force in Middle Eastern societies since the seventh century when it became the elite culture of the Arabo-Islamic empire until today. This course focuses on poetry from the "Golden Age of Islam" during the Abbasid period and especially on three famous poets: Abu Nuwas (d. 814), al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), and al-Maʿarri (d. 1057). While the emphasis will be on close reading of their poems (in Arabic), we will also discuss broader questions: How does this poetry reflect the world of the vast and quickly evolving world of the Islamic empire? How does it relate to its societies, political structures, and religious institutions?