CMLT

This course traces the intellectual genealogies of the rise of a Global New Right in relation to the contexts of late capitalist neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as the rise of social media. The course will explore the intertwining political and intellectual histories of the Russian Eurasianist movement, Hungarian Jobbik, the American Traditional Workers Party, the French GRECE, Greek Golden Dawn, and others through their published essays, blogs, vlogs and social media. Perhaps most importantly, the course asks: can we use f-word (fascism) to describe this problem? In order to pose this question we will explore the aesthetic concerns of the New Right in relation to postmodern theory, and the affective politics of nationalism. This course thus frames the rise of a global new right interdisciplinary and comparatively as a historical, geopolitical and aesthetic problem.

Designed for graduate students in the humanities, this course begins with fundamental texts on ideology and the critique of capitalist culture by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Althusser, Wilhelm Reich and Raymond Williams, before moving to Marxist aesthetics, from the orthodox Lukács to the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Benjamin) to the heterodox (Brecht), and concludes with contemporary debates around Marxism and imperialism (Lenin, Fanon, and others), and Marxism and media, including the internetRequirements: one or two oral presentations—depending on class size--of assigned texts, including one page of notes, quotes, and queries for the class, and submission of notes as part of writing requirementMidterm: analysis of a fundamental textFinal paper: analysis of a text/art object/ cultural practice illuminated by Marxist and related theoriesPQ: HUM graduate students and equivalent (eg DIV school; not suitable for MAPSS or Social Science PhDs

Intellectuals may be defined as those who speak truth to power, but how they speak, with what conception of truth, and in relation to what kind of power? In this course, we will try to begin to answer these questions by looking at the works and lives of some exemplary intellectuals, including Machiavelli, Carlyle, Benda, Nietzsche, Sartre, Ellison, Foucault, Sontag, and Said.

This course will introduce graduate students to critical thinking about literature.  It aims at identifying an object of study that is integral, yet flexible enough to allow for comparisons between its manifestations in various national traditions.We will start from the assumption that in literature new trends and theories usually continue to focus on the same objects of study: the specificity of literature, its links with cultural history, genre, the role of the author, and the nature of literary understanding.  Thus, while in physics and biology Aristotle has long been obsolete, literary scholars still find his Poetics to be a source of important insights for understanding genre.  Yet literary studies, far from being resistant to change, have over time experienced a genuine historical growth.  Perhaps one can best describe the discipline of literature as a stable field of recurring issues in which innovative thinking blends with tradition.

Spanning medieval Hebrew to contemporary Yiddish, this course will explore the intersections of Jewish literature and queer theory, homophobia and antisemitism. While centered on literary studies, the syllabus will also include film, visual art, and music. Literary authors will include Bashevis Singer, Qalonymus ben Qalonymus, Irena Klepfisz, and others. Theorists will include Eve Sedgwick, Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Sander Gilman, and others. Readings will be in English translation.

This course provides an overview of different methods, approaches and themes currently prevalent in the study of South Asian texts from various periods.  Topics covered will include translation (theory and practice), book history, literary history, textual criticism, genre theory (the novel in South Asia), literature and colonialism, cultural mobility studies (Greenblatt) and comparative literature/new philologies (Spivak, Ette).  Readings will include work by George Steiner, Sheldon Pollock, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Terry Eagleton, Stephen Greenblatt, Gayatri Spivak, Ottmar Ette, and others.  We will discuss these different approaches with particular reference to the texts with which participating students are working for their various projects.  Students interested in both pre-modern and modern/contemporary texts 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".  The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students (no prior knowledge of literary theory or South Asian writing is assumed).

This course introduces models of comparative analysis across national literatures, genres, and media by focusing on poetry in different languages and cultures and in relation to other discursive and artistic forms.  We will examine a wide variety of poetic and critical texts in order to explore such topics as the specificity of poetry and of poetic kinds; orality and folk, art, and popular song; poetry’s relation to prose (from philosophy to autobiography to journalism); transnational imitation and translation; poetry and globalization; ekphrasis and poetry’s relations to visual arts; and poetry and film.  Readings will likely include poems by Sappho, Horace, Dante, Li Bai, Du Fu, Ronsard, Shakespeare, Milton, Basho, Goethe, Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and Dylan; and critical writings by Longinus, Plutarch, Montaigne, Li Zhi, Wordsworth, Auerbach, Jakobson, Adorno, Pasolini, Zumthor, Culler, and Damrosch.

This course examines the literature, aesthetics, and theory of global anarchist movements, from nineteenth-century Russian anarcho-syndicalism to Kurdish stateless democratic movements of today. We will also study the literature of “proto-anarchist” writers, such as William Blake, and stateless movements with anarchist resonances, such as Maroon communities in the Caribbean.  Theorists and historians will include Dilar Dirik, Nina Gurianova, Paul Avrich, Luisa Capetillo, Emma Goldman, Maia Ramnath, and Thomas Nail.  Particular attention will be given to decolonial thought, religious anarchism, fugitivity and migration, and gender and race in anarchist literature.

Historians often refer to the emergence of Zionism as an "Oedipal Revolution."Hence, the secular son's rebellion against his orthodox father is understood as the thrust that triggered the modern Jewish revolution. Alan Mintz aptly described the inter-generational rift between fathers and sons at the turn of the 20th century as a tragic yet inevitable consequence of modernity, underscoring the psychological difficulties and political dilemmas that haunted the sons who were "banished form their father's table."This seminar will focus on the (highly androcentric) oedipal figure in literary theory and explore its prominence in modern Hebrew literature. Freud's preoccupation with the Oedipus complex at the turn of the century coincided with the emergence of a powerful oedipal narrative in modern Hebrew culture. This confluence provides a fascinating backdrop to the "invention" of the Oedipus complex. We will read a variety of literary texts which rework the oedipal figure from the late 19th century to the 1980s and beyond.Although Freud's "invention" of the Oedipus complex transpired in a particular cultural and historical setting, it rapidly became a hermeneutic bedrock, a cross-cultural and trans-historical paradigm which illuminates texts as remote from one another as Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Kafka's "Letter to His Father." Freud first conceptualized the Oedipus complex in 1897 while he was immersed in his self-analysis and he continued to redefine its modalities throughout his career. Consequent developments in psychoanalysis – and in critical theory at large – attempted to account for the centrality of the oedipal figure, ascribing it to the social decline of the paternal imago.Various theoretical formulations of the Oedipus complex will be discussed alongside literary works which implicitly theorize the oedipal question. Why is this figure so central in Hebrew literature and what are its political implications?  What role is assigned to women in a culture which defines itself as "oedipal"?  Is there a foundational similarity between the Oedipus myth and the biblical story of the binding of Isaac? And how are these competing narratives employed in Israeli culture?   How did this figure evolve over the course of the 20th century and what are its political ramifications in different periods and for successive literary generations? We will lay a theoretical foundation for our discussion by reading Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and Kafka's "Letter to his Father," with commentary by Freud, Girard, and Deleuze and Guattari. Thereafter, we will focus on a selection of Hebrew works of prose fiction which are available in English translation. Students working in Hebrew will be provided with the texts in the original.

This course explores the unique challenges of experiencing performance through the page. Students will read plays and performances closely, taking into account not only form, character, plot, and genre, but also theatrical considerations like staging, acting, spectatorship, and historical conventions. We will also consider how various agents—playwrights, readers, directors, actors, and audiences—generate plays and give them meaning. While the course is not intended as a survey of dramatic literature or theater history, students will be introduced to a variety of essential plays from across the dramatic tradition. The course culminates in a scene project assignment that allows students put their skills of interpretation and adaptation into practice. No experience with theater is expected. (Gateway, Drama)