Undergraduate

This course explores the complex relationship between competition and manliness in Greco-Roman antiquity. We will examine a diverse range of examples of competition in the hopes of arriving at a deeper understanding of how manliness was defined, contested, and won in the time period ranging from archaic Greece to Augustan Rome. The course will consider questions such as whether the characteristics of manliness change over time or remain static; how the type of competition impacts the values at stake; whether it is necessary that manly acts be narrated by a poet or witnessed by spectators; and what dangers are tied to making the transition to manhood. We will explore such issues through a wide selection of literary representations of competition, ranging from the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in Homer's Iliad to Cicero's invective against Marc Antony in his Philippics; and from the athletic hymns of Pindar and Bacchylides to the poetic contests between shepherds in Theocritean and Vergilian pastoral. Other authors to be considered include Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus, Catullus, and Ovid. All texts will be read in translation. Material evidence, such as monuments and statues, will also be examined. The course will close with a brief consideration of the modern reception of ancient competition and manliness, focusing in particular on the nineteenth century rebirth of the Olympics and the 1936 Berlin games.

Course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students majoring in Comparative Literature. Early modern England and Golden Age Spain built thriving public theaters that broke away from the confines of neoclassicism to create some of the seminal tragedies of western civilization. As we compare the development of the public theater in both countries during the 17th century, and trace their shared Senecan heritage, we will also consider their distinct treatment of women in the performance space, and the nations' opposing Protestant and Catholic orientations. Plays from the two national theaters will be paired according to the themes of revenge, desengao , female power, and damnation as represented in tragedies by Lope de Vega and Middleton, Shakespeare and Caldern, Webster and Claramonte, and Shadwell and Tirso. The class will use English translations of the Spanish plays, but readers of Spanish will be encouraged to read the Spanish texts in the original. Spanish concentrators taking this course for their major will be required to read texts in the original Spanish.

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920's to the political learning plays to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Mller, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Ngugi, and various South African practitioners). We will consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht's own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard to African film makers. PQ: Juniors, seniors and/or graduate students with at least one of the following: Intro to Cinema, History and Theory of drama, or their equivalents. Working knowledge of German and/or French would be helpful but is not required.

A study of classical epic in the Renaissance or Early Modern period. Emphasis will be both on texts and on classical epic theory. We will read Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered , Cames' Lusiads , and Milton's Paradise Lost . A paper will be required and perhaps an examination.

A reading of some central texts of Freud (both early and late) in the context of a study of the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary European philosophy. Other authors to be read may include Foucault, Deleuze and Guatteri, Marcuse, and Derrida.

In this course, we will examine the works of major writers from former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine how their works grapple with the issues of national identity and their countries' place in the Balkans and in Europe, with the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, with socialism and its demise, with emigration, as well as simply with the modern experience of being. We will compare the conceptual and mythic categories through which these works make sense of the world and argue for and against considering such categories constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility. The readings will include works by Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andri, Norman Manea, Mesa Selimovi, Danilo Kis, Miroslav Krle a, Ismail Kadare and others.

The course will examine the novels of arguably the two most important Jewish novelists of the twentieth century. Isaac Bashevis Singer's debut Satan in Goray (1933) was followed by many novels in various sub-genres: family chronicle, historical, and autobiographical. Singer's novels were initially serialized in the Yiddish press in Poland and after 1935 in the US, and then adapted in English translation. Saul Bellow's main contribution was his novels from his debut Dangling Man (1944) to Ravelstein (2000). Using current methodological approaches to the novel as presented in Franco Moretti's The Novel (2006), we will discuss how Bellow and Singer renewed novelistic forms and styles. The course will discuss the main features of the Jewish novel in the twentieth century (Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and Shmuel Agnon) that influenced Bellow and Singer.

This course expands the conception of the field of Jewish American literature from English-only to English-plus. We examine how Yiddish literary models and styles influenced the emergence and development of Jewish American literature. We also discuss how recent Jewish American novels have renewed the engagement with the Yiddish literary tradition. Readings are by Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, I. B. Singer, Chaim Grade, Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Jonathan Safran Foer, Pearl Abraham, and Dara Horn.

This course will provide a close reading of Cervantes' Don Quijote and discuss its links with Renaissance art and Early Modern narrative genres. On the one hand, Don Quijote can be viewed in terms of prose fiction, from the ancient Greek romances to the medieval books of knights errant and the Renaissance pastoral novels. On the other hand, Don Quijote exhibits a desire for Italy through the utilization of Renaissance art. The course will be taught in English. Spanish majors and Spanish graduate students will read the text in the original and use Spanish for the course assignments.

We study the distinctions between myth and fairy tale, and then focus on collections of modern Western European fairy tales, including those by Straparola, Basile and Perrault, in light of their contemporary rewritings of classics (Angela Carter, Calvino, Anne Sexton). We analyze this genre from diverse critical standpoints (e.g., historical, structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist) through the works of Croce, Propp, Bettelheim and Marie-Louise Von Franz. Class conducted in English.