Undergraduate

This course explores the ways in which Chinese writers and critics have responded and contributed to the transformations in the Chinese literary field from the 1970s to the present. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the literary field, we discuss notions of autonomy and authorship, concepts of high and popular literature, and writers' attitudes toward commercialization. Texts include poems by Bei Dao and Yang Lian; and fiction by Mo Yan, Wang Shuo, Yu Hua, Han Shaogong, and Chen Ran. Texts in English. Students who read Chinese are encouraged to use Chinese materials.

Crossing the disciplinary boundaries between social, political, cultural and literary history, as well as the symbolic divide between Russia and Western Europe, the course will explore early modern royal courts as crucial institutions of European culture. Rulers and the elites relied on symbolic resources of literature, philosophy and the arts to secure their growing political authority and broadcast values underpinning the existing social order. From the Renaissance on royal courts increasingly merged into a single an-European sociocultural paradigm, which over centuries framed the political effort of rulers as remote as Louis XIV, King of France, and Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia, as well as creative work of artists, composers and writers as important as Rubens, Molière, Mozart, Goethe, and Derzhavin.Absolutist social values and the modes of their cultural (re)production at the courts of early modern Europe and Russia will be examined drawing on historical sources as well works of art, philosophy and science, but primarily concentrating on literature. Texts in English.

This course seeks to explore the arena of socialinteractions—from flirting to striving for status to solidarity-seeking and beyond—that is captured by the term the social scene. We make use of literary fiction (i.e., Austen, Flaubert, Wilde), artwork (i.e., Manet), film (i.e., Warhol), and television (i.e., Jersey Shore ) that helps bring into visibility the morphology, power dynamics, and ethical or political possibilities inherent in scenes. We also look at some efforts to conceptualize scenes (e.g., Benjamin, Lefebvre, Fischer, Jameson, Bourdieu, Foucault).

This two-course sequence examines discursive practices in a number of literary and cinematic works from the South East corner of Europe through which identities in the region become defined by two distinct others: the barbaric, demonic Ottoman and the civilized Western European.

PQ: Prior or current registration in CMST 10100 required; CMLT 22400/32400 strongly recommended. 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.

In this course, we ask whether there is such a thing as a Balkan type of magic realism and think about the differences between the genres of magic realism and the fantastic, while reading some of the most interesting writing to have come out of the Balkans. We also look at the similarities of the works from different countries (e.g., lyricism of expression, eroticism, nostalgia) and argue for and against considering such similarities constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility.

This course will introduce the concept of mimesis (imitation, representation), tracing it from Plato and Aristole through some of its reformulations in recent literary and critical theory. Topics to be addressed include desire, postcolonialism, and non-western aesthetic traditions. Readings may include Plato, Aristotle, Euripides's Bacchae , Book of Songs , Lu Ji's Rhapsody on Literature , Auerbach, Butler, Derrida, Girard, Saussy, and Spivak.

Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in CMLT. This workshop begins in Autumn Quarter and continues through the middle of Spring Quarter. While the BA workshop meets in all three quarters, it counts as a one-quarter course credit. Students may register for the course in any of the three quarters of their fourth year. A grade for the course is assigned in the Spring Quarter, based partly on participation in the workshop and partly on the quality of the BA paper. Attendance at each class section required.

This course is centered on several canonical works of classical modernism: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ein Brief, Robert Walser's Jakob von Gunten , Thomas Mann's Tod in Venedig , Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung , Arthur Schnitzler's Fräulein Else , and Bertolt Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder ; and poetry by Stefan George, Hofmannsthal, Gottfried Benn, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Georg Trakl; as well as essays by Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Musil. On the basis of the works studied, we endeavor to develop a concept of modernism sufficiently capacious to embrace radically opposed literary and cultural agendas. All work in German.

This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in Comparative Literature. This course covers the Celtic tradition, Old and Middle English, Anglo-Norman French, and a late text from Scotland. Texts include: from Old English, Beowulf; from Irish, The Battle of Moytura and the Tain, and two of the immrana or voyages that concern Bran Son of Ferbal and Mael Duin; from Anglo-Norman French, The Lays of Marie de France; from Welsh, The Four Branches from the Mabinogion; from Middle English, selections from The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and from Scotland, Dunbar.