Global Arc

In an effort to encompass the variety of responses to what is arguably the most traumatic event of modern Western experience, the Holocaust is explored as transmitted through documents, testimony, memoirs, creative writing, historiography, and cinema. In this study of works, reflecting diverse languages, cultures, genres, and points of view, the course focuses on issues of bearing witness, collective vs. individual memory, and the nature of radical evil. One three-hour seminar, plus weekly film showings.

Contemporary changes in modes of creating, presenting, and preserving knowledge have also fostered a scholarly and artistic fascination with old media, book history, archives, manuscripts, etc. This course explores the practical and ethical issues involved in archival work, and how modern and contemporary poets have used archival research to fuel historically- and politically-minded interventions. We will also explore the holdings of some of the many archives on campus; students will produce final projects that will be both critical and creative in nature, using the poetic texts we will read in the course as models.

For historical reasons most books that come into English are translated from just a few languages, creating a misleading impression of the spread of literature itself. This course provides an opportunity to discover literary works from languages with small reading populations which rarely attract academic attention in the USA. It also offers tools to reflect critically on the networks of selection that determine which books reach English-language readers; the role of literature in the maintenance of national identities; the role of translation; and the concept of "world literature" in Comparative Literary Studies.

This course is an introduction to contemporary Latin American and Caribbean literature and visual arts. Placing special emphasis on the changing relationships between aesthetics and politics, it analyzes different genres and artistic styles that emerge with new forms of imagining the relations between culture and politics, from the 1960s to the present.

This course aims at reading and analysis of some of the most iconic texts of the Middle Ages including the Mediterranean. In addition to providing a fascinating group of texts for us to discuss, `Rethinking Medieval Cultures' will reveal the many dynamic perspectives at issue during this foundational period of Western civilization. Issues of power - political, religious, amorous and supernatural - attitudes toward sex and gender, slavery, class and dreams are some of the topics voiced in our readings.

This course examines an emergent historical situation as it unfolds: the ongoing financial, social, and humanitarian "crisis" in Greece, including the "refugee crisis." It offers a comparative approach to current Greek cultural production, through literature and film of the past decade and writings drawn from history, anthropology, political science, economics, news sources, and political blogs. We also probe terms like "crisis," exploring how language shapes our understanding of events and how our perceptions of an unfamiliar culture, history, and society are mediated not just by linguistic translation but by market forces and media spin.

Study of a selected theme or topic in comparative literature. Subjects will range from historical and cultural questions (literature and politics, the literature of the avant-garde) to the study of specific literary themes or topics (feminine autobiography, the grotesque in literature).

An exploration of the cultural meanings of the Gothic mode through a study of its characteristic elements, its origins in 18th-century English and German culture and thought, its development across Western national traditions, and its persistence in contemporary culture, including film, electronic media, clothing, social behavior, and belief systems, as well as literature. Films, artifacts, websites, and electronic publications will supplement readings. One three-hour seminar.

What possible relevance could Homer's Iliad have today? Yet for nearly three millennia the epic has inspired countless rewritings, from ancient and early modern drama, to modern translations and continuations, to Hollywood blockbusters and contemporary avant-garde theater. This course traces the influence of the epic across languages, media, and time. Together we will ask vital questions about the formation and reformation of literary canons; the role of translation in the transformation of literary works; and the social, political, and ethical impulses that often motivate our encounters with literary texts.

The idea that the poet "created a world" was a commonplace of Renaissance literary criticism. In this course we will be thinking about how poetry's worldmaking powers responded to changing ideas of what makes up the world - from revolutionary visions of the cosmos to new conceptions of the nature of matter and life - as well as to the new technologies which made these discoveries possible. How do the "creative" qualities of literature interact with an emerging scientific emphasis on facts and "things as they are"? We will consider these and similar questions in the different contexts of early modern Italy and England.