Global Arc

A study of the relation between the writing of poetry and the question of modernity as a theoretical and cultural problem. The course will take into account the various experimental movements that opted for poetry as their primary medium (imagism, dadaism, surrealism, futurism), as well as the work of certain poets who have indelibly marked the 20th century's poetic landscape (Yeats, Brecht, Neruda, Cavafy, and others). Students are expected to know at least one of the foreign languages involved well enough to read the original texts. One three-hour seminar.

An introduction to literature as a vehicle of thought about law, morality, and the tensions between them. Readings include ancient legal codes, selected biblical texts, Greek tragedies, Norse sagas, medieval satirical epics, Renaissance drama, 18th-century drama, and modern fiction. Emphasis on revenge codes, the shift from prelegal to legal societies, the Christianization of Germanic law, equity, contract, critiques of law and legal systems. One three-hour seminar.

Literature, art, computer code, social media, news, music and video games--copyright underpins almost everything we read or hear. But it is not an old idea. Why was it invented? For whose benefit? What is a "work" or an "author"? Is copyright still relevant, or is a new framework needed? From Balzac and Dickens to Facebook, from Bizet to Broadway musicals, this new course invites students to think about the philosophical and cultural issues raised by copyright in the past and present--and for the future. Taught jointly by a professor of Comparative Literature and a practicing intellectual property lawyer; for students in all disciplines.

Poetry can be seen as a mode of reflection on history and, very often, as an act of resistance to it. This course will examine works written in Europe, Latin America and the US during the 20th and 21st centuries in different languages and historical contexts. We will explore their oppositional and also their liberatory effects: their ability to evoke their times, to disrupt our usual understandings while offering new political, artistic and ethical perspectives. The course will pay special attention to the work of René Char and Paul Celan, as ideal points of focus for questions of language and resistance.

Fiction by writers of a fundamentally realist persuasion who nevertheless depict in their work the intrusion of the supernatural and the fantastic into everyday life. Gogol, Kleist, James, Olesha, Nabokov, Bradbury, García Márquez, and Calvino are among the authors read. One lecture, one two-hour seminar.

The short story and other forms of brief imaginative prose as they have developed in English and the European languages during the 19th and 20th centuries. The seminar discussions will examine selected works of such authors as Chekhov, Lawrence, Kafka, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Borges, Nabokov, W. C. Williams, Welty, Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Tournier, and Barthelme. One lecture, one two-hour seminar.

Societal and political themes - such as class struggle, race/race relations, national/cultural identity, the rights of workers, gender and sexuality - are inextricable from the novel, as the form that seeks to encapsulate the experience of life in the modern world. But although every novel is political, some novels are deliberately so. This seminar will discuss notable novels that engage with political themes as well as the political implications of the novel as a genre. We will also be screening major works of what we might call "political cinema" to complement and enhance our discussion of these political narratives.

In this course we will study films that address global audiences yet ground themselves in particular, local, vernacular sources of artistic creation. Our focus will be on three exciting postwar cinematic movements (Italian Neorealism, Iranian New Wave, the Danish Dogma 95), but we will also discuss parallels in American filmmaking. Familiarity with Homer's Ulysses, Virgil's Aeneid and Shakespeare's Hamlet will be helpful since they serve as the frame of reference for many of the examined films.

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.