Courses

Spring 2025
'Don Quixote' in Material and Virtual Worlds (LA)
Subject associations
SPA 441 / COM 468

An exploration of material culture with the first modern novel of the Western world. It is about contemporary, 21st-century reading practices as well as those that prevailed at the time of the Quixote's production. We will survey intersections of material and digital objects in addition to digital surrogates. Hands-on experience of Firestone's rare books will introduce us to the dramatic effects of varying formats. Our modern, paperback versions will also reveal how media shape our understanding of the text. Images and contemporary reading practices of the "app generation" will increase our grasp of how media shape textual interpretation.

Instructors
Marina S. Brownlee
Spring 2025
Advanced Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (LA)
Subject associations
CWR 306 / COM 356 / TRA 314

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

Instructors
Jenny McPhee
Spring 2025
Advanced Sanskrit Poetry and Poetics (LA)
Subject associations
SAN 302 / COM 385 / TRA 307

This course builds upon the foundation in Classical Sanskrit grammar and vocabulary established during 1st and 2nd year Sanskrit, and also builds knowledge of Sanskrit poetry and South Asian culture through reading selections from Sanskrit poetic works and traditional theoretical treaties on poetics. It is primarily a reading course, focusing on passages from poems by Kalidasa, Murari, Bhavabhuti, Bhartrhari and other classical poets in combination with readings from Dandin's theoretical work on poetry the Kavyadarsa. This course provides students a comprehensive introduction to the Sanskrit poetic literature of different periods.

Instructors
Nataliya Yanchevskaya
Spring 2025
Art, Memory, and Human Rights in Latin America (CD or LA)
Subject associations
COM 336 / LAS 316 / POL 456

This course studies artistic and cultural practices that created different aesthetics and politics of memory that have become essential to respond, denounce, and creatively resist to different forms of violence and human rights violations. Looking at essays, literature, visual arts, and sites of memory, the course will analyze how cultural works on memory and human rights have helped to create connections between past and present histories of both violence and resistance. Although the course focuses on Latin America, it will also look at forms of cultural transfer among memory practices from different parts of the world.

Instructors
Susana Draper
Spring 2025
Chinese Poetry (LA)
Subject associations
EAS 331 / COM 331

In this seminar we closely study ancient and medieval Chinese poetry, with emphasis on the formative stages of the Chinese textual tradition. While all texts will be read in translation, we also explore the ways in which the classical Chinese language shaped this poetry in its unique characteristics and possibilities of expression. In addition, we discuss in depth key texts of Chinese literary thought in their aesthetic, philosophical, social, and historical dimensions. Knowledge of the Chinese language is neither required nor expected.

Instructors
Martin Kern
Spring 2025
Contemporary Critical Theories: Novel Theories
Subject associations
COM 535 / ENG 528

Narratology and theory of the novel, related but distinct traditions in literary theory, have in the twenty-first century moved away from their respective formalist/structuralist and literary historical roots, and converged in the post-print era on questions of ethics. This seminar offers an opportunity to explore the new ethical narratologies alongside recent theories of the ethics of the novel.

Instructors
April Alliston
Spring 2025
Contemporary Latin American Feminisms and the Question of Justice and Accountability
Subject associations
COM 589 / LAS 589 / GSS 572

This course focuses on how the renewed analysis of a relationality among different violences generated by popular feminisms impact our understanding of justice and accountability. Taking the crossings between social reproduction and prison abolition, personal and systemic violences as critical horizons, we explore different practices and regimes of signification posed in pamphlets, philosophical, literary, and artistic works. Although the course focuses on Latin America, it includes key works by feminists from the U.S. and analyzes processes of translation currently taking place. Readings available in Spanish and English.

Instructors
Susana Draper
Spring 2025
Contemporary Literary Theory (LA)
Subject associations
ENG 305 / COM 312

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of psychoanalysis as a literary-critical and philosophical tradition of thought. In addition to classic texts by Freud, Lacan, Fanon, and Klein, we will read contemporary writers influenced by psychoanalysis (Cheng, Zupancic, Scott). Topics include interpretation of dreams, Freudo-Marxism, the psychology of colonialism and race, and sexual difference.

Instructors
Zahid R. Chaudhary
Spring 2025
Creative Writing (Literary Translation) (LA)
Subject associations
CWR 206 / TRA 206 / COM 215

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

Instructors
Jenny McPhee
Spring 2025
Cultural Systems: Proust, Freud, Borges (LA)
Subject associations
ECS 321 / SPA 333 / COM 389

An overview of three of the most influential writers in the twentieth century, focusing on selected masterpieces. All three were fascinated by similar topics: dreams and memory; sexuality; Judaism. All three lived during traumatic historical periods. Proust during WWI; Freud during WWII; and Borges during Peronismo. Seminar will explore the relationship between literature modernism, politics, and religion.

Instructors
Rubén Gallo