Eight hundred years before Bram Stoker gave us the West's most memorable vampire in Dracula (1897) and long before the exploits of Vlad "the Impaler" Tepes horrified Europe (1431-46), the Russian Primary Chronicles write of a Novgorodian priest as Upyr' Likhij, or Wicked Vampire (1047).  The Slavic and Balkan worlds abound in histories, legends, myths and literary portraits of the so-called undead, creatures that literally draw life out of the living. This course examines the vampire in the cultures of Russia and Eastern Europe, including manifestations in literature, religion, art, film and common practices from its origins to 2013.  Texts – both print and non-print media – will be drawn from Russian, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Serbian and Croatian sources.  Participants will be asked to separate historical fact from popular fiction, and form opinions about the place of the vampire in Slavic and East European cultures. 

Prerequisites:  The course is conducted in English.  No knowledge of Russian required, though readings in Russian and other Slavic languages are available for majors and concentrators in these related fields.

Readings:  

• The Vampire in Slavic Culture, Course Reader (CR), T. J. Garza, ed., Cognella Press, San Diego: CA, 2010. [order online]

• The Vampire: A Casebook, Alan Dundes, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.

Description*:

This course focuses on post-abolition Afro-Brazilian life, history, culture, politics, and literature. It engages a wide range of literary texts, socio-cultural movements, visual arts, and cultural performances, while raising a number of questions that would lead to provocative midterm and final research papers, while simultaneously honing students’ writing skills with a number of response papers that may be expanded into a research paper. Most concepts and issues will be illustrated with multimedia clips or movies to ensure that students gain a richer experience of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora world.

Some of the questions the course will grapple with include the following: (i) What explains the continued exclusion of Afro-Brazilians from political power?; (ii) What is the legacy or impact of slavery within this context?; (iii) How is the concept of Africa (re)imagined, distorted, and manipulated in this regard?; (iv)What are the discourses used to justify social inequalities and racial discrimination in Brazil?; (v) How is the “radical” view on discrimination silenced while the “co-opted” perspective is promoted?; (vi) What are the effects of governmental patronage on cultural producers as they negotiate what Carl Degler calls the “mulatto escape hatch” that fits into Gilberto Freyre’s “racial democracy” model; and (vii) What are the limitations of ideology in an era of “globalization” and pragmatism? These among other issues will form the basis of the course which will additionally analyze the social condition that goes beyond the more apparent “culture game”; and must also be seen as a political game towards visibility, participation, gendered equality, and empowerment. 

Objectives:

1. Students will be able to meet requirements for writing and global flags. 2. Students will be exposed to the dynamics of coping mechanism with social inequalities in Brazil as they mostly affect the Afro-Brazilian population. 3. Students will not only be exposed to elements of style, they will also improve their writing skills by having opportunities to re-write most of their assignments. 4. Transnational resonances will be invoked for comparative analysis within contexts and texts in order to see the African Diaspora beyond a continental prism.

*This syllabus is subject to minor alterations in the course of the semester

E 316N  l  World Literature

Instructor:  Kornhaber, David

Unique #:  34880-34935

Semester:  Fall 2019

Cross-lists:  C L 315

Prerequisites: One of the following:E 303C (or 603A), RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 303C (or 603A).

Description: This course presents a survey of world literature through the lens of dramatic literature, examining classic works of drama from around the globe.  Our survey will begin with the classical theatre of Greece, Rome, India, and China and will continue through the religious dramas of the European middle ages, the plays of feudal Japan, early modern drama from England and Spain, and eighteenth-century neoclassical tragedies from France and Germany; we will continue our studies with an examination of the global spread of melodrama in the nineteenth century, the rise of modern drama in Europe and Russia near the turn of the century, and the explosion of theatrical experiments worldwide across the twentieth century, concluding with a selection of modern and contemporary plays from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and the Caribbean as well as the United States. Throughout, we will examine the shifting characteristics of dramatic literature across time periods and cultures and will pay ongoing attention to the complex relationship between dramatic literature and theatrical performance.  We will also consider the ways in which the study of drama touches on wider issues of history, politics, and philosophy, even raising questions as to the nature of literature itself.  Students can expect to receive a grounding in the history of world drama, training in the core techniques of close reading and literary analysis, and an appreciation for literary and performance cultures worldwide.  All texts will be read in English.

Texts(tentative):  Agammemnon(Aeschylus, Greece); Oedipus Tyrannos(Sophocles, Greece); The Bacchae(Euripides, Greece); Thyestes (Seneca, Rome); Shakuntala (Kalidasa, India); Snow in Midsummer (Guan Hanqing, China);Everyman (Anonymous, England); Atsumori (Zeami Motokiyo, Japan); Hamlet(William Shakespeare, England); Life is a Dream (Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Spain); The Rover (Aphra Behn, England); Phaedra (Jean Racine, France); Faust (Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany);The Octoroon (Dion Boucicault, Ireland); A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen, Norway); The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Russia); Mother Courage and Her Children(Bertolt Brecht, Germany); Song of Death(Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egypt); Waiting for Godot(Samuel Beckett, Ireland/France); The Sea at Dauphin(Derek Walcott, St. Lucia); A Raisin in the Sun (Lorrain Hansberry, US); The Man Who Turned Into a Stick (Kobo Abe, Japan); Death and the King’s Horseman(Wole Soyinka, Nigeria); Angles in America(Tony Kushner, US).

Requirements & Grading: Attendance and participation in weekly discussion sections: 5%; four in-section quizzes: 20% (5% each); two in-section mini-exams: 30% (15% each); two short papers: 45% (first 20%, second 25%).

E 316N  l  World Literature

Instructor:  Hinrichs, L

Unique #:  34940

Semester:  Fall 2019

Cross-lists:  C L 315

Prerequisites: One of the following: E 303C (or 603A), RHE 306, 306Q, or T C 303C (or 603A).

Description: This course is an introduction to the systematic study of literature.  The selections focus on masterworks of literature from the 19^thand early 20^thcenturies.  Students will learn how to read a literary text as an (a) artifact that (b) reflects the historical, social, and cultural circumstances of its production.  Consequently, lectures will introduce basic concepts from critical theory and rhetorical analysis, and apply these to the readings.  We will also discuss, for each work, its historical background and how our knowledge of a text and its context can inform each other.  Discussions and assignments are designed to sharpen critical skills and focus on practical exercises in interpretation.

Requirements & Grading: The final grade will be composed of the following parts:  Three essays, 50%; Midterm exam, 15%; Final exam, 25%; Classroom participation, 10%.

Maledicta: (Latin. n., pl. maledictum, sg.), curse words, insults; profane language of all kinds.

When is a word “bad”? Why can one person use a “bad” word with impunity, and another cannot? What marks such usage as acceptable or not?  How do race, socioeconomic class, and gender play into the use of “bad” language in the US? This course undertakes the examination of modern usage of language that has been designated as “bad” through social convention. Usage of forms of obscenities and profanity in popular usage will be examined in an attempt to come to an understanding of how the products of US popular culture portray maledicta in situational contexts. Through an examination of various texts culled from print, film, and music, participants will study the context and use of “bad” language and attempt to determine the underlying principles that dictate its affect and determine its impact on the audience. Though the majority of texts and usage will be taken from English-language sources, several non-English examples of maledicta from Mexican Spanish and Russian will also be examined for contrast and comparison.

NB: This course examines texts that contain usage of obscenities, profanity, and offensive language. Students who do not wish to be exposed to such language in use should not sign up for this course.

Texts:

• Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others? Edwin Battistella. Oxford UP, 2007.

• Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language. Ruth Wajnryb. Free press, 2005.

• Course packet

This writing-intensive course will provide the student with a comprehensive overview of narrative literature and poetry composed in the three classical languages of India (Old Tamil, Sanskrit, and Prakrit). We will begin with a study of aesthetic conventions. First, we will examine rasa theory as it is spelled out in the Sanskrit Natyashastra, and we will then move on to dhvani or “poetic resonance” as an analytical category described by the theoreticians Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta. We will then read excerpts from the Tolkappiyam, the earliest extant Tamil text on phonetics, grammar, and poetry, paying special attention to the sections on poetic convention and generic taxonomies. This will give us the means to study poetry produced in India’s classical period. In tandem with our explorations of literary convention, we will read a wide variety of poems from various collections from the Sanskrit and Prakrit traditions, and will then read selections from the eight anthologies of classical Tamil that treat akam (romantic/erotic) and puram (heroic/ethical) themes. We will then move on to an exploration of epic and story literature from the Sanskrit and Tamil languages.

Fall 2019 Focus:  Landscape Poetry and Painting

[Taught in English]

This course will provide an introduction to the classical Chinese poetic tradition and is open to all students.  No previous background in Chinese language, culture or literature is required. 

Lectures and discussions will focus on the literary, cultural, historical, social, political, philosophical, and religious background against which these representative works in poetry arose.  While background reading will be assigned, the focus of lectures and discussion will be on the primary works of poetry, and the relationship of poetry and painting in the Chinese tradition.

Lectures, readings and class discussion will examine these ideas and concepts in the context of landscape, known as “mountains and water” (shan shui) in Chinese literary and cultural memory.  Through this methodical process, we will begin to decode the literary language of classical Chinese poetry and poetic craft.  

Global Cultures:  This course carries the Global Cultures flag. Global Cultures courses are designed to increase your familiarity with cultural groups outside the United States. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from assignments covering the practices, beliefs, and histories of at least one non-U.S. cultural group, past or present.

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) was arguably the greatest filmmaker of the twentieth century. His career spanned over sixty years and includes such works as the sophisticated comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the allegorical Seventh Seal (1957), the avant-garde Persona (1966), the masterful television adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1975), and the television miniseries Fanny and Alexander (1982). He also wrote scripts for many other filmmakers, including Bille August and Liv Ullmann. In 2003, he directed the television film Saraband, and in recent years many of his films have been adapted for the stage both in Sweden and elsewhere.

This course is intended as an introduction both to the films of Ingmar Bergman and to the viewing of films in general. We will look at representative films by this prolific and gifted filmmaker, considering them in the contexts of the director's life, Scandinavian culture, and issues of film theory and aesthetics.

This course carries the Writing Flag. Writing Flag courses are designed to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline. In this class, you can expect to write regularly during the semester, complete substantial writing projects, and receive feedback from your instructor to help you improve your writing. You will also have the opportunity to revise one or more assignments, and to read and discuss your peers' work. You should therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your written work.

ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:

One two-page paper which may be rewritten (5%); one five-page paper which may be rewritten (25%); one storyboard (10%) accompanied by a five-page essay (25%), and five quizzes (25%; you may drop the lowest grade). Class participation will count 10%.

Description: The events of the Holocaust changed Western culture in fundamental ways. Not only was a great part of Jewish culture in Europe destroyed, the circumstances of the Nazi genocide as a modern, highly rationalized, efficient form of mass murder which took place in the heart of civilized Europe changed the conception of the progress of modernity and the Enlightenment in fundamental ways. This course explores the historical, political, psychological, theological, and cultural fall-out, as well as literary and cinematic responses in Europe and the U.S. to these events as they first became known, and as one moved further away from it in time and came to understand its pronounced and often problematic after effects. Central to our inquiry is the realization that the events of the Holocaust have left indelible traces in European and U.S. culture and culture production, of which a closer look (first decade by decade, then moving on to a number of themes and questions), reveals profound insights into current day culture, politics, and society.

Required Texts: Levi and Rothberg, The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings; Art Spiegelman, Maus I ⅈ Ruth Klüger, Still Alive: a Girlhood Remembered; Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; Elie Wiesel, Night; Additional course packet Films: Nuit et Brouillard; Holocaust (excerpts); Shoah (excerpts); Schindler's List (excerpt)

Grading Policy: Attendance/participation 15% Response papers (2) 10% Class presentation 10% Presentation paper 15% Midterm exam 20% Final research paper 30% (proposal, bibliography, outline + 1st, 5% each, paper: 15%)

Description:

This course explores the dilemmas of homicide, suicide, patricide and redemption in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky — Russia’s greatest chronicler of human suffering and triumph. Over the course of the semester we will read a number of Dostoevsky’s greatest works, including Notes From Underground, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. At the same time, we will look at the contemporary intellectual and social trends relevant to the development of Dostoevsky’s career as a writer and thinker.

Required Texts:

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky

This course will introduce students to nineteenth- to twenty-first-century children’s literature from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Authors highlighted will include Heinrich Hoffmann (Struwwelpeter), Wilhelm Busch (Max and Moritz), Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, The Red Bird, The Brothers Lionheart), Erich Kästner (Emil and the Detectives), Dick Bruna (Miffy), Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World), Bjarne Reuter (The Boys from St. Petri), Tove Jansson (Finn Family Moomintroll), Otfried Preussler (The Robber Hotzenplotz, Krabat), Walter Moers (Capt’n Bluebear), Cornelia Funke (Inkworld, Mirrorworld), Sven Nordqvist (Pancakes for Findus), Michael Ende (Momo, Jim Button, The Neverending Story), Jacques Vriens (You’re a Hen!), Annie M. G. Schmidt and Fiep Westendorp (Jip and Janneke), and Klaus Schädelin (My Name is Eugen). Students are encouraged to explore additional authors and works for papers or group projects. Emphasis will be placed on the prominent place of children’s literature in the popular culture of central and northern Europe, as well as the serious issues and themes which north Americans might otherwise consider “adult” that are often found in this genre -- death, war, poverty, social justice, and family conflict, for example – alongside whimsy, warmth and wonder.

The Medieval and Early Modern Curriculum

This course will encompass overlapping but not identical sets of texts taught at schools during the medieval, late medieval, and early modern periods. A number of these texts were also taught in American schools and colleges (and formed the basis of libraries of British and American novelists and poets well into the nineteenth century). When possible, both medieval and early modern approaches to the texts will be discussed.

Although some histories of education will be consulted, the emphasis of the course will be on actually reading the texts known to most educated men (and some women) of the periods. Almost all the works were originally written for adults and in Latin, although all required reading for the course will be in English. (Students focusing on the Early Modern period may read texts on EEBO if they wish.) Printed editions of some and manuscripts of a few of the works are in the HRC’s collections.

Students of all periods are welcome, and research projects (including those focusing on other periods or cultures) will be worked out individually for each student according to his or her research interests.

Selective reading list of primary sources:

Building Blocks:

            The Distichs of Cato (proverbs)

            Eclogue of Theodulus (debate poem with paired classical and biblical stories)

Troy Books for Boys:

            Achilleid of Statius (boyhood of Achilles, including when he was disguised as a girl)

            Ilias Latina (“Latin Homer”)

Sexual Exploits;

            Elegies of Maximian (memories of love and sex)

Geta (Jupiter pretends to be a student returning to his wife)

Pamphilus on Love (so widely read that it’s said to be the origin of the word “pamphlet”)

Auctores (with both medieval and early modern commentary)

Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 1

Virgil, Aeneid, Books 1, 2, 4, and 6

Biblical Narratives:

Tobias of Matthew of Vendôme

“Judith” from the Aurora (Dawn) of Peter Riga.

Glossa ordinaria on the Book of Jonah

Composition Texts:

Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova (rhetoric taught rhetorically)

Erasmus, selections from De copia (composition based on classical models)

Aphthonius, Progumnasmata (linked sequence of preliminary exercises)

Additional primary readings  and secondary sources will be chosen taking into account the research interests of the students.

FR 390M/CL 391

METROPOLITAN VISIONS:

SEEING, SUBJECTIVITY, MODERNITY

Alexandra K. Wettlaufer

In “Metropolitan Visions: Seeing, Subjectivity and Modernity” we will consider representations of subjectivity and the urban landscape of Paris in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French novels, poetry, painting, photography, and film, with a focus on the changing politics and poetics of vision, place, space, and the scopic regimes of power from 1830 to 2000.  In units centering on “Romantic Paris: Panoramic Visions,” “Old and New Paris: Haussmannisation,” “Naturalist Paris: Capitalist Visions,” “Modern Paris: Deconstructed Visions,” “Occupied Paris and Lieux de mémoire,” and “Diasporic Paris: Vision and Invisibility,” we will read works by Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, Apollinaire, Aragon, Duras, Modiano, Sebbar, and Charef, among others, along with critical essays by Foucault, David Harvey, Soja, Nora, Hargreaves, and others.  As we trace the ways in which Paris is depicted in Realist, Naturalist, Symbolist, Surrealist, Post-Modern, and Post-Colonial texts, we will at the same time considering visual representations of the city in painting, drawing, caricature, physiologies, maps, illustrations, photography, and film.  Theories of gender, mobility, migration, and subjectivity will be central to our discussions as we investigate the concrete and symbolic ways in which the city figures forth social constructions of French identity in these various genres and periods. 

Description: 

            One trend in twentieth century Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture was the revival of baroque aesthetics. "Lo barroco" resurfaced both as a period concept to trace the "foundations" of Latin American expression in colonial times and as the poetics of a "neobarroco" avant-garde artistic and intellectual movement. In this course we will consider some of the principal colonial and contemporary works of art and literature studied under these terms, and the theoretical and critical works that study its origins or promote its revival.  We will be concerned with tracing a transatlantic/subaltern genealogy of the concept, studying how the Baroque came to be associated with aspects of past and present day Caribbean and Latin(x) American culture and expression. Issues of hybridity, ethnicity, aesthetics, colonialism, indigeneity, religious orthodoxy, sexuality, gender, race and power will be reviewed in this genealogical approach

            We will focus on how relevant this trend and the debates it has inspired remain today by looking at how the persistence of the baroque in Latin(x) America is connected to questions of colonialism and coloniality in the Global South. We will consider how neobaroque movements spring out of a debate regarding the problematic cultural and political legacies of colonial dominance in the region's attempts at modernity, and why the concept--normally thought as referring to a seventeenth century European artistic period following the Renaissance--comes to describe decolonial and queer tendencies in the postmodern art and writing of a non-European region in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

To achieve these goals, readings for the course will be divided into three sets. The first consists of essays and critical articles that debate the definition and the appearance of baroque art during both the seventeenth century and the modern and postmodern periods. Texts by Wellek, Wolfllin, Weisbach, d’Ors, Maravall, Genette, Sarduy, Lacan, Calabrese, Deleuze, Glissant, Salgado, Anna More, and Monika Kaup, among others, will be discussed as required reading or in special presentations. To understand the arguments regarding the dynamic continuity or the ruptures and differences between the baroque art of the past and the neobaroque expressions of the present, for the second set we'll cover a selection of European and New World writings of the Golden Age/colonial period by Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo, Bernardo de Balbuena, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. We'll read these in relation to what neobaroque authors and critics say about them. The third set of readings consists of contemporary neobaroque prose and poetry by Caribbean, Mexican, and Argentine writers and Latinx experimental writing in Spanglish to be discussed in the light of the theories presented in the essays of the first set. We will also consider how recent Caribbean, Latinx, Latin- and Afro-American films, art, and performance labeled as ultra-baroque, brut-baroque, or hip hop baroque (Luis Gispert, Kehinde Wiley, Pepón Osorio) 
reflect these concerns.

Readings (tentative):

Luis de Góngoras, Soledades

Francisco de Quevedo, selección de poesía y prosa

Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza mexicana

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, selección de poesía, Neptuno alegórico

Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Teatro de virtudes políticas

Irving Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico(selections)

José Lezama Lima, La expresión americana(selections)

Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada(selections)

Bolívar Echevarría, La modernidad de lo barroco(selections)

Alejo Carpentier, selección de ensayos, El acoso, Concierto barroco

Severo Sarduy, selección de ensayos, De donde son los cantantes

Reinaldo Arenas, El mundo alucinante

Néstor Perlongher, Un barroco de trinchera

Echevarren/Kozer/Sefamí,Medusario (selections)

Giannina Braschi, United States of Banana

Urayoán Noel,Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico

Readings packet with theoretical texts and historiography

Films: Barrocoby Paul Leduc, Yo, la peor de todasby M.L.Bemberg, El viajero inmóvil by Thomas Piard, Prospero’s Books by Peter Greenaway

Requirements and Grading:

One 15-20 page final term paper (60%).  Class participation, including an oral presentation (20%).  Midterm Take-Home Exercise (20%).