Comparative Literature

Faculty of the Department of Comparative Literature

Jan Ziolkowski, Professor of Medieval Latin and Comparative Literature (Chair)
Margaret Alexiou, George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Svetlana Boym, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature
Michel Chaouli, Assistant Professor of German and Comparative Literature
Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal and Professor of Comparative Literature
James Engell, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Luis M. Girón Negrón, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and of Romance Languages and Literatures
Barbara E. Johnson, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society
Walter Kaiser, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of Villa I Tatti
James L. Kugel, Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies (on leave spring term)
Jacques A. Lezra, Visiting Associate Professor of Comparative Literature (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature
Stephen Owen, James Bryant Conant University Professor
Lino Pertile, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature
Judith Ryan, Harvard College Professor and the Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Marc Shell, Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of English
Susan R. Suleiman, C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature
William Mills Todd III, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature, and Dean for Undergraduate Education
Ruth R. Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)

Other Faculty Offering Instruction in the Department of Comparative Literature

Sacvan Bercovitch, Charles H. Carswell Professor of English and American Literature and Language
George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevs’kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature (on leave spring term)
Karl S. Guthke, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture (on leave fall term)
Beatrice Hanssen, Associate Professor of German
Alan Heimert, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature (on leave 1999-00)
Robert Kiely, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English
Francisco Márquez, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Barry C. Mazur, Gerhard Gade University Professor
Marcus Moseley, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
Sandra Naddaff, Senior Lecturer on Literature
Per Nykrog, Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures
Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures

This field is organized to facilitate the systematic study of subjects and problems common to the various literatures. Programs leading to the degrees of A.M. and Ph.D. may, with the approval of the Department, be undertaken by properly qualified graduate students. Though undergraduates may not concentrate in Comparative Literature, their attention is called to the Literature Concentration, to History and Literature, to the Classics and allied fields, and to options in the concentration in English and American Literature and Language. The courses listed below are designed to supplement the offerings of other departments in ancient and modern languages and related fields, including the Literature and Arts courses in the Core Curriculum.

For Undergraduates and Graduates

Comparative Literature 102x. How to Think Money
Catalog Number: 8734
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10. EXAM GROUP: 12
Introduction to aesthetic and economic form in literature, painting, music, and cinema. Theoretical perspectives from Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Simmel, Burke, Derrida, Baudrillard. Attention to issues of symbolic mediation, theme and structure. Works include Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Metsys’ Moneychanger and His Wife, Poe’s “Wall Street,” Bresson’s Money, Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Charles Ives’ Marches.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 103r. Literature and Politics: The Case of the Holocaust]
Catalog Number: 6773
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines the category of “Holocaust Literature” — khurbn literatur in Yiddish and sifrut hashoah in Hebrew—to see how works written within discrete literary traditions reflect on their languages of composition and cultural contexts. The works of writers in Hebrew, Yiddish, several European languages, and English will be read in translation, including Aharon Appelfeld, Yitzhak Katsenelson, Emanuel Ringelblum, Abraham Sutzkever, Jacob Glatstein, Primo Levi, Piotr Rawicz, Elie Wiesel, Cynthia Ozick.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

Comparative Literature 104. Jewish Autobiography from the Renaissance to the 20th Century
Catalog Number: 0956
Marcus Moseley
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 14
Jewish autobiographical texts from the Renaissance period to the present in the light of contemporary critical and theoretical perspectives and within a comparative context. Authors to be studied include Y.A. Modena, Nahman of Bratslav, Solomon Maimon, N.H. Bialik, Y.L. Peretz, and David Daiches. All readings are in English.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 106x. Diaspora in Jewish Fiction]
Catalog Number: 3711
Sacvan Bercovitch
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
An exploration of the transformations in Judaism of the meanings of Diaspora, historically and aesthetically, from scripture to commentary to modern fiction. Selections from the Bible, Commentaries, Hassidic Tales, Sholem Aleikhem, Peretz, Kafka, Babel, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 109. Aesthetic Disgust, Disgusting Aesthetics]
Catalog Number: 2032
Michel Chaouli
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
According to Kant’s third Critique, everything can be represented aesthetically, except what evokes disgust. Why is this? In rethinking terms such as taste and beauty through an analysis of disgust, we will consider other questions: is there a utopian moment to disgust? is disgust (not its object but the affect itself) historically constructed? is it gendered? can there be ethical disgust? and, why is it, pace Kant, so enjoyable? Works by Lessing, Kant, Sade, Kleist, Flaubert, Freud, Bataille, Céline, Genet, Kristeva, Derrida, and Lacan.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

Comparative Literature 111. From Type to Self in the Middle Ages
Catalog Number: 9245
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 11. EXAM GROUP: 4
Examines self-representation and the emergence of the individual in selected poems and first-person narratives from medieval/early modern Europe. Examples drawn from spiritual autobiographies, epic poems, saints’ lives, maqama literature (Arabic and Hebrew rhymed prose narratives), troubadour lyric, Hispano-Jewish poetry, pilgrimage tales, medieval allegories, Spanish colonial historiography, and the picaresque novel.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01. All readings in English translation.

[Comparative Literature 112. Religion and Literature in the Middle Ages]
Catalog Number: 6579
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
An introduction to religion as a cultural context for literary expression in the Middle Ages. Selected case studies on the following themes: poetry, prophecy and mysticism, Scriptural interpretation and allegorical fiction, dreams and visions of the other-world, Jews, Christians and Muslims, magic and astrology, miracle stories and medieval society, the philosophical tradition, ritual and theater, pilgrimage narratives, and saints and heroes as literary types.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01. All readings in English translation.

[Comparative Literature 151. The Faust Legend in Literature]
Catalog Number: 6217
Karl S. Guthke
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Important works in the Faust tradition, from the Faustbuch (1587) to the 20th century, with emphasis on Marlowe, Calderón, Lessing, Goethe, Byron, Berlioz, and Mann.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01. No reading knowledge of Spanish, French, or German required.

[Comparative Literature 159. The Peasant in Literature: Conference Course]
Catalog Number: 9742
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
The perception of the peasant as topic, as ideal, and as the Other in 19th- and 20th-century literature. Examines the paradigms and strategies of Romantic idealization, realism and verismo, naturalism, impressionism and symbolism, as well as ideological stances (populism, Marxism, socialist realism, anti-fascism) and psychological attitudes (from self-identificaion to demonization). Authors treated include George Sand, Shevchenko, Turgenev, Hardy, Tolstoy, Zola, Reymond, Verga, Kociubynskyj, Silone, Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, and Kosinski.
Note: Expected to be given in 2001–02. All texts can be read in English.

[Comparative Literature 162. (Neo) Existentialism]
Catalog Number: 5661
Beatrice Hanssen
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
On the road towards the end of the century (and millennium), we will cast a backward glance at one of the most intriguing intellectual movements of the 20th century to ask in what sense existentialism might still be with us. The prevalence of moods such as angst, nausea, and melancholia, or the new use of categories such as freedom and experience suggest the emergence of a neo-existentialism in reaction, perhaps, to postmodernism. Figures considered include: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Fanon, Debord, Kerouac, Plath, Cioran, Kristeva, and Kieslowski.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 164. The 20th-Century Post-Realist Novel in Eastern Europe: Conference Course]
Catalog Number: 7762
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Psychological, mythic, “catastrophist,” and comic tendencies in the Eastern and Central European novel between the two world wars (1918–1939). Focus on Kafka, Capek, Bulgakov, Schulz, Witkiewicz, Gombrowicz, and Nabokov.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01. All texts can be read in English translation.

[Comparative Literature 166. The Comic Tradition in Jewish Culture]
Catalog Number: 3418
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines the premise that Jewish culture is predisposed to irony and humor because of contradictions between internal self-images and external socio-political conditions. Writings from mid-19th century to World War II.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 167. Contemporary Fiction]
Catalog Number: 1808
Judith Ryan
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Against a background of theoretical readings on the problem of ideology in literature, a variety of recent novels and their response to political and social problems are explored. Authors treated: D. M. Thomas, Marguerite Duras, Günter Grass, John Irving, Thomas Kenneally, Joyce Carol Oates, Patrick Süsskind, Graham Swift, and Christa Wolf.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 168. Literature and Film]
Catalog Number: 8121
Svetlana Boym
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on literary and cinematic techniques of representation and the ways in which different media reflect and inform modern cultural myths. Special attention to representation of history and memory in East and West European film and to the tradition of cinematic experimentation from the silent era to the present. Works by Vertov, Eisenstein, Gogol, Trauberg, Nabokov, Kubrik, Jarmusch, Cortázar, Antonioni, Kundera, Vajda, Tarkovsky, Varda, Sarraute, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

[Comparative Literature 182 (formerly Comparative Literature 282). Comparative Cultures of Money]
Catalog Number: 0539
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Language and money as means of representation and exchange. Special attention to presumptions about politics, imitation, and the visual arts. Readings include texts by modern theorists as well as Aristotle, Balzac, Del Mar, Goethe, Heidegger, Hess, Martineau, Pascal, Shakespeare, Thoreau, and Ueda.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

Comparative Literature 185. Reading and Representation in Early Modern Europe
Catalog Number: 5286
Jacques A. Lezra (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11. EXAM GROUP: 13
Close study of the proposition–central in contemporary philosophical, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic work–that an analogy between reading and seeing helps structure the emergence of a recognizably “modern” form of subjectivity. Readings from Cervantes, Descartes, and Ariosto, alongside works by Piero della Francesca, Titian, Velázquez, Lacan, Heidegger, Panofsky, Cassirer, Irigaray, Kofman, Ginzburg, Carducho, Virilio, and Marx.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

Primarily for Graduates

*Comparative Literature 206 (formerly Comparative Literature 106). Allegory: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3313
Barbara E. Johnson
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Studies allegorical reading from Christian interpretations of the “Old Testament” to modern psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, queer theory, postcolonialism. Readings include classical allegories (The Romance of the Rose, The Pilgrim’s Progress), modern allegorical texts (Mary Shelley, Melville, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Wilde, Gilman, Camus, DuBois, Calvino), and theorists (Freud, Benjamin, de Man, Sedgwick, Jameson, Jan Mohamed, Morrison).
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

[*Comparative Literature 207. Theory and Methods in Comparative Oral Traditions: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 7426
Gregory Nagy
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Genres, forms, and themes of oral traditions in poetry and prose. Problems of analyzing divergences and convergences in oral and written literatures. The concept of the canon in oral and written literatures. Theories of performance and composition. Comparative metrical and formulaic analysis.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01. Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 210. Comparative Themes in the Literatures of Medieval Spain: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3298
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (spring term). W., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 9
Examines Jewish-Christian-Muslim interaction as a Hispano-Medieval paradigm of cultural creativity. Examples drawn from Spanish epic, muwashshahat, Hispano-Jewish poetry, the short story tradition, maqama literature, the adab tradition, medieval didactica, historical chronicles, polemical writings, the Sephardic romancero, cancionero poetry, La Celestina, and Spanish mystical literature.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01. Spanish, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew materials will be read in English translation but students are encouraged to work with the originals.

*Comparative Literature 260. Literature and Exile: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3691
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Explores the intimate connection between literature and exile through fiction, poetry, autobiographical and critical writings of writer-expatriates. Topics to be considered include exile as a metaphor and as an experience, nostalgia and irony, imagined homelands and national canons, bilingualism and transnational identity. Readings from Nabokov, Kundera, Sarraute, Cortázar, Rushdie, Brodsky.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01. Open to qualified undergraduates.

[*Comparative Literature 261. Memory and Modernity: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 6923 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores modern art of memory in literary, philosophical, and critical texts. Topics to be considered: nostalgia and search for newness, collective and individual memory, conspiracy theories and ethics of remembering, modern “memory sites” — metropolis, museum, monument, home. Special attention to contemporary East-European reflection on art, memory, and nation. Readings from Baudelaire, Benjamin, Nietzsche, Proust, Nabokov, Tsvetaeva, Kundera, Kis, Levi, Cortázar, Borges, Brodsky, Lyotard, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01. All texts available in English, but reading texts in the original is encouraged. Primarily for graduate students; qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 269. Metaphors of Illness: From Polio to AIDS: Seminar
Catalog Number: 8517
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
Considers culture and social aesthetics of 20th-century medical epidemics in Europe and America. Literary texts, films, visual art. Syllabus includes Tales from Inside the Iron Lung, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, speeches by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, medical texts about hysterical paralysis, paintings by Frida Kahlo and Masaccio. Theorists of aesthetics and medicine include Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Mann, Susan Sontag.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

*Comparative Literature 280. Literary Theory and Criticism in the Middle Ages: Seminar
Catalog Number: 2215
Jan Ziolkowski
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines the place of theory and criticism in the curriculum (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic). Topics include allegory and allegoresis; nature of medieval glosses and commentaries; continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian traditions; medieval sign theory. Readings include works by Augustine, Fulgentius, Bede, Bernard Silvestris, Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Snorri Sturluson, Dante, and Boccaccio.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2001–02.

[*Comparative Literature 283. Language Wars and Polyglot Literature: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 9342
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
First we consider how language difference abets war and promises peace; sites include ancient Gilead and Rome, as well as contemporary Québec, Nigeria, and Hispaniola. Then we consider problems of translation, heteroglossia and literary multilingualism; texts include the trilingual New Testament and works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Celan, and Beckett.
Note: Expected to be given in 2000–01.

*Comparative Literature 284. Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Judgment: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7019
Michel Chaouli and Barry C. Mazur
Half course (spring term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Focus is a detailed reading of one of the central works of aesthetics, Kant’s Critique of Judgment, and selected portions of the first Critique. We will pursue questions of mimesis, affect, and representation in works by Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley. Advanced undergraduates welcome.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

*Comparative Literature 285. Comparative Romantic Theory: Seminar
Catalog Number: 0752
James Engell
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Intensive readings in Anglo-American and Continental theory of the Romantic period with relevant 20th-century commentary (e.g., Coleridge, Schelling, Keats, de Man, Todorov, and McFarland on allegory and symbol). Topics include language theory, irony, influence and originality, expression and reception, literary forms (genre), gender, and aesthetics.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.
Prerequisite: Some prior knowledge of Romantic literature. Reading knowledge of German desirable but not required.

*Comparative Literature 286. Terror and Materialism: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3383
Jacques A. Lezra (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Can the experience of terror and the mode of allegory together define a materialist aesthetics? If so, with what consequences for accounts of political engagement? Of ethics more broadly? Readings from Hegel, Poe, Marx, Melville, Borges, Cortázar, Lispector, Resnais, Celan, Améry, Derrida, Althusser, Levinas, Benjamin, and de Man.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01.

*Comparative Literature 287r. Selected Topics in Poetics and Rhetoric: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7999
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
Points of departure: Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01. Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 288. Ideology of the Aesthetic-Aesthetic Ideology: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3775
Beatrice Hanssen
Half course (fall term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
In-depth study of major 18th- and 19th-century philosophical essays on aesthetics, which are read against Eagleton’s Ideology of the Aesthetic and de Man’s Aesthetic Ideology. Authors considered include: Kant, Burke, Hume, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno, Bourdieu, Althusser, Kristeva, Lyotard.
Note: Expected to be omitted in 2000–01. Open to qualified undergraduates.

*Comparative Literature 299a. Literary Theory: Proseminar
Catalog Number: 2431
Michel Chaouli
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An introduction to the main concepts, texts, and debates that have shaped literary studies in the United States, particularly since the 1960s.
Note: Required of first-year graduate students in Comparative Literature; others may be admitted by permission of instructor.

Graduate Courses of Reading and Research

*Comparative Literature 396. Preparation for the General Examinations
Catalog Number: 4570
Margaret Alexiou 1214 (on leave spring term), Sacvan Bercovitch 7638, Svetlana Boym 1926, Michel Chaouli 1681, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511 (on leave spring term), Karl S. Guthke 1715 (on leave fall term), Alan Heimert 1631 (on leave 1999-00), Barbara E. Johnson 7626, Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Per Nykrog 6239, Stephen Owen 7418, Lino Pertile 3416, Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave spring term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term), and Jan Ziolkowski 7275

*Comparative Literature 397. Direction of Doctoral Dissertations
Catalog Number: 0320
Margaret Alexiou 1214 (on leave spring term), Sacvan Bercovitch 7638, Svetlana Boym 1926, Michel Chaouli 1681, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511 (on leave spring term), Karl S. Guthke 1715 (on leave fall term), Alan Heimert 1631 (on leave 1999-00), Barbara E. Johnson 7626, Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Per Nykrog 6239, Stephen Owen 7418, Lino Pertile 3416, Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave spring term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term), and Jan Ziolkowski 7275

*Comparative Literature 399. Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 2893
Margaret Alexiou 1214 (on leave spring term), Sacvan Bercovitch 7638, Svetlana Boym 1926, Michel Chaouli 1681, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, George G. Grabowicz 4511 (on leave spring term), Karl S. Guthke 1715 (on leave fall term), Alan Heimert 1631 (on leave 1999-00), Barbara E. Johnson 7626, Walter Kaiser 2561, Robert Kiely 1621, James L. Kugel 7575 (on leave spring term), Francisco Márquez 5064, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Per Nykrog 6239, Stephen Owen 7418, Lino Pertile 3416, Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave spring term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term), and Jan Ziolkowski 7275
Note: Candidates for the doctoral degree in Comparative Literature may pursue advanced studies under the individual supervision of these instructors. Permission to register for this course should be obtained from the instructor whose guidance is sought and from the Chairman of the Department.