Comparative Literature

Faculty of the Department of Comparative Literature

Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin (Chair)
Svetlana Boym, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature (on leave spring term)
Joaquim-Francisco Coelho, Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal and Professor of Comparative Literature
James Engell, Gurney Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature (Director of Graduate Studies)
Luis M. Girón Negrón, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Languages and Literatures (on leave spring term)
John T. Hamilton, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Literature
Barbara E. Johnson, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society (on leave 2001-02)
Walter Kaiser, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus (on leave 2001-02)
Despina Kakoudaki, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and of Literature
James L. Kugel, Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature
Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature
Stephen Owen, James Bryant Conant University Professor (on leave 2002-2003)
Judith Ryan, Harvard College Professor and Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature (on leave fall 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, Harvard College Professor, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, and Professor of Comparative Literature
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, Powell M. Cabot Research Professor of American Literature (on leave fall term)
George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevs‘kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature
Karl S. Guthke, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture
Robert Kiely, Harvard College Professor and the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English (on leave spring term)
Sandra Naddaff, Senior Lecturer on Literature
Maria Tatar, Harvard College Professor and John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Alfred Thomas, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, John L Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities

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). Hours to be arranged.
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 given in 2002–03.

[Comparative Literature 103r. Literature and Politics: The Case of Zionism]
Catalog Number: 6773
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Seminar on the interrelationship between politics and literature. Studies novels, stories, poems, and dramas that engage in the struggle over the settlement and creation of Israel. Works in different languages reflect different cultural traditions and perspectives. Writers include George Eliot, Haim Nahman Bialik, Yosef Haim Brenner, Sholem Aleichman, S.Y. Agnon, Haim Hazaz, Arthur Koestler, Herman Wouk, A.B. Yehoshua, A.M. Klein.
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.

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 first-person narratives and poems from medieval/early modern Europe. Examples drawn from spiritual autobiographies (Augustine, Margery Kempe, Teresa of Avila), letter collections (Heloise and Abelard), maqama literature, troubadour lyric, Hispano-Jewish poetry (Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi), pilgrimage narratives, medieval allegories, Dante, Spanish colonial historiography, and the picaresque novel.
Note: 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 2002–03. 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 2002–03. No reading knowledge of Spanish, French, or German required.

Comparative Literature 156. The Literature of Destruction
Catalog Number: 2746
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
How does art, which strives for perfection, confront the attempt to desecrate and obliterate a people? How does culture influence responses to the destruction of European Jewry—what English calls the “Holocaust?” This course addresses these questions through study of works in various languages and genres, including diaries of the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos, memoirs, novels, plays, and poems. All readings in translation.

Comparative Literature 158. Turning the Century: Culture, Technology, and Representation, 1870-1910
Catalog Number: 9311
Despina Kakoudaki
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 10 and occasional film screenings to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 12
This interdisciplinary class explores the rise of a culture of novelty in the period from 1870 to 1910. Focus on the emergence of new visual media such as photography and film, new ideas about the body and sexuality, and a new relationship to public space and consumer culture.

[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 2002–03. All texts can be read in English.

Comparative Literature 160. Literary Forgeries and Mystifications
Catalog Number: 3614
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (spring term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
Examines literary forgeries and mystifications (from Ossian and the Igor Tale to Ern Malley and the Book of Vles) with special focus on their “national” dimension, i.e., their role in modern identity formation and political mythmaking. Also considers the psychology and esthetics of simulation and mystificaion and their reflection in selected works of Gide, Borges, Nabokov, Pavic and others.
Note: All readings in English.

Comparative Literature 163. From Kafka to Kundera: Questions of Identity in Central European Modernist Fiction
Catalog Number: 7586
Alfred Thomas
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 12. EXAM GROUP: 14
Explores interrelated issues of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in key works by German, Polish, and Czech writers of the 20th century (Witold Gombrowicz, Egon Hostovsky, Bohumil Hrabal, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler, Bruno Schulz, and Richard Weiner.) Includes film versions of Kafka’s “The Trial” and Schnitzler’s “Dream Story.”
Note: All readings in English.

[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 2003–04. All texts can be read in English translation.

Comparative Literature 165. The Holocaust and Problems of Representation
Catalog Number: 0577 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Susan R. Suleiman
Half course (spring term). Th., 3–5:30; and additional film screenings to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
Can the story of the Holocaust be told? Is there such a thing as “the story” of the Holocaust? Who is authorized to tell it, and how? Do aesthetic categories apply to Holocaust art? Are some representations unacceptable? If so, why? We will explore these and other questions raised by a wide range of works (oral and written testimonies, novels, essays, comic strips, documentary and feature films, poetry, monuments) produced from 1945 to the present in Europe, Israel, and the United States. Works by Levi, Wiesel, Lanzmann, Ophuls, Appelfeld, Fink, Spiegelman, Spielberg, Delbo, and others.

[Comparative Literature 166. The Comic Tradition in Jewish Culture]
Catalog Number: 3418
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Studies some of the genres, subjects, theories and uses of comedy in Modern Jewish culture. Examines the joke, parody, satire, film and stage comedy, and stand-up humor. Asks what are the functions of humor? What are the methods of humor? Does humor have a national dimension? Are Jews predisposed to comedy, and if so, why?
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03. Readers of Yiddish may take this course as Yiddish 200.

[Comparative Literature 167. Contemporary Fiction: The Novel After Theory]
Catalog Number: 1808
Judith Ryan
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines a series of novels from 1980 to the present that build consciously on recent literary and cultural theory. Also explores the relation of fictional narrative to history, social problems, and ideology. Authors treated include: Helen Darville, Marguerite Duras, David Malouf, Christoph Ransmayr, Marilynne Robinson, Patrick Süsskind, Graham Swift, and Christa Wolf. Theorists include: Barthes, Bhabha, Baudrillard, Derrida, Hassan, Lacan, and White.
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.

[Comparative Literature 168. Literature and Film]
Catalog Number: 8121
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring 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 2002–03.

[Comparative Literature 182. 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 2002–03.

Primarily for Graduates

[*Comparative Literature 207. Theory and Methods in Comparative Oral Traditions: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 7426
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall 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 2002–03. Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

Comparative Literature 208. Experience and Expression: Seminar
Catalog Number: 0767
John T. Hamilton
Half course (fall term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Addresses the issue of subjective immediacy and the expropriating power of language within the German and French tradition: Rousseau, Goethe, Hölderlin, Hegel, Nietzsche, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Rilke, Bergson, Dilthey, Heidegger, Lacan and Celan.

*Comparative Literature 210. Comparative Themes in the Literatures of Medieval Spain: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3298 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
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 the Spanish epic, the 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: Spanish, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew materials will be read in English translation but students are encouraged to work with the originals.

[*Comparative Literature 211. Mysticism and Literature: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 3867
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines trends, issues, and debates in the comparative study of mystical literature. Close readings of primary works by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim authors from the Middle Ages through the 16th century. Topics include poetry and mysticism; allegory, symbolism, and Scripture; body and gender; apophasis vs. cataphasis; exemplarity and autobiographism; language and experience. Also examines creative engagement of premodern mystical literature in selected works by modern authors (Borges, T.S. Eliot, Goytisolo) and literary theorists (DeCerteau.)
Note: Expected to be given in 2003–04.

Comparative Literature 215. Melopoeia: On German Music and Letters: Seminar
Catalog Number: 9138
John T. Hamilton
Half course (spring term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Examines music theories in German literature and philosophy (Schlegel to Adorno). Topics include: Romantic Universalpoesie, the syntax of melody, the tone-poem, secularization and the rise of chromatization, Kulturpolitik; etc.

[*Comparative Literature 260. Literature and Exile: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 3691
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
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 given in 2002–03. Open to qualified undergraduates.

[*Comparative Literature 261. Memory and Modernity: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 6923 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Svetlana Boym
Half course (fall 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 2002–03. All texts available in English, but reading texts in the original is encouraged. Primarily for graduate students; qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 262. Aesthetics and Freedom
Catalog Number: 5308
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Examines philosophical, political, and aesthetic conceptions of freedom from French and American revolutions to postcommunism. Topics: aesthetic education and politics, democratic individualism and the myth of America, love and experience of modernity, avantgarde revolution and writers’ trials, technology and ethics.
Note: Open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates. The discussions in class will be based mostly on the English translations. However, the use of the texts in the original languages (Russian, French, and German) is encouraged for the final paper.

Comparative Literature 265. Vision in Motion: Science and Technology in Early Film
Catalog Number: 6060
Despina Kakoudaki
Half course (spring term). M., 4–6; Film Screenings: F., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 9
This class explores the emergence of the moving image and its relationship to science, narrative, technological innovation, and representation. We will examine pre-cinematic experiments in photography and other media, film techniques and technologies, and the work of major early filmmakers and studios.

*Comparative Literature 269. Paralysis: Seminar
Catalog Number: 8517
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
How does paralysis inform aesthetics? Part One focuses on speech paralysis (Hamlet), hysterical paralysis (Broken Glass), and paralyzed rulers (FDR, Claudius). Part Two considers movement/stillness in painting (Kahlo, Masaccio) and cinema (Rear Window, Breathing Lessons) and examines first-person polio narratives. Texts also include history of medicine and film/literary theory.
Note: Open to undergraduates by special permission.

Comparative Literature 275. Theory of Narrative: Conference Course
Catalog Number: 3105 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
William Mills Todd III
Half course (fall term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Studies of narrative (fictional, psychoanalytic, historical, sacred) as verbal structure, representation, rhetoric, and social phenomenon. Readings by Jakobson, Barthes, Bakhtin, Iser, Lukács, Foucault, and others. Analysis of the theoretical readings with reference to Russian and European narratives.
Note: Open to advanced undergraduates and graduates. Recommended for potential teaching fellows for Literature and Arts A-60.

[*Comparative Literature 280. Literary Theory and Criticism in the Middle Ages: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 2215
Jan Ziolkowski
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
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 given in 2002–03.

*Comparative Literature 283. Language War: Seminar
Catalog Number: 9342
Marc Shell
Half course (spring term). Th., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Considers language difference as a cause of war. Areas for study include ancient Gilead and Rome as well as Quebec, Nigeria, Hispaniola, the Balkans, Britain, and Israel. Literary problems include translation, heteroglossia, accent, and multilingualism. Texts by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Celan, and Beckett; theoretical works in sociolinguistics, politics, and rhetoric.
Note: Open to undergraduates by special permission.

*Comparative Literature 285. Comparative Romantic Theory: Seminar
Catalog Number: 0752
James Engell
Half course (spring term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
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, the recent self-conscious nature of romantic studies, and aesthetics.
Prerequisite: Some prior knowledge of Romantic literature. Reading knowledge of German desirable but not required.

*Comparative Literature 287r. Selected Topics in Poetics and Rhetoric: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7999
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall term). Tu., 12–2. EXAM GROUP: 14, 15
Points of departure: Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric.
Note: Knowledge of Greek not required. Qualified undergraduates welcome.

*Comparative Literature 299ar (formerly *Comparative Literature 299a). Literary Theory: Proseminar
Catalog Number: 2431
Stephen Owen
Half course (fall term). Tu., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
An introduction to some perennial problems in literary studies (mimesis, authorship, form) and to some of the ways in which these problems have been discussed in literary theory since the 1960’s.
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
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926 (on leave spring term), Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060 (on leave spring term), George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, John T. Hamilton 3977, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave 2001-02), Walter Kaiser 2561 (on leave 2001-02), Despina Kakoudaki 3979, Robert Kiely 1621 (on leave spring term), James L. Kugel 7575, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Stephen Owen 7418 (on leave 2002-2003), Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave fall term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, and Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term)

*Comparative Literature 397. Direction of Doctoral Dissertations
Catalog Number: 0320
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926 (on leave spring term), Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060 (on leave spring term), George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, John T. Hamilton 3977, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave 2001-02), Walter Kaiser 2561 (on leave 2001-02), Despina Kakoudaki 3979, Robert Kiely 1621 (on leave spring term), James L. Kugel 7575, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Stephen Owen 7418 (on leave 2002-2003), Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave fall term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, and Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term)

*Comparative Literature 399. Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 2893
Jan Ziolkowski 7275, Sacvan Bercovitch 7638 (on leave fall term), Svetlana Boym 1926 (on leave spring term), Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060 (on leave spring term), George G. Grabowicz 4511, Karl S. Guthke 1715, John T. Hamilton 3977, Barbara E. Johnson 7626 (on leave 2001-02), Walter Kaiser 2561 (on leave 2001-02), Despina Kakoudaki 3979, Robert Kiely 1621 (on leave spring term), James L. Kugel 7575, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Stephen Owen 7418 (on leave 2002-2003), Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave fall term), Marc Shell 3176, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Maria Tatar 3645, William Mills Todd III 1634, and Ruth R. Wisse 3177 (on leave spring term)
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.