Literature 11. Writing Across Cultures: Literatures of the World (from 1750 to the present)
Catalog Number: 4361
David Damrosch (Columbia University)
Half course (spring term). M., 1–3, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
An overview of world literature in the modern period through a series of international styles and literary and social movements. Reading imaginative texts from around the world, we will examine the interplay of local, national, regional, and global languages, literatures, and cultures, exploring the ways writers have responded to the tensions and the opportunities of an emerging modernity.
Note: This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
*Literature 12. Introduction to Literary Studies
Catalog Number: 3548 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Jacob M. Emery
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
An introduction to the basic issues of literary culture. How do works demand different modes of reading and interpretation? What is the relationship between thought, language, and writing? How can we relate texts to the cultural and economic contexts in which they are read? The course engages these and related questions through a wide range of literary and theoretical readings. Authors include Plato, Shakespeare, Milton, Marx, Tolstoy, James, Kafka, Nabokov, and Barthes.
*Literature 91r. Supervised Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 1074
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Hours to be arranged.
A graded, supervised course of reading and research to be conducted by a person approved by the Committee.
Note: Permission of Director of Studies required.
*Literature 97. Tutorial — Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 4595
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of Literature 97 is required of all concentrators in their sophomore year.
*Literature 98a. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 3119
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one term of Literature 98a is required of all concentrators in their junior year.
*Literature 98b. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 1528
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one term of Literature 98b is required of all concentrators in their junior year.
*Literature 99a. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 4857
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one term of Literature 99a is required of all concentrators in their senior year.
*Literature 99b. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 1290
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one term of Literature 99b is required of all concentrators in their senior year.
[*Literature 104. On Theory]
Catalog Number: 8760 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
What is theory? What is the difference between literary, critical and cultural theory? What is the relation between theory and reading? This course introduces students to various concepts of theory (Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Balibar, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Saussure, Cixous, Kristeva, Butler and others). Focuses on theoretical texts and will bring in literary texts where necessary.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
*Literature 106. On Lyric
Catalog Number: 6351 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Christopher D. Johnson
Half course (spring term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Explores the history of Western lyric poetry and how lyric has given voice to the recurrent themes of love, death, and subjectivity. Poetic techniques and forms will be examined, as will the roles that lyric has played as a vehicle for intellectual and cultural values. Poets to be read include Sappho, Catullus, Ovid, Bertran de Born, Dante, Petrarch, Donne, Quevedo, Sponde, Goethe, Labé, Blake, Dickinson, Baudelaire, Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Celan, Pound, Akhmatova, and Carson.
*Literature 109. On Translation
Catalog Number: 0594 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Sandra Naddaff
Half course (fall term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Examines theories of translation from various periods (Dryden, Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher, Benjamin, de Man, among others). Also looks closely at specific translated texts (e.g., various English translations of The Thousand and One Nights), and considers such topics as the notion of “unequal languages,” the problem of cultural translation, translation post-9/11, and the possibility of untranslatability. Final project involves an original translation and commentary.
Note: Preference given to Literature concentrators.
Prerequisite: Reading knowledge of one foreign language.
[Literature 115. Literature and the Environment]
Catalog Number: 3677
Karen Thornber
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines how literature from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe has addressed environmental concerns and crises. Focuses on literary works that explore the uneasy relationship between human desire and the survival of the non-human world. Introduces concepts of ecocriticism, ecofeminism, ecology, environmental criticism and environmental justice. Critical readings by Adamson, Bhabha, Buell, Conley, Dimock, Foucault, Glotfelty, Said, Stein, Snyder, Williams, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2010–11.
*Literature 116. Literature and Science
Catalog Number: 6289 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Christopher D. Johnson
Half course (fall term). Th., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
Explores how literature in different historical periods represents and reshapes the ideas, methods, and language of science. Compares the ways reason and the imagination function in literature and science. Considers how literature rethinks the cultural and historical significance of the scientific enterprise. Primary texts include Lucretius, Donne, Copernicus, Kepler, Cavendish, Fontenelle, Shelley, Goethe, Darwin, Calvino and Gibson.
Literature 117. Literature, Gender, and Revolution - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 3626
Karen Thornber
Half course (fall term). W., 3–5.
Explores relationships among literature, gender, and revolution in China, Cuba, Iran, Japan, Korea, and Russia from the late 19th century to the present. Readings by Butler, Chukovskaya, Danishvar, de Beauvoir, Foucault, Mikiso Hane, Kim Ilyop, Loynaz, Marruz, Pleck, Qiu Jin, Scott, Tamura Toshiko among others.
[*Literature 119. On Comparative Arts]
Catalog Number: 0078 Enrollment: Limited to 18.
Marc Shell and Daniel Albright
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Is there one Art, or are there many arts? We will consider affinity and difference among literature, painting, music, and other arts. Student projects will investigate works of art that submit to or reject a particular material medium. Theory from Plato (Ion), Aristotle, Lessing, Burke, Diderot, Rousseau, Hegel, Pater, Greenberg, Heidegger; examples from Homer, Leonardo, Turner, Monet, Rossetti, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Apollinaire, Schoenberg--and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[*Literature 121. Phenomenal Cosmic Powers: Adaptations, Transformations, and Translations of the 1001 Nights ]
Catalog Number: 5879 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Sandra Naddaff
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines the way one of the foundational narrative texts is transformed for different media and genres. Focuses on a variety of films, illustrations/images, musical renditions, versions, and re-tellings of stories from the 1001 Nights. Considers various translations (Galland, Burton); films (The Thief of Baghdad, Il fiore delle mille e una notte, Aladdin); music (Rimsky-Korsakov, Kismet); and literary works (Poe, Borges, Barth, Mahfouz).
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
Literature 129. Reading the 18th Century Through 21st-Century Eyes - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8742
Christie McDonald
Half course (spring term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Why read texts from the French Enlightenment today and how? Analysis of novels, plays, media events, and films of the 18th and 20th-21st centuries that revisit key questions: the present in its relationship to the past; what constitutes change? Topics include textual rewritings and continuing controversies around the individual, the family, the state, and society; pornography and reproduction; opinion and the media. Readings include works by Beaumarchais, Diderot, Franklin, Kant, Rousseau, Sade, Beauvoir, Blanchot, Boyd, Foucault, Kundera, Shine, Weiss.
[*Literature 140 (formerly *Literature 128). Performing Texts]
Catalog Number: 3404 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Julie A. Buckler
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines performance as its own subject in drama, opera, musical theater, film, and dance (e.g., Tosca, The Red Shoes, The Seagull), and as represented in verbal and visual art. Juxtaposes perspectives rendered by literature and the arts with theoretical readings in the emerging interdisciplinary and de-centered field of performance studies.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[*Literature 143 (formerly *Literature 136). Writers and Their Medium]
Catalog Number: 5842 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on the relation between writers and the act of writing (Blanchot, Bernhard, Cixous, James, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, Rilke, Tsvetaeva and others). Focuses on the relation between writing, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Special attention will be paid to questions of gender, representation and performance.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
*Literature 146 (formerly *Literature 124). Space and Place in Postmodern Culture
Catalog Number: 8228 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Focuses on renewed awareness of space in contemporary theory, literature and film. Examines notions of space and place under the impact of consumerism and electronic technologies in a global world. Texts and films include Lefebvre, Godard, de Certeau, Wenders, Baudrillard, Perec, Tati, Augé, Deleuze and Guattari, Virilio and Verhoeven.
[*Literature 150 (formerly *Literature 140). Colonial and Post-Colonial Spaces: France-North Africa]
Catalog Number: 9366 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on transformations of colonial and postcolonial spaces in North Africa that include Morocco, Tunisia, and, especially, Algeria by way of literature, film and theory (Allouache, Bouraoui, Camus, Djebar, Fanon, Kateb Yacine, Mammeri, Memmi, Said, Sebbar, Tlatli and others). Special attention is given to problems of language, subjectivity, identity and citizenship, nation and community. Also examines the emergence of new cultural spaces in connection with postcolonial and global migrations in France and in Europe.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[Literature 153 (formerly Comparative Literature 153). Saul Bellow and the New York Intellectuals]
Catalog Number: 2506
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Studies Bellow’s major works in the context of the intellectual and literary community that constituted America’s first European style "intelligentsia." Considers work of Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, writers of Partisan Review and Commentary.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Class is conducted in a modified seminar format.
Literature 157 (formerly 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 10. EXAM GROUP: 3
It has been argued that the poetic "I" in premodern literatures is not a vehicle for self-representation, but an archetype of the human. The course will examine this thesis against the rise of autobiographical writing in medieval and early modern Europe. Readings include spiritual autobiographies (Augustine, Kempe, Teresa of Ávila), letter collections, maqama literature, troubadour lyric, Hispano-Jewish poetry, pilgrimage narratives, medieval allegories, Dante and the picaresque novel. Theoretical perspectives by Spitzer, Lejeune, Zumthor and DeCerteau.
Note: All readings in English translation.
Literature 162 (formerly *Comparative Literature 207). Theory and Methods in Comparative Oral Traditions: Seminar
Catalog Number: 7426
Gregory Nagy
Half course (fall term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Genres, forms, and themes of oral traditions in poetry and prose. Theories of performance and composition. Comparative metrical and formulaic analysis.
Note: Knowledge of Greek not required.
Literature 163. Jewish Languages and Literature - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 8627
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5, plus an additional hour to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
What is a Jewish language? What is Jewish literature? General topics are alphabetization, translation, oral tradition and diaspora. Languages worldwide include Hebrew as well as Judeo-Spanish, -Aramaic, -Arabic, -French, -Greek, -Italian, -Persian, -Spanish, -Malayalam, Yiddish, and other secular Jewish languages. Readings usually include love stories, medical and philosophic texts.
Literature 164 (formerly Comparative Literature 164). The 20th-Century Post-Realist Novel in Eastern Europe: Conference Course
Catalog Number: 7762
George G. Grabowicz
Half course (spring term). M., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
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: All texts can be read in English translation.
[*Literature 165 (formerly Comparative Literature 165). The Holocaust and Problems of Representation]
Catalog Number: 0577 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Susan R. Suleiman
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
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? We explore these and other questions raised by a wide range of works (oral and written testimonies, novels, essays, comic strips, films, poetry, monuments) produced from 1945 to the present in Europe, Israel, and the US.
Note: Expected to be given in 2010–11.
Literature 166 (formerly Comparative Literature 166). The Comic Tradition in Jewish Culture
Catalog Number: 3418
Ruth R. Wisse
Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., at 11, and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13
Jews are probably best known in America today for their roles in the Holocaust and in Humor. What, if anything, is the relation between these spheres? Does Jewish humor make fun of the Jews, or does it make fun of those who make fun of the Jews? Studies some of the theories and uses of Jewish humor, some of its leading practitioners and outstanding works. Invites comparison with other comic traditions and investigation of "national" humor.
Note: Readers of Yiddish may take this course as Yiddish 200. This course, when taken for a letter grade, meets the Core area requirement for Literature and Arts A.
[Literature 167 (formerly 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: Don DeLillo, Marguerite Duras, John Irving, David Malouf, Christoph Ransmayr, Patrick Süsskind, Graham Swift, and Christa Wolf. Theorists include: Barthes, Bhabha, Baudrillard, Derrida, Hassan, Lacan, and White.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[Literature 178 (formerly Slavic 178). Trauma: Representation, Theory, Experience: Conference Course]
Catalog Number: 9125
Joanna Nizynska
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
How do literature and film convey traumatic experiences and how does trauma challenge representation? What constitutes post-traumatic syndrome in the life of the individual and society? How does it affect the formation of personal and collective memory? Using texts and films by Agamben, Borowski, Caruth, Freud, LaCapra, Polanski and Kieslowski, we will consider historical traumas (e.g., the Holocaust) and individual trauma, the transposition of traumatic memory/experiences into narratives, and the trans-generational transmission of the traumatic.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. All readings in English translation. All films subtitled.
Literature 184. Imagining the City: Literature, Film, and the Arts
Catalog Number: 2332
Giuliana Bruno and Svetlana Boym
Half course (fall term). Th., 11:30–1, and a weekly film screening W., 7-9 pm, and. weekly sections to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 13, 14
How do visual representation and narrative figuration contribute to construct urban identity? Explores the urban imagination in different artforms: architecture, cinema, literature, photography, and painting. Topics to be mapped out include: cities and modernity, metrophilia and metrophobia, the museum and cultural archaeology, the ruin and the construction site, interior space and public sphere, technology and virtual cities. We will focus on the European city, as we travel through Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Naples, and Rome
Note: Cannot be taken for credit if VES 184 had been taken. Cannot be taken concurrently with VES 184. Also offered jointly with the Graduate School of Design as 4353.
[*Literature 187r (formerly *Literature 187). Selected Topics in Poetics and Rhetoric: Seminar]
Catalog Number: 7999
Gregory Nagy
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Points of departure: Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Knowledge of Greek not required.
*Comparative Literature 211. Mysticism and Literature: Seminar
Catalog Number: 3867
Luis M. Girón Negrón
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Trends and debates in the comparative study of mystical literature. Primary works by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim authors from the Middle Ages through the 16th century. Also modern authors (Borges, Eliot, Goytisolo) and literary theorists (DeCerteau).
Note: Students admitted by permission of course head. Offered jointly with the Divinty School as 3802.
[Comparative Literature 230. The Poetics of Empire: Colonization, Translation, and Literary Rewriting]
Catalog Number: 0694
Karen Thornber
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores how colonial, semicolonial, and postcolonial writers from Africa, the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia have reconfigured literature from American, European, and Japanese (former) metropoles via translations and intertextual recreations. Also addresses metropolitan engagement with literature from (former) colonies/semicolonies. Aims to rethink the phenomenon of world literature and theories of cultural negotiation.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[Comparative Literature 241. Reading Spinoza and Leibniz with Gilles Deleuze]
Catalog Number: 1652
Christopher D. Johnson
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
“In the history of philosophy,” Deleuze writes, “a commentary should act as a veritable double and bear the maximal modification appropriate to a double.” Examines the thoughts of Spinoza (The Ethics) and Leibniz (The Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics) in the context of Deleuze’s commentaries.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
Comparative Literature 246. The Critic in Culture
Catalog Number: 3141
David Damrosch (Columbia University)
Half course (spring term). Tu., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
This class will examine the interplay of scholarly analysis and cultural critique in a range of major modern critics and theorists, exploring their stylistic and essayistic strategies as they seek to find - or create - an audience for their ideas. Readings in Nietzsche, Foucault, Benjamin, Kobayashi, Woolf, Adorno, Barthes, Cixous, Said, Miyoshi, Minh-ha, Anzaldúa, Penley, Gramsci, and Agamben.
[*Comparative Literature 257. Trauma, Memory, and Creativity]
Catalog Number: 7853
Susan R. Suleiman
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
We will examine classic and contemporary theories of psychic trauma in individual and collective contexts and explore the relations between trauma, resilience, play, and artistic innovation with special attention to modern literary autobiography; fiction; some attention to film and visual narrative.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Open to qualified juniors and seniors with approval of the instructor.
Prerequisite: Good reading knowledge of at least one non-English language.
[*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: nostalgia and search for newness, and ethics of remembering, modern “memory sites.” Special attention to contemporary East-European reflection on art, memory, and nation.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. All texts available in English, but reading texts in the original is encouraged. Primarily for graduate students, but qualified undergraduates welcome.
[*Comparative Literature 262. Aesthetics and Freedom]
Catalog Number: 5308
Svetlana Boym
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Examines philosophical, political, and aesthetic conceptions of freedom from French and American revolutions to postcommunism. Topics: aesthetic education and the space of freedom, the myth of America from a cross-cultural perspective, love, and modern ethics.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10. Open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates. The discussions in class are 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 263. Journey, Exile, and Displacement in Modern Arabic Literature
Catalog Number: 3125
William E. Granara
Half course (spring term). Th., 4–6. EXAM GROUP: 18
The course examines narratives of journey, exile, and displacement in modern Arabic literature that trespass geographical, political and linguistic boundaries, and create new literary spaces that define and reshape modern Arab identities. Theoretical readings will include Prattt, Said, Rushdie and Kaplan.
Note: Arabic helpful but not required. Undergraduates welcome.
[Comparative Literature 264. Thinking and Writing Transculturally]
Catalog Number: 6133
Karen Thornber
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores approaches to transculturation in the production and evaluation of literature in light of new understandings of human and textual border-crossings. Topics include the ethics of dividing cultural products along ethnic, linguistic, and national lines on the one hand and classifying phenomena as global on the other, and the ramifications of cross-cultural comparison. We also examine the relationship between creative production and such topics as empire, travel/diaspora, translingualism, and literary reconfiguration.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
[Comparative Literature 266. Irony]
Catalog Number: 9984
Panagiotis Roilos
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores major philosophical and aesthetic discourses on irony as well as literary manipulations of the trope in western European tradition. Topics discussed include irony and rhetoric, parody, laughter, irony, and the post-modern.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
Comparative Literature 273. Approaches to Modernity: The Metropolis
Catalog Number: 2521
Svetlana Boym
Half course (fall term). W., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 7, 8
Examines the relationship between urban experience and debates on modernity/postmodernity in art, architecture and social theory. Topics: nostalgia and modernization, cultural archeology and architecture of transition, memorial, museum and public art, national identity and cosmopolitan imagination, metropolis and megapolis.
Note: Students in this class will be encouraged to attend lectures and screenings for VES 184 and develop individual research and/or creative projects.
[Comparative Literature 275. Theory of Narrative: Conference Course ]
Catalog Number: 3105 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
William Mills Todd III
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Studies of selected narratives (fictional, psychoanalytic, historical, sacred) as semiotic structures, representations, rhetorical gambits, and cultural phenomena. Readings by Jakobson, Barthes, Bakhtin, Iser, Lukács, Foucault and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2010–11. Open to advanced undergraduates and graduates. Recommended for potential teaching fellows.
Comparative Literature 276. Renaissance Poetics and Rhetoric
Catalog Number: 2534
Christopher D. Johnson
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Examines Renaissance literary criticism and theory in the context of the arts of poetry and rhetoric. Topics include imitation, genre, decorum, and the conceit. Readings from Petrarch to Gracián and Boileau.
Comparative Literature 277. Literature and Diaspora - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 6042
Karen Thornber
Half course (spring term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
Examines creative and critical discourse from and about the African, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, and Korean diasporas. Explores the relationship between diaspora and constructions of artistic and cultural identities, transculturation, translation, and multilingualism.
[Comparative Literature 283. Language Differences] - (New Course)
Catalog Number: 7468
Marc Shell
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Considers language difference both as a literary theme and as a potent cause of war in the political arena. Historical foci include Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Africa. Literary issues include translation, heteroglossia, cinematography, and multilingualism. Works of literature include Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dove.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
Comparative Literature 286 (formerly Literature 148). Metaphor
Catalog Number: 6074
Christopher D. Johnson
Half course (fall term). M., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Explores the theory and practice of metaphor in literature, philosophy, and science. Topics include: the aesthetic, heuristic, and epistemological functions of metaphor; metaphor’s relation to allegory, irony, and other “major tropes”; metaphor in lyric poetry. Readings include Aristotle, Gracián, Jakobson, Freud, Ricoeur, Blumenberg, Kofman,Derrida, de Man, and Kuhn.
Note: All readings will be available in translation, but students are encouraged to work in the original languages.
[Comparative Literature 288. Antiquity and Beyond: Modern Critical Theory and the Classics]
Catalog Number: 7557
Panagiotis Roilos
Half course (spring term). W., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 8, 9
Explores the relevance of ancient literature for modern critical theory and the applicability of current theoretical discourses to classical texts and societies. Topics include: trafficability of art; ritual theory; sexuality; gender studies; irony; orality and literacy; construction of power.
Note: Expected to be given in 2009–10.
*Comparative Literature 299ar. Theory and Comparative Literature: Proseminar
Catalog Number: 2431
David Damrosch (Columbia University) and Karen Thornber
Half course (fall term). W., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 6, 7
An investigation into current trends in comparative literature, with an emphasis on methodologies, resources, and theory.
Note: Required of first-year graduate students in Comparative Literature; others may be admitted by permission of the instructor.
*Comparative Literature 397. Direction of Doctoral Dissertations
Catalog Number: 0320
Daniel Albright 4615 (on leave spring term), Svetlana Boym 1926, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, William E. Granara 1054, Christopher D. Johnson 4301, Christie McDonald 1160, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Stephen Owen 7418, Panagiotis Roilos 1982 (on leave 2008-09), Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave spring term), Marc Shell 3176 (on leave spring term), Werner Sollors 7424 (on leave fall term), Diana Sorensen 4214, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Karen Thornber 5764, William Mills Todd III 1634, and Ruth R. Wisse 3177
*Comparative Literature 399. Reading and Research
Catalog Number: 2893
Daniel Albright 4615 (on leave spring term), Svetlana Boym 1926, Joaquim-Francisco Coelho 7715, Verena A. Conley 2250, James Engell 8076, Luis M. Girón Negrón 3060, Christopher D. Johnson 4301, Christie McDonald 1160, Sandra Naddaff 7779, Gregory Nagy 1423, Stephen Owen 7418, Panagiotis Roilos 1982 (on leave 2008-09), Judith Ryan 1135 (on leave spring term), Marc Shell 3176 (on leave spring term), Werner Sollors 7424 (on leave fall term), Diana Sorensen 4214, Susan R. Suleiman 7234, Karen Thornber 5764, William Mills Todd III 1634, and Ruth R. Wisse 3177
Candidates for the doctoral degree in Comparative Literature may pursue advanced studies under the individual supervision of these instructors.
Note: Permission of the instructor and the Chairman of the Department required.