Comparative Literature

COLI 1220. Poetry and Poetics. (3 Credits)

The goal of this course is to extend the student's reading experience by demonstrating the interconnection between literature and culture in its widest sense. Students will also learn the techniques of poetry and close reading.

COLI 1230. History and the Novel. (3 Credits)

Not a history of the novel, this course invites students to view the novel and history not as separate fields of study but as mutually informing ways of representing the world. To this end, it will examine representative novels and historical analyses that deliberately cross boundaries presumed to define literature and history.

COLI 1413. Fiction and Human Rights. (4 Credits)

Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 1800. Internship. (1 Credit)

COLI 1999. Tutorial. (1 Credit)

Tutorial.

COLI 2000. Texts and Contexts. (3 Credits)

An introduction to the literary analysis of texts and the cultural and historical contexts within which they are produced and read. Significant class time will be devoted to critical writing and to speaking about literature. Each section of Texts and Contexts will have a focus developed by the individual instructor and expressed in its subtitle. This course fulfills the Core requirements for the second Eloqentia Perfecta seminar.

Attributes: ENGL, EP2, TC.

Prerequisite: ENGL 1102.

Mutually Exclusive: .

COLI 2800. Major Enrichment Internship. (4 Credits)

Supervised course in which a student's major-relevant internship is combined with regular meetings with a professor, with the aim of producing a research paper about some aspect of the institution with which the student is interning. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 2999. Tutorial. (2 Credits)

Independent Study.

COLI 3000. Literary Theories. (4 Credits)

This course explores big questions of literary study, questions that we don’t usually slow down to ask, such as: What is literature? Why do we call some texts “literary”? How does language work? And for that matter, how does the human mind work? What are the different ways that we read and interpret literature? What are the most relevant contexts for understanding literature and the broader field of culture, and how do we relate literary and artistic works to those contexts? How do categories such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion play out in literary form? This course starts from the premise that literary theory is not just about literature, and that its tools are eminently useful in analyzing other cultural phenomena. With this in mind, across the semester we’ll look at theory that informs the ways we read texts, and we’ll look at theory that takes those tools and applies them to cultural objects more broadly. For more information about the particular section of “Literary Theories” you are signing up for, please look at that class’s “notes” in Banner. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, AMST, ASLT, ENGL.

COLI 3003. Intercultural Theory. (4 Credits)

In this course, we will explore the "contact zone" as a theoretical concept and a site of encounters, conflicts, and negotiations. In her book "Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation" (1992), Mary Louise Pratt describes the contact zone as "the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict." Like Pratt, the contact zones we study will not only stress ideas of coexistence and interaction but also insist on "asymmetrical relations of power." Over the course of the semester, we will focus in particular on the following themes: home/displacement, temporality, personhood/community, translingualism/transculturation/translation, and recycling/adaptation/appropriation/imitation. In this course, we will also envision the classroom as a multilingual, multicultural, and multidisciplinary contact zone that fosters creative responses through a series of activities and collaborative projects. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: MLL.

COLI 3006. Trauma Theory. (4 Credits)

This course will introduce trauma theory, an approach meant to shed light on the event and aftermath of extreme violence and describe a “structure of experience” characterized by belatedness. This course will also reflect on the structural limits of trauma theory and ask how trauma translates beyond a Eurocentric horizon. We will read classic texts such as Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” post-Freudian interventions, as well as non-European texts. In seeking answers to the theoretical conundrums, we will also weave in readings of literary and cinematic works from the Chinese context. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: CNST, MLL, PJST, PJWT.

COLI 3010. Politics and Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Rise of Vernacular Culture in the Mediterranean. (4 Credits)

This course analyzes the development of vernacular culture and literature in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. Students will explore the political, historical, and linguistic context within which vernacular languages and cultures emerged between the 11th and 13th centuries. Following Dante’s On Vernacular language—the first linguistic and poetic “map” of the Middle Ages—students will retrace the interrelations linking the Italian vernacular culture to the other traditions within the “romance” domain in the Mediterranean. With the imperial court of Frederick II in Sicily, the Pope in Rome, and the most powerful centers of trade and finance in Florence and other Italian city-states, the Italian peninsula provides a special standing point for the analysis of the relationship between poetry and power in different political contexts: the court of the emperor Frederick II and the powerful communal republics in center and northern Italy will be the focus of the course. Among the texts, authors, and movements included are: Provencal and Italian trobadours; the “Sicilian School” and the encyclopedic culture at the court of the emperor Frederick II (poetry, law, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, translations); religious literature and the Tuscan School of poetry (S. Francis, Jacopone da Todi, Guittone d’Arezzo); and the “New Sweet Style” (Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri). Fulfills the Advanced Literature requirement of the core and satisfies the requirement of Minor and Major in Italian. Cross-listed with MVST and MLAL. Taught in English with coursework in Italian for credit in Italian. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ITAL, MLL, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3025. The Fantastic in Film and Literature. (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary course explores the concept of the fantastic in both film and literature, examining how it operates as a narrative mode and a lens through which to explore cultural, social, and psychological themes. Through a selection of key texts and films, students will investigate the blurred boundaries between reality and the supernatural, the uncanny, and the surreal. Drawing from a range of genres such as fantasy, horror, science fiction, and magical realism, the course will delve into theoretical frameworks that underpin the fantastic, including Todorov’s notion of the fantastic as the hesitation between the supernatural and the natural. Through close analysis of texts and films, students will explore how authors and filmmakers use the fantastic to engage with concepts such as identity, power, otherness, and the unknown. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ALC.

COLI 3031. Medieval Monsters. (4 Credits)

St. Augustine once wrote that the word "monster" derived from the Latin word "monstro," to show, implying that monstrous beings were meant to reflect divine creativity. Over time, this word for unusual beings has taken on a more sinister flavor, even within the Middle Ages. This course will explore the medieval taste for the exotic, from ferocious giants and dog-headed men to the peace-loving sciapod. In this course we will examine the discourse of monstrosity as a complex critical lens through which premodern writers asked important questions of race, religion, civic virtue, and human morality. In our study, we will read selections from Pliny, Augustine, and others before moving through a range of medieval texts, including the Beowulf manuscript, medieval romances, and Mandeville's account. Please note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, ENHD, ENRJ, EP3, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3102. Notre Dame de Paris: The Cathedral in Art, Literature, Culture, & History. (4 Credits)

This course examines the cultural importance of Paris's great gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris. We will examine the cathedral through history, with a focus on its creation and significance for the Middle Ages and on its future after the devastating fire of 2019. We will read some of the medieval French literature that illuminates its stained glass windows and sculpture. Reference will also be made to some of the other great cathedrals of 12th- and 13th-century France, especially Notre Dame de Chartres. Our study of Notre Dame de Paris will include its use through history, from the Revolution and Napoleon to its presence in contemporary film and literature. In French. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, FRME.

Prerequisite: FREN 2600.

COLI 3112. Italian Neorealist Cinema. (4 Credits)

This course will examine the different narrative styles and themes characterizing Italian cinema in the 1940s and 1950s and its relation to the social and political situation of postwar Italy. We will also review the critical debate on the definition and chronology of neorealism and the differences between neorealist cinematic and literary experiences. Screenings will include classics by Visconti, Rossellini, De Sica, and De Santis. This course is taught in English, with coursework in Italian to receive credit in Italian. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ITAL, ITMO.

COLI 3116. Social Issues in Italian Literature and Film. (4 Credits)

Focusing on various aspects of visual language and verbal narratives, this course explores in depth the ethical and moral aspects of historical and socio-political events as evidenced in cinematic and literary works by such authors and directors as Fellini, Pirandello, Lampedusa, Visconti, Salvatores, Carlo Levi, Elsa Morante, Sorrentino, and Camilleri, among others. Taught in English. Italian studies majors and Italian minors in the course are expected to complete the readings as well as writing assignments in Italian. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3119. Contemporary Middle East Film and Literature. (4 Credits)

Examines contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African film and literature, considering postcolonial films and literature as efforts to forge complex new identities in the context of a newly re-mapped region. Particular focus on representations of gender and Islam. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: GLBL, MEST.

COLI 3122. The Eternal Feminine in Literature and Film. (4 Credits)

In this course, we will study the myth of the Eternal Feminine, understood as a source of mystery, fear and fascination bringing many myths of women together. Deeply rooted in our collective imaginary, this complex representation will be analyzed throughout a selection of literary works written from the end of the 18th century (when Goethe uses the expression for the first time) and films that will allow us to discuss the adaptation of the classical texts on screen; the creation and spreading myth through literature, opera, and cinema; and the impact of the feminist critic of the myth in contemporary representations of women. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ALC.

COLI 3123. Surviving the Barbarians in Early Medieval Britain. (4 Credits)

This course explores the literature of ancient and early medieval Britain from the age of the Roman Empire to the time of "Beowulf," with glances south to the Mediterranean and west to Ireland. It considers the contact and conflict between populations long resident in Britain like the Britons and Picts and invaders like the Romans, the Irish and the Saxons—groups who would be subjected to their own invasions later. How did certain groups come to view others as "barbarians," and what was it like to grapple with that label? This course will introduce students to the changing material culture of Britain and to several postcolonial and critical race studies perspectives on the medieval evidence. Readings will be translated from Latin, Old and Middle Welsh, Old English, and Old Norse. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, ENHD, ENRJ, IRST, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3134. 20th Century Art: Modernism and Modernity. (4 Credits)

A survey of the major developments of modern art from the late 19th century until today, with an emphasis on work done before 1940. This course will undertake the larger task of understanding modernism in art as a visual response to the conditions of modernity. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: VART.

COLI 3135. Irish and British High Medieval Literature: Connections and Comparisons. (4 Credits)

This course covers the literature of the period 1000 to 1330 in England, Wales, Ireland, and Northern France in the context of spiritual reform, artistic innovation, political consolidation, and cultural exchange. Readings will include selections from all the major genres of high medieval literature: Arthurian romance and other courtly fictions, history and saga, the outrageous lives and afterlives of the saints, and lyric poetry in English as well as translated from Latin, Welsh, Irish, and French. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, ENHD, IRST, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3137. World Cinema Masterpieces. (4 Credits)

World Cinema Masterpieces provides a close analysis of style, narrative, structure and visual texture in selected masterworks of major European, Asian, and American directors. Directors under consideration include: Renoir, Carne, Lang, Welles, Ophuls, Hitchcock, Bresson, Kurosawa, Ray, Bergman, Rossellini, Fellini, Trufaut, Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Fassbinder and Altman Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, ASAM, ENGL, INST, ISEU, ISIN.

COLI 3143. World Cinema Masterpieces 1960-1980. (4 Credits)

World Cinema Masterpieces, 1960-1980 explores major works of the French New Wave, expressionism, surrealism, epic, and New German cinema--all produced during a twenty year period of extraordinary diversity and experiment. Among the European, North American and Asian directors we will consider are: Truffaut, Rohmer, Trakovsky, Bunuel, Antonioni, Teshigahara, Bergman, Kurbrick, Fassbinder and Malik. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, ASAM, INST, ISEU, ISIN.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1004 or ENGL 2000 or CLAS 2000 or COLI 2000 or HPLC 1201 or HPRH 1001 or HPRH 1051 or HPRH 2001 or HPRH 2051 or MLAL 2000 or LACU 2000.

COLI 3145. Medieval Love in Comparison: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Perspectives. (4 Credits)

The concept of romantic love preoccupies contemporary society and art, as it has done for hundreds of years. Ideas of romantic love have their roots in the literature and ideas of medieval Muslims, Jews, and Christians, who were themselves responding to even earlier ideas about love and sex. In this class, we will ask: What were the discourses of love among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Middle Ages, and how do they impinge on our understanding of love in the present? Readings will include selections from classical poetry, the Bible, and medieval poetry in English or translated from Latin, Occitan, Arabic, Hebrew, and French. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENHD, GLBL, JWST, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3146. Science and Magic in Medieval Literature. (4 Credits)

This course considers the entanglements of language, literature, and knowledge about the natural world during the Middle Ages. We will look at medieval practices of what we would come to call natural and biological science, consider medieval understandings of nature's "occult" power, and explore medieval literature about spells, wonders, witches, and demons. By the course's end, students will better understand the connections between language, culture, and scientific facts, and they will have learned about the long history of magic in the Middle Ages. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, ENHD, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3200. Machiavelli's Utopia. (4 Credits)

In this course we will analyze The Prince as well as Machiavelli's creative work (e.g., his theatrical piece The Mandrake Root and his short story Belfagor. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach for the examination of both the historical and the artistic context in which Machiavelli lived, we will address the question of how and why The Prince was misinterpreted by Italian and European intellectuals and humanists of Machiavelli’s time, leading to a misperception of many of the text's core ideas in an historical moment in which Europe was steadily transforming itself into a domain of absolutism (we will read Reginald Pole, Innocent Gentillet, Erasmus, Montaigne, among others). We will retrieve the original cultural context in which Machiavelli wrote: a climate of strong limitation of political creativity and liberty, which lead Machiavelli to compose The Prince (1513 ca.) inspired by an utopian desire for a new leader who could reconcile all the contradictions of Italy. Course taught in English. Coursework in Italian for credit in Italian. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ITAL, ITRE.

COLI 3202. Ariosto to Galileo: The Invention of Modernity in Renaissance Italy. (4 Credits)

Ariosto and Galileo represent two chronological ends of a revolutionary intellectual period in the Italian Renaissance culture. Between the years 1516 (date of the first edition of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso) and 1610 (date of edition of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius), Italian civilization contributed significantly to the shaping of a new idea of reality. The course is dedicated to the study of this particular period in which masterpieces such as the Furioso, Torquato Tasso’s pastoral poem Aminta, and his epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, as well as Galileo’s works (Sidereus Nuncius, Copernican Letters, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) become the founding texts of a new realism that questioned and distrusted appearances and, by doing so, prepared the intellectual background where Galileo could develop his new scientific method and discover intellectual models useful for his innovative comprehension of the natural world (with strong implications about the separation of theology and science). Recent scholarship insists on the deep influence that literary humanism had on Galileo’s mind who, no surprise, was a reader, a writer of literature and also a literary critic (for example he wrote about Ariosto and also an incomplete commentary on Tasso’s Jerusalem). The course is therefore dedicated to the study of the relationship of literature to the History of Science with close reading of the above mentioned works and also following an interdisciplinary approach devoted to the exploration of the artistic civilization around Ariosto, Tasso, and Galileo. Taught in English with coursework in Italian for credit in Italian. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ALC.

COLI 3210. The Adolescent as Hero. (4 Credits)

Study of literary works and films dealing with adolescence and coming of age. Authors may include Balzac, Gide, Goethe, Mann, Musil, Proust and Rimbaud. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3211. Evil in Literature. (4 Credits)

Evil as perceived in literature from the late 18th century to the end of the twentieth. Authors may include Balzac, Baudelaire, Bronte, Genet, Laclos and Wilde. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3215. The War Novel. (4 Credits)

The course focuses on how the 20th century war novel translates the experience of war into fiction (World War I and II, and the Vietnam War). Readings may include Hemingway, Remarque, Celine, Claude Simon, Tim O'Brien. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3216. Lost Illusions. (4 Credits)

The shift in Western Civilization from the idea of inevitable progress to the more modern mode of uncertainty will be studied through selected literary texts and films. Authors may include Boll, Celine, Duras, Flaubert, Fontane, Hemingway, and Musil. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3220. The Stage and Society. (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the social issues, class relationships, ideals and ideologies, gender issues, justice and diversity issues, and the human emotional and cultural universe as they are represented in the dramatic works of authors/playwrights from Machiavelli (Renaissance) to Dario Fo (21st century). Features of dramatic language, such as stage setting, organization of scenes, and character development, among others, will be discussed as well. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ITAL, MLL, THEA.

COLI 3230. Women in Italian Movies. (4 Credits)

This course will examine the importance that women had in the development of the Italian film industry as producers, directors, and actresses interpreting unforgettable roles, from the earliest pioneer Elvira Notari to Lina Wertmuller and beyond. The construction of femininity and the representation of gender and sexuality in the visual discourse of cinema will be explored in films by both women directors and screenwriters such as Lina Wertmuller, Francesca Archibugi, Liliana Cavani, and men such as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Paolo Sorrentino, among others. The female characters portrayed by these filmmakers are refreshingly realistic: They are not defined by their relationship with men or by their appearance. They are complex, dynamic individuals whose stories are integral to the overall visual narratives of Italy’s postwar cinema. Icons such as Anna Magnani, Claudia Cardinale, Silvana Mangano, Sofia Loren, and their superb acting skills will be analyzed. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ITAL, MLL.

COLI 3250. Represent Sp Civil War. (4 Credits)

This course situates the socio-historical and ideological issues surrounding the Spanish civil war (1936-39) as a broad introduction to 20th century history and culture, beginning with a brief intro to the history of the civil war. Students explore how the war has been represented in media (film, poetry, novel, photography, poster art, journalism, letter and memoir). A brief theoretical intro highlights the concept of history as a text subject to interpretation, while also questioning the relationship between governments and the histories they chose as representative. By studying varied representations of the war, students learn about the many different wars fought- over ideology, class, land, religion, military supremacy, and national history. A research project at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives requires students to analyze the relationship between history and representation in texts from the war. Students analyze reactions of artists and writers to the Spanish civil war through a multinational, multidisciplinary approach to understand the relationship between art and politics in 20th century culture. Authors and artisits include Luis Bunuel, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Capa, Pablo Picasso, George Orwell, Langston Hughes, Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, and Ken Loach. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3357. Writing Asian America. (4 Credits)

What does it mean to be Asian American? How have Asian Americans grappled with the racist assumptions about Asian-ness imposed by U.S. national culture? What ethical modes of being have Asian Americans imagined, what global histories have they uncovered, what social and political possibilities have they dreamt of, and what can they teach us about the historical present? What does it mean to write Asian America? This course fulfills the Pluralism and Advanced Literature Core requirements of the core curriculum. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AAST, ACUP, ADVD, ALC, AMST, ASLT, ENGL, PLUR.

COLI 3359. Asian Diasporic Literatures. (4 Credits)

“To be rooted,” Simone Weil once wrote, “is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” If so, what does uprootedness do to the human soul? How does diaspora, the often violent loss of a native land, challenge the arts of poetry, drama, and story-telling? What geo-historical forces go into creating such violent dislocations? With what ethical and political dilemmas do they confront the diasporic subject? How does diasporic trauma manifest itself across generations? What role can literature play in healing the wounds of the uprooted? This course addresses these questions by examining Asian diasporic literatures of roughly the last half century. Previous writers have included Maxine Hong Kingston, lê thi diem thúy, Jessica Hagedorn, Jhumpa Lahiri, Min Jin Lee, Li-Young Lee, and Ocean Vuong. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AAST, ACUP, ADVD, ALC, AMST, ASHS, ASLT, ENGL, ENRJ, EP3, INST, ISAS, ISIN, PJRC, PJST, PLUR.

COLI 3364. Novels of Ideas: 19th Century. (4 Credits)

An intensive study of four major novels from the second half of the nineteenth century: Melville’s Moby Dick, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. In exploring the ideological texture of these works, the course will consider the influence of such seminal figures as Schopenhauer, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Zola, and Frazer. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, OCST.

Mutually Exclusive: ENGL 3364.

COLI 3365. Novels of Ideas: High Modernism. (4 Credits)

Drawing on works of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics and literary theory, the course will develop close, contextualized readings of five Modernist masterpieces, all published with a twenty year span: Proust’s Swann’s Way (1913), Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno (1923), Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924), and Faulkner’s Light In August (1932). The class will require approximately 2,700 pages of reading—about 200 pages per week. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, INST, ISEU.

COLI 3400. Modern Jewish Writing. (4 Credits)

From the nineteenth century to the recent past, this course uses literary study to explore the Jewish encounter with modernity in Europe and Russia. Through readings in fiction and poetry, the course explores literary responses to emigration to the U/S/ and elsewhere, the impact of the Shoah, the establishment of the State or Israel, and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, INST, ISEU, JWST.

COLI 3407. Foreignness & Translation: Multilingual Autobio Writing in Contemp Latin-Am & Latino Lit. (4 Credits)

This course studies manifestations of multilingualism in contemporary Latin-American and Latino literature, more particularly multilingualism that creates a tension between mother tongue and adoptive language when one of the languages is Spanish. It focuses on narratives and memoirs written by authors whose roots are in the Southern Cone (Argentina and Chile: Manuel Puig, Sylvia Molloy, Paloma Vidal, Ariel Dorfman…), the Caribbean (Pérez Firmat, Judith Ortiz Cofer…) and México (Richard Rodríguez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ilan Stavans…). The paradoxes of multilingualism will be approached formally (categories of multilingualism: alternating between languages, self-translation, code switching…; rhetorical patterns, central tropes), thematically (identity construction and the perception of the self, the affective function of language) and sociologically (the difficulties to publish real bilingual texts as a consequence of unequal relationships of power between North and South). Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, ALC, AMST, ASLT, LAHA, LALS, SPAN.

Prerequisite: SPAN 2500.

COLI 3423. Modern European Drama. (4 Credits)

A survey of the rise of modernist drama in the work of such playwrights as Buchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Checkhov, Shaw, Pirandello, Brecht, Synge, Lorca, Genet, Ionesco, and Beckett. The course will frame close readings of about fourteen plays, tracing the 19th century and early 20th century intellectual influences and exploring a variety of contemporary theoretical perspectives. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3424. Romantics and Their World. (4 Credits)

In this course we will study British Fiction, Non-fiction and poetry from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. As a counterpoint to this examination of traditional romantic literature, we will pursue traits of romanticism beyond the usual region and places, and search out their permutations in a variety of media, cultures, and historical conditions. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3426. Romantic Encounters. (4 Credits)

This course considers a wide array of fiction and non-fiction from the Romantic period that concerns themes of cultural and national difference, exploration, and tourism. Drawing from British, French, and German traditions, we will look at how authors discussed the pleasures, dangers, and scandals of travel. Through poems, novels, guidebooks, periodical essays, exploration narratives, and travel journals, the course asks why journeying -- whether actual or imaginary -- is so central to the Romantic identity and how it mediates the relationship between self and other. Students will emerge with an understanding of the connection between the idea of foreign and the role of the writer in the Romantic period and will be introduced to theories of gender, representation, and discourse analysis. Authors will likely include Charles Baudelaire, Novalis, Percy Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Mungo Park, and James Cook. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3431. From Realism to Modernism. (4 Credits)

A study of the 19th and early 20th century novel with particular attention to the development of the genre in the context of issues of representation and narration. Works by Balzac, E. Bronte, Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Flaubert, James, Joyce, Proust. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3434. The Avant-Gardes: Europe and Latin America. (4 Credits)

An in-depth introduction to the various collective literary and artistic movements that prevailed in 1920s and 1930s Europe, Spanish-America, and Brazil. We will read poems, manifestoes, chronicles, essays and short stories by the likes of Breton, Picabia, Marinetti, Carrington, Borges, Girondo, Huidobro, Mario and Oswald de Andrade. Course material will also draw from the visual arts, especially painting, photography, and film (Dali, Magritte, Bunuel, Rivera, Xul Solar, Amaral). This course will delve into the cultural and political implications of the avant-gardes in a transatlantic context, with particular emphasis on a comparative exploration of notions of center and periphery, imitations and parody, art and politics. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: GLBL, LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3438. American Modernism. (4 Credits)

This course introduces forms of literary experimentation associated with the modernist movement, including authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, and others. We’ll examine such contexts as the Harlem Renaissance, American writers in Paris, southern agrarianism, and others, as a way of grasping modernism’s fascination with difficulty. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, ASLT, ENGL.

COLI 3440. Arabic Literature in English Translation. (4 Credits)

A survey of Arabic literature from the sixth century A.D. to the present, this course will explore the development of the literary genres of the Arabic canon while keeping a keen (and critical) eye on the political, cultural, religious, and social circumstances that have accompanied—and, in many cases, given rise to—their development. What is considered literature in the Arabic canon? What is the relationship between literature and politics? What impact has the Quran had on Arabic literature? What is the role of women in the Arabic literary tradition? What kind of dialogue has there been between Arabic and Western literatures? What is commitment in contemporary Arabic literature? Class discussions will be conducted in English. All readings will be translated into English. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ARAB, GLBL, INST, ISME, MEST, MLL, MVLI, MVST.

COLI 3450. The City in Literature and Art. (4 Credits)

The structures, spaces, people, and life patterns of cities in the imagination of writers and visual artists from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. We will focus on Berlin, Paris, and New York, using the work of Walter Benjamin as a stimulus to thinking about our own relationship to the urban environment. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, ASAM, ASLT, ENGL, INST, ISEU, ISIN, URST.

COLI 3451. The City in Literature. (4 Credits)

A study of urban life through the close reading of fiction, poetry and drama, focusing mainly on New York, but also London, Paris, and Cairo. Discussion of films and photographs will also play a part in the course. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: URST.

COLI 3455. Literature, Ecstasy, and Popular Culture. (4 Credits)

In this course, we will examine the extent to which the experience and representation of ecstasy may be seen to create, reflect, counteract or otherwise impinge upon traditions and trajectories of historical and contemporary popular cultures. Framed by Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, our comparative study will include texts in various media from Plato to Almodovar. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3462. Sympathy and Sensibilite. (4 Credits)

A study of these concepts in French and British texts (novels, plays, essays, medical treaties, etc.) in the 18th century. Authors will include: Crebillon fils, Diderot, Mackenzie, Marivaux, Smith, Sterne, Swift, among others. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: FFPM.

COLI 3463. Diderot. (4 Credits)

From generative and scientific speculations on the body and life and the encyclopedic organization of all knowledge, to visual and theatrical tableaux and the deployment of dissonant narrative strategies, Diderot's literary, aesthetic, and scientific work make him one of the most important and interesting writers of the 18th century and force us to rethink the understanding of the body, the novel, the play, and the work of art in the 18th century and beyond. Diderot has also informed some of the most innovative texts in contemporary theory, philosophy, and art. In this seminar we will examine multiple works from Diderot's interdisciplinary corpus to gain intimate knowledge of his poetics and of his unique articulation of key Enlightenment issues in the discourses of science, aesthetics, music, fiction, and race. Works can be read in English or French. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, FFPM, FREN, FRMI.

COLI 3464. Medicine and Literature in Ancient Regime. (4 Credits)

Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: FFPM.

COLI 3466. Discovering French Cinema. (4 Credits)

With over 2000 movie theaters, an average of 200 feature films produced annually and over 50 international co-production agreements, France’s film culture and industry remain strong. Every year, major international film festivals feature French films and filmmakers. But what is French cinema? What defines its “Frenchness”? This course examines how and why French cinema successfully positioned itself as a lasting international reference, looking at the work of a few iconic and revolutionary filmmakers. It also aims at questioning the conscious (re)construction of “Frenchness” in and through cinema over time. To that end, we will consider the role various social, cultural, political, and industrial forces have played in defining, establishing, and promoting a certain idea of French cinema. We will also discuss filmmakers who have used cinema to question such reifications, by continuously re-imagining its contours, reclaiming narratives, and challenging expectations. You will have opportunities to enjoy NYC’s francophile and cinephile culture since high-profile annual French film festivals take place in the city every Spring, including Animation First at FIAF/Alliance Française and Rendez-vous with French Cinema at Film at Lincoln Center. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, FITV, FRMO, INST, IPE, ISEU.

Prerequisite: FREN 2600.

COLI 3471. Luigi Pirandello in Context: The Subject and Its Masks. (4 Credits)

A study of the narrative, theatre and theoretical essays of Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936; Nobel Prize 1934) in the context of the literary, cultural, and social developments in early 20th-century Italy and Europe. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ENGL.

COLI 3476. Conflict and Violence in Francophone African Cinemas. (4 Credits)

The development of film industries across Africa has been inextricably tied with colonial history. We will focus here on the cinematic production of former French colonies, from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa to sub-Saharan countries, including Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Tchad. Often trained in Western film schools, African and North African filmmakers started making films in the 1950s and 1960s, a time also marked by repeated struggles for independence from colonial domination. There is no single way to look at such a diverse and extraordinarily rich corpus. We will look more specifically at how different filmmakers have addressed, performed and questioned the notions of conflict and violence, both physical and psychological, literal and symbolic, at different time periods and in different regional contexts. Ousmane Sembène, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Nabil Ayouch, Sarah Maldorore will be among the filmmakers included in our discussions. Taught in French. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, GLBL, INST, ISAF, ISME.

COLI 3480. Francophone Caribbean Literature. (4 Credits)

This course examines a variety of literary, historical, cultural and linguistic aspects of the francophone Caribbean between 1791 (the beginning of the Haitian Revolution) and today. Topics include articulations of political sovereignty in colonial and post-colonial contexts, francophone Caribbean literary movements, alternative narratives provided by Afro-diasporic voices, and Caribbean feminisms. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, ASLT, COLI, FRAN, FRMO, GLBL, IPE.

Prerequisite: FREN 2600.

COLI 3500. Advanced Literary Theory. (4 Credits)

This course is designed to give students an in-depth study of multiple topics in literary theory not generally covered in the introductory-level course. Emphasis will be placed on reading theoretical texts in relation to the historical and political conditions under which they were produced. Topics will vary by semester but may include: Franz Fanon and the Algerian war; Herbert Marcuse and the Black Panther Party; Gilles Deleuze and May ’68; and Eve Sedgwick and the AIDS epidemic. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ENGL.

Prerequisites: COLI 3000 or ENGL 3000.

COLI 3519. Writing and Rewriting Seduction. (4 Credits)

This class examines the theme of seduction and its relation to writing in European literature pre-1789. Writers include among others: Heloise and Abelard, Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Marvell, Castiglione, Lafayette, Casanova, Bastide, Crebillon fils, Laclos, and Sade in addition to critical works by Baudrillard, Paglia, and others. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: FFPM.

COLI 3522. Strange Memories, Strange Desires. (4 Credits)

The course will use the image of the strange to make less familiar our concept of the Americas as a whole an coherent. Readings will span across the continents, valuing what we could describe as unsettling, weird, and bizarre. This concept of the "strange" will be considered alongside thematics of historical memory and desire in various novels. Short stories by: Hawthorne, Poe, and James. Authors may include: Faulkner, Bowles, Rulfo, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Puig, Borges, Pynchon, and Garcia Marquez. The course will be divided into thematic sections as follows: Strange Lands; Strange Love; Strange Worlds; and The Memory of Sex. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT, ENGL, LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3530. Trauma Memory Narrative. (4 Credits)

"Trauma, Memory, and Interrupted Narrative" considers what it means to live and write in the aftermath of trauma. Topics will include personal (rape, abuse, incest, violence, Aids) as well as historical traumas (the Holocaust, genocide, war). Authors might include Freud, Caruth, Laub, Felman, Phelan, Taussig, Sontag, Erikson. Literature by Morrison, Duras, Kincaid, Didion, etc. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3531. Unhappy Families. (4 Credits)

Unhappy Families: Trauma, Secrecy, and Testimony. Secrets can hold families together or tear them apart. In recent years, American culture has become increasingly fixated on representations of secrecy in families, specifically those concealing psychological trauma. Contemporary literature, film, theatre, and the visual arts have become fearless in their exploration of the internicine warfare within the familial construct. Though alcoholism, adultery, and revolt against patriarchy have marked much of 20th century cultural output, these newer portrayals shatter the paradigm and reveal previously taboo fragments. Thus, things that were once off limits are now fair game, such as dysfunctional communication and alienation, inappropriate sexualization, longing and nihilism, suicide and murder. Reading texts on the literature of and about psychological trauma, various narrative strategies will be analyzed with an eye to identifying connections between theory, fiction, and memoir. The three major objectives will be to familiarize students with theories of trauma, apply these theories to the analysis of selected works both fictive and real, and finally, to consider the ways in which family trauma is repressed or concealed, remembered, revealed, dramatized, framed, and staged. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AMST, ASLT.

COLI 3535. Building the Ideal City: Ethics and Economics Foundations of Realizable Utopias. (4 Credits)

This course introduces students to the investigation of the role that economic concepts such as profit, work, utility, and exchange play in defining the ideal city as a realizable political project. Students will explore ethical and economic concepts and their interrelation in the debate on the best form of State and government that developed from antiquity to modern American utopian communities. This course includes texts from various sources - philosophical, theological, juridical, and literary. Through these readings, students will learn how theoretical and practical ideas on the best form of society developed in time and still influence modern political thought. The course also focuses on the impact of the socioeconomic doctrines of the Catholic Church in shaping the idea of a possible, realizable, ideal city. Among the texts and authors included are Plato, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Boccaccio, Thomas More, Leon Battista Alberti, Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon. Taught in English with coursework in Italian for credit in Italian. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ALC, AMST, APPI, ASHS, ASRP, INST, ISIN, ITAL, ITMA, ITRE, MVPH, MVST, URST.

COLI 3553. 21st Century Romantics. (4 Credits)

In this course, contemporary (i.e., 20/21st century) romantic lyric, prose, and film will be examined in historical context, and compared with traditional (i.e., 18/19th century) romantic texts. We will explore the evolution of the term "romantic" within popular culture. The making of lyrical icons, or the popular romanticization of the author/artist figure, will be a chief theme throughout the course. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3575. Painting the Empire: Understanding the Spanish Empire Through Art and Literature. (4 Credits)

The Golden Age of Spanish art and literature (known as “el Siglo de Oro”) coincided with the configuration of Spain as a global empire after the rise of the Habsburg dynasty to the Spanish throne (from around 1550 to around 1650). This course proposes a study of the main social, political and cultural conflicts that conformed that empire from a multidisciplinary perspective that combines the works of the empire’s most famous painters (El Greco, Diego Velázquez, José de Ribera, among others) with the works of its most representative writers (Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes, María de Zayas, among others); topics such as the symbolic construction and shaping of space, gender, national identity or social and religious relationships will be approached through a combination of visual and textual representations. The course will also take great advantage of the important collections of Spanish Renaissance and Baroque painting held at several New York institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the Hispanic Society of America, including visits to those institutions and field work. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, LALS.

Prerequisite: SPAN 2500.

COLI 3585. Transnational Asian Cinema. (4 Credits)

With its over-the-top action movies, riveting crime thrillers, sweeping historical romances, and unabashed melodramas, Asian cinema is one of the most exciting sites of cultural production in the world today. This capstone course will draw on theories and methods from film studies, literary studies, and sociology in an effort to develop an interdisciplinary model for analyzing Asian cinemas in a global context. The remainder of the course will focus on Asian cinema as a way of testing "the transnational cinema" hypothesis: the proposition that, thanks to the machinations of global capitalism, even seemingly "national cinemas" must now be understood in "post-national" terms. The course will culminate in a series of screenings at the annual New York Asian Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3624. Music and Nation in the Arab World. (4 Credits)

Though music is a domain of individual expression, it may also reflect or respond to social, cultural, and historic influences of a time and place. This course explores the ways in which music acts as an expression of national identity in the Arab world. It considers this relationship in a region where the idea of nation has multiple meanings, and where conflicting factors such as regional diversity and the notion of pan-Arabism exists. Specifically, the course focuses on how particular types of music, including the Aleppian, Waslah, Al-Qasida al-ghinaiy, and Al-Muwashah, have affected the development and embodiment of national identity in the 20th century. Course materials are presented in English, however students of Arabic language are encouraged to enroll. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ARAB, INST, ISME, MEST, PJRC, PJST.

COLI 3652. Contemporary French Philosophy. (4 Credits)

This course introduces the work of French thinkers from the 20th and 21st centuries. Themes under consideration might be subjectivity, violence, justice, embodiment, and epistemology. Figures covered may include Badiou, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kofman, Le Doeuff, Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, and Ranciere. Reference may also be made to recent developments of French theory in the Anglo-American context, including in feminist theory and social and political philosophy. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AMST, ASRP, INST, ISEU, PHCO, PHIL.

COLI 3656. Languages and Identities. (4 Credits)

This course examines the relationships between the languages we speak and who we are, with a particular focus on the role that translation might play in expanding our horizons. We will study works by thinkers from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America, uncovering differences and connections across a diverse range of linguistic, cultural, and intellectual contexts. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: GLBL.

Prerequisites: PHIL 3000 or HPLC 1001 or HPRH 1002 or HPRH 1103.

COLI 3663. Philosophies of Translation. (4 Credits)

In this course we will study different theories of translation, reading historical and contemporary texts primarily from Anglo-American, European, and African traditions of philosophy. Particular attention will be paid to ethical and political issues connected to translation, and to the relationship between translation and philosophical thought and practice. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Prerequisites: PHIL 3000 or HPLC 1001 or HPRH 1002 or HPRH 1003.

COLI 3668. Caribbean Identities. (4 Credits)

This course explores the literature of the Caribbean in terms of socio-historical Creole identities, diaspora and colonial legacies in the Spanish, French, and English speaking Caribbean. We will read in contemporar and late twentieth century texts the manners in which this history shapes the understanding of Caribbean identities. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3689. African Literature II. (4 Credits)

The second course is an examination of the colonial and postcolonial literary production of European-influenced African writers writing in European languages: English, French and Portuguese. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AFAH, AFST, ENGL, GLBL.

COLI 3690. Women Writing Africa. (4 Credits)

This course will consider the representation of Africa in the writing of women authors coming from different literary, cultural, and national traditions. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 3691. 20th Century African-American and African Women. (4 Credits)

"20th-Century African-American and African Women Writers" considers the political, social, racial, and other related contexts in which these women write. Authors include Larsen, Hurston, Morrison, El Saadawi, and others. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT.

COLI 3692. Anglophone African Literature. (4 Credits)

This course (sub-titled "America in Africa") offers students an opportunity to learn about Africa and how America and Americans are represented by authors of the African continent writing in English. Using a range of texts in which America and/or American characters are represented, the course will encourage students to ask and answer questions such as: how is America (and Americans) represented abroad? And why? Simultaneously, students will also be learning about other places, peoples, cultures, and beliefs. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT.

COLI 3802. Literature and Imperialism. (4 Credits)

This course explores key debates in the study of literature and in the history of imperialism. Attention will be paid to the importance of literary form and historical representation as well as the relation between the two. A major concern of the course will be to examine the problems posed for any study of culture by legacies of imperialism. Readings will likely include Joseph Conrad, Mahasweta Devi, Naruddin Farah, Rudyard Kipling, Salman Rushdie, Tayeb Salih, Olive Schreiner, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AASR, ALC, ENRJ, GLBL, INST, ISIN, PJST, PJWT.

COLI 3803. Empire and Sexuality. (4 Credits)

For many years now, critical queer and trans scholars have traced the intersections between gender and sexual identity formations and the modern exercise of state power. In particular, this body of scholarship has excavated the complicities between the mainstream LGBTQ movement and structures of empire-building, neoliberal capital and racial governmentality. This literature course engages with these conversations by exploring how literary works stage the role of gender and sexuality within racial, colonial, and imperial projects. Rather than surveying the world for manifestations of trans and queer identity, we will attend to gender and sexuality as sites of power, subjection, and subject formation. In so doing, we will explore how sexuality is central to the formation of racial categories, as well as the management and control of populations. As we read texts set within and responding to various systems of colonial and neo-colonial rule, our focus will be on connecting the interpersonal and intimate to institutions and structures. We will consider how literary texts offer challenges to liberal conceptions of identity as well as alternative imaginings of desire, subjectivity, kinship, and sociality. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ALC, ENGL, GLBL, INST, ISIN, PJGS, PJST, WGSS.

COLI 3839. Postcolonial Literatures. (4 Credits)

In this course, we will examine postcolonial literatures, a rich and complex body of writing. The term postcolonial primarily refers to those parts of the world that emerged in the 20th century from European colonial empires. Each formerly colonized region has been shaped by the violence of colonization. As a result, the literatures of these regions are animated by political and creative struggles, including anti-colonialism, resistance, liberation, nationalism, neocolonialism, globalization, diasporic migration, and linguistic contest. We will study these and other phenomena, while also looking at history, literature, and literary theory from the period of decolonization. The main regions covered will include the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, ENRJ, GLBL.

COLI 3840. Latin American Culture Through Film. (4 Credits)

Major topics of Latin American cultural criticism through an examination of Latin American and Latino film production, with a special emphasis on the documentary as an alternative to mainstream cinema and television. Latin American media theories and cultural criticism. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASAM, FITV, GLBL, INST, ISLA, LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3910. US Latino Film Making. (4 Credits)

Examination of the major topics and genres of Latino film making in the U.S. Film makers studied may include Rodriguez, Valdez, Ichaso, Troyano, Muniz, and Sayles. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, AMST, ENGL, LAHA, LALS, PLUR.

COLI 3912. Literature of the Americas. (4 Credits)

Literature of the Americas-- Spanning North, Central, and South America, this class will read novels across time and space. Whether this literature can produce a coherent vision of "America" in the 21st century will be considered alongside questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. We will also examine the complexities of the aesthetic: Not only what makes a novel "American" but also what makes an American novel valuable. Authors include Pynchon, Cisneros, Garcia Marquez, Burroguhs, and Fuentes. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT, LAHA, LALS.

COLI 3999. Tutorial. (3 Credits)

Independent Study.

COLI 4011. Narrating Childhood. (4 Credits)

In this seminar, we will study the explorations of childhood experience that are to be found in literary, theoretical and cinematic texts. We will examine the construction in language of the child's point of view and voice and we will consider literary and psychoanalytic views of the significance of childhood experience to adult life. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, PJRC, PJST, WGSS.

COLI 4014. Jean Rhys: Rewriting English. (4 Credits)

The seminar offers an intensive study of the work of Caribbean-born English writer Jean Rhys, from the early stories and novels of the 1930s to the last and most famous novel, “Wide Sargasso Sea,” published in 1966. We pay particular attention to the way Rhys' writing reimagines the linguistic, literary, and cultural coordinates of English, not only in her last novel's rewriting of Charlotte Bronte's “Jane Eyre,” but also in the early novels “Quartet” (1928), “After Leaving Mr Mackenzie” (1930), “Voyage in the Dark” (1934), and “Good Morning, Midnight” (1939). The seminar studies Rhys' work within the comparative contexts of European modernism, mass media and popular culture, feminist and gender theories, and postcolonial studies. The seminar fulfills both English (elective) and comparative literature (senior seminar) major requirements. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ENGL.

COLI 4016. Rewriting the Mediterranean (20th and 21st Centuries). (4 Credits)

Historically the Mediterranean has been a region where different ethnicities, cultures and religions have emerged, dissolved or coexisted. The enduring encounter of East and West, North and South on its shores and in its waters, however, has been far from peaceful. In this seminar, we will discuss contemporary writers and intellectuals from the Mediterranean, who build on the rich artistic heritage and vital cultural traditions of the region to confront the legacy of centuries-old political and religious divisions. We will analyze the modern construction of the ideas of “Mediterranean culture” and “Mediterranean identity” in the current post-national context by examining fiction and essays by Vincenzo Consolo, Assia Djebar, Juan Goytisolo, Amin Maalouf, Orhan Pamuk and Abraham B. Yehoshua, among others. By telling stories set in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean – from Italy and Spain to Turkey, Israel and the Middle East – these writers reimagine early civilizations and recast their histories in the present to critique modernity’s narratives of socio-economic and political control, cultural domination and religious exclusion, and offer novel forms of cultural production and critical practice fostering cross-cultural interaction and intercultural understanding. We will conduct our analyses within the conceptual frameworks provided by historians Fernand Braudel, Iain Chambers, David Abulafia and Ian Morris, anthropologist Talal Asad, sociologists Franco Cassano and Edgar Morin, economist Serge Latouche, literary scholar Predrag Matvejevic, and cultural critic Edward Said. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ITAL, ITMO, MEST, OCST, PJRC, PJST.

COLI 4018. Cuba: Revolution, Literature and Film. (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary capstone course will study the representation of the Cuban revolutionary process in literature, history, and film. It will explore some of the major topics on the Cuban revolutionary process from the vantage point of historical, literary and cinematic accounts: the relationship of intellectuals to the state, the revision of the past as antecedent to the Cuban revolution and its policies, the place of race, gender and sexuality in revolutionary culture, the Mariel exodus and the revolution’s relationship to Cuban diasporic communities, the critique of revolutionary rhetoric during the post-Soviet “special period” and issues related to consumption, gender, sexuality, race, urban development and subjectivity during the current period of economic and cultural transition from socialism. It will use an interdisciplinary historical, literary and cinematic approach to examine the Cuban revolutionary process. Conducted in English with texts in Spanish and English translation. Coursework in Spanish for credit toward the Spanish major and minor. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: CCUS, COMC, COMM, FITV, GLBL, ICC, INST, ISLA, LAHA, LALS.

COLI 4020. Literature, Film and Development. (4 Credits)

Development and underdevelopment are terms we now associate with the relative industrialization/financialization of any given part of the world and the comparative disposition of their economic structures. They are used to differentiate the haves from the have-nots (North/South, First and Third Worlds; metropole and postcolony). We will study Development and its discourse as it has emerged since the 18th century within humanist frameworks of philosophy/science (the animal-human divide); literature (stories/narrative as colonial inscription); and technology (as techne and prostheses manifest in photography, film and video). We will explore the ways it inflects our perceptions and ways we read our own and other worlds. In particular, we will focus on how Development/development has constructed and shaped the many significations of "the human" from the early modern to contemporary times. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ASAM, ENGL, ENRJ, ICC, INST, ISIN, PJSJ, PJST.

COLI 4021. The Classical Tradition in Contemporary Fiction and Film. (4 Credits)

This course provides a survey of classical works from ancient Greece and Rome and their reception in contemporary literature and film. The objective is threefold: first, to learn about patterns of narrative intrinsic to the representation of myth and history in classical literature; then to observe how these patterns function both in works of the classical period and also in contemporary fiction and film; and finally, to consider why classical antiquity has proved an enduring source of inspiration for writers and film-makers of today. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ICC.

COLI 4055. Race and Ethnicity in Antiquity and Today. (4 Credits)

This course offers an in-depth study of race and ethnicity in the ancient world and explores from an ethical perspective how ancient conceptions of race influence modern ones. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: CLAS, INST, ISIN, OCST, PJRC, PJST, PLUR.

COLI 4125. Kieslowski in Theory and History. (4 Credits)

This semester will focuses on a close analysis of the Decalogue, the 10-film cinematic masterpiece of the Eastern European director, Krzysztof Kieslowski. The films will be paired with some key texts in critical and film theory and discussed in multiple contexts; the rest of Kieslowski¿s oeuvre; the works of other Eastern European filmmakers; and the historical context of Poland in the 1980s. Capstone seminar for Comparative Literature majors. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: ENGL.

COLI 4150. Race and Contemporary Film. (4 Credits)

This course examines contemporary cinema in an effort to understand the racial present. Drawing on theories and methods from sociology, anthropology, history, and literary theory, we will develop a provisional model of interdisciplinary cultural analysis that will help us better understand how representations of race function in our own historical moment. At the same time, we will investigate exactly what constitutes “our own historical moment.” What is the historical present? How and why does it differ from one racial group to the next? And how do these competing racial temporalities affect present-day racial politics? With such questions in mind, we will conduct a series of case studies in racial representation. Each case will be organized around a recent film, and each film will be examined from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with particular emphasis on how various academic disciplines both illuminate and obscure various aspects of the racial representation at hand. NOTE: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AAST, ENRJ, ICC, PJRC, PJST, PLUR.

COLI 4204. Joseph Conrad and the Future of English. (4 Credits)

A study of works by Joseph Conrad and their relevance for the changing landscape of English literature within the comparative linguistic, literary, and cultural context of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Besides select works of Conrad (including Almayer’s Folly, "Heart of Darkness,” Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes), other works to be studies may include: Ngugi wa Thiong’ o, A Grain of Wheat, V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, Nuruddin Farah, Maps, Jessica Hagedorn, Dream Jungle, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind. CAPSTONE SEMINARE FOR COMPARATIVE LITERATURE MAJORS. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 4206. Comparative Studies in Revolution. (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary capstone seminar engages students in a series of literary and historical studies of revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary) movements (e.g. the Haitian revolution of 1791, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the events of 1965 in Indonesia). Examining historical documents, works of fiction, literary theory and historiography, the seminar will investigate how the disciplines of history, literary criticism, and cultural studies more generally, seek to explain revolutionary historical change. Particular attention will be paid to the authority of textual evidence placed within interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and multi-media contexts. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AMST, APPI, ASAM, ASHS, ASLT, ENGL, ENRJ, GLBL, ICC, INST, ISIN, PJSJ, PJST.

COLI 4207. Comparative Studies in Empire. (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary capstone seminar will study the interrelation between different imperial formations (e.g. Roman, Ottoman, Mongol, British, Chinese, and American) and the various linguistic, literary, and cultural traditions that give them imaginative and historical shape. Attention will be paid to the importance of literary form and historical representation. Juxtaposing historical and fictional texts from different cultural and historical moments, the seminar will explore how these texts foreground problems of historical documentation and textual authority. The seminar will also study how these foundational problems, shared by the disciplines of history and literary criticism, are embodied in other media, notably music and film. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, ADVD, AMST, APPI, ASHS, ENGL, ICC, IRST.

COLI 4210. Comparative Studies in Atlantic Revolutions. (4 Credits)

This interdisciplinary seminar engages students in a series of literary and historical studies of revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary) movements that took place in the Atlantic world (e.g., the English Civil War, the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, uprisings of enslaved people in Curaçao and Jamaica, and the Spanish American wars for independence). Examining historical documents, works of fiction, literary theory, and historiography, the seminar will investigate how the disciplines of history and literary criticism, and cultural studies more generally, seek to understand revolutionary historical change. Particular attention will be paid to the authority of textual evidence placed within interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and multimedia contexts. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, ENHD, ENRJ, EP3, GLBL, PJRC.

COLI 4211. Empire and Sexuality. (4 Credits)

For many years now, critical queer and trans scholars have traced the intersections between gender and sexual identity formations and the modern exercise of state power. In particular, this body of scholarship has excavated the complicities between the mainstream LGBTQ movement and structures of empire-building, neoliberal capital, and racial governmentality. This interdisciplinary women’s, gender, and sexuality studies course explores how two disciplines—literature and political science—study the role of gender and sexuality within racial, colonial, and imperial projects. We will examine and compare how these two disciplinary approaches pose their own questions and employ distinct methodologies to produce scholarly knowledge. As we read works of literature, policy documents, and legal documents, the course charts how sexuality is central to the formation of racial categories, as well as the management and control of populations. Following a central insight of decolonial feminism, we will work to connect interpersonal and intimate violence to the political: institutions, structures of power, and their relevant histories. Our course texts offer challenges to Eurocentric conceptions of identity, as well as alternative imaginings of desire, subjectivity, kinship, and sociality. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, ENRJ, GLBL, ICC, INST, ISIN, PJGS, PJST, WGSS.

Mutually Exclusive: COLI 3803, ENGL 3803.

COLI 4217. Health, Self, and Capital: The Art of Living and Its Discontents. (4 Credits)

This course draws on the two disciplines of history and literary studies to examine the intersection of health, self, and capital in Western ideas about the art of living over four seminal and interrelated moments—antiquity, the Enlightenment, the early 20th-century Lebensreform movement, and today’s $4.5 trillion global wellness industry. The course is divided into two parts. In the first, we take an analytical and critical approach to the theories and history of ideas about the art of living and wellness. In the second, students will apply the methodological approaches and tools we have developed in the first half of the course to complete collaborative research projects and deliver presentations addressing the discontents of traditional conceptions of the art of living and articulating new trajectories. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, ICC.

COLI 4320. Reading the Indian Ocean World. (4 Credits)

A new area of study has emerged in the last decade known as Indian Ocean Studies. It uses interdisciplinarity to study the cultural flows and encounters over time of the peoples and traffic of the Indian Ocean. This course will focus on the literature, writing, and expressive practices (including film, music and performance) that this confluence of peoples has created. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ENGL, GLBL, ICC, INST, ISAF, ISAS, ISIN, WGSS.

COLI 4412. Representing Art in Literature. (4 Credits)

Art and its literary representation in 17th and 18th century France and England. In this seminar, we will examine the literary representation of art (portraits, landscape, etc.) in novels. What is the status of these representations? In what ways does this status change from the 17th to the end of the 18th centuries? In order to analyze the import of visual representation in literary texts, we will also read a number of works of early art criticism both in England and France as well as contemporary criticism and theory. As such, we will try to determine the interrelation between history of the visual and literary culture in the early modern period. Texts can be read in the original language if desired. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: FFPM.

COLI 4420. Ethics and Intelligence. (4 Credits)

This seminar will engage students in an intensive examination of the history, literature, and ethics of secret intelligence. Tracing the historical emergence of contemporary intelligence agencies from the early modern period up to the present, and with special attention to literary works from contrasting cultural traditions, the seminar will focus on three areas of expertise that have historically shaped he articulation and administration of both clandestine and public intelligence and information: the work of translators, the work of missionaries, and the work of government agencies.

Attributes: ENGL, EP4, VAL.

Prerequisites: ENGL 1102 and ENGL 2000 or ENGL 1004 or CLAS 2000 or COLI 2000 or HPLC 1201 or HPRH 1001 or HPRH 1051 or HPRH 2001 or HPRH 2051 or MLAL 2000 or LACU 2000.

COLI 4570. Films of Moral Struggle. (4 Credits)

(Formerly COLI 4001): The course studies the portrayal of human values and moral choices both in the narrative content and the cinematic technique of outstanding films. Class discussion tends to explore ethical aspects of each film's issues, while numerous critical analyses of the films are offered to develop the student's appreciation of the film's artistic achievements. A lab fee is required. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: ACUP, AMST, ASAM, ASRP, BEHR, BEVL, CELP, EP4, FITV, PJMJ, PJST, REST, VAL.

COLI 4600. Anger in Asian American Literature and Culture. (4 Credits)

Ever since the first Chinese immigrant carved a protest poem into the walls of the Angel Island detention center, Asian American literature has been suffused with anger—both the anger Asian Americans feel as minority subjects and the anger they are forced to absorb in a virulently racist, white supremacist society. Drawing on scholarship from philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies, this interdisciplinary course asks what Asian American anger can teach us about both the lived experience and the structural conditions of race. Treating anger less as a character flaw than as a social product, we will explore several interrelated questions. How does the production of anger relate to the processes of racialization? How might Asian American anger complicate the Black-white binary that dominates U.S. racial discourse? In what ways might it enable a global understanding of race? What aesthetic and ethical-political problems does it pose? What possibilities does it open up? How have Asian American artists and writers grappled with those problems? And how have they sought to actualize the possibilities of Asian American anger? Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AAST, ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT, ENGL, ENRJ, ICC, PJRC, PJST, PLUR.

COLI 4603. Asian American Critique. (4 Credits)

This capstone course explores canonical and cutting-edge research in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American Studies. Examining the field’s interventions in disciplines such as history, sociology, media studies, and literary studies, we will discover how Asian Americanists have enunciated a distinct set of themes, methods, analyses, historical narratives, and ethico-political projects. Topics may include Asian American critiques of racial capitalism; neoliberalism; biopolitics; environmental devastation; human-animal relations; contemporary aesthetic categories; the Asian Century; and the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. This course fulfills the ICC and pluralism requirements of the common core. Previous exposure to ENGL 3356, “Approaches to Asian American Studies,” or ENGL 3359, “Asian Diasporic Literature,” is encouraged but not required. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: AAST, ACUP, ADVD, AMST, ASLT, ENGL, ENRJ, ICC, INST, ISAS, PJRC, PJST, PLUR.

COLI 4800. Internship. (4 Credits)

Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 4998. Senior Thesis Tutorial in Comparative Literature. (4 Credits)

Practical application of comparative techniques and research methods. Supervised independent work culminating in an orginal research paper in the area of comparative literature. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

COLI 4999. Tutorial. (4 Credits)

Independent research and readings with supervision from a faculty member.