Course Offerings
- For a complete list of courses, please see the graduate bulletin
Spring 2010
CMLT-C 523 (14876) Medieval Literature: Words and Images in Dialogue | R. McGerr| TR 1:00 – 2:15 | Class meets with MEST M502
The interplay of visual and verbal texts provides an important locus of signification in medieval European reading experiences. Verbal texts in medieval manuscripts often appear with illustrations, while quotations from verbal texts often appear in medieval visual works of art, such as paintings, carvings, and sculptures. Passages of ekphrasis within verbal texts can create virtual visual texts for readers. A special category of hybrid text is the carmen figuratum or poem that creates meaning through both visual and verbal texts. In this seminar, we will examine examples from medieval Europe of these different forms of dialogue between words and images, in order to gain deeper understanding of the frames of reference involved in medieval textual experiences. Our primary readings (all available in English translation) will include Liber de laudibus sanctae crucis (selections) by Hrabanus Maurus, Yvain by Chrétien de Troyes, Cantigas de Santa Maria (selections) by Alphonso X of Spain, Le Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, the Commedia by Dante, the “Manesse Codex” of Middle High German courtly lyric (selections), and Le Livre de la Cité des Dames by Christine de Pizan. Secondary readings will include scholarly commentary by Jonathan Alexander, Keith Busby, Michael Camille, Mary Carruthers, Madeline Caviness, Sandra Hindman, Sylvia Huot, Suzanne Lewis, Margaret Manion, James Rushing, and Elizabeth Sears.
Students will prepare two short class presentations (1-2 pages each), one on a primary reading and one on a secondary reading. Students will also choose a comparative topic for a research project on a topic related to the course readings, submit a project proposal with preliminary bibliography (2-3 pages), and complete the written research project (20-22 pages) at the end of the semester.
CMLT-C 525 (26850) Renaissance and 17th Century | S. Van der Laan| TR 11:15 -12:30
We will trace the cultural movement known as the Renaissance from its origins in fourteenth-century Italy, through France, Spain, and northern Europe, to its final flowering in seventeenth-century England. Drama, epic, the novel, opera, art, architecture, humanism, political theory, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the rise of modern science will all furnish texts for our scrutiny. Whenever possible, we will cross disciplinary boundaries in order to understand how developments in one form influenced another or how ideas were developed simultaneously across several media or genres. We will explore a range of theoretical approaches to Renaissance texts and examine recent controversies over the use of certain theoretical lenses to read Renaissance texts. Some attention will also be given to the ongoing revisions of Renaissance historiography and methods that have led to the rise of the alternative label “early modern.” To what extent was the Renaissance a genuine rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman culture? To what extent does it lay the foundations of modernity? Is the concept of the “Renaissance” still useful—or even tenable?
This course fulfills the pre-modern requirement for graduate students in Comparative
CMLT-C 537 (26851) The Twentieth Century I | H. Marks | TR 4:40 – 7:10
Three essential “modernists” and their nineteenth-century precursors: poetry and prose of Valéry (read against Mallarmé), Rilke (read against Hölderlin), and Stevens (read against Shelley--or perhaps Whitman). Is modernism a radical break with the past or a late phase of Romanticism (and how useful is the whole notion of periodization)? Rilke revered Valéry, and Stevens the other two. What if anything do we gain by studying them (and literature generally) from a comparative perspective?
For the first class: please read Matei Calinescu, “The Idea of Modernity,” Five Faces of Modernity, 13-92, and texts to be posted on Oncourse.
Written work: one seminar presentation and a final paper. Knowledge of French and/or German is highly desireable but not obligatory; texts in both languages will be available in opposite-face editions.
CMLT-C 602 (26852) Contemporary Theories, Issues and Approaches: Spaces and Places: Rooms, Cities Continents| A. Pao| TR 11:15 – 12:30
Since the 1970s, the interpretation of spatiality has been a central concern in a wide range of fields. The resulting transdisciplinary theorization of space has been enormously productive for human geographers, social scientists, and cultural critics who are interested primarily in the material and functional properties of spaces and places. At the same time, the works of humanistic geographers and philosophers who focus on the metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic dimensions of space (e.g. Gaston Bachelard, Yi-Fu Tuan and the vague Henri Lefebvre) have generally been positioned on the periphery of contemporary geopolitical and socio-cultural debates. In this seminar, we will explore possibilities for conjoining these perspectives to study the poetics and the politics of various aesthetic spaces (particularly the literary imagination and theatrical stages). There will be special attention to issues arising from the gendering of spaces and the emergence of diasporic geographical and cultural formations.
Readings (of and from):
Gaston Bachelard – The Poetics of Space
Michel de Certeau – The Practice of Everyday Life – “Spatial Practices”
Una Chaudhuri – Staging Place: the Geography of Modern Drama – “Geopathology: the painful politics of location”
Stanton B. Garner, Jr. – Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama – “(Dis)figuring Space”
Henri Lefebvre – The Production of Space
Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Sigen – The Myth of Continents: a Critique of Metageography (1997)
Doreen Massey – Spatial Divisions of Labor
Gay McAuley – Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre
Edward Soja – Post-modern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory; Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other –real-and-imagined places; Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions
Yi-Fu Tuan – Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values; Landscapes of Fear; Space and Place: the Perspective of Experience.
Samuel Beckett – Happy Days, Rockaby
Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
Linda Le – Slander/Calomnies
Li-young Lee – The City in Which I Love You
Anna Deavere Smith – Twilight – Los Angeles 1992
Wole Soyinka – Death and the King’s Horseman
CMLT-C 680 (26853) Topics in Translation | B. Johnston | M 5:00-7:30
This class offers an opportunity to develop an extensive literary translation project in a workshop setting. Throughout the course the emphasis will be on a collaborative, exploratory approach to literary translation, and one which is grounded in the practical craft of translation, yet makes use of literary theory and translation theory where these are useful and appropriate.
Classes will consist primarily of in-depth workshops focusing on ongoing drafts of short extracts from your projects. Other activities and materials will be used as and when they are needed. Many students use this class as an oppportunity to develop a project for the Certificate in Literary Translation.
York, 2004); The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, edited by Peter France (Oxford, 2000); and a volume of the Penguin series Poets in Translation to be determined. These texts will be supplemented by other selected readings available in electronic format.
