Course Offerings
- For a complete list of courses, please see the undergraduate bulletin
Spring 2010 courses
CMLT- BE 146 Major Themes in Western Lit: Bad Company| See schedule for times
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
Self-indulgence, luxury, decadence, me first—enough is never enough! The world of literature is filled with characters who go too far, won’t be satisfied, and push the limits of what society can handle. This semester we will focus on tales of excess: from extravagant luxury to single-minded bloodlust. All sections will read Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer, H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Euripides’ Bacchae. Meet a mother and son team whose wealth buys them every pleasure but cannot protect them from homicidal vengeance. On an uncharted island, a doctor performs freakish experiments on animals to discover the essence of humanity. See what happens in the world of Greek myths when a king tries to resist the god of wine and pleasure. Each section will read additional works unique to that section that may include short stories, poetry, novels, and drama. Individual sections may also include television, art, music, and film. This course continues to work on the development of skills in critical thinking, clear communication, and persuasive composition begun in the fall semester with BE-145. The workload includes three essays, mid-term and final exams, as well as shorter writing assignments. For composition credit, students must take BE-145 in the fall semester. Both BE-145 and BE-146 are automatically bundled with English W-143 (a one credit hour course) to certify composition credit.
CMLT-C 151 (11609) Intro to Popular Culture | C. Van den Broek | MW 9:30 – 10:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
What is a fetish? Where does the fetish originate, historically and psychologically? How does an ordinary commodity like a Manolo Blahnik shoe, or an iPod, become an object of obsession? How do fetishes influence or change our sense of self, our identity? Are fetishes a replacement, a stand-in for something else? We will look at various pop culture sources, including essays, short stories, web sites,magazines, advertising, television, music and other sources to find the answers to these questions. By tracing the history of the fetish in literature and pop culture,students will discover the origins of fetishism and the motives behind our behavior. Is fetishism particular to capitalist society? Are fetishes always of a sexual nature? Students will work on individual projects through the semester, in which they will trace the development of a fetishized object of their choosing and pose a theory on the ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ of that fetish. We will also take a field trip to the world renowned Kinsey Institute. Possible authors and readings include: Excerpts from Marx’s Kapital and Freud’s works, Gautier’s “The Mummy’s Foot”, Camus’ “The Renegade”, Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs”, Borges’ The Zahir”, the Revise F65 web site (An international effort to revise medical definitions of fetishism as a psychiatric disorder), brand advertising from various decades, popular magazines, fan culture, and essays from Ray B. Browne’s Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishes and Fetishism in Popular Culture.
CMLT-C 151 (6027) Intro to Popular Culture: Ghosts/the Undead | J. Jin | TR 9:30 -10:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
What do they want from us? Why won’t they just die? What can they tell us about ourselves and the world we inhabit? Why are we repelled by and fascinated with them at the same time? In this course, we will examine figures of the undead/ ghosts to generate a critical perspective about the persistence of zombies, vampires and other supernatural beings in popular culture. We will pay attention to the ways in which the undead intersects with our conceptualization of the future, reexamination of traumatic past, cultural anxieties such as sexual agency and infiltration of foreign bodies/immigrants and our fundamental fear of disorientation of the self. While this course emphasizes contemporary cultural expressions of the undead, we will also discuss the vicissitudes of the supernatural in historical contexts by looking at Japanese horror stories and American gothic literature.
Assignments include two short essays, midterm and final exam.
CMLT-C 151(29722) Intro to Popular Culture: |L. Campbell-Badger | MW 5:45 – 8:00 |*Meets 2nd 8 weeks only*
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
In the last five years more than a half dozen popular films have detailed the horrors of the American food industry. Negative publicity has forced corporations to scramble to put on new (healthier) faces, and the public has been made slightly more leery of highly processed lunchmeats and high-fructose corn syrup. The Industry has responded with a spewing of new labels, among them “organic,” “fair trade,” “free-range,” and the ubiquitous and vague “natural.” We must, however demand: Is this shift in marketing and labeling enough? Is the media coverage of industrial horror stories changing anything? And, in the meantime, how are our bodies, our nation, and our greater world still affected by the industry of food? This class will examine the ways that issues of food and industry have permeated popular culture in America. The semester will be divided into units that examine the following three topics:
-The public face and less-public failures of the food industry in America
-The effects of American corporations and political policies on the food crisis in the third world
-Advocacy for changes in food production and consumption
In all units, special attention will be paid to the way in which representations in film and literature engage the social issues of food and industry. The course will focus on popular representations in books, films, news-media, magazines, and the websites of internet-based activist groups. We will have regular movie screenings, and will also read selections from the following books, which will be required for the course: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Stuffed and Starved: the Hidden Battle for the World Food System, Stolen Harvest: the Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, Slow Food Nation: Why our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair and Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed
CMLT-C155 (14836) Cul/Mod Exp: Interdis/Intl App: Hollywood vs Nollywood |A. Pouille | MW 5:45 – 7:00
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
Different in terms of production, international appeal and longevity, Hollywood and Nollywood (Nigeria) cinema industries are today producers of a genre of movie heavily marked by elements of the supernatural. The popularity of this specific film genre among spectators on both sides of the Atlantic begs for a comparative study of Hollywood movies such as Harry Potter, The Lord of Rings and Nollywood films such as Thunderbolt that make extensive use of the occult. Adding documentaries, scholarly and popular magazine articles to our tools of investigation, we will look for more points of convergence and/or divergence between the Hollywood and Nollywood occult movies, reasons for their appeal among spectators, and we will see what they suggest about the modern viewer.
CMLT-C 205 (16347) Comparative Literary Analysis: Under the Influence
J. Johnson | MW 5:45 – 7:00
*fulfills A&H and IW requirements
*REQUIRED COURSE FOR CMLT MAJORS*
In Artists do not live in a vacuum, but in a world inhabited by the works of great artists who came before them. Creative inspiration is not always a matter of dreaming up something totally new, but reacting to and engaging with the work of some previous artist. This will be our approach to Comparative Literature: to study how one author has influenced another and how that influence reveals itself in subject matter, style, and themes. We will examine how the later author responds to and re-writes the work of the earlier author—praising, correcting, surpassing, belittling, or even misrepresenting his predecessor’s accomplishments. Crossing centuries, language barriers, and genres, we will read three pairs of texts: two fundamentally different visions of the “ideal” society in Thomas More’s Utopia and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; two legendary Japanese poets, Saigyo and Basho, contemplating humanity’s place in the natural world through their poetry and travel journals; and the fate of empires dramatized in two epic poems from ancient Rome and Renaissance Portugal, The Aeneid of Vergil and The Lusiads of Luiz Vaz de Camões. This course is required of Comparative Literature majors, but has no prerequisites, so it is also open to any interested person. The Intensive Writing curriculum includes 4 essays ranging from 3 to 6 pages long and a revision of one of these. There will also be short writing assignments and reading quizzes. There are no exams for this course.
CMLT-C217 (6029) Detective, Mystery and Horror Lit | A. Perez | MWF 11:15 – 12:05
*fulfills A&H requirements
Stephanie Meyer’s _Twilight_ series has inspired the most recent vampire craze, but vampires have long populated literature—and the imagination. In this course, we will trace the figure of the vampire through a series of texts beginning with lesser-known early works such as Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (1872). Readings will also include Bram Stoker’s Dracula(1897), Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire (1976), and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian (2005). Shorter readings will help us formulate theories regarding the changing profile of the vampire and the problems of detecting or unveiling the mystery of the vampire in a narrative. One of our key goals will be to understand the functions of the vampire in literature, and we will examine in particular how the portrayal of the vampire and his or her victims reflects or challenges the concerns of society at large. We will also attend closely to each writer’s unique contributions to vampire literature to discern what issues can be addressed—directly or indirectly—through the vampire. A commitment to the careful reading of all texts is the only prerequisite for the course.
CMLT –C 219(10757) Romance and the Western Tradition| S. Akbar | MW 1:00 -2:15
*fulfills A&H requirements
This class will examine one of history’s most enduring modes of literature: the romance. In this course we will study the romance as a genre subject to ever-evolving literary conventions. Our readings will begin with classical texts and will follow the development of the romance through the Renaissance and across traditional boundaries as we study such texts as a 12th century Persian romance, a modern science fiction novel, and scenes from contemporary films. While we will explore romance as a genre of “love,” our approach will extend beyond this limiting notion to consider the manifestations of romance in other forms, including sonnet sequences and individual lyric poems. Students will learn to identify the various characteristics of the genre and will learn to critique many diverse texts within this framework. Coursework will include a handful of one-page response papers, two short papers (four to seven pages each), and a final exam.
CMLT-C251 (13537) Lyrics and Popular Song| D. Hertz | TR 11:15 – 12:30
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
The course will explore all sorts of popular songs, from the late-nineteenth century to now. We will mostly concentrate on the great American songwriters, including such as figures as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, W.C. Handy, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, and Frank Loesser. We will also consider later figures such as The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. We will periodically move abroad to study French,Italian, Argentine, Brazilian and Mexican songs. Our target in all cases is the same: the varied phenomena of how words and music come together in the hybrid art form we call the popular song. At times we will concentrate on the culture that produced the song, and its means of production and distribution. Most of the time, we will focus close attention on the work of the lyricist or the composer. Sometimes we will discover that they are the same person. The great Cole Porter is a case in point, and Irving Berlin is another fine example. At other times, we will focus on a great performer, such as Piaf or Sinatra. Or we will discover that the performer and creator are sometimes the same person, as in the case of Jacques Brel, the Beatles, or Springsteen. Lyrics will be analyzed in relation to the musical structures and as poetry too. Most important will be to study the popular song as a complete art form, using both words and music. Emphasis will be on the 30s through the 50s, but there will be very recent song material as well. No prerequisites. Varied levels of training in music and poetry are expected from the students in the class. Independent projects will be designed to fit the level of each student. Classes will be a mixture of lecture and discussion. There will be some live performance, and some recordings. Attendance is required. Assignments: there will be two short papers, or the first paper can be expanded into a final paper (the two written projects can be interrelated). Two tests (midterm and final). Required Texts (subject to change): Stephen Citron, Songwriting, Phil Furia, Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Will Friedwald, Stardust Melodies, D.M. Hertz, ed., Songbook I (essays, lyrics, scores) available at IU Bookstore.. Oncourse materials and other short readings to be assigned during the semester
CMLT- C255 (6030) Modern Lit & the Other Arts: Intro | A. Dragu | TR 1:00 – 2:15
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
The course on “Modern Literature and the Other Arts” proposes a comparative analysis of the literature, music and painting of the Western European culture starting from the end of the 18th century until the beginning of the XXth century through some key terms: aesthetics, comparative arts, intermediality, Doppelbegabung (Double talents), performance in the arts, iconology and iconography, collage, ekphrasis, referentiality and metareferentiality, musicalization of fiction, ut pictura poesis, manifesto, visual poetry. By defining the evolution and the birth of these terms over the centuries we will gain insight into the intricacies of arts: though the arts had a parallel development over the centuries, the relationships between them are hard to grasp and describe. The purpose of this class is to make you aware of the limits of the comparability of arts, highlight the similarities and differences that establish themselves between the various arts. The course encourages you to define and develop your own personal views on the field of comparative arts. Originality and creative thinking will be encouraged.
CMLT-C265 (26842) Intro to East Asian Poetry | K. Tsai | TR 2:30 – 3:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
This course explores the classical poetic tradition of China and its influence on Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. We aim to develop sensitivity to literary language and to understand Asian poetry within its literary and cultural contexts. How does poetry in East Asia serve as a medium for self-expression as well as a means for political engagement and even spiritual cultivation? Why does love poetry focus on loss or longing to the exclusion of consummation? What is Zen poetry all about, and why is it so short? Close reading and literary analysis are supplemented with composition exercises to develop a greater sense of form and style. Comparison with the Western tradition will enable us to examine the place of lyric poetry in world literature. While the volume of reading is not high, poetry does demand a great deal of attention and concentration. All readings will be in English translation.
CMLT-C301 (16570) Special Topics in Comp Lit: Modern Fiction and the Image of the Human | A. Fernandes | MW 12:20 – 2:50 |*Meets 2nd 8 weeks only*
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
The common assumption that all literary fiction rests upon the representation of human life often makes us underestimate the complex issues raised when considering the images of the human presented and discussed in literature. Moreover, the theoretical tradition of classical Humanism and modern anti-humanisms adds complexity and polemic to most critical stances. Nevertheless, the question of how to represent human beings, individually and in groups, has become a central issue for writers of modern fiction, as questions of self-knowledge and social identity combine with the discussion of moral values, body limits and discursive agency. In this course, we will explore various perspectives on the literary representation of the human, understood not merely as a theme but rather as a fundamental artistic problem. Taking as our point of departure the 1925 essay The dehumanization of art, by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, we shall read and discuss literary texts by Iberian and Ibero-American novelists and poets, including Machado de Assis, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones), and Clarice Lispector (Laços de Família). Texts may be read in English translation. Students will be asked to write several short exercises and a final paper
CMLT-C 301 (27563) Special Topics in Comp Lit: Adaptations | A. Pao | TR 2:30 – 3:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
In this class, we will study the adaptation of literary texts into new literary works and into various stage and screen forms. We will examine the historical, cultural and aesthetic issues involved in revising and reimagining source texts into different formats for readers or spectators of different eras. Among the questions we will consider are: how does the process of adaptation differ from that of appropriation? What are the characteristics of the most resilient narratives and characters that remain relevant for audiences of different centuries and disparate cultures? How do generic conventions and social conditions interact to revise the meanings of the source text?
CMLT C-305 (6031) Comp App to Lit: Theory and Method | E. Peretz | TR 1:00 – 2:15
*fulfills A&H requirements
*REQUIRED COURSE FOR CMLT MAJORS*
“A poem”, writes German poet Paul Celan, “being an instance of language, hence essentially dialogue, may be a letter in a bottle thrown out to sea with the – surely not always strong – hope that it may somehow wash up somewhere, perhaps on a shoreline of the heart.” Pointing thus to a relation between poetry – and by extension, literary language in general - and the question of the letter, Celan poses for us the task of thinking the following questions: What exactly is the relation between the writing and reading of literature and the sending or addressing of letters? Why is it that a literary text can be compared to a letter, and what at all is a letter? By taking a look at some major literary texts of the last two centuries as well at some of the major theoretical texts of the last fifty years this class proposes that by following these question we can, on the one hand, reach a general, theoretical, understanding of the nature of literary language, of what at all is this thing that we call literature, as well as, on the other hand, actually learn to read literature in systematic manner, that is, learn how to pay attention to the way in which literary language works on us, and addresses us. Readings include, among others, Melville, Hoffmann, Kleist, Kafka, Henry James, Poe, Lacan, Derrida, Blanchot.
CMLT-C318 (26843) Satire | A. Adesokan | TR 11:15 – 12:30
*fulfills A& H requirements
Which is the better idea: to grill the sparerib of a child for lunch or let him run in the streets panning wildly for alms? Is a tropical beach a less likely place than a solemn church to experience divine power? In this course we will read several works of satire from different parts of the world and across the ages, focusing on the forms, literary or visual techniques, and the social and political targets of satire. While working from the premise that the victim of a satirical work is assumed to be removed from the reader, we will also look at cases where the dividing lines are not so clear. Authors and sources may include Achebe, Aristophanes, Bullins, Horace, Jones, Juvenal, Molière, O’Brien, Pope, Soyinka, Swift, The Onion, Twain, Voltaire, Waugh, Ward, and the Yes Men.
CMLT-C321 (13538) Medieval Literarure | R. McGerr | MW 1:00 – 2:15
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements | *meets with MEST M390*
This course introduces students to the beauty, humor, and intellectual sophistication of texts written in Europe between the sixth and fifteenth centuries, in order to help students learn more about medieval European cultures and allow students to compare early literary traditions in Europe with literatures from other times and other areas of the world. Another course goal is to help students enhance their general ability to read and write about texts analytically. We will study representative medieval works from a variety of genres and modes (including epic, romance, lyric, drama, allegorical narrative, and satire). We will explore such issues as the emergence of vernacular literature in the Middle Ages, the relationship of oral and written presentation of medieval texts, the influence of classical and Christian traditions on medieval texts, the relationship of medieval literature to music and the visual arts, and the social forces that shaped European literature during this time. READINGS: Our texts will include a selection of lyric poems from the Latin and vernacular traditions, the Song of Roland, the Song of the Cid,Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain, Marie de France's Lais, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Romance of the Rose, Dante's Divine Comedy, The Second Shepherd's Play, and Everyman. Requirements: Students in C 321 will answer study questions, take mid-term and final exams, and write one critical essay of six to eight pages.
CMLT-C325 (26844) The Renaissance | S. Van der Laan | MW 2:30 – 3:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
What is the Renaissance? Why do we refer to a multi-talented person as a “Renaissance man”? In this class, 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. We will discover the origins of modern drama and opera, sample the last great European epic poems, and watch the birth of the novel. We will witness the Protestant Reformation, the rise of modern science, and the development of new ideas about humanity’s place in the universe. We will observe new developments in art, architecture, and music. Finally, we will explore the origins and the legacy of the Renaissance. The word “renaissance” means “rebirth” in French; to what extent was the Renaissance really the revival of ancient Greek and Roman culture that it claimed to be? The Renaissance is also known as the “early modern” period; how does it lay the foundations for our modern era?
CMLT-C338 (26845) Literature Today: 1950 to the Present | V. Halloran | TR 2:30 – 3:45
*fulfills A&H requirements
In this class, we will analyze the role that history plays as a theme or organizing principle in postmodern novels from around the world. We will consider examples of the genre ranging from historiographical metafiction to hysterical fiction and everything in between. Among the questions we will be raising this semester are: What constitutes historical fiction? What do we do with alternate or apocryphal histories? What is the difference between the “real,” the “authentic,” and the “true” when it comes to past events? What is entertaining about history? What is historical about literature? How do we reconcile conflicting histories within one narrative? What role should the past have in the present? We will read Linda Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism to ground our discussion of these and other theoretical questions. The novels we will read include Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (UK), Ana Teresa Torres’ Doña Inés vs. Oblivion (Venezuela), Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificent (Martinique), Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Colombia), and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (United States). *No prerequisite or instructor approval needed for this class.
CMLT-C340 (14846) Women in World Literature | | M. Valverde | MW 2:30 -3:45
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
It is the year 431 BC, and you (a male Athenian citizen) are attending the festival of Dionysus in Athens. A performance of Euripides’ Medea begins, and the first person on the stage is the nurse. Medea makes her appearance on stage shortly thereafter. But wait! Both women are males, disguised in female garb. Indeed, men are the only actors in a Greek theater. As Froma Zeitlin explains “in order to represent women on stage, men must always put on a feminine costume and mask.” To be sure, “It is not a women who speaks and acts for herself and in herself on stage; it is always a man who impersonates her.” Though women did not perform their own roles and represent themselves on stage in the classical era and even in Shakespeare’s day, women played crucial roles in dramatic performances. In fact, women in tragedy and comedy often assumed more powerful and prominent roles than men. The question then arises, how accurate of a representation do dramatic texts (written by and presumably for men) provide us regarding the role of women in society? Even during the Elizabethan era, female parts were performed by men, and yet women frequently attended the theater. Theater provides us with a very unique and enlightening perspective from which to examine the role of women in society. Though we primarily read dramatic texts today, the presence and cohesion of the audience was a crucial dimension of the production of plays. The experience of going to the theater in classical Athens and in early modern England was very different than it is today. Attending a dramatic performance today is an individual experience and we are merely solitary spectators; however, attending the theater used to be an exercise in self-definition in which the audience formed a collective and cohesive whole. Consequently, the performance of a man-as-woman or later of a woman-as-woman served to continually (re)define the role of women in society. In this course, we will examine how women are portrayed in dramatic texts (both comic and tragic) from the classical era to the modern, and we will read a variety of comic and tragic playwrights, such as Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Shakespeare, Racine, Isben, and Miller. We will even read a few adaptations of classical texts, such as Maureen Duffy’s Rites, that are written by female writers who attempt to refocus the attention of and on women.
CMLT-C 361 (26847) African Lit and Other Arts | A. Adesokan | TR 4:00 – 5:15
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
In this course we will discuss at length the different traditions of African literary writings, focusing on the emergence of these genres—fiction, drama, and poetry—in relation to other art forms. The course explores the relationships between literature and other arts in three related ways: first, the development of some of African literary traditions from oral and visual forms which continue to survive in media such as cinema, music, cartoon; second, the autonomous growth of the non-literary media as social forms; and thirdly their increasing visibility partly as a result of the crises in literary publishing on the continent. Authors may include King-Aribisala, Armah, Birago Diop, Fela Kuti, Kouyate, Ngugi, Okot p’Bitek, Tutuola, and Shapiro.
CMLT-C363 (29084) Studies in Comp Lit: Black Paris. | E. Julien | TR 9:30 – 10:45
*fulfills A&H requirements | *meets with AAAD-A 400 and Hon-H303
As early as the 1800s, free New Orleanians of color journeyed to France, a country that seemed to offer them greater freedom. Since then, countless African American writers, musicians, visual artists and performers have made France and Paris their adopted home. By studying the lives and work of figures such as Claude McKay, Josephine Baker, Lois Mailou Jones, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Melvin Dixon, Faith Ringgold, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and African, Caribbean, and French intellectual counterparts (Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Genêt), we will examine a range of issues, including the historical and cultural ties of New Orleans to the Caribbean and France, migration and exile, the négritude movement and the Harlem Renaissance, the jazz age, transnationalism, and the performance of multi-faceted identities.
CMLT-C370 (16574) Comp Studies Western and Mid East Lit: Voyages through the 1001 Nights | P. Losensky| MWF 10-10- 11:00
*fulfills A&H, CS and IW requirements | *meets with CMLT-C573
Sindbad, Scheherazade, Ali Baba, and Aladdin—the stories of these characters have been retold so often that they have become part of our global literary imagination. In this course, we will examine how The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights, took shape in medieval Islamic culture and, like Sindbad, voyaged around the world. To begin our journey, we will study the origins and structure of the work, its narrative techniques, typical character types, and the social values and aspirations they embody. We will then map the travels of the Nights around the world through the history of its translations into western languages, comparing some of its many English versions. Finally, we will track the stories of the Nights into the mediums of visual art and film and discuss a few of its many rewritings in modern literature by authors such as William Beckford, E. A. Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth, and Naguib Mahfuz. In the course of our voyage, we will make land in the realms of narratology, Orientalism, and gender and translation studies. Students will be expected to attend film screenings on February 8, March 8, and April 12.
CMLT-C375 (26848) Imagining China, Translating China | K. Tsai | TR 11:15 – 12:30
*fulfills A&H and CS requirements
This course is about the lies that European intellectuals have told about China— lies that, when carefully examined,reveal a great deal of truth about Western self-definition and cross-cultural interactions in the age of modernity and empire. Initially portrayed as a realm of virtue and philosopher-kings by Marco Polo, the Jesuits, and Voltaire, China came to be vilified in the hands of Daniel Defoe, Montaigne, and Hegel. How did this happen, when the Far East that most of them knew— detractors and defenders alike— existed only in fantasy, not in fact? What can Puccini’s operas Turandot and Madame Butterfly tell us about cross-cultural relations? From the politics of representation the second half of the course turns to examine the literary life of “China,”imagined or otherwise, through Kafka, Calvino, and Pound. If modernist translations of classical Chinese poetry weremore often than not critiqued as “misreadings” of culture even though such “mistranslations” profoundly influenced twentieth-century poetry, how do we balance the necessity of cultural authenticity with the equally weighty imperative of artistic genius?
