Fall 2009
 
 LC Course Offerings  |  LC Cross-Listed Courses  |  RH Course Offerings  |  RH Cross-Listed Courses

Lincoln Center Course Offerings
COLI 3000-L01 – Theories of Comparative Literature  (4 credits)
A. Hoffman      MR 4:00-5:15
A review of theories and methods of comparative literary studies, using literary theory and criticism as primary readings in conjunction with works of literature drawn from a range of literary traditions. Fulfills the theory requirement for Comparative Literature and English majors.

COLI 3211-L01 – Evil in Literature  (4 credits)
F. Harris      TF 11:30-12:45
Evil as portrayed in literature from the late eighteenth-century to the end of the twentieth. Authors studied may include Balzac, Baudelaire, Bronte, Genet, Laclos and Wilde.


Lincoln Center Cross-listed Courses
AFAM 3030-L01 – African American Women  (4 credits)
I. Owens      T 2:30-5:15
A survey of African American women’s history using documentary texts, fiction and social science literature. Examines the multiple jeopardies of race, sex and economic condition. Explores specific conditions of female slavery, resistance, work and political activism. Women studied include Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells Barnett, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amy Jaques Garvey and bell hooks. Fulfills the American Pluralism requirement.

COMM 4001-L01 – Films of Moral Struggle  (4 credits)
M. Tueth      MW 1:00-2:15
This course attempts to study how human values and moral choices are explored through both the narrative content and technique of the film medium. Philosophical and theological perspectives are brought to bear on various ethical questions which each film presents, while numerous critical approaches are employed to develop the students’ appreciation of each film's technical aspects. The majority of the films studied are distinguished achievements in the American film canon, such as Casablanca, On the Waterfront, The Graduate, The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River, American Beauty, and others. Fulfills the Senior Values requirement – open to LC students only.

COMM 4001-L02 – Films of Moral Struggle  (4 credits)
A. Auster      T 2:30-5:00
This course will survey both American and World Cinema for their approaches to moral and ethical issues. It will examine how these issues are presented to an audience and how these issues are resolved, or perhaps even left ambiguous or unresolved. It will also examine how these films' moral issues are framed by the filmmakers in various countries and cultures. Fulfills the Senior Values requirement – open to LC students only.

FREN 3340-L01 – Neo-Classical French Women Writers  (4 credits)
A. Clark      MR 10:00-11:15
Introduction: This course examines women writers in 17th - and 18th-century France and the various movements, events, literary genres, groups, and institutions their writing informed (i.e., les  Précieuses, the Republic of Letters, the Salons littéraires, the epistolary novel, etc.). Objectives: To examine the literature and culture of French speaking women in the neo-classical period (1648-1789) and the material, social, political, and historical conditions in which they lived, negotiated power, and wrote. We will give special attention to the various literary genres that these women invented, adapted, developed, and/or re-imagined and the ways in which they used their writing to create a relatively autonomous identity and literary space. Conducted in French.

SPAN 3530-L01 – Excess in Spanish Literature  (4 credits)
R. Lamas      TF 2:30-3:45
The modern Spanish national identity was constructed exploring the limits beyond European ethics and aesthetics to present Spain as the Other. This course focuses on the tragic consequences of the Spanish excess, examining representations in literature, film, and music. Among the writers studied will be Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, Cela, and Goytisolo. We will also study critical works by authors such as Bataille, Freud, and Baudrillard. Conducted in Spanish.

SPAN 3850-L01 – Narrating the City  (4 credits)
C. Vich      MR 10:00-11:15
In this course we will workwith 20th-century Latin American literary works in which a particular city has a prominent role. We will discuss how each work uses cities like Lima, Mexico City or Buenos Aires (among others) as material for literary imagination. Among the topics of discussion, we will talk about the city as a text, the role of the urban flâneur, the growth of urban peripheries (i.e., shantytowns) and the changing nature of cities as a result of migration. Conducted in Spanish.

WMST 3607-C01 – Women’s Art and Literature  (4 credits)
E. Frost      M 6:00-8:45
The Body in Contemporary Women’s Art and Literature. How do contemporary women writers and artists depict the experiences of bodies? This course will examine works by women writers and visual artists since the 1970s whose work depicts such issues as sexuality, physical difference, and racial difference, challenging conceptions of bodily norms.


Rose Hill Course Offerings
COLI 1210-R01 – Literature and Society  (3 credits)
J. Kim      MR 11:30-12:45
This course will examine a variety of contemporary American cultural artifacts in order to gain insight into the social construction of race. Primary texts may include novels such as Junot Diaz's Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Susan Choi’s A Person of Interest, and Toni Morrison's Beloved; films such as Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Romeo Must Die, and The Pursuit of Happyness; a selection of cartoons and spoken word poetry; and a variety of theoretical and critical texts aimed at equipping students with a rigorous vocabulary for participating in intellectually sophisticated and ethically responsible discussions of race. Fulfills the Sophomore Literature and American Pluralism requirements of the Core Curriculum pre-fall 2009.

COLI 1250-R01 – Traditions of Storytelling  (3 credits)
C. GoGwilt      MR 11:30-12:45
This course offers a comparative study of traditions of storytelling, placing questions of narrative form within global cultural and historical coordinates. Selections from ancient forms of storytelling will be considered alongside modern examples from European and American literature, and with a comparative emphasis on twentieth-century work from Africa, Indonesia, and China. Fulfills the Sophomore Literature and Global Studies requirements of the Core Curriculum pre-fall 2009.

COLI 3522-R01 – Strange Desires  (4 credits)
D. Contreras      TF 11:30-12:45
The course will use the image of the strange and the thematic of desire to make less familiar our concept of American literature, from North and South. Readings will span across the continents, valuing what we could describe as unsettling and even bizarre forms of desire and sexuality. Forms of obsession and modes of perversion will be highlighted in the readings. We will begin with short stories by Hawthorne, Poe, James. Authors may include: Faulkner, Bowles, Burroughs, Arturo Islas, John Rechy, Julio Cortazar, Reinaldo Arenas, and Garcia Marquez. The course will be divided into thematic sections as follows: perverse Journeys; Strange Love; and the Memory of Sex.

COLI 4125-R01 – Kieslowski in Theory and History  (4 credits)
E. Badowska      T 2:30-5:00
This seminar will focus 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.


Rose Hill Cross-listed Courses
ENGL 3045-R01 – Theory for English Majors  (4 credits)
M. Gold      TF 11:30-12:45
Ordinarily to be taken during the junior year, this course introduces the student to debates in literary and critical theory. The goal of this course is to reflect on reading strategies, textual practices, and language itself. Students will engage with a range of critical, theoretical, and social issues shaping the field of literary studies today. English and Comparative Literature majors/minors only. May be substituted for CO 3000 - Theories of Comparative Literature.

ENGL 3119-R01 – Love in the Middle Ages  (4 credits)
M. Erler      MR 2:30-3:45
This course will treat the “rules” for the love of the 12th-century author Andreas Capellanus, together with the work of his Roman predecessor Ovid. Then we will examine the way love was experienced in Marie de France’s short stories (lais), and will read the real-life letters of Abelard and his mistress, Heloise. The course will conclude with Arthurian narratives from Chretien de Troyes, Sir Thomas Malory and others.

ENGL 3328-R01 – 18th-Century Literature and Society  (4 credits)
W. Leung      TF 11:30-12:45
This course examines a range of 18th-century texts paying special attention to their social and historical contexts.

ENGL 3535-R01 – Modernist Poetry  (4 credits)
P. Sicker      MR 2:30-3:45
Modernist Poetry offers an intensive survey of major thematic currents and formal experiments in British, Irish and American verse from the late 19th century through World War II. Beginning with Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy, the course will devote central attention to the poetic development of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, while also exploring works by such major figures as Ezra Pound, H.D., Robert Frost, Wilfred Owen, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden and Langston Hughes.

ENGL 3590-R01 – Multicultural Britain  (4 credits)
J. Gilchrist      TF 2:30-3:45
An interdisciplinary approach to representations of race in post-WWII British culture. We will study novels and films from the 1950s and later, directing particular attention to the ways racial and national identities are constructed and debated.

ENGL 3843-R01 – Extraordinary Bodies  (4 credits)
L. Cassuto      W 11:30-2:00
From freak shows to the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with odd bodies have received special, and not always welcome, attention from their peers. This course will study the  experience of people with anomalous bones from a variety of personal and social perspectives. Fulfills the Senior Values requirement – open to RH students only.

FREN 3109-R01 – Medieval French Lit & Politics  (4 credits)
D. Dudash      MR 2:30-3:45
This course explores the political crises and literary polemics of late medieval France. We will examine a variety of different genres (poetry, epistle, political prose) that reflected and attempted to contend with the crises of the day, including the Hundred Years’ War, Civil War, and polemics over the role and meaning of literature. Conducted in French.

FREN 3360-R01 – French Autobiography  (4 credits)
L. Schreier      MR 11:30-12:45
Autobiography as a genre and a practice involves making public intensely personal traumas and triumphs and using intimacy at the center of the artistic project. This course explores the tension between sincerity and creativity, “objective” representations of the self and respect for the literary canon, memory and fiction. Readings include poetry, memoirs, travel journals, letters and diaries by Rousseau, Doubrovsky, Roubaud, Perec, Sarraute, Satrapi. We also discuss a number of autobiographical documentary films. Conducted in French.

ITAL 3051-R01 – Survey of Literature  (4 credits)
A. Polcri      MR 11:30-12:45
Sacred and Profane in the Italian Tradition of the Renaissance. The relationship between the sacred and the profane is a central theme in thepoetry, prose, and dramatic Italian literature of the Renaissance. In this course we will consider the intellectual debate on sensual and spiritual love and will study the moral tradition represented by the literary production of such preachers as San Bernardino from Siena, as well as the allegorical works of Angelo Poliziano and Luigi Pulci. Finally, we will pay particular attention to the profane “novelle” of major authors such as Boccaccio and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and to theatrical masterpieces like Niccolò Machiavelli’s Mandragola and Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio. Conducted in Italian.

PHIL 3188-R01 – Art, Morality, Politics  (4 credits)
J. Gosetti      TF 10:00-11:15
This seminar explores the interrelationship among artistic, moral and political values. Fulfills the Senior Values requirement – open to RH students only.

PHIL 3930-R01 – Philosophy and Literature  (4 credits)
J. Gosetti      TF 11:30-12:45
This course is devoted to the study of philosophical theories of literature, including studies of literary and poetic language, of the relationship between literary and other kinds of knowledge, of the philosophical meaning of literary works, and of questions regarding the status of the author and reader in the work of literature. The course covers readings from the history of philosophy and from recent philosophical and literary sources. Philosophers and authors studied include Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Iser, Blanchot, Bachelard, Sartre, Nehamas and de Bolla, as well as literary works by Rilke, Proust, Moravia and writers of Holocaust literature.

SPAN 3561-R01 – Representing the Gypsy  (4 credits)
J. Jimenez-Belmonte      MR 2:30-3:45
Representing the Gypsy in Spanish Literature and Culture. Socially rejected and alienated for centuries by Spanish authorities and laws, the Gypsy has become, paradoxically, one of the  most recognizable and exportable icon of modern Spain; cultural phenomena like “flamenco” or even feelings like passion are widely perceived today as irrevocable signs of the Spanish character. The subject of this course is the study of that paradox through the analysis of the cultural representations of the Gypsy (both as a community and as an individual) produced in Spain from the 1500 to the present. The course proposes a multidisciplinary approach and will include legal and literary texts (by authors like Miguel de Cervantes and Federico García Lorca, among others) as well as audiovisual material (by filmmakers like Carlos Saura or Pedro Almodóvar). Conducted in Spanish.