Fall 2007 - Lincoln Center
COLU 3216 Lost Illusions (F. Harris)
Western civilization over the last century and a half viewed from the perspective of selected literary texts and films. The shift from confidence in the idea of inevitable progress to the more modern mode of uncertainty. Writers include Flaubert, Fontane, Remarque, Sartre, and Tim O’Brien.
COLU 3431 From Realism to Modernism (E. Stadler)
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.
COLU 3530 Trauma, Memory, and Interrupted Narratives (C. Petit-Hall)
This course will consider what it means to live, write, and create in the aftermath of trauma. Reading texts on the literature of and about trauma and traumatic memory, we will examine various modes of narrative – literary, dramatic, visual, and cultural – identifying connections between theory and practice. Topics for discussion include personal trauma such as rape, abuse, incest, violence, and AIDS, as well as historical trauma such as the Holocaust, racial and political oppression, genocide and war. Through these readings, we will consider the tension between the representation of traumatic memory and the actual experience of the event itself, and the ways in which trauma forces a rethinking of the categories of identity and history. What is the capacity of language to articulate the experience of trauma? What are the ethics of representing trauma in literature, fiction, autobiography and film? How does the creation of these narratives enact and recreate memory? What does the cultural memory of historical trauma reveal about our collective identity? Readings may include: Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Shoshana Felman, Marita Sturken, Peggy Phelan, Michael Taussig, Susan Sontag, Kai Erikson, William Haver, Anne Whitehead, Laurie Vickroy, Dorothy Allison, Toni Morrison, Marguerite Duras, Jamaica Kincaid, Kathryn Harrison, Joan Didion, Susan Lori Parks, David Wojnarowicz, Sally Mann, Reza Abdoh, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Cross-Listed Courses
AAEG 3688 African Literature I (F. Mustafa)
This course will focus on indigenous language and pre-colonial African (oral) literatures in translation. We will pay attention to the formalities of oral practices, tracing their development from the epics of the west African Empires, through 20th-century and contemporary African film and music. We will also survey the spread of the literary and performative traditions of Kiswahili and other Eastern and Southern African trends.
CMLU 3420 Contemporary Filmmakers (E. Stadler)
A study of film makers of the 90's, focusing on the work of directors whose films will be presented at the current New York Film Festival. Attendance at Festival screenings and press conferences. Special fee for Festival tickets.
ENLU 3045 Theory for the English Major (L. Kramer)
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 major/minor only. May be substituted for CO 3000 - Theories of Comparative Literature.
ENLU 3115 Medieval Women Writers (S. Yeager)
In the literature of the medieval era, a popular literary character named the Wife of Bath asked what the historical record would have shown had women written more texts. Like the poet Geoffrey Chaucer who created the Wife of Bath, we will ask similar questions in this course, exploring the ways in which the writing of medieval women influenced themselves, their society, and continues to affect our world today. Medieval texts by women writers offer a range of experiences and authors, from the love poetry of Christine de Pisan, to Margery Kempe’s mystical union with the divine, to Heloise’s illicit letters to Abelard. Whether writing for themselves or for others, these women left behind a lively and intriguing account of female experience in the Middle Ages, demonstrating an intense interest in politics, the arts, philosophy and spirituality.
SPLU 3426 Modern Hispanic Theater (R. Lamas)
Through the study of a series of contemporary plays, this course will address theatre as testimony to the social and political changes in the Hispanic world during the twentieth century. From pre- to post-Franco Spain, and from the naturalist drama in the early twentieth century to the postmodern experiments in the theatre of the absurd in Argentina, we will focus on issues of rebellion, abuse of power, and tyrannicide.
SPLP 3582 New York in Latino Literature (A. Cruz-Malavé)
The representation of the City of New York by Spanish, Latin American, and New York Latino writers. New York as viewed by Spanish and Latin American visiting and exile writers as well as by native Latino New York artists. New York as a metaphor for artistic creation in a globalized world and as a center for a cosmopolitan Spanish and Latin American diasporic avantgarde. The constitution of neighborhoods, communities, andplaces such as El Barrio (East Harlem), Loisaida (Lower East Side), La 42 (42nd Street), Quisqueya Heights (Washington Heights, Manhattan), Los Sures (South Williamsburg, Brooklyn), El Bronx, and Queens in writing, film, and art. New York as constructed by the Latino imagination. To include authors such as Martí, Tablada, Lorca, Burgos, González, Arenas, Thomas, Piñero, Rivera, Prida, Braschi, Hijuelos, Manrique, Rodriguez, Leguizamo, and Troyano. Applies to LALS and LS majors.
SPLU 3610 Children's Gaze in Latin American Literature (C. Vich)
This course examines several Latin American short stories, novels and poetry which focus on the way children and adolescents view the world and on how they process their immediate socioeconomic and geographical contexts to construct their worldview and to find their own place in society. Through our readings, we will explore childhood as a literary discourse, as a particular form of sensitivity towards the world. Topics such as the creation of imaginary worlds, the understanding of reality through the practice of play and the beginnings of sexual awakening will be discussed in relation to the works read. Examples of the literary works that will usually be included in this course are: Alfredo Bryce’s Un mundo para Julius, José María Arguedas’ Los ríos profundos and José Emilio Pacheco’s Las batallas en el desierto.
Fall 2007 - Rose Hill
CORU 1230 History and the Novel (E. Badowska)
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.
CORU 3691 20th Century African American and African Women’s Writing (Y. Christiansë)
This course introduces a body of literature by African American and African women, as well as writings about such women. We will consider the political, racial, social, and other related contexts in which these women write. How, for example, did African American writers of the early 20th century attempt to define black female identity and how do later 20th century writers engage this same concern? What concerns are shared in the writings of African American women and women writing in countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal? We consider how some African women responded to their countries’ independence from external or internal colonialism. We also consider the larger cultural traditions into which African American and African women’s writings have been absorbed, or which their writings resist, or change. Our African readings will also consider how gender and racial concerns factor in writings by white African women writers. Does religion (Christianity, Islam) play any role in the way that some writers address their identity as women? Our definition of ‘writings’ will include novels, poetry, film, autobiography and journalism. Authors include: Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison, Saidiya Hartman, Nawal El Saadawi, Mariama Ba, Antjie Krog, Ingrid de Kok. We will also read Njabulo Ndebele’s strange fictional biography of Winnie Mandela, The Cry of Winnie Mandela.
Cross-Listed Courses
ENRU 4134 Spy Plots and Conspirancy Theories (C. GoGwilt)
This course will examine a variety of spy plots and conspiracy theories, from English Renaissance drama to contemporary American movies. The main aim is to place in comparative historical, cultural, and theoretical context contemporary interest in conspiracy theories, as exemplified in recent spy thrillers, films, and current events. Recent examples of spy thrillers, such as The Bourne Identity, The Interpreter, and The Manchurian Candidate will be placed in a variety of historical contexts: the Cold War, with such examples as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and the James Bond films; the rise of the spy thriller in the early twentieth century, from such works as Kipling’s Kim and Conrad’s The Secret Agent; and against the backdrop of classic prefigurations of espionage and conspiracy theory, in such works as Wilkie Collin’s The Moonstone, Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
ENRU 3045 Theory for English Majors (C. GoGwilt)
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 major/minor only. May be substituted for CO 3000 - Theories of Comparative Literature.
ENRU 3099 Translating Literature: Why and How? (C. Brandt)
What does it take to translate a poem or story well? How be true to the original and carry over its aesthetic excitement as well as its meaning? A course for those with a basic knowledge of a language other than English.
