Course Catalog

Addresses major themes and preoccupations that have concerned writers since the Second World War. Focuses on writers who have felt and expressed with peculiar poignancy the challenge which the experience of the war poses to our understanding of humanity. Selected writers include Appelfield, Belben, Bernhard, Calvino, Celan, Duras, Gadda, Hofmann, Josipovici, Levi, Perec, Sciascia, Spark.

Traumatic reaction in the aftermath of WWI, the rapid evolution of cinema and photography, emerging trends of psychoanalytic thought, all contributed to a disturbing, often volatile, re-examination of the aesthetics of literature in the wake of a culture of ruin characterizing early 20th century Europe. Trends in mass consumption, such as the popularity of crime fiction and its existential outgrowth film noir, are largely rooted in this struggle to come to terms with cultural transitions taking place between the two wars. This course will examine the origins and aesthetics of crime fiction and film, notably, the evolution of film noir and the série noire, and other developments in Europe and America just before and after WWII. Students will analyze some of the canonical writers whose works influenced a second generation of crime fiction writers as well as the works of film directors who presided over these crucial moments of transition.

Reads Joyce's Ulysses in depth, and in the context of British modernist culture. Supporting readings include works by Wyndham Lewis and Virginia Woolf, and documents from contemporary periodicals. Articulates the relationships between stylistic creativity and the imagination of new possibilities for living, arguing that stylistic innovation attempts seriously and productively to grasp the emerging difficulties and opportunities of late capitalism.

This course is a quest for understanding of the conventions of medieval romance, a genre of predilection for establishing codified, recognizable normative femininities and masculinities through the lens of gender, sexuality and feminist and queer theory. We will explore medieval texts and the social contexts of their production and reception, the aspirations and contradictions of the idealized, and the heteronormative world of knighthood and courtly love.

Considers a range of literary writing in which experimental prose and challenging depictions of sex have together defined a particularly subversive force. Reads these works against the development of particularly modern arieties of sexual identity and sexual behavior. Includes works by Genet, Nabokov, Orton, Bataille, Kathy Acker, Nella Larsen, among others.

We examine Brecht's application of his theories and plays to his work in German and Hollywood cinema. We consider his collaborations with Fritz Lang, Charles Laughton, G.W. Pabst, Lotte Eisner and others. We also analyze his influence on later filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Hans Jurgen Syberberg and R.W. Fassbinder and his contributions to film theory.

Explores literary works from Africa, Asia, India, Latin American, Ireland and/or the Caribbean alongside classics from the Western canon that address key colonial and post-colonial issues and concepts: imperialism, nationalism, globalization, empire, resistance writing, feminism, hybridity, border-crossing, exile and cultural translation. Introduces major voices in post-colonial literary and cultural studies, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak.

Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty.

Internships may be taken for 1 or 4 credits. Students may do more than one internship, but internship credit cannot cumulatively total more than 4 credits.

Through writing poetry and analyzing examples, students become familiar with poetic forms and techniques. This workshop, led by a publishing writer, includes weekly peer critique of poems written for the course. Students explore what makes a poem moving, evocative, and imbued with a sense of music, no matter what the approach: lyric, narrative, surreal, or experimental.May be taken twice for credit.