Courses

COML B200 Introduction to Comparative Literature

Spring 2025

This course explores a variety of approaches to the comparative or transnational study of literature through readings of several kinds: texts from different cultural traditions that raise questions about the nature and function of storytelling and literature; texts that comment on, respond to, and rewrite other texts from different historical periods and nations; translations; and readings in critical theory.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

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COML B216 Dreaming and Fictional Narrative in Comparative Context

Not offered 2024-25

Is the sleeping you still "you"? How does your dream-self relate to your "real world" self? In this course we will examine the relationship between dreams and other acts of imagination represented in fiction, drama, film, and other related arts. How do dreams engage questions of the distinctions between reality and fiction? Following the philosopher Zhuangzi's dream of the butterfly: if there is a clear distinction, can we know which side of that distinction we are on? In this course, we will look at the ways that different authors have used dreams to explore topics such as: the relationship between true and false, dreams as expressions of innermost desire, dreams as predictions of the future, and dreams as interpretations of experiences. Surveying classical and contemporary fiction, drama, film, and graphic novels from Chinese, American, and other national languages and traditions, we will apply ideas developed in philosophy and critical theory to examine how authors have explored this tradition. Theoretical topics include: narrative theory, time and memory, epistemic injustice. All texts are read in English translation, but students who can read the original language are encouraged to do so when possible. EALC or COML majors have the option to take it as 316 with permission of instructor.

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COML B217 Lovesick

Not offered 2024-25

Love has often been compared to some kind of sickness. In this class, we will explore this traditional discourse on love from different angles: how sick is love? What kind of sickness are we talking about? Is there a cure to love? Is love always delusional? Is there always a touch of sacrifice in love? In order to answer these questions, we will read books, a graphic novels, and watch movies belonging to a variety of cultures and times. Authors include: Ovid, Mme de La Fayette, Charles Burns.

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COML B324 Version Control: Surface, Depth and Literature

Not offered 2024-25

"Version Control" is a semester-long course in Comparative Literature that explores the way we read and interpret texts. Are texts hiding their true meanings under a surface layer of plot? Is a story a riddle that we have to overcome in order to understand it? As Rita Felski wrote: "the professional reader, whether critic or detective, presses below distracting surfaces to the deeper meaning of signs" (Felski, "Suspicious" 224). What are the hazards of pressing below the surface? We will address this and other questions this semester through the close reading of a variety of texts that make this question central to their plots. We read literary texts where multiple-and often contradictory-levels of story are held in suspension; texts that use images and texts together to tell their story; and, finally, we will look intra-textually at adaptations of literary texts.

Course does not meet an Approach

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COML B398 Theories and Methods in Comparative Literature

This course, required of all senior comparative literature majors in preparation for writing the senior thesis in the spring semester, has a twofold purpose: to review interpretive approaches informed by critical theories that enhance our understanding of literary and cultural texts; and to help students prepare a preliminary outline of their senior theses. Throughout the semester, students research theoretical paradigms that bear on their own comparative thesis topics in order to situate those topics in an appropriate critical context. This is a required for majors and minors.

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COML B399 Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature

Thesis writing seminar. Research methods.

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COML B403 Supervised Work

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CSTS B219 Poetic Desires, Queer Longings

Not offered 2024-25

This course places poetry that considers love and desire from Greco-Roman antiquity in conversation with modern poetry and critical theory (queer, feminist, and literary). How are the roles of lover and beloved constructed through gender? How does queer desire and sexuality manifest in different cultural contexts? How have poets sought to express desire through language, and in what ways does language fail to capture that desire? Students in this course will face the difficulties of articulating desire head-on through both traditional literary analysis papers and a creative writing project. Texts will include love poetry by Sappho and Ovid, Trista Mateer's Aphrodite Made Me Do It, Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet, and Audre Lorde's "The Uses of the Erotic."

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CSTS B375 Interpreting Mythology

Not offered 2024-25

The myths of the Greeks have provoked outrage and fascination, interpretation and retelling, censorship and elaboration, beginning with the Greeks themselves. We will see how some of these stories have been read and understood, recounted and revised, in various cultures and eras, from ancient tellings to modern movies. We will also explore some of the interpretive theories by which these tales have been understood, from ancient allegory to modern structural and semiotic theories. The student should gain a more profound understanding of the meaning of these myths to the Greeks themselves, of the cultural context in which they were formulated. At the same time, this course should provide the student with some familiarity with the range of interpretations and strategies of understanding that people of various cultures and times have applied to the Greek myths during the more than two millennia in which they have been preserved. Preference to upperclassmen, previous coursework in myth required.

Counts Toward: Classical Culture and Society; Comparative Literature; Greek; Latin.

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EALC B200 Major Seminar: Methods and Approaches

Spring 2025

This course is a writing intensive course for EALC majors and minors to introduce some foundational ideas and concepts in the study of East Asia. Beginning with close readings of primary source texts, students are introduced to the philosophy and culture of China, and its subsequent transmission and adaptation across the vast geographical area that is commonly referred to as "East Asia." Students will gain familiarity with methods in this interdisciplinary field and develop skills in the practice of close critical analysis, bibliography, and the formulation of a research topic. Required of EALC majors and minors. Majors should take this course before the senior year.

Writing Intensive

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages & Culture; History.

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EALC B240 Topics in Chinese Film

Not offered 2024-25

This is a topics course. Course content varies.

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EALC B281 Food in Translation: Theory and Practice

Spring 2025

This semester we will explore the connections between what we eat and how we define ourselves in the context of global culture. We will proceed from the assumption that food is an object of culture, and that our contemplation of its transformations and translations in production, preparation, consumption, and distribution will inform our notions of personal and group identity. This course takes Chinese food as a case study, and examines the way that Chinese food moves from its host country to diasporic communities all over the world, using theories of translation as our theoretical and empirical foundation. From analyzing menu and ingredient translations to producing a short film based on interviews, we will consider the relationship between food and communication in a multilingual and multicultural world. Readings include theoretical texts on translation (Apter), recipe books and menus, Chinese and Chinese-American literature (Classic of Poetry, Mo Yan, Hong Kingston). Films include Ian Cheney's "Searching for General Tso," Wayne Wang's "Soul of a Banquet" and "Eat a Bowl of Tea," Ang Li's "Eat Drink Man Woman," and Wong Karwai's "In the Mood for Love."

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages & Culture.

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EALC B355 Animals, Vegetables, Minerals in East Asian Literature & Film

Not offered 2024-25

This semester, we will explore how artists question, explore, celebrate, and critique the relationships between humans and the environment. Through a topics-focused course, students will examine the ways that narratives about environment have shaped the way that humans have defined themselves. We will be reading novels and short stories and viewing films that contest conventional binaries of man and animal, civilization and nature, tradition and technology, and even truth and fiction. "Animals, Vegetables, Minerals" does not follow chronological or geographical frameworks, but chooses texts that engage the three categories enumerated as the major themes of our course. We will read and discuss animal theory, theories of place and landscape, and theories of modernization or mechanization; and there will be frequent (and intentional) overlap between these categories. We will also be watching films that extend our theoretical questions of thes e themes beyond national, linguistic, and generic borders. You are expected to view this course as a collaborative process in which you share responsibility for leading discussion. There are no prerequisites or language expectations, but students should have some basic knowledge of East Asian, especially Sinophone, history and culture, or be willing to do some additional reading (suggested by the instructor) to achieve an adequate contextual background for exploring these texts.

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ENGL B213 Global Cinema

Not offered 2024-25

This course introduces students to one possible history of global cinema. We will discuss and analyze a variety of filmmakers and film movements from around the world. Students will be exposed to the discipline of film studies as it is specifically related to the cinema of East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. We will study these works with special emphasis on film language, aesthetics, and politics, as well as film style and genre. Along the way, we will explore a number of key terms and concepts, including colonialism, postcolonialism, form, realism, surrealism, futurism, orientalism, modernity, postmodernity, hegemony, the subaltern, and globalization. Filmmakers will include, among others, Wong Kar-wai, Satyajit Ray, Shirin Neshat, Fernando Mereilles, Agnès Varda, and Werner Herzog.

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ENGL B217 Narratives of Latinidad

Not offered 2024-25

This course explores how Latina/o writers fashion bicultural and transnational identities and narrate the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Latin America. We will focus on topics of shared concern among Latino groups such as struggles for social justice, the damaging effects of machismo and racial hierarchies, the politics of Spanglish, and the affective experience of migration. By analyzing a range of cultural production, including novels, poetry, testimonial narratives, films, activist art, and essays, we will unpack the complexity of Latinidad in the Americas.

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ENGL B237 Cultural Memory and State-Sanctioned Violence in Latinx Literature

Not offered 2024-25

This course examines how Latinx literature grapples with state-sanctioned violence, cultural memory, and struggles for justice in the Americas. Attending to the histories of dictatorship and civil war in Central and South America, we will focus on a range of genres-including novels, memoir, poetry, film, and murals-to explore how memory and the imagination can contest state-sanctioned violence, how torture and disappearances haunt the present, how hetereopatriarchal and white supremacist discourses are embedded in authoritarian regimes, and how U.S. imperialism has impacted undocumented migration. Throughout the course we will analyze the various creative techniques Latinx cultural producers use to resist violence and imagine justice.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; International Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx; Spanish.

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FREN B207 Ouvrir la voix: Introduction aux études francophones

Not offered 2024-25

This course provides students with an overview of foundational concepts, methods and texts relevant to Francophone Studies. We will engage with past and present debates relating to identity, diversity, nation and empire in the colonial and postcolonial contexts and explore the specificity of Francophone Studies with regards to the field of postcolonial studies. While focused on literature, the course will also explore other forms of cultural production (movies, graphic novels, political speeches, etc.) from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Caribbean and Vietnam. The course will train students in literary analysis and develop their ability to speak and write critically in French. Prerequisites: FREN 102 or 105.

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FREN B213 Theory in Practice:Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Fall 2024

By bringing together the study of major theoretical currents of the 20th century and the practice of analyzing literary works in the light of theory, this course aims at providing students with skills to use literary theory in their own scholarship. The selection of theoretical readings reflects the history of theory (psychoanalysis, structuralism, narratology), as well as the currents most relevant to the contemporary academic field: Post-structuralism, Post-colonialism, Gender Studies, and Ecocriticism. They are paired with a diverse range of short stories (Poe, Kafka, Camus, Borges, Calvino, Morrison, Djebar, Ngozi Adichie) that we discuss along with our study of theoretical texts. The class will be conducted in English with an additional hour in French for students wishing to take it for French credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; English; German and German Studies; History of Art; Italian and Italian Studies; Philosophy; Russian.

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FREN B229 Monstres et Merveilles

Not offered 2024-25

Sous leurs dehors simples, les contes merveilleux ont fasciné les critiques littéraires comme les spécialistes du folklore. Ces derniers ont tenté de définir leur structure primordiale et de les classer selon des motifs universels. Nous nous inspirerons à la fois de l'analyse structurale et de l'analyse symbolique pour réenchanter des contes devenus parfois trop familiers. Pour y voir plus clair, nous lirons plusieurs versions d'un même conte. A la fin du cours, vous pourrez répondre à ces questions : quel est le rapport entre Cendrillon et les cendres ? Pourquoi le chaperon du Petit Chaperon Rouge est-il rouge ? Le devoir final sera un conte que vous écrirez vous-même.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature.

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FREN B302 Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts

Not offered 2024-25

This study of selected women authors from Latin CE-Carolingian period through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and 17th century-among them, Perpetua, Hrotswitha, Marie de France, the trobairitz, Christine de Pisan, Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre, and Madame de Lafayette-examines the way in which they appropriate and transform the male writing tradition and define themselves as self-conscious artists within or outside it. Particular attention will be paid to identifying recurring concerns and structures in their works, and to assessing their importance to women's writing in general: among them, the poetics of silence, reproduction as a metaphor for artistic creation, and sociopolitical engagement. Prerequisite: two 200-level courses or permission of instructor.

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FREN B312 Advanced Topics in Literature

Spring 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisites: two 200-level courses.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature.

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FREN B325 Topics: Etudes avancées

Section 001 (Fall 2024): La France du Roi-Soleil

Fall 2024

An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilization. This is a topics course. Course content varies. The seminar topic rotates among many subjects: La Révolution française: Histoire, littérature et culture; L'environnement naturel dans la culture française; Mal et valeurs éthiques; Le Cinéma et la politique, 1940-1968; Le Nationalisme en France et dans les pays francophones; Étude socio-culturelle des arts du manger en France du Moyen Age à nos jours; Crimes et criminalité; Ecrire la Grande Guerre: 1914-10; Le "Rentrée Littéraire"; Proust/Baudelaire; L'Humain et l'environnement.

Current topic description: À la fois fantasmé et décrié, le règne de Louis XIV a laissé une marque indélébile sur l'histoire de France. En effet, derrière le faste du château de Versailles, de l'avènement de la galanterie et de la préciosité se cachent la fermeté et la rigueur de la monarchie absolue de droit divin. Néanmoins, ces aspects en apparence contradictoires constituent des marqueurs de l'ambition démesurée et de la soif d'autorité d'un monarque qui a façonné le XVIIe siècle à tous les niveaux. Ce cours se propose d'étudier le règne de Louis XIV sous ses différentes manifestations : de la centralisation politique à la réglementation de la culture et de la langue, jusqu'aux innovations en matière d'ingénierie, d'architecture et d'urbanisme. Il s'agira de mettre en lumière l'étendue du pouvoir exercé par le roi sur son royaume, mais également de ses limites par l'étude de sources littéraires et critiques. Auteurs étudiés : Jean de la Fontaine, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Molière, La Rochefoucauld, Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Saint-Simon, Louis XIV, etc.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature.

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FREN B326 Etudes avancées

Section 001 (Spring 2024): Aux armes, citoyennes!

Not offered 2024-25

An in-depth study of a particular topic, event or historical figure in French civilization. This is a topics course. Course content varies.

Current topic description: Olympe de Gouges, une des actrices de la Révolution française et pionnière du féminisme en France, reste encore méconnue de beaucoup. En effet, ses combats et son œuvre ont été dénigrés, ignorés et passés sous silence pendant près de deux siècles. Or, lorsque nous constatons qu'à l'époque contemporaine, le droit des femmes à disposer de leur corps est menacé et que les inégalités entre les individus ne cessent de croître, les messages d'Olympe de Gouges prennent tout leur sens, et méritent d'être examinés en profondeur. Ce cours aura pour objectif de familiariser les étudiant.e.s avec les combats d'Olympe de Gouges, à travers ses prises de position concernant l'éducation des femmes, les inégalités liées au mariage, ainsi que l'esclavage. Nous explorerons tant ses écrits politiques - dont la Déclaration de la femme et de la citoyenne - que ses textes dramatiques, comme L'esclavage des noirs. Nous étudierons ces œuvres dissidentes en parallèle avec des évènements majeurs de la Révolution, des expériences personnelles de l'autrice, et des phénomènes contemporains. Ce cours sera enseigné en français.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature.

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FREN B350 Voix médiévales et échos modernes

Not offered 2024-25

A study of selected 19th- and 20th-century works inspired by medieval subjects, such as the Grail and Arthurian legends and the Tristan and Yseut stories, and by medieval genres, such as the roman, saints' lives, or the miracle play. Among the texts and films studied are works by Bonnefoy, Cocteau, Flaubert, Genevoix, Giono, and Gracq.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature.

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GERM B223 Topics in German Cultural Studies

Section 001 (Fall 2024): Gender and Artificial Life

Fall 2024

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English.

Current topic description: Gender and Artificial Life: Monsters, Machines, Lovers and Others: Beginning with Pygmalion's animated sculpture, the creation of artificial life from dead matter stages a gendered dynamic between the creator and creation--a dynamic that was renegotiated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continues to be revisited today. Whereas Cartesian thought celebrates the perfectibility of automata and anthropomorphic machines, Romantic stories featuring animated dolls of women and Doppelgängers reveal a deep skepticism toward artificial life, bound to key aesthetic and philosophical questions that intersect with conceptions of the feminine at the time. Early film at the turn of the century both deploy and upend these characterizations, uncovering an aesthetic anxiety in the face of technological innovations and the quickly evolving life in the Metropolis--depicting Others along racialized and gendered lines. In the present day, recent blockbusters such as the Barbie movie feature created life and simulacra and extend these questions beyond those of mere human autonomy to the very nature of visuality and representation. This course will feature works by Ovid, ETA Hoffmann, Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud, Eichendorff, Goethe, the Grimms, as well as expressionist and recent films.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; History; History of Art.

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GERM B245 Interdisciplinary Approaches to German Literature and Culture

Section 001 (Fall 2023): Scenes of Observation:

Not offered 2024-25

This is a topics course. Taught in German. Course content varies. Previous topics include, Women's Narratives on Modern Migrancy, Exile, and Diasporas; Nation and Identity in Post-War Austria.

Writing Attentive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Gender Sexuality Studies; Growth and Structure of Cities.

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HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema

Spring 2025

This course is writing intensive. An introduction to the analysis of film and other lensed, time-based media through particular attention to the role of the spectator. Why do moving images compel our fascination? How exactly do spectators relate to the people, objects, and places that appear on the screen? Wherein lies the power of images to move, attract, repel, persuade, or transform their viewers? Students will be introduced to film theory through the rich and complex topic of identification. We will explore how points of view are framed by the camera in still photography, film, television, video games, and other media. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. Fulfills Film Studies Introductory or Theory course requirement. This course was formerly numbered HART B110; students who previously completed HART B110 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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ITAL B213 Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Not offered 2024-25

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Comparative Literature; English; French and Francophone Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; German and German Studies; History of Art; Philosophy; Russian.

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ITAL B216 Body and Mind

Not offered 2024-25

In this course, we will explore representations of the relationship between body and mind, starting from 19th-century Russian novels that conceptualize love as a physical ailment and ending with the history of Alzheimer's disease. Talking about the relationship between body and mind will allow us to investigate how gender roles and models of womanhood and masculinity shaped the evolution of modern sciences, from psychiatry to obstetrics. Investigating how bodies have been (and continue to be) read, we will discuss systems created to police societies by cataloguing bodies, from Lombroso's phrenology to modern fingerprinting and face recognition softwares. Finally, we will consider how our understanding of the relationship between body and mind has changed over time. Many of the theories we will discuss during the semester are now considered outdated pseudo-science - but how can we conceptualize the difference between science and pseudo-science? As new categories and disease designations appear to substitute the old ones, which are the implications of creating a label for a constellation of existing symptoms? The course will be taught entirely in English. There will be an optional hour in Italian for students of Italian.

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ITAL B325 Literature and Film, Literature into Films and Back

Not offered 2024-25

This course is a critical analysis of Modern Italian society through cinematic production and literature, from the Risorgimento to the present. According to Alfred Hitchock's little stories, two goats were eating the reel of a movie taken from a famous novel. "I liked the book better," says one to the other. While at times we too chew on movies taken from books, our main objective will not be to compare books and films, but rather to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". Students will become acquainted with literary sources through careful readings; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. An important concern of this course will be to analyze the particularity of each film/book in relation to a set of themes -gender, death, class, discrimination, history, migration- through close textual analysis. We shall use contemporary Film theory and critical methodology to access these themes.

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POLS B381 Nietzsche

Fall 2024

This course examines Nietzsche's thought, with particular focus on such questions as the nature of the self, truth , irony, aggression, play, joy, love, and morality. The texts for the course are drawn mostly from Nietzsche's own writing, but these are complemented by some contemporary work in moral philosophy and philosophy of mind that has a Nietzschean influence.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; German and German Studies; Philosophy.

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RUSS B220 Chornobyl

Not offered 2024-25

This course introduces students to the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, its consequences, and its representations across a range of cultures and media through a comparative lens and as a global phenomenon. Culture meets ecology, science, history, and politics. Students will contribute to a digital exhibition and physical installation. Taught in translation. No knowledge of Russian required.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Environmental Studies; Health Studies; International Studies.

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RUSS B232 Coal, Oil, Nuclear: Narrative Afterlives

Not offered 2024-25

Coal. Oil. Nuclear energy. These items give shape to our everyday lives in countless ways. They impact our health, our politics, and our very survival on earth.. Nevertheless, because these resources permeate nearly every aspect of our existence, the human mind can struggle to comprehend them in their totality. In this course, we'll explore texts that engage with our environment to help us bring humans' relationship to these materials into focus. Scientific, historical, and economic studies tend to focus on their scale and widespread impact. Reading stories, watching

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Environmental Studies; International Studies.

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