| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| COM LIT 10 | AFRICAN LITERATURE AND THE POSTCOLONIAL CONDITION | BAJAJ, A. | This course is meant to be a preliminary survey of postcolonial African literature. Though ‘Africa’ is too wide a geo-political terrain and concept to encapsulate within a single course we will trace some of the major historical trajectories of the continent—after the advent of the mid-20th century de-colonial movements. Over the quarter we will also reflect on how African history over the past six decades may serve as a model to think recent socio-political developments in other parts of the global south. The choice of texts is based on some of the major literary and historical themes that have been examined by prominent literary figures from Africa—Achebe, Ngugi, Mariama Ba, Sembene, Soyinka, and Farah, among others. In sequence these themes include colonialism, the tension between traditionalism and modernity, nationalism and disillusionment, feminism and patriarchy, international aid, and diaspora, each of these offering us a unique view of African history and society. Our selection includes novels, a novella, a play, short stories, and films, encouraging us to think about the specific representative capacities of these mediums. |
| COM LIT 10 | CITIES AND CINEMA | ABBAS, A. | Walter Benjamin once described the city dweller as ‘a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness’, reflecting the many facets of the city like a broken mirror – or like a film. More and more, the city exists not just as a physical, political, and economic entity that can be mapped, but also as a cluster of images, a series of discourses, a puzzling experience of space, time, and affect. Each of the cities that this course examines has a name – Hong Kong, Taipei, Los Angeles, or Seoul; but each is also a kind of jig-saw puzzle of the mind, made up of pieces that do not seem to fit together. In this sense, all these cities are what Calvino in his great novel calls ‘Invisible Cities.’ Through a discussion of cinema, this course will consider the city as a film that challenges our ability to read it. Syllabus 0. Introduction: Walter Benjamin on cities and cinema, Italo Calvino ‘Invisible Cities’ 1. Hong Kong: Fruit Chan, ‘Made in Hong Kong’ (1997) 2. Beijing: Ning Ying, ‘Perpetual Motion’ (2005) 3. Taipei: Tsai Ming-liang, ‘What Time Is It There?’ (2001) 4. New York: Martin Scorsese, ‘Taxi-Driver’ (1976) 5. Los Angeles: Curtis Hanson, ‘LA Confidential’ (1997) 6. Tokyo: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, ‘Tokyo Sonata’ (2008) 7. X-Urbanism: David Lynch, ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986) 8. Seoul: Bong Joon-ho, ‘Parasite’ (2019) 9. Future Cities: The Wachowski Sisters, ‘Matrix’ (1999) Further Readings Georg Simmel, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1903) Rem Koolhaas, ‘Generic Cities’ Evaluation 1/ Participation and mid-term exam 2/ Term paper of around 1500 words |
| COM LIT 60B | READING WITH THEORY | AMIRAN, E. | CL60B Winter 2023 An introduction to literary and cultural theory in practice. We will read theory from critical race studies (Angela Davis), deconstruction, feminism, Marxism, media theory, psychoanalysis, and theory of war, and use these theories to read literary and cultural texts like Fredrick Douglass’s Autobiography, video poetry by Ghayath Almadhoun, short fiction by Italo Calvino, and Batman. What does media theory say about guns, and why does that change how we think about drone footage? What is the connection between advertising and Disneyland? How can we think about domestic labor in a global context? We’ll ask these kinds of questions and develop our own strategies for engaging them. No previous theory experience required. |
| COM LIT 102W | TRANSLATION AND CREATIVITY | WOLPE, S. | Literary translation is not the transparent inter-lingual transfer of ideas out of one language into another. Rather, it is always conditioned by assumptions, values and codes proper to both the source- and the target-language, and often relies upon the hierarchies of power and prestige that structure both the discourses and realities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and national identity. This course will: 1. Introduce the students to theories and practice of literary translation as well as the challenges that contemporary translators face today in a variety of cultural and political context. 2. Guide the students towards exploring their own creative writing through translation, culminating in a group a project, as well as individual creative projects. Working knowledge of a language other than English is required. Assessment: Students will be assessed through writing and translation assignments (15%), attendance (20%), participation (25%), and final translation/creative writing projects (40%). Required Texts Required readings are available as PDF files through Canvas. Prerequisites: Lower-Division Writing; Working knowledge of a language other than English |
| COM LIT 142 | MEXICO CITY | COLMENARES GON, D. | Everyday life is oblivious to the passage of time, especially the slow pace of historical change. And yet, the cities where we live are full of the traces and wounds of the past. How do people make sense of their lived present experience against the backdrop of the city? We explore these questions by looking at Mexico City, the city that arose from the ashes of the Aztec imperial capital of Tenochtitlan. After the Spanish crown established trade routes that connected Acapulco and Manila, Mexico City became a global and multi-ethnic city, a central hub in a burgeoning international trade network linking Asia and Europe. A seventeenth-century poet exclaimed: “in your midst China meets Spain, and Italy, Japan.” This new city, however, was rife with contradictions: shaped by colonial domination, the city embodied Renaissance ideals about rationality and order; defined by a centralized and often authoritarian power, the city saw constant rebellions that challenged the status quo. Since then, the city has never ceased to be the site of transformative cultural, political, and social experimentation. In this course, we will explore the ways in which these multi-layered histories and conflicts manifest themselves in modern Mexico. We will investigate maps, pictorial codices, films, paintings, short stories, chronicles, memoirs, popular songs, graphic novels, architectural projects and political manifestos connected to various key moments that have defined the life of Mexico City in order to understand not only how people make sense of Mexico City, but also how people experience historical change through urban experience in general. |
| COM LIT 144 | ARTICULATIONS OF MODERNITY IN LITS FROM ARAB-SPEAKING WORLD | MOURAD, G. | "Articulations of Modernity in Literatures from the Arab-Speaking World" In “Poetics and Modernity,” the Syrian poet and literary theorist Adonis states that “we will only be able to reach a proper understanding of the poetics of Arab modernity by viewing it in its social, cultural and political context.” This course examines the poetics of Arab modernity in literary texts from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Arab-speaking cultures. We will examine texts in which modernity is articulated in various ways and on different levels: the political, the social, the religious, and the sexual. The course offers a reflection on the different spaces of literary expressions in different parts of the Arab-speaking world, including North Africa. The questions we will pursue include: How do these Arab writers conceive of modernity? How do they envision the relation between modernity, sexuality, and politics? Who are the readers of these texts? Finally, how does modernity for these authors relate to mythology and Sufism? |
| COM LIT 150 | READING FANON | FARBMAN, H. | This course will be devoted to an immersive reading of two major texts by Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs) and The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la terre). Fanon is a central thinker in contemporary Black Studies, decolonial thought, and psychoanalysis. As such, paraphrases of his key claims circulate widely in discussions across the humanities. The aim of this course is to facilitate first-hand exploration of the texts from which these claims emerge. We will follow closely Fanon’s way of working in writing, paying special attention to the difficulties he encounters and the inventions he makes along the way. Though all discussion and writing will be in English, French majors and other readers of French will be encouraged to read at least parts of the texts in the original. |
| COM LIT 150 | THE NOVEL AND THE CITY | DIMENDBERG, E. | Comparative Literature 150 The Novel and the City Instructor: Edward Dimendberg Approaching the urban novel as evidence of the varied paths to modernity pursued by different cultures across distinct time periods, this course will concentrate on identifying key concerns of novelistic treatments of the metropolis. Literary narratives set in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Santiago, Tokyo, and other cities will be studied with an eye to discerning the fantasies, myths, and stories elicited by cities. We will consider how identities, global forces, and political conflicts are refracted by the concentrations of people, wealth, ideas, and architecture found in the largest human settlements. Readings in literary and cultural criticism will supplement the analysis of novels. Assignment structure: Take-home midterm and final research paper. |
| COM LIT 199 | INDEPENDENT STUIDY IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE | STAFF | To be taken only when the materials to be studied lie outside the normal run of departmental offerings. Repeatability: May be repeated for credit unlimited times. |
| COM LIT 210 | CL210: THE QUANTUM IMAGE IN MODERN ART AND LITERATURE | ABBAS, A. | The world according to quantum mechanics seems perversely weird and counter-intuitive. A particle can be in two places or positions at the same time, a phenomenon called superposition. A cat can be both alive and dead until someone observes it: observation determines, not just informs us, about what happens. Light behaves both like a particle and a wave, while ‘entanglement’ shows that two particles can be interconnected in such a way that measuring the state of one would ‘determine’ the state of the other, no matter how far apart they may be. What this seminar calls the quantum image alludes to how the strange world that quantum mechanics reveals through mathematics has parallels with the world that modern art and literature discovers through a radical re-thinking of the image. Benjamin suggested that the best way of experiencing the world of modern physics would be to read Kafka. The main emphasis of this course will be on Benjamin’s ‘dialectical image’, Deleuze’s ‘time image’, and Flusser’s ‘technical image’. Specifically, we will discuss Benjamin on Kafka, on the crisis of storytelling, and on history as image. What Deleuze calls the ‘time image’ in modern cinema is an image that interrupts time-as-chronology, studies ‘Brownian movement’ and aberrant movement, all of which leads up to the Deleuzian notion of ‘the powers of the false. Flusser’s seminal work tracks the effects of changes in media on historical life. His prescient analysis of the ‘technical image’ demonstrates, among other things, the unbearable lightness of social media. Reading List We will keep readings to a minimum. I will introduce the subject at our first meeting. You should buy or download : --Benjamin’s ‘Illuminations’: the chapters entitled The Storyteller, Some reflections on Kafka, Theses on the Philosophy of History, + sections of the Artwork essay. --Deleuze’s ‘Cinema 2’: the preface and parts of chap 1, 4, 5, and 6. --Flusser’s ‘Towards A Philosophy of Photography’, ‘Into Immaterial Culture’, and the essay ‘The Crisis of Linearity’ (online). Recommended Reading --Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey To Quantum Gravity Evaluation --Participation --Final paper or project |
| COM LIT 210 | INDIGEQUEER THEORY | CARROLL, A. | COM LIT 210: Indigequeer Theory Course Description Queer Indigenous studies scholars, artists, and activists assert that traditionally, for Indigenous Peoples, there is nothing queer, deviant, or non-normative about what colonial European-American societies define as queerness. Non-binary people and social systems have always existed among Indigenous communities around the globe. Some Native American and Indigenous oral traditions include creation stories that represent creator spirits and/or the first humans as multi-gendered or genderless. European colonizers used the integral existence of non-heteronormative Indigenous people as a primary justification for genocidal violence, land theft, and the imposition of patriarchal systems of government, domination, discipline, and punishment. The sexual and gender violence that colonizers inflicted on Indigenous peoples--for example, through compulsory displacement of Native American and Indigenous children to federal- or church-run boarding schools that forced colonial cultural assimilation--disrupted traditions and often disintegrated tribes. In 1990, an organization of LGBTIQ-identified Native American and Indigenous people coined the term Two-Spirit to name myriad, diverse, tribally specific, traditional, non-binary Indigenous social roles. Two-Spirit/queer Indigenous scholars and artists work to decolonize gender and sexuality as a key component of Indigenous sovereignty and decolonization per se. Rather than seek rights from colonial nation-states like mainstream LGBTIQ+ movements, Two-Spirit/queer Indigenous people work to reintegrate and heal their Indigenous communities and revitalize traditions that have been disrupted by settler colonialism. This graduate seminar examines queer Indigenous art, activism, and theory. Seminar participants will consider thematic and transnational contexts to explore multiple intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, Indigeneity, and colonialism. Course materials center creative and critical works by Two-Spirit/queer Indigenous people, including essays, films, novels, poetry, and multi-genre works and collections. Assignments will include discussion board posts, a presentation, and a final research paper. |
| COM LIT 210 | WESTPHALIANISM | NEWMAN, J. | COM LIT 210/HUMAN 270: Westphalianism Tu, 2:00 - 4.50, HIB 137 There is much debate among International Relations theorists these days about the so-called “crisis of the nation-state” and whether the world is entering or exiting a post-Westphalian or a neo-Westphalian phase. The reference is to the historic Treaty of Westphalia signed between the Holy Roman Empire and the empires of Sweden and France in 1648. The document had over 100 signatories and took several years to negotiate – and even longer to implement – as it struggled to bring the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) to an end. Westphalia is said to have established the basic structure of the modern international system of states, with its mechanisms of the balance of (only the great) powers and the marginalization and subordination of everyone else. Now called a “reference peace” and referred to as a crucial category of “historical demarcation” in theories of the emergence of modernity, Westphalia allegedly endowed the nation-state with the absolute power to defend territorial sovereignty against threats from the outside and the authority to control domestic populations (also in the broader sense of colonial populations) within, and the political order based on it is said to have dominated Western geo-politics until 1945 and then to have experienced a renewal in the aftermath of decolonization, when newly enfranchised polities aspired to be Westphalian too. The triumph of neo-liberal economics and globalization (and its apparent demise at the time of the writing of this course description), the emergence of both non-state political actors in the form of various transnational movements and of civil-society organizations, the rise of a variety of sub-state and regional populisms, and the enormous increase in diasporic, refugee, and immigrant populations, have nevertheless meant that the notional statist hegemony of Westphalianism now no longer reigns supreme – either ideologically or in fact (this in spite of the fact that Westphalianist defenses of border and internal population control have been on the rise). In this course, we will examine the origins of Westphalianism in the near century of European religious and civil wars between 1550-1650 and the chaotic political and economic worlds and mixed demographics by which it was defined. We will read early modern political theoretical texts on which the Westphalian order was based (Luther, Machiavelli, Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf) alongside alternatives to that order authored by Dante, Calvin, Spinoza and Althusius, as well as a selection of the highly formalized treaties of the early modern period in which such theories issued. Contemporary students of neo- and post-Westphalianism such as Richard Falk and Mahmood Momdani, and historians and theorists of an anti-Westphalian cosmopolitanism and human rights and of alternatives to the nation-state, such as Martti Koskenniemi, Seyla Benhabib, Hendrik Spruyt, and Adom Getachew, will be our guides. We will also interrogate the underbelly of the ‘human rights’-talk that sought to transcend Westphalia’s statism, but masked the erasure of economic and social rights on the part of minority populations, as Samuel Moyn has pointed out – an erasure that was enshrined in the original Treaty of Westphalia itself. Of interest to students of Citizenship Studies, Security and Border Studies, Post-Sovereignty and Democracy Studies, and trans-statist theories related to immigration, Environmental and Internet Studies, Refugee Studies, International Law, and Human Rights who might seek to embed their work in a longer historical arc. |
| COM LIT 290 | READING&CONFERENCE | STAFF | Studies in selected areas. Topics addressed vary each quarter. Repeatability: May be repeated for credit unlimited times. |
| COM LIT 291 | GUIDED READING | STAFF | |
| COM LIT 299 | DISSERTATN RESEARCH | STAFF | A units-only course for students in the dissertation phase. Grading Option: Satisfactory/unsatisfactory only. Repeatability: May be repeated for credit unlimited times. |
| COM LIT 399 | UNIVERSITY TEACHING | RAHIMIEH, N. |