Our Courses

Spring 2024
 

Fall 2023
 

Spring 2023
 

Fall 2022

Spring 2022

Fall 2021

We are excited to introduce our department’s new curriculum for the Academic Year 2020-21.
All of our courses are offered the full semester length.
Please note that this schedule may be subject to change, and students are encouraged not only to revisit this page but also to confirm the course listings in the online Directory of Classes.

Our departmental immersive courses will cover a semester’s worth of material in a shorter period of time and will meet for twice as many hours per week, allowing students to take fewer courses at the same time and a more sustained focus on course content. 

Please feel free to contact your major advisor with any questions you may have about your academic schedule.
 

Spring 2021

Fall 2020

CPLS BC3124: Utopian Literature

M/W 10:10-11:25

Ron Briggs

Oscar Wilde wrote that “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.” This course reads the concept from Christopher Columbus and Thomas More to the advent of modern socialism. Readings by Campanella, Cavendish, Engels, Bellamy, Gilman, and Portal.

CPLS BC3143: Topics in Comp Literature - Literature & Action

M/W 1:10-2:25

Emily Sun

What does it mean to perform an act?  What are we doing when we do something?  How might literature shed light on what it means for us to intervene in the world through our actions? And how might literature, beyond simply representing the actions of human agents, be understood itself to perform actions that make something–or, strangely enough, nothing–happen in the world? In this course, we will investigate how literary texts grapple in different historical periods and cultural contexts with the vexing question of what it means to act.  By studying texts of literature, philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, and cinema, the course will engage students in developing critical approaches to literary texts as sites for the interrogation and reinvention of action. Topics include: the relationship between the notions of action and imitation, the ambiguity between acting and play-acting, cross-cultural theories of action, crises of action in modernity, and the tension between action, work, and labor as forms of human activity.  Readings include works by Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Zhuangzi, Shakespeare, Molière, Adam Smith, Marx, Flaubert, Freud, J.L. Austin, Lacan, Arendt, Erving Goffmann, Shoshana Felman, Slavoj Zizek, Eileen Chang, and Ang Lee.

Capped at 15 students.  Preference given to Barnard majors in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, for whom “Topics in Comparative Literature” is a core required course.

CPLT BC3145: Derrida and Literature (NEW!)

Brian O’Keeffe

T/TH, 10:10:11:25

Jacques Derrida was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and his impact on literary studies was enormously significant. The objective of this course is to take stock of Derrida’s contribution to literature, and to do so by assessing the intricate relations he establishes between literature, philosophy, economic and political theory, gender studies, translation studies, postcolonial theory, and theology. The course is divided into six parts. Part 1 introduces Derrida’s approach to ‘deconstruction,’ particularly as regards his engagement with the fundamental concepts of Western thought and the importance he confers upon the notion of ‘writing’ itself. Part 2 examines Derrida’s autobiographical texts wherein he positions himself as a subject for deconstruction, interrogating his own gender, his sense of being an organic, creaturely life-form, the relationship he has to his own language, and the matter of his identity as French, but also as Algerian, and Jewish. While the majority of the Derrida texts we will be reading are excerpts from larger works or short essays and interviews, in this section we will read a full-length text – Monolingualism of the Other – so that we can trace Derrida’s train of thought from beginning to end. In Part 3 we will use an interview conducted by Derek Attridge, “This Strange Institution Called Literature,” as a template for thinking about Derrida’s relation to literature, and in Part 4 we will read our second full-length text by Derrida, namely Given Time 1: Counterfeit Money, an in-depth analysis of a prose poem by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Part 5 considers an aspect of Derrida’s work that reveals the extent of his embrace of provisional, in-between positions for thought in general, and for literary texts in particular, namely translation. For deconstruction is keenly invested in words beginning with ‘trans’: transposition, transplant, trans-valuation, and indeed trans-gender. Translation provides Derrida with a scenario whereby crossings and transits can be imagined – for literary texts, and for identities that wish to remain un-determined by fixed poles or normative values. The course finishes with an assessment of Derrida’s reflections on death, mourning, and the matter of leaving a legacy. In Part 6, we therefore read more of the essay “Living On,” and also Derrida’s final interview, “Learning to Live, Finally.” Not even Derrida could deconstruct away the finality of death, but he did hope to live on. My corresponding hope is that you will feel sufficiently attuned to Derrida’s thought that you consider it important to continue his legacy – to be one of the agents of his living on, survival or survie, a translator and transporter of his thought towards contexts that he could not have foreseen, but which he would doubtless have welcomed as a precious chance for his own work to be considered differently. Taking intellectual risks, thinking otherwise, and inventing new ways of knowing are, after all, the hallmarks of Derridean deconstruction.

CPLT BC3145: In Other Words: World Poetry and Cosmopolitanism (NEW!)

Erk Grimm

T/TH, 2:40-3:55

What is “world poetry”? This course will try to give an answer to this vexing question. You are being introduced to a number of influential poets who have entered a dialogue about what it means to write, read, translate and appreciate poetry in a global context. The impact of globalization is most visible in a number of anthologies which made considerable efforts to move beyond the existing range of national representatives and to make an English-speaking audience familiar with the names and works of poets who are bilingual or who write in their native language. Throughout the semester, we will read English translations of these poems (but feel free to read the original if you know the language). Secondly, the global context is of great importance for understanding each poet’s vision of the world since poets are involved in processes of “world-making” as well as reacting to the world’s past and present. s the semester progresses you will see that the poets are part of a larger conversation; some themes, forms and issues we discovered at the beginning will return in the middle or toward the end of the term. The selection of poets is based on considerations of gender, race, age and religious affiliation; many of the poets whose works we are going to discuss are iconic figures; in studying other cases, you will be exposed to new voices (for example, young South African poets) whose significance will emerge in a critical discussion of the anthologists’ rationale and criteria for selecting poets and marginalizing others.

CPLS BC3510: Advanced Translation Workshop

T 4:10-6:00pm

Emily Sun 

The purposes of this workshop are to verse students in important currents in translation theory, past and present, and to assist students in perfecting their translation skills. The course is divided into two parts. In the first eight weeks we will read each week one or more articles relating to the theory and practice of translation. On occasion, these sessions will include analysis of published translations of prose, poetry, or drama, as well as analysis of reviews of translations published in the mainstream press or in scholarly journals. During this first part of the course students will translate one brief foreign-language extract into English. In the second part of the semester, class sessions will be devoted to the presentation and discussion of the work that students will have chosen for their final project.

Capped at 12 students.  Preference given to students who have taken "Introduction to Translation Studies” at Barnard.  Students who have not already taken the course should write to Professor Sun for permission to take the workshop, explaining previous coursework they may have taken in translation-related subjects and their reasons for wanting to take the workshop.  

CPLS BC3997: Senior Seminar

W 4:10-6:00

Emily Sun

Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s).

CPLT BC3000

Diana Matar

M, 4:10-6:00

Global Long-Form Photography

In a time where almost everyone has a camera phone to capture the present, photographic artists are increasingly pointing their practice towards history and memory to give insight into the past. In weekly seminars, we will look at how contemporary global photographers are challenging national narratives and rewriting history. We will engage in the question of how photography, arguably the artistic medium most tied to the present, has been used to explore that which is no longer there. We will look at how photographers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Middle East have used their contemporary practice to address issues of collective memory as it pertains to dictatorship, state sponsored violence, and contested history.  We will investigate how artists from the world over have employed  photographic practices to explore the inherited legacies and injustices of previous generations...

CPLT BC3001

Emily Sun

T/R, 11:40-12:55

Introduction to Comparative Literature

Introduction to the study of literature from a comparative and cross-disciplinary perspective. Readings will be selected to promote reflection on such topics as the relation of literature to the other arts; nationalism and literature; international literary movements; post-colonial literature; gender and literature; and issues of authorship, influence, originality, and intertextuality.

CPLT BC3110

Peter Connor

M/W, 2:40-3:55

Introduction to Translation Studies

Pre-requisites: Completion of Intermediate II or equivalent in any foreign language.Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating.  Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers. 

CPLT BC3123:

Erk Grimm

T/R, 10:10-11:25

Friend or Foe? World Literature and Justice

With an emphasis on equality and social justice, this course examines and compares significant 19th c./20th c. literary approaches to friendship as intermediary between individualism and communal life. Discussion of culturally formed concepts and attitudes in modern or postcolonial settings. Reading of Dickens, Hesse, Woolf, Ocampo, Puig, Fugard, Emerson, Derrida, Rawls.

CPLT BC3144

Emily Sun

T/R, 2:40-3:55

Introduction to Narrative

An introduction to narrative through texts that themselves foreground acts of storytelling and thus teach us how to read them. Readings range across periods and cultures - from fifth-century BCE Athens to late twentieth-century Brazil - and include short stories, novellas, novels, a ballad, film and a psychoanalytic case history. Texts by Conan Doyle, Sophocles, Melville, Hitchcock, Augustine, Coleridge, Freud, McEwan, the tellers and compilers of the The Arabian Nights, Diderot, Flaubert, and Lispector. Emphasis on close reading and hands-on experience in analyzing texts.

CPLT BC3551

Hisham Matar

T, 2:10-4:00

Arabian Nights Influences

Prerequisites: Completion of one college-level literature course. Permission of instructor. This course examines the enduring power of The Arabian Nights and some of the wide range of literary authors, genres and variations that it has influenced. The focus is, therefore, on this marvelous work—one of the earliest examples of the short story and the novel—but also on a selection of classical and contemporary works of fiction from around the world that have been informed by it. In this regard, this is a class interested in literary influence, reciprocity and exchange across time and languages.  

CPLT BC4161

Nancy Worman

T, 2:10-4:00

Tragic Bodies II: Surfaces, Materialities, Enactments

Prerequisites: CPLS BC3160 Tragic Bodies I, or permission of instructor. This is an upper-level seminar with quite a lot of reading and semester-long development of a substantial project. This course is conceived as an advanced seminar (i.e., upper-level undergraduate and graduate) that addresses in more depth the themes of my lecture course Tragic Bodies (BC3160). It explores how dramatic enactment represents bodily boundaries and edges and thus skin, coverings, maskings, and dress-up in relation to gender, sexuality, race, and status / class. The course will focus on these edges and surfaces, as well as proximities, touching, and affect in ancient and modern drama (and occasionally film). The course treats the three ancient tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) as unifying threads and centers on politically and aesthetically challenging re-envisionings of their plays.

CPLT GU4152

Hana Worthen

T, 10:10-12:00

Politics of Performance

CPLT BC3140: The New Europe in Literature

Erk Grimm

T/R 10:10-11:25

Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, H. Boell, C. Toibin and others.

CPLT BC3143:  Topics in Comparative Literature - Literature and Violence

Brian O'Keeffe

T/R 4:10-5:25

This course examines the ways in which literary works engage with the matter of violence. The texts have been chosen for the intensity with which they confront the ethical and political dilemmas relation the act of violence, and indeed, the justification of violence. Topics to be considered include terrorism and revolutionary militancy, arguments for and against the death penalty, acts of vengeance, cruelty, and torture. Texts are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts - classical Greek tragedy, European literature of the 19th century, works set in Franco-phone Algeria, and in early 20th century China, among others. The course also addresses different genres, including theater, narrative prose, and poetry, as well as photography. Further aspects of the topic will be developed in connection with recent philosophical writing on violence.

CPLT BC3162: Novella Cevantes to Kafka

Alfred Mac Adam

10:10-11:25

The novella, older than the novel, painstakingly crafted, links the worlds of ideas and fiction.  The readings present the novella as a genre, tracing its progress from the 17th century to the 20th.  Each text read in the comparative milieu, grants the reader access to the intellectual concerns of an era.

CPLT BC3200: Visual and Verbal Arts

Erk Grimm

T/TH 2:40-3:55

Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT)

Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Visual and Performing Arts (ART)

Analysis and discussion of the relation of literature to painting, photography, and film. Emphasis on artistic and literary concepts concerning the visual dimension of narrative and poetic texts from Homer to Burroughs. Explores the role of description, illustration, and montage in realist and modern literature.

CPLT BC3510: Advanced Workshop Translation

Section 001 - Peter Connor - T 4:10-6:00

Section 002 - Emily Sun - T 4:10-6:00

Prerequisites:  Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. CPLT BC 3110 "Introduction to Translation Studies" is a recommended, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors. 

A deep immersion in the theory and practice of translation with a focus on translating into English. The first half of the course is devoted to discussing readings in the history of translation theory while translating brief practical exercises; in the second half, translation projects are submitted to the class for critical discussion. The foreign texts for these projects, chosen in consultation with the instructor, will be humanistic, not only literature as conventionally defined (prose fiction and poetry, memoir and travel writing), but also the gamut of text types in the human sciences, including philosophy, history, and ethnography. The aim is not just to translate, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory, past and present, and by examining translations written by professionals. 

Please email pconnor@barnard.edu or esun@barnard.edu by December 2018 with the following information: name, year of graduation, major, college (BC, CU, etc.); a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; a brief (max 300 word) statement explaining why you wish to take the workshop (this statement is not required if you have taken or are taking CPLT BC3110 Intro to Translation Studies).

CPLT BC3630 - Theatre and Democracy

Hana Worthen

T 10:10-12:00

How does theatre promote democracy, and vice versa: how do concepts and modes of theatre prevent the spectators from assuming civic positions both within and outside a theatrical performance? This class explores both the promotion and the denial of democratic discourse in the practices of dramatic writing and theatrical performance.

CPLT BC3997 - Senior Seminar

Emily Sun

W 4:10-6:00

Prerequisite: For comparative literature majors in their senior year only.

Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s).

CPLT BC3001: Introduction to Comparative Literature

Brian O'Keeffe

T/R, 11:40-12:55

Introduction to methods and topics in the study of literature across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, across historical periods, and in relation to other arts and disciplines. Readings are selected and juxtaposed in consecutive units designed to give students training in the practice of comparative criticism and to foster, through praxis, reflection on underlying theoretical and methodological questions.  We will study works of poetry, drama, prose fiction, theory, and criticism. Topics include: the role of language and literature in different cultures and historical periods, the relationship between genres, the circulation of literary forms, literature and translation, post-colonial literature; East-West literary relations, the relationship of literature to other arts, and the relationship between literature and theory.

CPLT BC3110: Introduction to Translation Studies

Peter Connor

T/R, 4:10-5:25

Completion of Intermediate II or equivalent in any foreign language.

Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating.  Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers. 

CPLT BC3123: Friend or Foe? World Literature & The Question of Justice

Erk Grimm

T/R, 2:40-3:55

With an emphasis on equality and social justice, this course examines and compares significant 19th c./20th c. literary approaches to friendship as intermediary between individualism and communal life. Discussion of culturally formed concepts and attitudes in modern or postcolonial settings. Reading of Dickens, Hesse, Woolf, Ocampo, Puig, Fugard, Emerson, Derrida, Rawls.

CPLT BC3160: Tragic Bodies

Nancy Worman

M/W, 2:40-3:55

This course will focus on embodiment in ancient and modern drama as well as in film, television, and performance art, including plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Beckett; films such as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Limits of Control”; and performances by artists such as Karen Finley and Marina Abromovic. We will explore the provocations, theatricality, and shock aesthetics of such concepts as Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” and Kristeva's "powers of horror," as well as Adorno's ideas about terror and the sublime.

CPLT BC3190: Aesthetics of Grotesque

Erk Grimm

T/R, 10:10-11:25

Examination of the grotesque in different cultural contexts from late Renaissance to the postmodern period comparing modes of transgression and excess in Western literature and film.  Particular emphasis on exaggeration in style and on fantastic representations of the body, from the ornate and corpulent to the laconic and anorexic. Readings in Rabelais, Swift, Richardson, Poe, Gogol, Kafka, Meyrink, Pirandello, Greenaway, and M. Python.

CPLT BC3551: Arabian Nights (NEW!!)
Hisham Matar
M 10:10-12:00

Prerequisite: Permission from instructor

This course examines the enduring power of The Arabian Nights and some of the wide range of literary authors, genres and variations that it has influenced. The focus is, therefore, on this marvellous work—one of the earliest examples of the short story and the novel—but also on a selection of classical and contemporary works of fiction from around the world that have been informed by it. In this regard, this is a class interested in literary influence, reciprocity and exchange across time and languages.

CPLT BC3675: Mad Love

Alfred Mac Adam

M/W, 2:40-3:55

The history of irrational love as embodied in literary and non-literary texts throughout the Western tradition. Readings include the Bible, Greek, Roman, Medieval, and modern texts.

CPLS BC3143:  Topics in Comparative Literature - Literature and Violence

Brian O'Keeffe

T/R 11:40-12:55

This course examines the ways in which literary works engage with the matter of violence. The texts have been chosen for the intensity with which they confront the ethical and political dilemmas relation the act of violence, and indeed, the justification of violence. Topics to be considered include terrorism and revolutionary militancy, arguments for and against the death penalty, acts of vengeance, cruelty, and torture. Texts are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts - classical Greek tragedy, European literature of the 19th century, works set in Franco-phone Algeria, and in early 20th century China, among others. The course also addresses different genres, including theater, narrative prose, and poetry, as well as photography. Further aspects of the topic will be developed in connection with recent philosophical writing on violence.

CPLS BC3158:  Languages of Loss

Emily Sun

M/W 1:10-2:25

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).

A study of the genre of elegy across time and cultures. Emphasis on how poets express grief and relate to literary traditions. Comparisons of European, Chinese, and American elegies (by Theocritus, Milton, Qu Yuan, Holderlin, Wordsworth, Whitman, Bishop, and others) and discussions of the relationship between singular and collective life.

CPLT UN3200: Visual and Verbal Arts

Erk Grimm

T/TH 10:10-11:25

Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT)

Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART)

Analysis and discussion of the relation of literature to painting, photography, and film. Emphasis on artistic and literary concepts concerning the visual dimension of narrative and poetic texts from Homer to Burroughs. Explores the role of description, illustration, and montage in realist and modern literature.

CPLS BC3510: Advanced Workshop Translation

Section 001 - Peter Connor - T 4:10-6:00

Section 002 - Emily Sun - T 4:10-6:00

Prerequisites:  Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. CPLT BC 3110 "Introduction to Translation Studies" is a recommended, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors. 

    A deep immersion in the theory and practice of translation with a focus on translating into English. The first half of the course is devoted to discussing readings in the history of translation theory while translating brief practical exercises; in the second half, translation projects are submitted to the class for critical discussion. The foreign texts for these projects, chosen in consultation with the instructor, will be humanistic, not only literature as conventionally defined (prose fiction and poetry, memoir and travel writing), but also the gamut of text types in the human sciences, including philosophy, history, and ethnography. The aim is not just to translate, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory, past and present, and by examining translations written by professionals. 

    In the spring of 2016, the workshop will be offered in two sections by Professor Peter Connor and Professor Emily Sun. The sections will share most of the common readings in the history of translation theory, but Professor Sun's section will emphasize issues specific to translating East Asia. Enrollment in each workshop is limited to 12 students

    Please email pconnor@barnard.edu or esun@barnard.edu by 1 December 2017 with the following information: name, year of graduation, major, college (BC, CU, etc.); a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; a brief (max 300 word) statement explaining why you wish to take the workshop (this statement is not required if you have taken or are taking CPLT BC3110 Intro to Translation Studies).

CPLS BC3899 - Surrealism and DADA (NEW!!!)

Caroline Weber

M/W 4:10-5:25

This course focuses on two twentieth-century avant-garde art movements, Dada and Surrealism, that developed in response to the horrors of World War I, and that investigated the revolutionary potential of artistic experimentation. Both movements drew artists from many different national backgrounds (German, French, Belgian, British, Swiss, Spanish, Latin American, North American); these individuals worked in a wide range of media (fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, film) and pioneered several new or hybrid forms (automatic writing, chance collages, exquisite cadavers, found objects, ready-mades, solarizations, woven textiles).  Students will study works from all these categories, paying special attention to: the avant-garde critique of "high culture," the elaboration of an "anti-art" aesthetics (in both literature and the visual arts), the notion of creative activity as a work of political revolt and/or social reform, and the role of female artists and the conceptualization of sexuality and gender roles.

CPLS GU4161 - Tragic Bodies II: Identities, Materialities, Enactments (NEW!!!)
Nancy Worman
W 10:10-12:00

Prerequisite: Tragic Bodies (CPLS BC3160) or permission from instructor

This course is conceived as an advanced seminar (i.e., upper-level undergraduate and graduate) that addresses in more depth the themes of my lecture course Tragic Bodies (BC3160). It explores how dramatic enactment represents bodily boundaries and edges and thus skin, coverings, maskings, and dress-up in relation to gender, sexuality, race, and status / class. The course will focus on these edges and surfaces, as well as proximities, touching, and affect in ancient and modern drama (and occasionally film). The course treats the three ancient tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) as unifying threads and centers on politically and aesthetically challenging re-envisionings of their plays.

CPLS BC3997 - Senior Seminar

Emily Sun

W 4:10-6:00

Prerequisite: For comparative literature majors in their senior year only.

Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s).

Cross-listed Courses

CLRS GU4040: The Future is Red (White and Blue) - Modernity & Social Justice in the U.S. & U.S.S.R. 1920s-1960s

Bradley Gorski

W 4:10-6:00pm

In the 1920s, the Soviet Union and the U.S. emerged as growing world powers, offering each other two compelling, if often opposed, versions of modernity. At the same time, each country saw its intercontinental rival as an attractive, but dangerous “other”: a counterexample of the road not taken, and a foil for its own ideology and identity. From the 1920s to the heat of the Cold War, Some of the USSR’s most prominent public figures came to the U.S. and several American intellectuals, progressive activists, and officials traveled to the Soviet experiment. This course examines the cultural images of the American and Soviet “other” in the texts that resulted from these exchanges. We will read works about America from Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ilya Il'f and Evgeny Petrov, and poems, essays, and novels about Russia by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Louise Bryant, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Steinbeck, and others. Each of these texts attempts to grapple with what it means to be modern—both technologically advanced and socially liberated—in different national contexts and under different proclaimed ideologies.

DNCE BC3000: From Page to Stage - The Interactions of Literature and Choreography

Seth Williams

T/R 11:40-12:55

Study of dance works which have their origins in the written word. Topics considered include: Is choreography a complete act of creative originality? Which literary genres are most often transformed into dance pieces? Why are some texts privileged with dance interpretation(s) and others are not?

CPLT BC3001: Introduction to Comparative Literature

E. Sun

M/W 11:40-12:55

Introduction to methods and topics in the study of literature across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, across historical periods, and in relation to other arts and disciplines. Readings are selected and juxtaposed in consecutive units designed to give students training in the practice of comparative criticism and to foster, through praxis, reflection on underlying theoretical and methodological questions.  We will study works of poetry, drama, prose fiction, theory, and criticism. Topics include: the role of language and literature in different cultures and historical periods, the relationship between genres, the circulation of literary forms, literature and translation, post-colonial literature; East-West literary relations, the relationship of literature to other arts, and the relationship between literature and theory.

CPLT BC3110: Introduction to Translation Studies

P. Connor

T/R 4:10-5:25

Prerequisites: Completion of the Language Requirement or equivalent

Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating.  Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers.

CPLS BC3140: Europe Imagined: Images of the New Europe in 20th-Century Literature​ (CANCELLED)

E. Grimm

T/R 10:10-11:25

Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, H. Boell, C. Toibin and others. 

CPLS BC3144: Stories and Storytelling: Introduction to Narrative

E. Sun

T/R 4:10-5:25

Study of the forms and functions of narrative through engagement with the modes of detection, confession, and digression. You will examine how storytelling takes place in various media and genres and across fiction and non-fiction, studying short stories, a novella, novels, a poem, films, scholarly essays, autobiography, and a psychoanalytic case history. Attention to cultural differences, historical shifts, and philosophical questions such as the writing of the self, the nature of memory, the experience of time, and the relationship of truth to fiction. Readings include  Doyle, Borges, Sophocles, Freud, Hitchcock, Augustine, Coleridge, McEwan, the compilers of The Arabian Nights, Diderot, Calvino, and Lispector. 

CPLS BC3161: Myths of Oedipus in Western Drama and Philosophy (CANCELLED)

C. Weber

M/W 2:40-3:55

This course examines the myth of Oedipus in a range of dramatic and theoretical writings, exploring how the paradigm of incest and parricide has shaped Western thought from classical tragedy to gender studies. Authors studied: Sophocles, Seneca, Corneille, Dryden, Voltaire, Hölderlin, Hegel, Wagner, Nietzsche, Freud, Klein, Deleuze, Guattari, and Butler.

CPLS GR4152: Politics of Performance (NEW!!!)

H. Worthen

T 10:10-12:00

Open to undergraduates.

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

AHUM UN1400 - Colloquium on Major Texts

D. Moerman

W 10:10am-12:00pm

This course explores the core classical literature in Chinese, Japanese and Korean Humanities. The main objective of the course is to discover the meanings that these literature offer, not just for the original audience or for the respective cultures, but for us. As such, it is not a survey or a lecture-based course. Rather than being taught what meanings are to be derived from the texts, we explore meanings together, informed by in-depth reading and thorough ongoing discussion.

CLRS UN3304: How to Read Violence - The Literature of Power, Force and Brutality from 20th Century Russia and America

B. Gorski

M/W 2:40-3:55pm

Violence is a central element in much narrative art, but an experience as visceral and physical as violence does not easily translate to aesthetic works. This course seeks to understand how authors and filmmakers have grappled with this problem, how they have mobilized the forms and devices of literature and film to communicate the experience of violence to their audiences. We will discuss how fragmentation, montage, language breakdown and other techniques not only depict violence, but reflect that violence in artistic forms. We will consider novels, poems, and films from 20th-century Russia and America, two societies which, while following distinct paths, engaged in the major violent conflicts of the last hundred years, from anarchism and revolution, to accelerated modernization, to entrenched societal injustice.

ENGL BC3192 - Estrangement and Exile in Global Novels 

H. Mitar

M 4:10-6:00pm

"I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn't really care."-Jean Rhys. This course examines the experiential life of the novelist as both artist and citizen. Through the study of the work of two towering figures in 20th century literature, we will look at the seemingly contradictory condition of the novelist as both outsider and integral to society, as both observer and expresser of time's yearnings and passions. In different ways and with different repercussions, Jean Rhys and Albert Camus were born into realities shaped by colonialism. They lived across borders, identities and allegiances. Rhys was neither black-Caribbean nor white-English. Albert Camus could be said to have been both French and Algerian, both the occupier and the occupied, and, perhaps, neither. We will look at how their work reflects the contradictions into which they were born. We will trace, through close reading and open discussion, the ways in which their art continues to have lasting power and remain, in light of the complexities of our own time, vivid, true and alive. The objective is to pinpoint connections between novelistic form and historical time. The uniqueness of the texts we will read lies not just in their use of narrative, ideas and myths, but also in their resistance to generalization. We will examine how our novelists' existential position, as both witnesses and participants, creates an opportunity for fiction to reveal more than the author intends and, on the other hand, more than power desires.

CPLS BC3124: Utopian Literature

M/W 10:10-11:25

Ron Briggs

Oscar Wilde wrote that “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.” This course reads the concept from Christopher Columbus and Thomas More to the advent of modern socialism. Readings by Campanella, Cavendish, Engels, Bellamy, Gilman, and Portal.

CPLS BC3143: Topics in Comp Lit - Literature & Violence

T/R 11:40-12:55

Brian O'Keeffe

This course examines the ways in which literary works engage with the matter of violence. The texts have been chosen for the intensity with which they confront the ethical and political dilemmas relation the act of violence, and indeed, the justification of violence. Topics to be considered include terrorism and revolutionary militancy, arguments for and against the death penalty, acts of vengeance, cruelty, and torture. Texts are drawn from a wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts - classical Greek tragedy, European literature of the 19th century, works set in Franco-phone Algeria, and in early 20th century China, among others. The course also addresses different genres, including theater, narrative prose, and poetry, as well as photography. Further aspects of the topic will be developed in connection with recent philosophical writing on violence.

CPLS BC3158: Languages of Loss: The Poetry of Mourning

M/W 11:40-12:55

Emily Sun

A study of the genre of elegy across time and cultures. Emphasis on how poets express grief and relate to literary traditions. Comparisons of European, Chinese, and American elegies (by Theocritus, Milton, Qu Yuan, Holderlin, Wordsworth, Whitman, Bishop, and others) and discussions of the relationship between singular and collective life.

CPLS BC3510 (Sec. 001 + Sec. 002): Advanced Translation Workshop

W 4:10-6:00pm

Peter Connor (section 001)

Emily Sun (section 002)

A deep immersion in the theory and practice of translation with a focus on translating into English. The first half of the course is devoted to discussing readings in the history of translation theory while translating brief practical exercises; in the second half, translation projects are submitted to the class for critical discussion. The foreign texts for these projects, chosen in consultation with the instructor, will be humanistic, not only literature as conventionally defined (prose fiction and poetry, memoir and travel writing), but also the gamut of text types in the human sciences, including philosophy, history, and ethnography. The aim is not just to translate, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory, past and present, and by examining translations written by professionals. In the spring of 2016, the workshop will be offered in two sections by Professor Peter Connor and Professor Emily Sun. The sections will share most of the common readings in the history of translation theory, but Professor Sun's section will emphasize issues specific to translating East Asia. Enrollment in each workshop is limited to 12 students. Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. CPLT BC 3011 "Introduction to Translation Studies" is a recommended prerequisite, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors. Please Email pconnor@barnard.edu by 1 December 2015 with the following information: Name, year of graduation, major, college (BC, CU, etc.); a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; a brief (max 300 word) statement explaining why you wish to take the workshop (this statement is not required if you have taken or are taking CPLT BC3110 Intro to Translation Studies).

CPLS UN3600: Visual and Verbal Arts

T/R 10:10-11:25

Erk Grimm

Analysis and discussion of the relation of literature to painting, photography, and film. Emphasis on artistic and literary concepts concerning the visual dimension of narrative and poetic texts from Homer to Burroughs. Explores the role of description, illustration, and montage in realist and modern literature.

CPLS UN3950: Literary Theory

T 4:10-6:00

Emily Sun

Examination of concepts and assumptions present in contemporary views of literature. Theory of meaning and interpretation (hermeneutics); questions of genre (with discussion of representative examples); a critical analysis of formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, Marxist, and feminist approaches to literature.

CPLS BC3997: Senior Seminar

W 2:10-4:00

Erk Grimm

Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s).

CPLS BC3144: Stories and Storytelling: Introduction to Narrative

E. Sun

T/R 4:10-5:25

Study of the forms and functions of narrative through engagement with the modes of detection, confession, and digression. You will examine how storytelling takes place in various media and genres and across fiction and non-fiction, studying short stories, a novella, novels, a poem, films, scholarly essays, autobiography, and a psychoanalytic case history. Attention to cultural differences, historical shifts, and philosophical questions such as the writing of the self, the nature of memory, the experience of time, and the relationship of truth to fiction. Readings include  Doyle, Borges, Sophocles, Freud, Hitchcock, Augustine, Coleridge, McEwan, the compilers of The Arabian Nights, Diderot, Calvino, and Lispector.

CPLS BC3630: Theatre and Democracy

H. Worthen

T 10:10-12:00

How does theatre promote democracy, and vice versa: how do concepts and modes of theatre prevent the spectators from assuming civic positions both within and outside a theatrical performance? This class explores both the promotion and the denial of democratic discourse in the practices of dramatic writing and theatrical performance.

CPLT BC3001: Introduction to Comparative Literature

E. Sun

T/R 11:40-12:55

Introduction to methods and topics in the study of literature across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, across historical periods, and in relation to other arts and disciplines. Readings are selected and juxtaposed in consecutive units designed to give students training in the practice of comparative criticism and to foster, through praxis, reflection on underlying theoretical and methodological questions.  We will study works of poetry, drama, prose fiction, theory, and criticism. Topics include: the role of language and literature in different cultures and historical periods, the relationship between genres, the circulation of literary forms, literature and translation, post-colonial literature; East-West literary relations, the relationship of literature to other arts, and the relationship between literature and theory.

CPLT BC3110: Introduction to Translation Studies

P. Connor

T/R 4:10-5:25

Prerequisites: Completion of the Language Requirement or equivalent.

Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating.  Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers.

CPLT BC3140: Europe Imagined: Images of the New Europe in 20th-Century Literature​

E. Grimm

T/R 10:10-11:25

Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, H. Boell, C. Toibin and others.

CPLT BC3162: The Novella from Cervantes to Kafka

A. Mac Adam

M/W 10:10-11:25

The novella, older than the novel, painstakingly crafted, links the worlds of ideas and fiction.  The readings present the novella as a genre, tracing its progress from the 17th century to the 20th.  Each text read in the comparative milieu, grants the reader access to the intellectual concerns of an era.

CPLS BC3158 - Languages of Loss: Poetry of Mourning - NEW!!!

T/R 11:40-12:55pm

Emily Sun

A study of the genre of elegy across time and cultures. Emphasis on how poets express grief and relate to literary traditions. Comparisons of European, Chinese, and American elegies (by Theocritus, Milton, Qu Yuan, Holderlin, Wordsworth, Whitman, Bishop, and others) and discussions of the relationship between singular and collective life.

CLSP BC3215 - The Colonial Encounter:  Conquest, Landscape, and Subject in the Hispanic New World 

T/R 2:40-3:55pm 

Orlando Bentancor

This course will move across and over the geopolitical landscape of the Tudor and Habsburg Empires in Europe and the New World in order to explore and compare the diverse symbolic and political roles the colonial encounter had in the signification of the relationship between the subject and the landscape.

CPLS BC3510.001 - Advanced Workshop (Section 1)

T 4:10-6:00pm

Peter Connor

In the spring of 2016, the workshop will be offered in two sections by Professor Peter Connor and Professor Emily Sun. The sections will share most of the common readings in the history of translation theory, but Professor Sun's section will emphasize issues specific to translating East Asia. Enrollment in each workshop is limited to 12 students. Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. 

CPLT BC 3011 "Introduction to Translation Studies" is a recommended prerequisite, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors.  Please email pconnor@barnard.edu by 1 December 2015 with the following information: 
Name, year of graduation, major, college (BC, CU, etc.); a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; a brief (max 300 word) statement explaining why you wish to take the workshop (this statement is not required if you have taken or are taking CPLT BC3110 Intro to Translation Studies).

CPLS BC3510.002 - Advanced Workshop ( Section 2)

W 4:10-6:00pm

Emily Sun

In the spring of 2016, the workshop will be offered in two sections by Professor Peter Connor and Professor Emily Sun. The sections will share most of the common readings in the history of translation theory, but Professor Sun's section will emphasize issues specific to translating East Asia. Enrollment in each workshop is limited to 12 students. Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. 

CPLT BC 3011 "Introduction to Translation Studies" is a recommended prerequisite, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors.  Please email pconnor@barnard.edu by 1 December 2015 with the following information: 
Name, year of graduation, major, college (BC, CU, etc.); a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; a brief (max 300 word) statement explaining why you wish to take the workshop (this statement is not required if you have taken or are taking CPLT BC3110 Intro to Translation Studies).

CPLS V3675 - Mad Love

M/W 2:40-3:55pm

Alfred MacAdam

The history of irrational love as embodied in literary and non-literary texts throughout the Western tradition. Readings include the Bible, Greek, Roman, Medieval, and modern texts.

CPLS V3950 - Colloquium in Literary Theory

T/R 4:10-5:25pm 

Emily Sun 

Examination of concepts and assumptions present in contemporary views of literature. Theory of meaning and interpretation (hermeneutics); questions of genre (with discussion of representative examples); a critical analysis of formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, Marxist, and feminist approaches to literature.

CPLS BC3997 - Senior Seminar

W 4:10-6:00pm

Erk Grimm 

CLLT W4300 - Classical Tradition 

M/W 11:40-12:55pm

Collomia Charles

AHUM V3400 - Colloquium in Major Texts

W 12:10-2:00pm

Hossein Kamaly

CLRS W4022: Russia and Asia

E. Tyerman

M/W 11:40-12:55

This course explores the formation of Russian national and imperial identity through ideologies of geography, focusing on a series of historical engagements with the concept of "Asia." How has the Mongol conquest shaped a sense of Russian identity as something destinct from Europe? How has Russian culture participated in Orientalist portrayals of conquered Asian lands, while simultaneously being Orientalized by Europe and, indeed, Orientalizing itself? How do concepts of Eurasianism and socialist internationalism, both arising in the ealry 20th century, seek to redraw the geography of Russia's relations with East and West? We will explore these questions through a range of materials, including: literary texts by Russian and non-Russian writers (Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Solovyov, Bely, Blok, Pilnyak, Khlebnikov, Planotov, Xiao Hong, Kurban Said, Aitimatov, Iskander, Bordsky); films (Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Kalatozov, Paradjanov, Mikhalkov); music and dance (the Ballets Russes); visual art (Vereshchagin, Roerich); and theoretical and secondary readings by Chaadaev, Said, Bassin, Trubetskoy, Leontievm, Lenin, and others.

CPLS BC3144: St0ries and Storytelling: Introduction to Narrative - NEW COURSE!!!

E. Sun

M/W 10:10-11:25

This course offers an introduction to narrative through the study of selected texts that themselves foreground and reflect on how stories are constructed and told and thus perform the function of teaching us how to read them. The texts are divided into units in which storytelling respectively resembles the process of detection, takes the form of confession, and employs digression, interruption, and interpolated narratives. These texts come from a range of historical periods and cultures–from fifth-century BCE Athens to late twentieth-century Brazil–and cover a variety of modes, genres, and media–short stories, novellas, novels, film, a ballad, autobiography, and a psychoanalytic case history.

CPLS BC3160: Tragic Bodies
N. Worman

T/R 2:40-3:55

This course will focus on embodiment in ancient and modern drama as well as in film, television, and performance art, including plays by Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Beckett; films such as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Limits of Control”; and performances by artists such as Karen Finley and Marina Abromovic. We will explore the provocations, theatricality, and shock aesthetics of such concepts as Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” and Kristeva's "powers of horror," as well as Adorno's ideas about terror and the sublime.

CPLS V3190: Aesthetics of the Grotesque

E. Grimm

T/R 4:10-5:25

Examination of the grotesque in different cultural contexts from late Renaissance to the postmodern period comparing modes of transgression and excess in Western literature and film.  Particular emphasis on exaggeration in style and on fantastic representations of the body, from the ornate and corpulent to the laconic and anorexic. Readings in Rabelais, Swift, Richardson, Poe, Gogol, Kafka, Meyrink, Pirandello, Greenaway, and M. Python.

CPLS BC3630: Theatre and Democracy - NEW COURSE!!!

H. Worthen

T 10:10-12:00

How does theatre promote democracy, and vice versa: how do concepts and modes of theatre prevent the spectators from assuming civic positions both within and outside a theatrical performance? This class explores both the promotion and the denial of democratic discourse in the practices of dramatic writing and theatrical performance.

CPLT BC3001: Introduction to Comparative Literature

E. Sun

T/R 11:40-12:55

Introduction to the study of literature from a comparative and cross-disciplinary perspective. Readings will be selected to promote reflection on such topics as the relation of literature to the other arts; nationalism and literature; international literary movements; post-colonial literature; gender and literature; and issues of authorship, influence, originality, and intertextuality.

CPLT BC3110: Introduction to Translation Studies

P. Connor

M/W 2:40-3:55

Prerequisites: Completion of the Language Requirement or equivalent.

Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating.  Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers.

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

ASST BC3610: Persian Literature through English Translation

H. Kamaly

M/W 10:10-11:25

CLSL W4075: Post Colonial/ Post Soviet Cinema

Y. Shevchuk

T 6:10-10:00

ENGL BC3158: Medieval Literature

C. Baswell

M/W 10:10-11:25

ENGL BC3192: Estrangement/Exile Global Novels

H. Matar

T 11:00-12:50

LING W3101: Introduction to Linguistics

J. McWhorter

T/R 2:40-3:55

THTR V3150: Western Theatre Traditions

W. Worthen

M/W 10:10-11:25