College Catalog Archives

Many departments in the Division of Literature and Languages offer courses in which the texts are read in translation. Literature courses are described under particular cross-listed departments within the division, with the exception of Literature 400, which is intended to serve all majors in the division. When courses are cross-listed under the sponsoring department, the texts in these courses are often read in the original language, usually in a separate conference; students with appropriate language skills should, for example, register for German 330 rather than Literature 330.

All literature courses fulfill Group A requirements. One unit of a literature course (or one unit in creative writing) may be applied toward the English major. For other majors in the division, literature courses at the 300 level will fulfill the division requirement of two units in a literature outside of the major.

Literature 309 - Introduction to Film Theory

Full course for one semester. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the main ideas and debates on film theory and criticism, from the early days of silent film to the most recent approaches to digital cinema. The discussion will focus on the most significant movements and film schools in Europe, the U.S., Latin America, and other parts of the world: realism, formalism, apparatus theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, auteurism, genre criticism, theories of spectatorship and reception, postmodernism, and third world and postcolonial cinema, among others. In addition to theoretical approaches, students will become familiar with cinematic language, including mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The course will explore the work of directors such as D.W. Griffith, Sergei M. Eisenstein, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Vittorio De Sica, Jean-Luc Godard, Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Ousmane Sembene, Pedro Almodóvar, Agnès Varda, Wong Kar-wai, and Asghar Farhadi. Course includes weekly film screenings. Prerequisite: sophomore standing or consent of the instructor.  Conference.

Literature 400 - Introduction to Literary Theory

Full course for one semester. This course is a historical and analytical introduction to the major theoretical movements of the last 50 years in Western Europe and America. We will trace the philosophical origins and conceptual affiliations of the major developments in these movements. We will unpack the central concepts or master tropes of these theories to think about their function in literary criticism and learn how to use them purposefully. The course will cover structuralism and semiotics, poststructuralism and deconstruction, psychoanalytic theory, poststructuralist Marxist theory, Foucauldian theory and new historicism, postcolonial studies, and gender and feminist studies. The course will be taught as a seminar, with each student responsible for organizing the discussion of a reading or topic. It is designed for literature majors, but non–literature majors with adequate preparation may be admitted at the discretion of the instructors. Prerequisite: junior standing or at least two literature courses. Conference. Cross-listed as English 400 in 2018–19.

Literature (Chinese) 281 - Self, Stage, and Society: An Excursion into Chinese Drama

See Chinese 281 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 281 Description

Literature (Chinese) 329 - Stranger Things in Medieval China

See Chinese 329 for description.

 

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 329 Description

Literature (Chinese) 334 - The Yijing: Text and Tradition of the Book of Changes

See Chinese 334 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 334 Description

Literature (Chinese) 335 - Chineseness, Translated Modernity, and World Literature

See Chinese 335 for description.

 

Chinese 335 Description

Literature (Chinese) 346 - From Allegories to Documentaries: Screening Postsocialist China

See Chinese 346 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 346 Description

Literature (Chinese) 348 - Reading for Translation

See Chinese 348 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 348 Description

Literature (Chinese) 355 - Early Chinese Philosophical Texts

See Chinese 355 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 355 Description

Literature (Chinese) 360 - The Social Life of Poetry in the Tang Dynasty (618–907)

See Chinese 360 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 360 Description

Literature (Chinese) 367 - Love in Late Imperial China

See Chinese 367 for description.

 

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 367 Description

Literature (Chinese) 369 - Modernizing Sentiments, Sentimentalizing Modernity

See Chinese 369 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 369 Description

Literature (Chinese) 374 - Reading Early Chinese Novels: The Four Masterworks

See Chinese 374 for description.

 

Chinese 374 Description

Literature (Chinese) 375 - Chinese Strange Writing: From Ghost Stories to Scientific Fantasies

See Chinese 375 for description.

 

Chinese 375 Description

Literature (Chinese) 380 - Chinese Narrative Traditions

See Chinese 380 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Chinese 380 Description

Literature (Classics) 360 - Special Topics: Animals in Greek and Roman Literature

See Classics 360 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Classics 360 Description

Literature (Classics) 362 - Classical Mythology

See Classics 362 for description.

Classics 362 Description

Literature (German) 346 - Introduction to Media Studies

See German 346 for description.

German 346 Description

Literature (German) 348 - Literature and Photography

See German 348 for description. 

Not offered 2018–19.

German 348 Description

Literature (German) 355 - Twentieth-Century Jewish Literature

See German 355 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

German 355 Description

Literature (German) 358 - The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation

See German 358 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

German 358 Description

Literature (German) 391 - German Theory I

Introduction to Critical Theory
See German 391 for description. Not offered 2018–19.

The Languages of War
See German 391 for description.

German 391 Description

Literature (German) 392 - German Theory II

Revolutions in Poetic Language
See German 392 for description. Not offered 2018–19.

Ways of Seeing: From Kant to Foucault
See German 392 for description.

German 392 Description

Literature (Russian) 266 - Russian Short Fiction

See Russian 266 for description.

Russian 266 Description

Literature (Russian) 325 - Multicultural Russia

See Russian 325 for description.

Russian 325 Description

Literature (Russian) 362 - Red Sci-Fi: Science Fiction in Soviet Literature and Film

See Russian 362 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 362 Description

Literature (Russian) 366 - Literature of Destruction

See Russian 366 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 366 Description

Literature (Russian) 371 - Russian Literature from its Beginnings through Gogol

See Russian 371 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 371 Description

Literature (Russian) 372 - Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction

See Russian 372 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 372 Description

Literature (Russian) 373 - Modern Russian Literature from Chekhov to the Present

See Russian 373 for description.

Russian 373 Description

Literature (Russian) 383 - Special Topics in Russian Literature: Russian Romanticism in the Western European Context

See Russian 383 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 383 Description

Literature (Russian) 390 - Russian Culture under Putin: Submission and Resistance

See Russian 390 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 390 Description

Literature (Russian) 404 - Tolstoy’s Great Novels

See Russian 404 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 404 Description

Literature (Russian) 408 - Decadence and Symbolism in Russia and Europe

See Russian 408 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 408 Description

Literature (Russian) 409 - Late Tolstoy: From Anna Karenina to a Religious Teaching

See Russian 409 for description.

Russian 409 Description

Literature (Russian) 413 - Russian Formalism, Structuralism, and Semiotics

See Russian 413 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 413 Description

Literature (Russian) 436 - Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Art: Decadence, Revolution, and the Mechanics of Ecstasy

See Russian 436 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Russian 436 Description

Literature (Russian) 445 - The Films of S. Kubrick and A. Tarkovsky

See Russian 445 for description. 

Russian 445 Description

Literature (Spanish) 343 - Don Quixote and Narrative Theory

See Spanish 343 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Spanish 343 Description

Literature (Spanish) 344 - Visual Art in Spanish Baroque Literature

See Spanish 344 for description.

Spanish 344 Description

Literature (Spanish) 361 - Decentering the Human

See Spanish 361 for description.

Spanish 361 Description

Literature (Spanish) 371 - Sensing Justice: Cinema and Politics of the Senses

See Spanish 371 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Spanish 371 Description

Literature (Spanish) 378 - Space and Power

See Spanish 378 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Spanish 378 Description

Literature (Spanish) 384 - Latin America’s Revolutionary Century

See Spanish 384 for description.

Not offered 2018–19.

Spanish 384 Description