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 Chinese 330 rather than Literature 330.
Literature 209 - Introduction to Film Studies: Form and History on the Big Screen
One unit semester course. This course introduces students to film aesthetics through the analysis of film form and style with the aim of acquiring fluency in and understanding of film’s unique language as it evolved technologically, historically, and generically. Students shall explore the specificity of the language of cinema and its development in the twentieth century, paying special attention to how the big screen responded to and represented major events and historical trauma. In addition to dissecting and identifying formal choices and techniques, students will undertake close readings of films and place them in the larger context of directorial oeuvre, critical schools, period or movement in European and American cinema, and beyond. Lecture-conference.
Literature 309 - Introduction to Film Theory
One unit semester course. 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 United States, 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-screenings.
Literature 324 - Self-Narration Before and After Proust
One unit semester course. This course will explore examples of self-narration in French literary works (in English translation) prior to and throughout the twentieth century, with Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way situated as the text alongside which and against which we will read other texts of self-narration, both autobiographical and fictional. The modes, gestures, and habits of self-narration that dominate contemporary life and that are immediately familiar today have rich literary examples. Self-fashioning, self-exploration, giving an account of oneself, organizing the relationship between one’s past and present, identifying meaningful patterns in the experiences of daily life; all of these may be considered components of a project of self-narration. Although this course will entail discussion of theoretical questions surrounding the project of self-narration (for instance, autofiction, the autobiographical pact, writing and memory, writing and the self), the primary focus of the course will be careful reading of the literary texts themselves, with emphasis on formal analysis. Authors read include Montaigne, Rousseau, Proust, Sartre, Leiris, Perec, Sarraute, Modiano, and Roubaud. Conference.
Literature 400 - Introduction to Literary Theory
One unit semester course. 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.
Literature (Ancient Mediterranean) 251 - Ancient Greek Athletics
See Ancient Mediterranean Studies 251 for description.
Ancient Mediterranean Studies 251 Description
Literature (Ancient Mediterranean) 261 - Greek and Roman Mythology
See Ancient Mediterranean Studies 261 for description.
Ancient Mediterranean Studies 261 Description
Literature (Chinese) 325 - Songs to Lost Music: Ci-Poetry
See Chinese 325 for course description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 327 - Chinese Inhumanities: Construction of the Other in Chinese Literature
See Chinese 327 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 329 - Stranger Things in Medieval China
See Chinese 329 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 330 - Chinese Ghost Stories and Supernatural Tales
See Chinese 330 for description.
Literature (Chinese) 334 - The Yijing: Text and Tradition of the Book of Changes
See Chinese 334 for description.
Literature (Chinese) 346 - From Allegories to Documentaries: Screening Postsocialist China
See Chinese 346 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 347 - Modern Sinophone Fiction and Film
See Chinese 347 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 348 - Reading for Translation
See Chinese 348 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 355 - Early Chinese Philosophical Texts
See Chinese 355 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 367 - Love in Late Imperial China
See Chinese 367 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 374 - Reading Early Chinese Novels: The Four Masterworks
See Chinese 374 for description.
Literature (Chinese) 380 - The Story of the Stone and the Literary Traditions of China
See Chinese 380 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Chinese) 390 - Realism and Its Discontents in Contemporary Chinese Visual Media
See Chinese 390 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (French) 392 - French Connections: The Intertwined Histories of French and American Cinema
See French 392 for description.
Literature (German) 346 - Introduction to Media Studies
See German 346 for description.
Literature (German) 349 - Cinema and Politics
See German 349 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (German) 358 - Representing Genocide
See German 358 for description.
Literature (German) 372 - Psychoanalysis and Literature
See German 372 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (German) 375 - Thinking Machines: Androids and Automatons in Science and Literature
See German 375 for course description.
Literature (German) 391 - German Theory I
Introduction to Critical Theory
See German 391 for description. Not offered 2022–23.
Plants and Politics
See German 391 for description.
Literature (German) 392 - German Theory II
Revolutions in Poetic Language
See German 392 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 266 - Russian Short Fiction
See Russian 266 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 325 - Multicultural Russia
See Russian 325 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 362 - Red Sci-Fi: Science Fiction in Soviet Literature and Film
See Russian 362 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 363 - Film Adaptation: When Kurosawa Met Dostoevsky
See Russian 363 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 365 - Kiev, Odessa, and the Steppes: Ukrainian Imagination and Russian Literature
See Russian 365 for description.
Literature (Russian) 371 - Russian Literature and Culture from Medieval to Romantic
See Russian 371 for description.
Literature (Russian) 372 - Russian Literature: Realism
See Russian 372 for description.
Literature (Russian) 373 - Modern Russian Literature from Chekhov to the Present
See Russian 373 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 387 - Jewishness and Cinema
See Russian 387 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 388 - From Lenin to Putin: Soviet Experience and its Aftermath through Film, Literature, and Human Document
See Russian 388 for description.
Literature (Russian) 390 - Russian Culture under Putin: Resistance and Conformity
See Russian 390 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 392 - Nuclear Literatures: A Comparative Approach
See Russian 392 for course description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 405 - Niklolaj Gogol’
See Russian 405 for course description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 408 - Decadence and Symbolism in Russia and Europe
See Russian 408 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 409 - Late Tolstoy: From Anna Karenina to a Religious Teaching
See Russian 409 for description.
Literature (Russian) 410 - Russian Literature in Revolution: 1917–1932
See Russian 410 for course description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 412 - Literary Translation Workshop
See Russian 412 for course description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 413 - Russian Formalism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Bakhtin
See Russian 413 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Russian) 436 - Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Art: Decadence, Revolution, and the Mechanics of Ecstasy
See Russian 436 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Spanish) 343 - Don Quixote and Narrative Theory
See Spanish 343 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Spanish) 344 - Visual Art in Spanish Baroque Literature
See Spanish 344 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Spanish) 351 - Saints and Sinners: Women in the Early Modern Transatlantic World
See Spanish 351 for description.
Literature (Spanish) 361 - Decentering the Human
See Spanish 361 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Spanish) 372 - Documentary Resistance in Latin America and Spain
See Spanish 372 for description.
Not offered 2022–23.
Literature (Spanish) 378 - Space & Power
See Spanish 378 for description.