Courses

This course offers close examination of global issues and features in literature, often those at the center of current critical interest. May be repeated for credit with different topics.

Fall Semester information

215A: Tps:Medieval Tabloid

215B: Tps:French Literature as World Literature (Taught in English)

In a manifesto published in Le Monde in 2007, forty-four French-language writers proclaimed the end of the idea of la francophonie and the "birth of a world literature in French" whose only borders were the mind itself. We will study this manifesto and responses to it and will then read recent fiction by several of its signatories. We will consider such issues as claims of universalism versus historical and geographical particularities, the relationship between "world literature" in French and in English (not to mention in other languages), the problem of monolingualism, and the role of the international literary marketplace in shaping conceptions of national and world literatures. We will also consider the perspectives that we bring to these questions as we read French-language works in English-language translations. Students will do lots of informal and formal writing, including reflective, critical, and creative pieces.

215C: Tps:Rage Against the Machine: Radical Thought in Contemporary France

Rage against the machine explores instances of rebelliousness and radicalness in the voices of several contemporary actors in the francophone (French-speaking) world through an interdisciplinary approach that centers questions of citizenship, integration, assimilation, language, and identity. Over the course of the semester, students will engage with authors and activists that question the political, social, cultural, and ethical viability of certain conceptualizations of France; that adopt radical, and in many cases, revolutionary social and ideological stances toward "Frenchness" and "the Western world"; that offer alternative histories, ideologies, and modes of existence to the homogenizing narratives of French universalism. Course material will ask students to negotiate questions of radicality and rebelliousness often at the borders of several contested social, cultural, linguistic, and political positionings. We will consider the diverse frames that make claims of rebelliousness and radicality possible within the francophone world and transnationally, as well as how these frames have been operationalized politically to marginalize, silence, or dismiss certain modes of thought. No knowledge of French required.

Spring Semester information

215A: Tps:Viking Myths and Modern Myth-Making

This course introduces students to a wide range of texts from the Viking-Age North Sea region (ca. 793¿1300 CE), beginning with the first Norse territorial expansions into Anglo-Saxon England and ending with the widespread Christianization of Iceland and Norway. The course will include selections from Old English poetry, the Eddas (prose and poetic), Norse þattr, Icelandic sagas, Icelandic law, Arabic travel narratives, and various other documents that tell the story of cultural contact between the Viking peoples and their neighbors near and far. We will consider the act of encountering literature in translation, investigate the historical and etymological origins of the term Viking, and probe the assumptions behind pop culture representations of medieval Scandinavians. The course will also address the appropriation of Viking culture by modern special interest groups. What are the past and present myths surrounding Viking culture, and how can we begin to uncover the truth about this complex group of peoples?

215B: Tps:Children's Literature