World Literature Courses

This course offers advanced, intensive examination of specific issues in World Literature, often those at the center of current critical interest. Examples may include translation issues; cross-cultural fertilizations; competing conceptions of world literature; literature in a global economy. May be repeated for credit with different topics.

Spring Semester information

315A: AdvTps:Cultural Studies of Satan

Across various times and places, the concept of "the satan"--found in texts like Job 1:6 (Hebrew: "the adversary")--has consistently proven to be a rich source of intellectual engagement: Satan, it seems, is "good to think with" (then and now). This course employs transdisciplinary approaches to investigate the contours and functions of the (sometimes-mundane, sometimes-magnificent, always-interesting) satanic imaginary as expressed in literature throughout history. Tying together select ancient (then) expositions from Abrahamic traditions (Judaism | Christianity | Islam) with select (now) [more] contemporary expressions, we will explore the host of positions and interests such voices bring to their discourses on Satan (and the satanic). How might we contextualize the diverse ways that "then and now" folk relate to the satanic? What discourses and relations of power are at work in "then and now" satanic musings? More broadly, how might we imagine our relationships with the "then and now" satanic imaginary, while growing in (self-)critical awareness of the ideological/contextual nature of engaging with the past, present, and future? Come and see!

Fall Semester information

315A: Advanced Topics:Translation: Theory and Practice

315B: Advanced Topics:Asian Theatre History and Criticism

This course will introduce students to important theoretical applications of performance specific to issues of cultures in Asia. At the end of the course, the student will be able to critically discuss issues involving performance theory, culture, civilization, politics, religion, faith, art forms, and dramatic literature. While refining students' analytical and interpretive skills, Asian Theatre offers intensive examination of specific issues in theatre history and performance theory, often those at the center of current critical interest.

315C: Advanced Topics:The Victorian Period

What do you think of when you hear the term "Victorian literature"? For many, this period of literary history has become synonymous with stories of corseted women trying to get married on a quaint estate in the English countryside, a world far removed from our frenetic, mobile, and highly globalized lives. Yet the Victorian era actually witnessed the development and codification of many of the genres that continue to shape storytelling worldwide: the Gothic, melodrama, romance, science fiction, and historical fiction. This section of "The Victorian Period" will explore how the genres of modern storytelling developed across the British empire between the years of 1837 and 1901 and subsequently proliferated over time and across the globe. While centering on work produced in the nineteenth century, each unit will conclude with a more contemporary work that illustrates the genre's afterlife. Assigned materials will include fiction, drama, and films by Charlotte Bronte, Victoria Cross, Rabindranath Tagore, and Tayeb Salih (the Gothic); Elizabeth Robins, Thomas Hardy, Asit Sen, and Mahasweta Devi (melodrama); Alexandre Dumas Fils, Ogai Mori, and Park Chan-wook (romance); Samuel Butler, Lao She, and Witi Ihimaera (science fiction); and George Eliot, Wilson Harris, and the creators of Netflix series The Crown (historical fiction).