Courses for Spring 2019 | Comparative Literature & Literary Theory

	Title	Instructors	Location	Time	Description	Cross listings	Fulfills	Registration notes	Syllabus URL
COML 002-401	Approaches Literary Std: Zombies	Astride Veronique Charles	PSYL A30	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	The zombie has long been an expression of the fear of the other, those at the margins of society, or the fear of the afterlife. Zombies remain as much a fascination in popular media as in art and scholarship, from the ongoing series The Walking Dead to Jean-Michel Basquiat's vodou-inspired zombielike portraits. Using sources from art, anthropology, history, literature and religion, this course will examine the mythologies and iconographies surrounding this ubiquitous figure at the cusp of life and death. In this course, students will approach a series of questions. How have different societies imagined the zombie? How does one become a zombie? Can one escape from that state of (non)existence? Finally, how do these stories and images offer subtle reflections on labor, power, humanity and society writ large? This is a CWiC critical speaking seminar, open to students from all majors. Course evaluations include weekly Canvas posts, oral presentations and creative, individualized final projects.<br />	ENGL002401, AFRC003401		Communication Within the Curriculum
COML 006-401	Hindu Mythology	Deven M. Patel	COLL 200	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	Premodern India produced some of the world's greatest myths and stories: tales of gods, goddesses, heroes, princesses, kings and lovers that continue to capture the imaginations of millions of readers and hearers. In this course, we will look closely at some of these stories especially as found in Purana-s, great compendia composed in Sanskrit, including the chief stories of the central gods of Hinduism: Visnu, Siva, and the Goddess. We will also consider the relationship between these texts and the earlier myths of the Vedas and the Indian Epics, the diversity of the narrative and mythic materials within and across different texts, and the re-imagining of these stories in the modern world.	SAST006401, RELS066401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 009-401	Intro Digital Humanities	Jonathan S Enderle	ANNS 111	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	This course provides an introduction to foundational skills common in digital humanities (DH). It covers a range of new technologies and methods and will empower scholars in literary studies and across humanities disciplines to take advantage of established and emerging digital research tools. Students will learn basic coding techniques that will enable them to work with a range data including literary texts and utilize techniques such as text mining, network analysis, and other computational approaches.	HIST009401, ENGL009401
COML 010-401	Central and Eastern Europe: Cultures, Histories, Societies	Kristen R. Ghodsee	WILL 27	TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM	The reappearance of the concept of Central and Eastern Europe is one of the most fascinating results of the collapse of the Soviet empire. The course will provide an introduction into the study of this region its cultures, histories, and societies from the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire to the enlargement of the European Union. Students are encouraged to delve deeper into particular countries, disciplines, and sub-regions, such as Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, through an individual research paper and class presentations.	EEUR010401, RUSS009401	Cross Cultural Analysis	All Readings and Lectures in English	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML010401
COML 012-601	India's Literature: Love, War, Wisdom and Humor	Deven M. Patel	COLL 311F	R 05:00 PM-08:00 PM	This course introduces students to the extraordinary quality of literary production during the past four millennia of South Asian civilization. We will read texts in translation from all parts of South Asia up to the sixteenth century. We will read selections from hymns, lyric poems, epics, wisdom literature, plays, political works, and religious texts.	SAST004601	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 031-401	Renaissance Lit & Cultr: the Global Renaissance	Ania Loomba	BENN 407	W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM	This course will survey the cultural history of sixteenth and seventeenth century England. Interdisciplinary in nature and drawing on the latest methodologies and insights of English studies, we will explore how aesthetics, politics, social traditions, impacted literature at this vital and turbulent time of English history. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.	ENGL031401
COML 090-401	Gender, Sexuality, and Literature: Queer Autobiography	Max Cavitch	BENN 310C	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	Autobiographical writing is a rich and formative part of the LGBTQ literary tradition: a vast library of queer life, storytelling, and history. In this course, we’ll study a multinational range of LGBTQ autobiographical works from the late-nineteenth century to the present, by authors both famous and little-known, such as Oscar Wilde, Mary MacLane, Gertrude Stein, Christopher Isherwood, Roland Barthes, Leslie Feinberg, Paul Monette, Alison Bechdel, Maggie Nelson, and Rigoberto González. As diverse and idiosyncratic as these authors are, their autobiographical narratives often share common thematic and structural elements that contribute to their collective queerness. These elements include: the closet, coming out, prejudice and exclusion, the joys and dangers of having a body, alternative families and communities, the splendor and muckiness of non-normative sex, political solidarity, and styles of both public and private mourning. Queer is both an old word and a new one. It first entered English in the 14th century, when it meant “to question.” By the 16th century, it had come to mean “strange,” “peculiar,” and “suspicious.” The word was first linked (in a highly derogatory way) to homosexuality in the late 19th century, and it wasn’t until the late 20th century that it became a positive, affirmative term of identity among some lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people—a term that disrupted stale, normative binaries of sexuality (homosexual/heterosexual) and gender (male/female). “Queer” has come to refer to any way of being that questions (the word’s original meaning!) such binaries. Autobiography is an appropriately “queer” genre for self-expression. It has many forms and few rules, and it helps fluid positions of sexuality and gender take on socially shared and culturally situated sets of meanings. It’s a genre that has been at the heart of the Western tradition for at least three millennia, and queer autobiographies are part of this tradition: adding new ways of reflecting on sexuality and gender (along with other shifting, intersecting identities) as fundamental parts of everyone’s life, new ways of understanding selfhood and subjectivity, and new ways of practicing both writing and world-building. ~ Coursework will include class attendance and participation, several short writing assignments, and brief, straightforward quizzes (there will be no midterm or final exam). Please note: the readings and class discussions will be full of frank talk about sexual behaviors and body parts.<br />	ENGL090401, GSWS090401
COML 094-401	Intro To Literary Theory: Ideology	David L. Eng	BENN 201	W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM	This course introduces students to major issues in the history of literary theory. Treating the work of Plato and Aristotle as well as contemporary criticism, we will consider the fundamental issues that arise from representation, making meaning, appropriation and adaptation, categorization and genre, historicity and genealogy, and historicity and temporality. We will consider major movements in the history of theory including the "New" Criticism of the 1920's and 30's, structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism and psychoanalysis, feminism, cultural studies, critical race theory, and queer theory. See the Comparative Literature website at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/complit/ for a description of the current offerings.	ENGL094401
COML 094-402	Intro To Psychoanalysis of Literature and Film	Jean-Michel Rabate	BENN 224	TR 09:00 AM-10:30 AM	This course introduces students to major issues in the history of literary theory. Treating the work of Plato and Aristotle as well as contemporary criticism, we will consider the fundamental issues that arise from representation, making meaning, appropriation and adaptation, categorization and genre, historicity and genealogy, and historicity and temporality. We will consider major movements in the history of theory including the "New" Criticism of the 1920's and 30's, structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism and psychoanalysis, feminism, cultural studies, critical race theory, and queer theory. See the Comparative Literature website at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/complit/ for a description of the current offerings.	ENGL094402
COML 099-601	Television and New Media	Jeremy Felix Gallion	ANNS 111	M 05:00 PM-08:00 PM	As a complex cultural product, television lends itself to a variety of critical approaches that build-on, parallel, or depart from film studies. This introductory course in television studies begins with an overview of the medium's history and explores how technical and industrial changes correspond to developing conventions of genre, programming, and aesthetics. Along the way, we analyze key concepts and theoretical debates that shaped the field. In particular, we will focus on approaches to textual analysis in combination with industry research, and critical engagements with the political, social and cultural dimensions of television as popular culture.	ARTH107601, CIMS103601, ENGL078601			https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML099601
COML 100-401	Intro. To Literary Study: Global Novel	Rita Barnard	BENN 141	MW 05:00 PM-06:30 PM	This course has three broad aims: first, it will introduce students to a selection of compelling contemporary narratives; second, it will provide prospective students of literature and film, as well as interested students headed for other majors, with fundamental skills in literary, visual, and cultural analysis; and, third, it will encourage a collective meditation on the function of literature and culture in our world, where commodities, people, and ideas are constantly in motion. Questions for discussion will therefore include: the meaning of terms like “globalization,” “translation,” and “world literature”; the transnational reach and circulation of texts; migration and engagement with “others”; violence, trauma, and memory; terrorism and the state; and the ethic of cosmopolitanism. Our collective endeavor will be to think about narrative forms as modes of mediating and engaging with the vast and complex world we inhabit today. <br /> <br /> In the course of the semester we will study about eight works of fiction and three films, as well as a selection of pertinent critical essays that will provide the terminology and theoretical framework for our conversations. The following works of fiction are likely to be included: Salman Rushdie, East, West; Ivan Vladislavic, selected stories and The Restless Supermarket; Dinaw Mengesthu, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears; Junot Diaz, The Short Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Sound of Things Falling; Moshin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man, David Mitchell, Ghostwritten. Films: Babel, Even the Rain, and Syriana. Written requirements: a 7-9 page mid-term and an 8-10 page final paper (topics will be provided). Note that this course will count as one of the core requirements for the Comparative Literature major.<br />	ENGL100401	Arts & Letters Sector
COML 101-401	Introduction To Folklore	Dan Ben-Amos	WILL 421	TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM	The purpose of the course is to introduce you to the subjects of the disciplineof Folkore, their occurrence in social life and the scholarly analysis of their use in culture. As a discipline folklore explores the manaifestations of expressive forms in both traditional and moderns societies, in small-scale groups where people interace with each face-to-face, and in large-scale, often industrial societies, in which the themes, symbols, and forms that permeate traditional life, occupy new positions, or occur in differenct occasions in in everyday life. For some of you the distinction between low and high culture, or artistic and popular art will be helpful in placing folkore forms in modern societies. For others, these distinction will not be helpful. In traditional societies, and within social groups that define themselvfes ethnically, professionally, or culturally, within modern heterogeneous societies, and traditional societies in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia,folkore plays a more prominent role in society, than it appears to plan in literatie cultures on the same continents. Consequently the study of folklore and the analysis of its forms are appropriate in traditional as well as modern societies and any society that is in a transitional phase.	RELS108401, FOLK101401, NELC181401	Cross Cultural Analysis	Humanities & Social Science Sector
COML 107-401	Leonardo Da Vinci: From Renaissance Florence To Assassin's Creed	Marina Della Putta Johnston	BENN 141	MWF 02:00 PM-03:00 PM	Topics vary. See the Department's website at https://complit.sas.upenn.edu/course-list/2019A	ITAL100401		Freshman Seminar All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 108-401	Greek & Roman Mythology	Peter T. Struck	COLL 200	MW 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis	Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. Registration also required for Recitation (see below)
COML 108-402	Greek & Roman Mythology	Daniel J Crosby	WILL 220	R 03:00 PM-04:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100402		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-403	Greek & Roman Mythology	Benjamin Abbott	WILL 214	R 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100403		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-404	Greek & Roman Mythology	Johanna Victoria Kaiser	COHN 203	R 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100404		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-405	Greek & Roman Mythology	Mary Somerville	WILL 301	R 03:00 PM-04:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100405		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-406	Greek & Roman Mythology	Benjamin Abbott	WILL 319	F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100406		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-407	Greek & Roman Mythology	Johanna Victoria Kaiser	COHN 203	F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100407		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-408	Greek & Roman Mythology	Daniel J Crosby	WILL 220	R 02:00 PM-03:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100408		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 108-409	Greek & Roman Mythology	Mary Somerville	WILL 216	R 02:00 PM-03:00 PM	Myths are traditional stories that have endured many years. Some of them have to do with events of great importance, such as the founding of a nation. Others tell the stories of great heroes and heroines and their exploits and courage in the face of adversity. Still others are simple tales about otherwise unremarkable people who get into trouble or do some great deed. What are we to make of all these tales, and why do people seem to like to hear them? This course will focus on the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as a few contemporary American ones, as a way of exploring the nature of myth and the function it plays for individuals, societies, and nations. We will also pay some attention to the way the Greeks and Romans themselves understood their own myths. Are myths subtle codes that contain some universal truth? Are they a window on the deep recesses of a particular culture? Are they entertaining stories that people like to tell over and over? Are they a set of blinders that all of us wear, though we do not realize it? Investigate these questions through a variety of topics creation of the universe between gods and mortals, religion and family, sex, love, madness, and death.	CLST100409		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 122-401	Prague: the Making of A European Nation	Julia Verkholantsev	WILL 304	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	Even though such "supercities" as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Boston, and San Francisco claim a special place in the minds and hearts of Americans, no American city plays as crucial a role in the formation of national identity among Americans as Prague does among the Czechs. One may even argue that the formation of a national identity associated with a nation's urban center is a European phenomenon. The focus of the proposed course is Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic and the geographical center of Europe. From the 14th century, when it became a seat of the Holy Roman Emperor, to the Hussite Revolution; from the 19th-century national revival and the birth of the independent Czechoslovakia in 1918, to the "Prague Offensive," the last major operation of the Soviet Army in World War II and the re-appearance of the Soviet tanks after the "Prague Spring" in 1968, to the "Velvet" Revolution in 1989, and on to the present day as an EU member, Prague has been the site of major European developments and is where the Czech national identity was forged. Today a popular tourist destination with a uniquely preserved historical center that is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List, Prague combines national character with an increasingly cosmopolitan flavor. Focusing on what makes Prague a national capital, we will note how the "national" negotiates its place with the "global." As a cultural hub and political center, Prague is the repository of a cultural collective memory and of historical and emotional records. It thus presents an excellent case study of how a national identity could be formed around a single urban center. The study of the many layers of Prague's urban landscape allows us to observe how history is built into the physical environment, while the analysis of literary and artistic production reveals how the city has become perceived as a national shrine, embodied in word and image. Students will read the "Prague text" as humanists, anthropologists, and historians. They will learn to apply methods of literary, cultural, and historical analyses, and will ask questions of what it means to be a Czech, a Central European, a European, and even, perhaps, an American. The travel component will further one of the key goals of this seminar: to develop cultural knowledge and sensitivity together with the appreciation of socio-cultural differences.	EEUR119401		Permission Needed From Instructor Penn Global Seminar Enrollment By Application Only See Dept Website
COML 123-401	World Film Hist To 1945	Meta Mazaj	BENN 401	TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM	This course surveys the history of world film from cinema s precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, a technology, and a political instrument. Topics include the emergence of film technology and early film audiences, the rise of narrative film and birth of Hollywood, national film industries and movements, African-American independent film, the emergence of the genre film (the western, film noir, and romantic comedies), ethnographic and documentary film, animated films, censorship, the MPPDA and Hays Code, and the introduction of sound. We will conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). In addition to contemporary theories that investigate the development of cinema and visual culture during the first half of the 20th century, we will read key texts that contributed to the emergence of film theory. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to attend screenings or watch films on their own.	ARTH108401, ENGL091401, CIMS101401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 124-401	World Film Hist '45-Pres	Timothy Corrigan	BENN 401	TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM		ENGL092401, CIMS102401, ARTH109401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 128-601	The Diary	Batsheva Ben-Amos	WILL 214	W 05:30 PM-08:30 PM	Diary writing is an intimate mode of expression in which individuals seek to find meaning in their personal lives and relations, responding to the external realities in which they live. Their coping is subjected to their historical,educational and social contexts, and to the generic conventions of diary writing. This course examines the diary as a genre, exploring its functions, meanings, forms and conventions, comparing it with fictive and non-fictive autobiographical writings such as the diary novel, autobiography and the memoir, as well as comparative gender diary-writing.	GSWS128601	Cross Cultural Analysis		https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML128601
COML 131-401	Portraits of Old Russia: Myth, Icon, Chronicle	Julia Verkholantsev	WILL 218	MW 03:30 PM-05:00 PM	This course covers eight centuries of Russias cultural, political, and social history, from its origins through the eighteenth century, a period which laid the foundation for the Russian Empire. Each week-long unit is organized around a set of texts (literary text, historical document, image, film) which examine prominent historical and legendary figures as they represent chapters in Russias history. Historical figures under examination include, among others, the Baptizer of Rus, Prince Vladimir; the nation-builder, Prince Alexander Nevsky; the first Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible; the first Emperor and Westernizer, Peter the Great; the renowned icon painter Andrei Rublev; the epic hero Ilya Muromets; and the founder of Muscovite monasticism, St. Sergius of Radonezh. Three modern-day nation-states Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus share and dispute the cultural heritage of Old Rus, and their political relationships even today revolve around interpretations of the past. This constructed past has a continuing influence in modern Russia and is keenly referenced, sometimes manipulatively, in contemporary social and political discourse. (Recently, for example, President Putin has justified the annexation of Crimea to Russia by referring to it as the holy site of Prince Vladimirs baptism, from which Russian Christianity ostensibly originates.) The study of pre-modern cultural and political history explains many aspects of modern Russian society, as well as certain political aspirations of its leaders.	HIST045401, RUSS613401, RUSS113401	History & Tradition Sector Cross Cultural Analysis	All Readings and Lectures in English	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML131401
COML 144-401	Foundations Mod Thought	Warren Breckman	COLL 318	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	“God is dead,” declared Friedrich Nietzsche, “and we have killed him.” Nietzche's words came as a climax of a longer history of skepticism, criticism of, and dissent toward, the religious foundations of European society and politics. The critique of religion had vast implications for the meaning of human life, the nature of the person, and the conception of political and social existence. The course will explore the intensifying debate over religion in the intellectual history of Europe, reaching from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. There is no straight line from belief to atheism, however. Indeed, the age of Enlightenment witnessed a proliferation of new conceptions of religion as skeptical thinkers confronted the apparent conflict between faith and reason. Orthodox Christians dug in their heels in resistance to these seemingly dangerous currents, yet some religious thinkers responded with nuanced arguments that did not simply reject the currents of modern thought. Modernity is not synonymous with unbelief, but rather with the dialectical tensions that were spawned between the impulse to liberate humans from the gods and the imperative to reimagine religion in light of the skeptical challenge.<br /> Course Requirements:<br /> Assignments: Take-home mid-term exam (5 pages) due Thursday, February 21, at 4:00 (please email your exam to me), and a cumulative take-home final exam (8 pages) due Monday, May 6, at 10:00 a.m.<br /> Mid-Term Exam 30%<br /> Final Exam 50%<br /> Participation 20%<br /> You may write an optional paper on a topic of your choice, which will count for 30% of your final-exam grade. The optional paper will be due on May 13. You must discuss your topic with me before writing, and you must still pass the final examination to pass the course.	HIST144401			https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML144401
COML 151-401	Water Worlds: Water Worlds:Cultural Responses To Sea Level Rise & Catastrophic Flooding	Simon J Richter	STIT B26	TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM	As a result of climate change, the world that will take shape in the course of this century will be decidedly more inundated with water than we're accustomed to. The polar ice caps are melting, glaciers are retreating, ocean levels are rising, polar bear habitat is disappearing, countries are jockeying for control over a new Arctic passage, while low-lying cities and small island nations are confronting the possibility of their own demise. Catastrophic flooding events are increasing in frequency, as are extreme droughts. Hurricane-related storm surges,tsunamis, and raging rivers have devastated regions on a local and global scale. In this seminar we will turn to the narratives and images that the human imagination has produced in response to the experience of overwhelming watery invasion, from Noah to New Orleans. Objects of analysis will include mythology, ancient and early modern diluvialism, literature, art, film, and commemorative practice. The basic question we'll be asking is: What can we learn from the humanities that will be helpful for confronting the problems and challenges caused by climate change and sea level rise?	CIMS150401, ENVS150401, GRMN150401	Arts & Letters Sector	All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 153-401	Euro Spiritual Crisis?	Guido Vanheeswijck		MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	Is Europe Facing a Spiritual Crisis? On Contemporary Debates about Secularization, Religion and Rationality. Point of departure for this course is the difference between Europe and the US as to the role of religion in the unfolding of their respective "cultural identities" (cf. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 522-530). As a rule, both the US and Western Europe are now defined as secularized cultures, even if their histories and specific identities are strongly rooted in the Christian heritage. Given this contemporary situation, four research questions will be dealt with in this course. 1) What is meant by secularization? In answer to that question, two secularization theories are distinguished: the classic versus the alternative secularization thesis; 2) What is the historical impact of the nominalist turning-point at the end of the Middle Ages in this process towards secularization? 3) How did the relation between rationality and religion develop during modern times in Europe? 4) What is the contemporary outcome of this evolution in so-called postmodern / post-secular Europe and US? We currently find ourselves in this so-called postmodern or post-secular period, marked by a sensitivity to the boundaries of (modern) rationality and to the fragility of our (modern) views on man, world and God. In this respect, we will focus on different parts of Europe (Western and Eastern Europe alike) and will refer to analogies and differences between Western Europe and US. This historical-thematic exposition is illustrated by means of important fragments from Western literature (and marginally from documents in other arts) and philosophy. We use these fragments in order to make more concrete the internal philosophical evolutions in relation to corresponding changes in diverse social domains (religion, politics, economy, society, literature, art...).	DTCH153401, GRMN153401
COML 191-401	World Literature	Augusta Atinuke Irele Martin Antonio Premoli	JAFF B17	M 02:00 PM-05:00 PM	How do we think 'the world' as such? Globalizing economic paradigms encourage one model that, while it connects distant regions with the ease of a finger-tap, also homogenizes the world, manufacturing patterns of sameness behind simulations of diversity. Our current world-political situation encourages another model, in which fundamental differences are held to warrant the consolidation of borders between Us and Them, "our world" and "theirs." This course begins with the proposal that there are other ways to encounter the world, that are politically compelling, ethically important, and personally enriching--and that the study of literature can help tease out these new paths. Through the idea of World Literature, this course introduces students to the appreciation and critical analysis of literary texts, with the aim of navigating calls for universality or particularity (and perhaps both) in fiction and film. "World literature" here refers not merely to the usual definition of "books written in places other than the US and Europe, "but any form of cultural production that explores and pushes at the limits of a particular world, that steps between and beyond worlds, or that heralds the coming of new worlds still within us, waiting to be born. And though, as we read and discuss our texts, we will glide about in space and time from the inner landscape of a private mind to the reaches of the farthest galaxies, knowledge of languages other than English will not be required, and neither will any prior familiary with the literary humanities. In the company of drunken kings, botanical witches, ambisexual alien lifeforms, and storytellers who've lost their voice, we will reflect on, and collectively navigate, our encounters with the faraway and the familiar--and thus train to think through the challenges of concepts such as translation, narrative, and ideology. Texts include Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula K. LeGuin, Salman Rushdie, Werner Herzog, Jamaica Kincaid, Russell Hoban, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Arundhathi Roy, and Abbas Kiarostami.	CLST191401, ENGL277401
COML 193-601	Great Story Collections	David S. Azzolina	TOWN 313	T 06:30 PM-09:30 PM	This course is intended for those with no prior background in folklore or knowledge of various cultures. Texts range in age from the first century to the twentieth, and geographically from the Middle East to Europe to the Unite States. Each collection displays various techniques of collecting folk materials and making them concerete. Each in its own way also raises different issues of genre, legitimacy, canon formation, cultural values and context.	ENGL099601, FOLK241601	Arts & Letters Sector
COML 197-401	Madness and Madmen in Russian Culture	Molly Peeney	HAYD 360	MW 03:30 PM-05:00 PM	This course will explore the theme of madness in Russian literature and arts from the medieval period through the October Revolution of 1917. The discussion will include formative masterpieces by Russian writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Bulgakov), painters (Repin, Vrubel, Filonov), composers (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky), and film-directors (Protazanov, Eisenstein), as well as non-fictional documents such as Russian medical, judicial, political, and philosophical treatises and essays on madness.	RUSS197401	Cross Cultural Analysis	Humanities & Social Science Sector
COML 204-401	Tolstoy	D. Brian Kim	WILL 4	TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM	This course consists of three parts. The first, How to read Tolstoy? deals with Tolstoys artistic stimuli, favorite devices, and narrative strategies. The second, Tolstoy at War, explores the authors provocative visions of war, gender, sex, art, social institutions, death, and religion. The emphasis is placed here on the role of a written word in Tolstoys search for truth and power. The third and the largest section is a close reading of Tolstoys masterwork The War and Peace (1863-68) a quintessence of both his artistic method and philosophical insights.	RUSS202401		Benjamin Franklin Seminars All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 205-401	The Religious Other	Talya Fishman	WILL 843	TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	Course explores attitudes toward monotheists of other faiths, and claims made about these "religious Others" in real and imagined encounters between Jews, Christians and Muslims from antiquity to the present. Strategies of "othering" will be analyzed through an exploration of claims about the Other's body, habits and beliefs, as found in works of scripture, law, theology, polemics, art, literature and reportage. Attention will be paid to myths about the other, inter-group violence, converts, cases of cross-cultural influence, notions of toleration, and perceptions of Others in contemporary life. Primary sources will be provided in English.	RELS203401, JWST213401, NELC383401	Cross Cultural Analysis	Benjamin Franklin Seminars
COML 212-401	Mod Mideast Lit in Trans	Fatemeh Shams Esmaeili Sylvia Onder Nili Rachel Scharf Gold Huda J. Fakhreddine	WILL 220	MW 05:00 PM-06:30 PM	The Middle East boasts a rich tapestry of cultures that have developed a vibrant body of modern literature that is often overlooked in media coverage of the region. While each of the modern literary traditions that will be surveyed in this introductory course-Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish-will be analyzed with an apprreciation of the cultural context unique to each body of literature, this course will also attempt to bridge these diverse traditions by analyzing common themes-such as modernity, social values, the individual and national identity-as reflected in the genres of postry, the novel and the short story. This course is in seminar format to encourage lively discussion and is team-taught by four professors whose expertise in modern Middle Eastern literature serves to create a deeper understanding and aesthetic appreciation of each literary trandition. In addition to honing students' literary analysis skills, the course will enable students to become more adept at discussing the social and political forces that are reflected in Middle Eastern literature, explore important themes and actively engage in reading new Middle Eastern works on their own in translation. All readings are in English.	NELC201401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 219-401	Fren Lit: Indiv/Society	Scott M. Francis	COLL 311F	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each period. Special emphasis is placed on close reading of texts in order to familiarize students with major authors and their characteristics and with methods of interpretation. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 232 has as its theme the Individual and Society.	FREN232401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis		https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML219401
COML 219-402	Fren Lit: Indiv/Society	Jacqueline C. Dougherty	WILL 4	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each period. Special emphasis is placed on close reading of texts in order to familiarize students with major authors and their characteristics and with methods of interpretation. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 232 has as its theme the Individual and Society.	FREN232402	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 219-403	Fren Lit: Indiv/Society			CANCELED	This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each period. Special emphasis is placed on close reading of texts in order to familiarize students with major authors and their characteristics and with methods of interpretation. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 232 has as its theme the Individual and Society.	FREN232403	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 221-401	Creating New Worlds: the Modern Indian Novel	Gregory Y. Goulding	MCNB 285	MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	Lonely bureaucrats and love-struck students, Bollywood stars and wayward revolutionaries: this course introduces students to the worlds of the Indian novel. From the moment of its emergence in the 19th century, the novel in India grappled with issues of class and caste, colonialism and its aftermath, gender, and the family. Although the novel has a historical origin in early modern Europe, it developed as a unique form in colonial and post-colonial India, influenced by local literary and folk genres. How did the novel in India--and in its successor states after 1947--transform and shift in order to depict its world? How are novels shaped by the many languages in which they are written, including English? And how do we, as readers, engage with the Indian novel in its diversity? This course surveys works major and minor from the past 200 years of novel-writing in India--with surveys both into predecessors of the Indian novel and parallel forms such as the short story. Readings will include works in translation from languages such as Hindi, Bangla, Urdu, Telugu, and Malayalam, as well as works written originally in English. Students will leave this course with an understanding of the Indian novel, along with the social conditions underlaying it, especially those relating to caste and gender.	SAST220401		Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen.
COML 246-401	Modern Arabic Literature: Modern Arabic Poetry	Huda J. Fakhreddine		CANCELED	This course is a study of modern Arabic literary forms in the context of the major political and social changes which shaped Arab history in the first half of the twentieth century. The aim of the course is to introduce students to key samples of modern Arabic literature which trace major social and political developments in Arab society. Each time the class will be offered with a focus on one of the literary genres which emerged or flourished in the twentieth century: the free verse poem, the prose-poem, drama, the novel, and the short story. We will study each of these emergent genres against the socio-political backdrop which informed it. All readings will be in English translations. The class will also draw attention to the politics of translation as a reading and representational lens.	NELC231401, NELC631401
COML 253-401	Freud	Liliane Weissberg	COLL 200	TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253401, HIST253401, GSWS252401		Humanities & Social Science Sector Registration also required for Recitation (see below)
COML 253-402	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis	Tommaso De Robertis	WILL 318	F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253402, HIST253402, GSWS252402		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 253-403	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis		WILL 29	F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253403, HIST253403, GSWS252403		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 253-404	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis	Tommaso De Robertis	WILL 318	F 12:00 PM-01:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253404, HIST253404, GSWS252404		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 253-405	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis	Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach	WILL 305	F 12:00 PM-01:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253405, HIST253405, GSWS252405		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 253-406	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis	Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach	WILL 438	F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253406, HIST253406, GSWS252406		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 253-407	Freud: the Invention of Psychoanalysis		BENN 25	F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM	No other person of the twentieth century has probably influenced scientific thought, humanitistic scholarship, medical therapy, and popular culture as much as Sigmund Freud. This seminar will study his work, its cultural background, and its impact on us today. In the first part of the course, we will learn about Freud's life and the Viennese culture of his time. We will then move to a discussion of seminal texts, such as excerpts from his Interpretation of Dreams, case studies, as well as essays on psychoanalytic practice, human development, definitions of gender and sex, neuroses, and culture in general. In the final part of the course, we will discuss the impact of Freud's work. Guest lectureres from the medical field, history of science, psychology, and the humnities will offer insights into the reception of Freud's work, and its consequences for various fields of study and therapy.	GRMN253407, HIST253407, GSWS252407		All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 256-401	Contempor Fict/Film-Jpan	Ayako Kano	COHN 392	F 02:00 PM-05:00 PM	This course will explore fiction and film in contemporary Japan, from 1945 to the present. Topics will include literary and cinematic representation of Japan s war experience and post-war reconstruction, negotiation with Japanese classics, confrontation with the state, and changing ideas of gender and sexuality. We will explore these and other questions by analyzing texts of various genres, including film and film scripts, novels, short stories, manga, and academic essays. Class sessions will combine lectures, discussion, audio-visual materials, and creative as well as analytical writing exercises. The course is taught in English, although Japanese materials will be made available upon request. No prior coursework in Japanese literature, culture, or film is required or expected; additional secondary materials will be available for students taking the course at the 600 level. Writers and film directors examined may include: Kawabata Yasunari, Hayashi Fumiko, Abe Kobo, Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo, Yoshimoto Banana, Ozu Yasujiro, Naruse Mikio, Kurosawa Akira, Imamura Shohei, Koreeda Hirokazu, and Beat Takeshi.	CIMS151401, GSWS257401, EALC151401, EALC551401	Arts & Letters Sector
COML 277-401	Jewish American Lit	Kathryn Ann Hellerstein	BENN 244	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	What makes Jewish American literature Jewish? What makes it American? This course will address these questions about ethnic literature through fiction, poetry, drama, and other writings by Jews in America, from their arrival in 1654 to the present. We will discuss how Jewish identity and ethnicity shape literature and will consider how form and language develop as Jewish writers "immigrate" from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Our readings, from Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, will include a variety of stellar authors, both famous and less-known, including Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Allegra Goodman. Students will come away from this course having explored the ways that Jewish culture intertwines with American culture in literature.	GRMN263401, JWST277401	Arts & Letters Sector Cultural Diversity in the US	All Readings and Lectures in English	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML277401
COML 282-401	Israeli Film & Lit: Haifa: Literature, Architecture, Film	Nili Rachel Scharf Gold	JAFF B17 COHN 493	W 02:00 PM-03:30 PM M 02:00 PM-03:30 PM	Like James Joyce’s Dublin, Italo Calvino’s Venice, Carl Sandburg’s Chicago, or even Woody Allen’s Paris, cities have long been the object of yearning and the subject of art. While focusing on the city of Haifa and the various works devoted to it, this course will examine the ways in which a city is forged in cinema, literature and scholarship. It highlights the depictions of other Israeli cities, like Amos Oz’s and Natalie Portman’s Jerusalem, and compares those to the ways in which American and European cities are portrayed in prose, poetry and film created in English and other languages. The emotional and physical connection between the writer or director and his/her present or past place of dwelling is transformed in the artistic work. A city, its streets and landmarks, may reflect the inner world, an interpersonal bond, or social, political and national conflicts.	JWST154401, CIMS159401, NELC159401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis	Permission Needed From Instructor Penn Global Seminar
COML 287-401	Ethnic Humor	Dan Ben-Amos	MUSE 330	TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM	Humor in ethnic societies has two dimensions: internal and external. The inside humor of an ethnic group is accessible to its members; it draws upon their respective social structures, historical and social experiences, languages, cultural symbols, and social and economic circumstances and aspirations. The external humor of an ethnic group targets members of other ethnic groups, and draws upon their stereotypes, and attributed characteristics by other ethnic groups. The external ethnic humor flourishes in immigrant and ethnically heterogenic societies. In both cases jokes and humor are an integral part of social interaction, and in their performance relate to the social, economic, and political dynamics of traditional and modern societies.	NELC287401, FOLK202401
COML 291-402	Topics Literary Theory: Theory As the Letter B	Jean-Michel Rabate	HAYD 358	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	This course explores an aspect of literary theory intensively; specific course topics vary from year to year.	ENGL294402
COML 299-401	Cinema and Media: Global Film Theory	Meta Mazaj Karen Redrobe	BENN 401	TR 10:30 AM-11:30 AM	This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be a weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Course requirements: attendance at lecture and participation in lecture and section discussions; canvas postings; 1 in-class mid-term; 1 final project.	ARTH295401, ENGL305401, CIMS305401, GSWS295401		Registration also required for Recitation (see below)	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML299401
COML 299-402	Cinema and Media	Ramey Elizabeth Mize		CANCELED	This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be a weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Course requirements: attendance at lecture and participation in lecture and section discussions; canvas postings; 1 in-class mid-term; 1 final project.	ARTH295402, ENGL305402, CIMS305402, GSWS295402		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML299402
COML 299-403	Cinema and Media	Ramey Elizabeth Mize		CANCELED	This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be a weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Course requirements: attendance at lecture and participation in lecture and section discussions; canvas postings; 1 in-class mid-term; 1 final project.	ARTH295403, ENGL305403, CIMS305403, GSWS295403		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML299403
COML 299-404	Cinema and Media	Ramey Elizabeth Mize	BENN 138	R 12:30 PM-01:30 PM	This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be a weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Course requirements: attendance at lecture and participation in lecture and section discussions; canvas postings; 1 in-class mid-term; 1 final project.	ARTH295404, GSWS295404, CIMS305404, ENGL305404		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 299-405	Cinema and Media	Helen Rachel Stuhr-Rommereim	BENN 138	R 02:00 PM-03:00 PM	This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates, and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be a weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed. Course requirements: attendance at lecture and participation in lecture and section discussions; canvas postings; 1 in-class mid-term; 1 final project.	CIMS305405, GSWS295405, ARTH295405, ENGL305405		Registration also required for Lecture (see below)
COML 322-401	Sexuality, Terrorism, and Human Rights	Kirk John Fiereck		CANCELED	How do sex and gender become sites of cultural production, identity-formation, and contentious politics? This seminar engages these questions in the context of the "Middle East" as a constructed geopolitical space for imperial politics and political intervention. The class is divided into three units. In the first unit, we engage feminist and queer theories to discuss the shifting meanings of "sex" and "gender" in transnational and postcolonial contexts. In the second unit we explore the contextual and shifting notions of "private" and "public" as they have been elaborated in political theory, feminist theory, and media studies. We also consider how different media technologies enable and constrain the performance and expression of gender and sexual identities. In the last unit, we examine the material and symbolic construction of sex and gender in the shadow of Orientalism, the War on Terror, Multiculturalism, and the recent Arab uprisings. In this unit, we consider how geopolitics are refracted in public controversies around issues like gay rights, female genital mutilation, the veil, and honor killing.	GSWS322401, SOCI322401	Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 333-401	Dante's Divine Comedy	Eva Del Soldato	WILL 215	TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM	In this course we will read the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, focusing on a series of interrelated problems raised by the poem: authority, fiction, history, politics and language. Particular attention will be given to how the Commedia presents itself as Dante's autobiography, and to how the autobiographical narrative serves as a unifying thread for this supremely rich literary text. Supplementary readings will include Virgil's Aeneid and selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses. All readings and written work will be in English. Italian or Italian Studies credit will require reading Italian texts in the original language and writing about their themes in Italian. This course may be taken for graduate credit, but additional work and meetings with the instructor will be required.	ENGL323401, ITAL333401	Cross Cultural Analysis	Benjamin Franklin Seminars
COML 359-401	Giants of Hebrew Lit	Nili Rachel Scharf Gold	COHN 237	M 03:30 PM-06:30 PM	This course introduces students to selections from the best literary works written in Hebrew over the last hundred years in a relaxed seminar environment. The goal of the course is to develop skills in critical reading of literature in general, and to examine how Hebrew authors grapple with crucial questions of human existence and national identity. Topics include: Hebrew classics and their modern "descendents," autobiography in poetry and fiction, the conflict between literary generations, and others. Because the content of this course changes from year to year, students may take it for credit more than once. This course is conducted in Hebrew and all readings are in Hebrew. Grading is based primarily on participation and students' literary understanding.	JWST359401, NELC359401, NELC659401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
COML 396-401	History Literary Crit	Rita Copeland	DRLB 3N6	TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM	This is a course on the history of literary theory, a survey of major debates about literature, poetics, and ideas about what literary texts should do, from ancient Greece to examples of modern European thought. The first half of the course will focus on early periods: Greek and Roman antiquity, especially Plato and Aristotle; the medieval period (including St. Augustine, Dante, and Boccaccio), and the early modern period (such as Philip Sidney and Giambattista Vico). In the second half of the course we will turn to modern concerns by looking at the literary (or "art") theories of some major philosophers and theorists: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Walter Benjamin. We end the course in the mid-twentieth century. The purpose driving this course is to consider closely how this tradition generated questions that are still with us, such as: what is the act of interpretation; what is the "aesthetic"; what is "imitation" or mimesis; and how are we to know an author's intention. During the semester there will be four short writing assignments in the form of analytical essays (3 pages each). Students may use these small essays to build into a long piece of writing on a single text or group of texts at the end of the term. Most of our readings will come from a published anthology of literary criticism and theory; a few readings will be on Canvas.	ENGL396401, CLST396401		Benjamin Franklin Seminars
COML 512-301	Wom/Cult/Mediev/Mod/Eur: Women Writers, Manuscript Culture, Networks: Europe (1300-1700)	Petronella Stoop		CANCELED	Women were important and active players in the literary field in Medieval and early Modern Europe. Many women throughout the continent and on the British Isles engaged in the book culture, as readers, owners, commissioners, copyists, illuminators, and authors. This course intends to study the role women had in the intellectual and literary culture of their time. Starting from a number of key publications on gender, agency and female literacy and authorship in the medieval and early modern period, we will examine what texts women wrote, to which genres they had access, and what the (literary) agency of female writers was. We will explore the options women had to express their experiences, ideas, opinions and feelings and their interaction with male supervisors (in case of religious women) or male colleagues. What impressions do we get of their intellectual and literary skills? How did women writers publish their works and for whom did they write? We will also study the networks and literary circles in which women participated. Sometimes these networks were local; sometimes literature for and by women circulated through all Euopre. In our travel through time and space between c. 1300 and 1700, we will explore several literary genres and meet famous and less famous women such as Hadewijch of Brabant, Marguerite Porete, Theresa van Avila, Christine de Pizan, Anna Bijns, Mary Sidney, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Margaret Cavendish, and their contemporaries. A strong emphasis in this course will lie on the women's texts and the manuscripts in which these have been preserved, in order to shed light on the role of women in the handwritten book culture. In this way we will explore how women, religious and secular, came to the fore in medieval and early modern literary culture. In order to get an impression of the material aspects of the books women produced, read and/or owned, we will visit some of the importnat manuscript collections in Philadelphia.
COML 519-401	Translating Literature	Kathryn Ann Hellerstein	WILL 205	R 03:00 PM-05:00 PM	The greats all have something to say about translation. The Hebrew poet H. N. Bialik is attributed with saying that “he who reads the Bible in translation is like a man who kisses his bride through a veil.” That, however, is a mistranslation: What Bialik really wrote was, “Whoever knows Judaism through translation is like a person who kisses his mother through a handkerchief." (http://benyehuda.org/bialik/dvarim02.html), a saying that he probably translated and adapted from Russian or German. (https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/116448/query-bialik-kissing-bride) Robert Frost wrote, “I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.” Walter Benjamin defines it: “Translation is a form. To comprehend it as a form, one must go back to the original, for the laws governing the translation lie within the original, contained in the issue of its translatability.” Lawrence Venuti rails against translation that domesticates, rather than foreignizes, thus betraying the foreign text through a contrived familiarity that makes the translator invisible. Emily Wilson wants her translation “to bring out the way I think the original text handles it. [The original text] allows you to see the perspective of the people who are being killed.” https://bookriot.com/2017/12/04/emily-wilson-translation-the-odyssey/ Is translation erotic? A form of filial love? Incestuous? A mode of communion, or idol worship? Is translation a magician’s vanishing trick? Is translation traitorous, transcendent? Maybe translation is impossible. But let’s try it anyways! In this graduate seminar, we will read key texts on the history and theory of translating literature, and we sample translations from across the centuries of the “classics,” such as the Bible and Homer. We will consider competing translations into English of significant modern literary works from a variety of languages, possibly including, but not limited to German, Yiddish, French, Hebrew, and Russian. These readings will serve to frame each student’s own semester-long translation of a literary work from a language of her or his choice. The seminar offers graduate students with their skills in various language an opportunity to take on a significant translation project within a circle of peers.	GRMN537401, JWST537401		Undergraduates Need Permission All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 533-401	Dante & New Developments in Medieval Italian Narrative	Kevin Brownlee		CANCELED	The course begins by considering the two key Italian predecessors to the Dantean opus: Durante’s sonnet sequence, Il Fiore (an Italian adaptation of the Roman de la Rose) and Brunetto Latini’s Il Tesoretto. We then turn to Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio to analyze how these new literary departures were utilized. We will simultaneously focus on the interrelated problems of authority, representation, history, politics, and language in Dante’s deeply innovative texts. The conclusion of the course examines two important texts of Boccaccio and Petrarch that take the newly canonical Dante as a key point of departure. On the one hand, Boccaccio’s La Teseida explicitly explores war as an epic matter in its Dantean context. On the other hand, Petrarch’s Latin Africa is an implicit correction of Dante’s Commedia, written in the Italian vernacular.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />	ITAL531401		Undergraduates Need Permission
COML 552-401	Transalpine Tensions: Franco-Italian Rivalries in the Renaissance	Scott M. Francis Eva Del Soldato	VANP 627	W 04:00 PM-06:00 PM	In the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, France and the Italian States were bound together by linguistic, economic, political, and religious ties, and intellectual developments never flowed unilaterally from one country to the other. On the contrary, they were transnational phenomena, and French and Italian thinkers and writers conceived of themselves and their work both in relation to and in opposition to one another. This course will consider the most fundamental aspects of Franco-Italian cultural exchange in the medieval and early modern period, with an emphasis on humanism, philosophical and religious debates, political struggles, and the rise of vernacular languages in literary and learned discourse. Authors to be studied include Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola Castiglione, Bembo, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Du Bellay, Machiavelli, and Montaigne. In addition to learning the material covered in the course, students will gain expertise in producing professional presentations and research papers, and will also have the opportunity to consult original material from the Kislak Center. This course is open to undergraduates with permission of the instructors. It counts toward the undergraduate minor in Global Medieval Studies and the graduate certificate in Global and Medieval Renaissance Studies.	ITAL541401, FREN541401		Undergraduates Need Permission	https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML552401
COML 562-401	Public Enviro Humanities: Public Environmental Humanities	Bethany Wiggin	WILL 28	W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM	This broadly interdisciplinary course is designed for Graduate and Undergraduate Fellows in the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) who hail from departments across Arts and Sciences as well as other schools at the university. The course is also open to others with permission of the instructors. Work in environmental humanities by necessity spans academic disciplines. By design, it can also address and engage publics beyond traditional academic settings. This seminar, with limited enrollment, explores best practices in public environmental humanities. Students receive close mentoring to develop and execute cross-disciplinary, public engagement projects on the environment.	ANTH543401, URBS544401, GRMN544401		Permission Needed From Instructor All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 576-401	War and Experience: 20th-Century Italian Narratives	Paola Gambarota	WILL 516	T 01:30 PM-03:30 PM		ITAL584401, CIMS584401		Undergraduates Need Permission
COML 590-401	Rec Issue in Crit Theory: Feminist Theory Now	Melissa E. Sanchez	BENN 222	M 12:00 PM-03:00 PM	This seminar will consider the possibilities of feminist theory in the wake of the resurgence of feminist politics in recent years, amidst the #MeToo and Black Live Matter movements and the prominence in the media of such issues as campus sexual assault and transgender rights. For a while in the first decade of the new millennium, academic journals and books were lamenting the demise of feminist criticism; the work published in the past decade has proven this demise illusory. Numerous important studies that engaged explicitly and directly with feminism has continued to appear, many of which brought feminism into dialogue with queer, trans*, affect, critical race, postcolonial, and new materialist theory. In this course, we will examine the interchange between popular and academic feminism, considering how recent feminist work at once engages with contemporary political questions and extends the purview of feminist theory. All students will write a conference-length paper and oral presentation.<br />	ENGL590401, GSWS589401
COML 608-401	Global France: Global France: the Ethnographic Detour of French Modernism	Michele H. Richman	WILL 516	R 02:00 PM-04:00 PM	The purpose of this course is to examine the various modalities of interaction between anthropology and literature in modern French culture. Our guiding thesis is that the turn toward other cultures has functioned as a revitalizing element in the production of cultural artifacts while providing an alternative vantage point from which to examine the development of French culture and society in the contemporary period. The extraordinary innovations of "ethnosurrealism" in the twenties and thirties by such key figures of the avant-garde as Breton, Artaud, Bataille, Caillois, and Leiris, have become acknowledged models for the postwar critical thought of Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, as well as inspiring a renewal of "anthropology as cultural critique in the United States." Besides the authors just indicated, key texts by Durkheim, Mauss and Levi-Strauss will be considered both on their own terms and in relation to their obvious influence. The institutional fate of these intellectual crossovers and their correlative disciplinary conflicts will provide the overarching historical frame for the course, from the turn of the century to the most recent debates.	FREN609401
COML 616-401	Approaches To Literary Texts	Julia Verkholantsev	VANP 627	F 11:00 AM-02:00 PM	Most seminars focus on literary texts composed during a single historical period;this course is unusual in inviting students to consider the challenges of approaching texts from a range of different historical eras. Taught by a team of literary specialists representing diverse periods and linguistic traditions and conducted as a hands-on workshop, this seminar is designed to help students of literature gain expertise in analysis and interpretation of literary works across the boundaries of time, geography, and language, from classic to modern. Students will approach literature as a historical discipline and learn about key methodological issues and questions that specialists in each period and field ask about texts that their disciplines study. The diachronic and cross-cultural perspectives inform discussions of language and style, text types and genres, notions of alterity, fictionality, literariness, symbolism, intertextuality, materiality, and interfaces with other disciplines. This is a unique opportunity to learn in one course about diverse literary approaches from specialists in different fields. Master classes are taught by Kevin Brownlee, Linda Chance, Eva del Soldato, Huda Fakhreddine, Scott Francis, Nili Gold, Bridget Murnghan, Deven Patel, Kevin Platt, Michael Solomon, Emily Steiner, Julia Verkholantsev, and Emily Wilson.	ROML616401, ENGL616401, EALC715401, EEUR616401, CLST636401			https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&amp%3Bterm=2019A&amp%3Bcourse=COML616401
COML 625-401	Paris and Philadelphia: Landscape and Literature of the 19th Century	Aaron V. Wunsch Andrea Reynaldo Goulet		CANCELED	This course explores the literal and literary landscapes of 19th-century Paris and Philadelphia, paying particular attention to the ways in which the built environment is shaped by and shapes shifting ideologies in the modern age. Although today the luxury and excesses of the "City of Light" may seem worlds apart from the Quaker simplicity of the "City of Brotherly Love," Paris and Philadelphia saw themselves as partners and mutual referents during the 1800s in many areas, from urban planning to politics, prisons to paleontology. This interdisciplinary seminar will include readings from the realms of literature, historical geography, architectural history, and cultural studies as well as site visits to Philadelphia landmarks, with a view to uncovering overlaps and resonances among different ways of reading the City. We will facilitate in-depth research by students on topics relating to both French and American architectural history, literature, and cultural thought.	HSPV620401		Undergraduates Need Permission
COML 628-401	Esstial Txts Mdrn S.Asia: Essential Texts From Modern South Asia	Gregory Y. Goulding	COLL 318	M 03:30 PM-06:30 PM	This course will read, together, the literatures of northern India from approximately 1500–1947, as part of an effort to form a literary history of a multilingual space. How do literary cultures interact across time and in space? How can this interaction be tracked and analyzed? And how can a consideration of geographic scale, world-systems theory, and the idea of the “multilingual local” be brought to bear on the study of literature? This course will function as a laboratory for the exploration of these concepts, while allowing new ideas of literary history to emerge through the granular analysis of literature itself. Major subjects of interest will include the genesis of the Urdu language, the role of Bhakti religious movements in literary history, the establishment of Braj as a literary standard, and the development of Hindi and the language debates of the nationalist period. Readings will include primary sources in translation from Urdu, Braj, Avadhi, Hindi, and other relevant languages, as well as secondary literature in translation and in English. Expertise in South Asian languages or literatures is not required. Students will finish the course with a thorough understanding of the literary history of North India, as well as insight into problems of literature and geography.	SAST628401
COML 632-401	Masterpieces of Sanskrit Culture: Literature, Philosophy, and Science	Deven M. Patel	MUSE 330	R 01:30 PM-04:30 PM	This course, wholly conducted in English translation from the Sanskrit, will identify a history of masterpieces from the Sanskrit tradition and carefully read selections or whole works that exemplify the most well-received classical Sanskrit works over the past two millennia. We will focus on the high classics of Sanskrit literature, sutras and commentaries on systematic forms of Indian philosophy, and selections from Sanskrit texts on the social, literary-critical, exact, and medical sciences. Students will be encouraged to engage with these works through the prisms of comparative literary theory, critical translation studies, comparative philosophy, and broader perspectives of social and cultural history.	SAST631401
COML 657-401	Becoming Modern	Liliane Weissberg	VANP 627	T 03:00 PM-05:00 PM	Yuri Slezkine described the twentieth century as a "Jewish Age"-to be modern would essentially mean to be a Jew. In German historical and cultural studies, this linkage has long been made--only in reference to the last years of the German monarchy and the time of the Weimar Republic. Indeed, what has become known as "modern" German culture-reflected in literature, music, and the visual arts and in a multitude of public media-has been more often than not assigned to Jewish authorship or Jewish subjects. But what do authorship and subject mean in this case? Do we locate the German-Jewish experience as the driving force of this new "modernity," or is our understanding of this experience the result of this new "modern" world?	GRMN657401, JWST657401		Undergraduates Need Permission All Readings and Lectures in English
COML 675-401	Poe's French Legacies	Andrea Reynaldo Goulet	WILL 516	F 02:00 PM-04:00 PM	Edgar Allan Poe was considered a vulgar hack by many of his fellow Americans, but in 19th-century France, he was touted as an ill-fated poetic genius, the original poete maudit. Through the translations and biographical essays of Charles Baudelaire, who found in Poe a kindred spirit in the "gout de l'infini," French intellectuals came to know the American writer as a model of compositional lucidity and morbid mastery. From his inklings of an urban modernity in "The Man in the Crowd" to the nevrotic perversity of "Berenice," Poe's aesthetics have cast an influential shadow on French culture. Beginning with Baudelaire, we will explore in this course the many literary and artistic movements in France that were directly inspired by Poe's uncanny mix of the macabre and the methodical: Symbolist poetry (Valery, Mallarme), the Scientific Fantastic (Maupassant, Villers de l'Isle-Adam), fin-de-siecle Decadence (Huysmanns,Odilon Redon), Science Fiction, (Verne), the detective novel (Gaboriau), and 20th-century Surrealism (Breton, Max Ernst).	FREN675401
COML 705-401	Interdis. Appro. To Lit.	Ania Loomba David L. Eng	VANP 626	T 12:00 PM-03:00 PM		ENGL705401		Permission Needed From Instructor
COML 710-401	Fascism and Racism: A Love Story	Michael George Hanchard	WLNT 330A	T 01:30 PM-04:30 PM	This course provides the opportunity for students to investigate the relationship between the emergence of African peoples as historical subjects and their location within specific geopolitical and economic circumstances.	LALS710401, HIST710401, PSCI711401, AFRC710401, SOCI702401
COML 714-401	Clsl Reception Midages: Gloss and Commentary	Rita Copeland	VANP 626	M 03:00 PM-06:00 PM	(Although this seminar is scheduled to finish at 6.00, we will finish at the latest by 5.30 to allow participants to attend History of Material Text seminars. We will meet in the Kislak Center.) Gloss and commentary are the sinews and nerve system of medieval textuality. But so pervasive are these forms that we often take them for granted, consulting them for the data they can yield up about interpretive trends and future literary production. In this seminar we will look more closely at the formal, rhetorical, and material history of gloss and commentary, from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, in Latin and vernacular traditions, in sacred and secular domains. We will also look at some non-Western fields of sacred commentary, including Qur’anic exegesis, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Hebrew bible, as well as any fields that the students in the seminar want to investigate. We will approach this subject through manuscripts in the Penn collections and from other collections online. The main topics we will cover can be summarized as follows: terminologies, formal properties, and character of gloss and commentary; the nature of large free-standing commentaries and examples of learned and literary texts that supported this particular form of critical approach; and interactions between text and commentary that gave rise to important theoretical understandings of letter and sense, literal and figurative (or allegorical) interpretation, authorial intention, and the interpretive control of the commentator. More particularly we will look at late antique and medieval definitions of gloss and commentary; ideological appropriations through the power of the gloss; the layout of commentaries (interlinear and marginal commentary vs. free-standing); commentators’ prologues; and the self-marking of commentators. What do expositors call their commentaries and how do they name their own roles? Under what constraints (legal, theological, philological) do commentators labor, and how do they mark those constraints? What conventions emerge for denoting commentative intertextuality? What kinds of texts tend to support free-standing commentaries, and under what conditions does a marginal commentary become a free-standing commentary? And finally, how does a successful commentary transform the reception of a literary or sacred text, or an intellectual tradition, and what role does its formal rhetoric play in reshaping the understanding of a text? We can (and will) cover these topics through glosses and commentaries that have been translated into English (or through English-language studies on them); but students who know various premodern languages can take these questions further into their own fields (and the readings can be adjusted according to individual inclinations). Non-medievalists are welcome. Classicists will find much to think about in studying medieval commentaries on classical texts; and early modernists/modernists will find important insights for their own work on the ages of print by studying the technologies of manuscript annotation and transmission. I hope that students working in non-Western traditions will find this seminar useful for their thinking and that they will present their materials to the group. We will also have ample opportunity to look at the importation of gloss and commentary systems into vernacular literatures.	ENGL715401, CLST610401
COML 721-401	Grad Sem Mongol Empire	Christopher P. Atwood	BENN 140	W 09:30 AM-12:30 PM	This seminar will cover all aspects of the “Secret History of the Mongols” (1264), the classic source on medieval Mongolian history and our most important source on Genghis Khan. The class will be taught through close reading of the text in translation, with full consideration of the parallel passages in the ‘Authentic Chronicles,’ Rashid al-Din’s Compendium of Chronicles, and the Yuan shi. Themes we will cover include: Textual transmission; Composition and context; Sources for the ‘Secret History’; Genealogies and paternal and maternal descent; Fratricide and empire; Narrative and chronotope; Secrecy and public history. All readings will be in English.	EALC734401
COML 790-401	Rec Issues in Crit Theor: Queer Method	Heather K. Love	BENN 112	M 06:00 PM-09:00 PM	Scholars in queer studies have contributed powerful critiques of the disciplines and of academic business as usual. For this reason, we might see the field as being anti-method rather than producing alternative or counter-methods. This course explores the paradox of producing positive knowledge in the absence of or in opposition to disciplinary dictates about what counts as knowledge. We will consider queer and feminist studies alongside other inter- and anti-disciplinary formations including critical race studies, disability studies, border studies, transgender studies, affect studies, and feminist science studies. Acknowledging the extent to which queer and feminist scholarship incorporate the work of traditional disciplines, we will consider several ethical and methodological cruxes in these fields. We will focus on a range of methodological experiments in these fields including critiques of historicism, the affective turn, queer materialism, surface reading, memoir, low and high theory, queer empiricism, extravagant formalism, and assemblage theory, among others, and will attend to the ways that academic institutionalization has shaped these fields. In addition to many articles across these fields, we will read a set of example texts that mix traditional and experimental methods (Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love). **Note: This course does not presume prior knowledge, but familiarity with queer, feminist, transgender, and critical race studies (as well as cultural studies more broadly) will certainly make things smoother. That said, the course is designed to serve as an introduction—albeit a challenging one—to the interdisciplinary field of queer studies (with a focus on literary studies). <br />	GSWS790401, ENGL790401
COML 981-001	M.A. Exam Prep	Emily R. C. Wilson	VANP 302	T 06:30 PM-09:30 PM	Course open to first-year Comparative Literature graduate students in preparation for required M.A. exam taken in spring of first year.			Permission Needed From Instructor