Courses for Fall 2019
| Title | Instructors | Location | Time | Description | Cross listings | Fulfills | Registration notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COML 001-401 | Approaches To Genre | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM | This course will introduce students to an exciting topic at the intersection of literature and cultural representation taught by young scholars at the cutting edge of the field. Requirements will include a number of oral presentations, and students will learn how to communicate clearly, thoughtfully and effectively on complex material. | ENGL001401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. Communication Within the Curriculum |
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| COML 002-401 | Approaches Literary Std | MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM | This course will introduce students to an exciting topic at the intersection of literature and cultural representation, taught by a young scholar at the cutting edge of the field. Requirements will include a number of oral presentations, and students will learn how to communicate clearly, thoughtfully and effectively on complex material. | ENGL002401, AFRC003401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. Communication Within the Curriculum |
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| COML 012-401 | India's Literature | Gregory Goulding | HAYD 358 | MW 02:00 PM-03:30 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. | SAST004401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 070-401 | Latina/O Literature: Latina/O Literature: Latinx Cultural Studies | Jennifer Lyn Sternad Ponce De Leon | BENN 231 | MW 03:30 PM-05:00 PM | This course offers a broad introduction to the study of Latina/o/x culture. We will examine literature, theater, visual art, and popular cultural forms, including murals, poster art, graffiti, guerrilla urban interventions, novels, poetry, short stories, and film. In each instance, we will study this work within its historical context and with close attention to the ways it illuminates class formation, racialization, and ideologies of gender and sexuality as they shape Latino/a/xs' experience in the U.S. Topics addressed in the course will include immigration and border policy, revolutionary nationalism and its critique, anti-imperialist thought, Latinx feminisms, queer latinidades, ideology, identity formation, and social movements. While we will address key texts, historical events, and intellectual currents from the late 19th century and early 20th century, the course will focus primarily on literature and art from the 1960s to the present. All texts will be in English. | ENGL070401, LALS060401, GSWS060401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 090-401 | Gender,Sexuality & Lit: Writing Women:1660-1760 | Toni Bowers | BENN 112 | TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM | Women were disenfranchised in many ways in eighteenth-century Britain. Women were seldom permitted to own property outright, to earn money, to exercise primary custody over their children, or to live or travel alone; they were denied legal representation, educational attainment, bodily self-determination, and other rights which we now consider to be basic indices of adulthood and citizenship. Being a woman was, for most, a state of dependency and enclosure. <br /> <br /> In this course, we shall carefully consider how eighteenth-century British women made their voices heard. We’ll consider works produced by (and occasionally, about) British women during the century that followed the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, taking in examples from several genres, including prose fiction, poetry, and expository writing. We shall consider relations between women's imaginative writing and the many worlds from which women were largely excluded — the worlds of inherited literary tradition, commerce, religious debate, and contemporary politics, to name a few — as well as women’s writing about the subjects they were assumed to know best: child-raising, courtship, housekeeping, and personal piety.<br /> <br /> The most important requirement in this course will be thorough reading of each assigned selection before class. Please take notes and be prepared to discuss particular language and rhetorical strategies, not merely plots and characterizations. The course will combine lectures and group discussions, class presentations, occasional quizzes, library research, and writing projects. Primary authors are likely to include Behn, Rochester, Philips, Haywood, Pope, Manley, Barker, and Richardson.<br /> |
ENGL090401, GSWS090401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 094-401 | Intro Literary Theory | Sarah P. Brilmyer | MEYH B13 | TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM | In this course we will learn of the many ways to read a cultural text by surveying the history of literary theory. We will address questions such as: What is literature? How do texts generate meaning? How do we determine the meanings of a cultural text? What are the relationships among an author, a text, a reader, and a context? What role does a text play in representing or even producing ideas of race, class, nation, sexuality, and gender? We will learn to read cultural texts closely and carefully: that is, to read for a text’s figures, themes, meanings, contexts, and structures. In addition, we will learn to ask and write about a text’s social, political, and material aspects.<br /> |
ENGL094401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 099-401 | Television and New Media | Rahul Mukherjee | BENN 401 | M 02:00 PM-05:00 PM | How and when do media become digital? What does digitization afford and what is lost as television and cinema become digitized? As lots of things around us turn digital, have we started telling stories, sharing experiences, and replaying memories differently? What has happened to television and life after “New Media”? How have television audiences been transformed by algorithmic cultures of Netflix and Amazon? <br /> <br /> Social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook have blurred the lines between public and private spaces, and ushered in a heightened sense of immediacy to mediations of everyday life. When BuzzFeed (an aggregator of hilarious memes) starts doing serious journalism, in what ways does it transform the production and evaluation of news? How have (social) media transformed socialities as ephemeral snaps and swiped intimacies become part of the "new" digital/phone cultures? This is an introductory survey/exploratory course and we discuss a wide variety of media technologies and phenomena that include: cloud computing, Internet of Things, hacking, trolls, “FAKE NEWS,” distribution platforms, optical fiber cables, surveillance tactics, social media, and race in cyberspace. We also examine emerging mobile phone cultures in the Global South and the environmental impact of digitization. Course activities include Tumblr blog posts and Instagram curations. The course assignments consist of in-class mid-term and a take home end-term of long answer-type questions.<br /> |
ARTH107401, ENGL078401, CIMS103401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 099-601 | Television and New Media | Jeremy Felix Gallion | BENN 141 | 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. | CIMS103601, ARTH107601, ENGL078601 | https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML099601 | ||||
| COML 100-401 | Intro. To Literary Study: Global Novel | Rita Barnard | PCPE 100 | 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 105-401 | Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome | Emily Wilson | MEYH B2 | TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM | What is being a man, being a woman, being masculine, being feminine, being neither, being both? Is sex about pleasure, domination, identity, reproduction, or something else? Are sexual orientation and gender identity innate? How can words, myths and stories inform cultural assumptions about sex and gender? Did people in ancient times have a concept of sexuality? How do gendered English terms (like "girly", "effeminate", or "feisty") compare to gendered ancient Greek and Latin terms, like virtus, which connotes both "virtue" and "masculinity"? Why did the Roman and English speaking worlds have to borrow the word "clitoris" from the ancient Greeks? How did people in antiquity understand consent? Can we ever get access to the perspectives of ancient women? In this introductory undergraduate course, we will learn about sex and gender in ancient Greece and Rome. We will discuss similarities and differences between ancient and modern attitudes, and we will consider how ancient texts, ancient art, ancient ideas and ancient history have informed modern western discussions, assumptions and legislation. Our main readings will be of ancient texts, all in English translation; authors studied will include Ovid, Aristophanes, Plato, Euripides, and Sappho. Class requirements will include participation in discussion as well as quizzes, reading responses, and a final exam. | GSWS104401, CLST101401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 107-401 | Topics: Freshman Seminar: Blood, Sweat and Pasta: Italian-American Literature | Frank Pellicone | HARR M20 | TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM | Topics vary. See the Department's website at https://complit.sas.upenn.edu/course-list/2019A | ITAL100401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. No Prior Language Experience Required Freshman Seminar All Readings and Lectures in English |
https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML107401 | ||
| COML 118-401 | Poetics of Screenplay: the Art of Plotting | Vladislav T. Todorov | WILL 216 | MW 03:30 PM-05:00 PM | This course studies scriptwriting in a historical, theoretical and artistic perspective. We discuss the rules of drama and dialogue, character development, stage vs. screen-writing, adaptation of nondramatic works, remaking of plots, author vs. genre theory of cinema, storytelling in silent and sound films, the evolvement of a script in the production process, script doctoring, as well as screenwriting techniques and tools. Coursework involves both analytical and creative tasks. | CIMS111401, RUSS111401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | All Readings and Lectures in English | |||
| COML 121-401 | The Translation of Poetry/The Poetry of Translation | Taije Jalaya Silverman | BENN 25 | TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM | “No problem is as consubstantial with literature and its modest mystery as the one posed by translation.”—Jorge Luis Borges<br /> <br /> In this class we will study and translate some of the major figures in 19th- and 20th-century poetry, including Gabriela Mistral, Wislawa Szymborska, Mahmoud Darwish, Anna Akhmatova, Rainer Maria Rilke, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Arthur Rimbaud, and Shu Ting. While the curriculum will be tailored to the interests and linguistic backgrounds of the students who enroll, all those curious about world poetry and the formidable, irresistible act of translation are welcome. Those wishing to take the translation course should have, at least, an intermediate knowledge of another language. We will study multiple translations of major poems and render our own versions in response. Students with knowledge of other languages will have the additional opportunity to work directly from the original. A portion of the course will be set up as a creative writing workshop in which to examine the overall effect of each others’ translations so that first drafts can become successful revisions. While class discussions will explore the contexts and particularity of poetry writen in Urdu, Italian, Arabic, French, Bulgarian, and Polish, they might ultimately reveal how notions of national literature have radically shifted in recent years to more polyglottic and globally textured forms. Through famous poems, essays on translation theory, and our own ongoing experiments, this course will celebrate the ways in which great poetry underscores the fact that language itself is a translation. In addition to the creative work, assignments will include an oral presentation, informal response papers, and a short final essay. This course is cross-listed with Comparative Literature.<br /> |
ENGL120401 | |||||
| COML 123-401 | World Film Hist To 1945 | Peter Decherney | BENN 419 | MW 02:00 PM-03:30 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. | ENGL091401, ARTH108401, CIMS101401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 124-401 | World Film Hist '45-Pres | Meta Mazaj | BENN 401 | TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM | Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism (of Rossellini and De Sica), we will follow the evolution of postwar cinema through the French New Wave (of Godard, Resnais, and Varda), American movies of the 1950s and 1960s (including the New Hollywood cinema of Coppola and Scorsese), and the various other new wave movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (such as the New German Cinema). We will then selectively examine some of the most important films of the last three decades, including those of U.S. independent film movement and movies from Iran, China, and elsewhere in an expanding global cinema culture. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, a research paper, weekly Canvas postings, and active participation in class discussion.<br /> |
ENGL092401, ARTH109401, CIMS102401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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| COML 124-601 | World Film History 1945-Present | Filippo Trentin | BENN 201 | TR 05:00 PM-06:30 PM | This course is an introduction to the analysis of film as both a textual practice and a cultural practice. We will examine a variety of films--from Fritz Lang's M (1931) to Julia Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991)--in order to demonstrate the tools and skills of "close reading." We will concentrate on those specifically filmic features of the movies, such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound strategies, as well as those larger organizational forms, such as narrative and non-narrative structures and movie genres. Because our responses to the movies always extend beyond the film frame, we will additionally look closely at the complex business of film distribution, promotion, and exhibition to show how the less visible machinery of the movie business also shapes our understanding and enjoyment of particular films. Along the way, we will discuss some of the most influential and productive critical schools of thought informing film analysis today, including realism, auteurism, feminism, postmodernism, and others. Screenings are mandatory. | CIMS102601, ARTH109601, ENGL092601 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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| COML 143-401 | Foundations of European Thought: From Rome To the Renaissance | Ann Elizabeth Moyer | COLL 314 | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM | This course offers an introduction to the world of thought and learning at the heart of European culture, from the Romans through the Renaissance. We begin with the ancient Mediterranean and the formation of Christianity and trace its transformation into European society. Along the way we will examine the rise of universities and institutions for learning, and follow the humanist movement in rediscovering and redefining the ancients in the modern world. | HIST143401 | History & Tradition Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML143401 | ||
| COML 150-401 | War and Representation | This class will explore complications of representing war in the 20th and 21st centuries. War poses problems of perception, knowledge, and language. The notional "fog of war" describes a disturbing discrepancy between agents and actions of war; the extreme nature of the violence of warfare tests the limits of cognition, emotion, and memory; war's traditional dependence on declaration is often warped by language games--"police action," "military intervention," "nation-building," or palpably unnamed and unacknowledged state violence. Faced with the radical uncertainty that forms of war bring, modern and contemporary authors have experimented in historically, geographically, experientially and artistically particular ways, forcing us to reconsider even seemingly basic definitions of what a war story can be. Where does a war narrative happen? On the battlefield, in the internment camp, in the suburbs, in the ocean, in the ruins of cities, in the bloodstream? Who narrates war? Soldiers, refugees, gossips, economists, witnesses, bureaucrats, survivors, children, journalists, descendants and inheritors of trauma, historians, those who were never there? How does literature respond to the rise of terrorist or ideology war, the philosophical and material consequences of biological and cyber wars, the role of the nuclear state? How does the problem of war and representation disturb the difference between fiction and non-fiction? How do utilitarian practices of representation--propaganda, nationalist messaging, memorialization, xenophobic depiction--affect the approaches we use to study art? Finally, is it possible to read a narrative barely touched or merely contextualized by war and attend to the question of war's shaping influence? The class will concentrate on literary objects--short stories, and graphic novels--as well as film and television. Students of every level and major are welcome in and encouraged to join this class, regardless of literary experience. | Humanities & Social Science Sector | ||||||||
| COML 151-401 | Water Worlds | Simon J Richter | MCNB 286-7 | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 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? | GRMN150401, CIMS150401, ENVS150401 | Arts & Letters Sector | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. All Readings and Lectures in English |
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| COML 191-401 | World Literature | MW 03:30 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 197-401 | Madness & Madmen | Molly Peeney | WILL 218 | MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM | Is "insanity" today the same thing as "madness" of old? Who gets to define what it means to be "sane," and why? Are the causes of madness biological or social? In this course, we will grapple with these and similar questions while exploring Russia's fascinating history of madness as a means to maintain, critique, or subvert the status quo. We will consider the concept of madness in Russian culture beginning with its earliest folkloric roots and trace its depiction and function in the figure of the Russian "holy fool," in classical literature, and in contemporary film. Readings will include works by many Russian greats, such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Bulgakov and Nabokov. | RUSS197401 | All Readings and Lectures in English Humanities & Social Science Sector |
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| COML 200-401 | The Fantastic Voyage From Homer To Science Fiction | Scott M Francis | TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM | Tales of voyages to strange lands with strange inhabitants and even stranger customs have been a part of the Western literary tradition from its inception. What connects these tales is that their voyages are not only voyages of discovery, but voyages of self-discovery. By describing the effects these voyages have on the characters who undertake them, and by hinting at comparisons between the lands described in the story and their own society, authors use fantastic voyages as vehicles for incisive commentary on literary, social, political, and scientific issues. In this course, we will explore the tradition of the fantastic voyage from Homer’s Odyssey, one of the earliest examples of this type of narrative and a model for countless subsequent voyage narratives, to science fiction, which appropriates this narrative for its own ends. We will determine what the common stylistic elements of voyage narratives are, such as the frame narrative, or story-within-a-story, and what purpose they serve in conveying the tale’s messages. We will see how voyagers attempt to understand and interact with the lands and peoples they encounter, and what these attempts tell us about both the voyagers and their newly-discovered counterparts. Finally, we will ask ourselves what real-world issues are commented upon by these narratives, what lessons the narratives have to teach about them, and how they impart these lessons to the reader. Readings for this course, all of which are in English or English translation, range from classics like the Odyssey and Gulliver’s Travels to predecessors of modern science fiction like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to seminal works of modern science fiction like Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts, and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Though this course is primarily dedicated to literature, we will also look at how films like the 1968 adaptation of Planet of the Apes and television shows like Star Trek and Futurama draw upon literary or cinematic models for their own purposes. This course is meant not only for SF fans who would like to become better acquainted with the precursors and classics of the genre, but for all those who wish to learn how great works of fiction, far from being intended solely for entertainment and escapism, attempt to improve upon the real world through the effect they have on the reader. | FREN200401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. Freshman Seminar |
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| COML 201-401 | Topics Film History: Transnational Cinema | Meta Mazaj | BENN 201 | TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM | This is a course in contemporary transnational film cultures and world cinema. The course will examine the idea of world cinema and set up a model of how it can be explored by studying contemporary film in various countries. We will explore ways in which cinemas from around the globe have attempted to come to terms with Hollywood, and look at forces that lead many filmmakers to define themselves in opposition to Hollywood norms. But we will also look at the phenomenon of world cinema in independent terms, as “waves” that peak in different places and times, and coordinate various forces. Finally, through the close case study of significant films and cinemas that have dominated the international festival circuit (Chinese, Korean, Iranian, Indian, etc.) we will engage with the questions of which films/cinemas get labeled as “world cinema,” what determines entry into the sphere of world cinema, and examine the importance of film festivals in creating world cinema.<br /> <br /> |
ARTH391401, CIMS201401, ENGL291401 | |||||
| COML 206-401 | Italian History On Screen | Carla Locatelli | BENN 231 | MW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM | How has our image of Italy arrived to us? Where does the story begin and who has recounted, rewritten, and rearranged it over the centuries? In this course, we will study Italy's rich and complex past and present. We will carefully read literary and historical texts and thoughtfully watch films in order to attain an understanding of Italy that is as varied and multifacted as the country itself. Group work, discussions and readings will allow us to examine the problems and trends in the political, cultural and social history from ancient Rome to today. We will focus on: the Roman Empire, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Unification, Turn of the Century, Fascist era, World War II, post-war and contemporary Italy. | ITAL204401, CIMS206401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML206401 | ||
| COML 211-401 | Lit of Dissent in E. Eur: Literature of Dissent:Art As Protest in 20-Th Cent.Poland & Czechoslovakia | Eastern and Central Europe was the site of monumental political changes in the twentieth century, including the disillusion of monarchical empires in the First World War and the expansion of Soviet-style communism. At every point, artists have taken part in political debates, sometimes advancing radical agendas, sometimes galvanizing movements, sometimes simply shouting into the void to register their own dissatisfaction. In this course, we will consider texts including literature, political philosophy and film that pushed back against the dominant political norms. In so doing, we will investigate Aesopian language, the mechanics of censorship, the repercussions of dissent, performativity, samizdat and the rise of an alternative culture. We will contextualize our readings of literature with the sociological and historical work of Benedict Anderson, Tony Judt, Jonathan Bolton, Shana Penn, Alexei Yurchak and the series Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe. As well as becoming familiar with major thinkers and movements in Eastern and Central Europe, students will develop a sense of art as a tool of political protest. | EEUR211401 | ||||||||
| COML 218-401 | Fren Lit: Love & Passion | Said Gahia | WILL 219 | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 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. Students are expected to take an active part in class dicussion in French. French 231 has as its theme the presentation of love and passion in French literature. | FREN231401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 218-402 | Fren Lit: Love & Passion | Jacqueline Dougherty | WILL 705 | 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. Students are expected to take an active part in class dicussion in French. French 231 has as its theme the presentation of love and passion in French literature. | FREN231402 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 218-403 | Fren Lit: Love & Passion | Andrea Goulet | WILL 315 | 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. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 231 has as its theme the presentation of love and passion in French literature. This course was previously offered as French 221. | FREN231403 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 237-401 | Berlin: Hist Pol Culture | Liliane Weissberg | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM | What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English. | URBS237401, GRMN237401, HIST237401, ARTH237401 | All Readings and Lectures in English Humanities & Social Science Sector Registration also required for Recitation (see below) |
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| COML 237-402 | Berlin: History, Politics, Culture | F 10:00 AM-11:00 AM | What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English. | ARTH237402, URBS237402, GRMN237402, HIST237402 | All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 237-403 | Berlin: History, Politics, Culture | F 11:00 AM-12:00 PM | What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English. | ARTH237403, URBS237403, GRMN237403, HIST237403 | All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 237-404 | Berlin: History, Politics, Culture | F 12:00 PM-01:00 PM | What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English. | ARTH237404, URBS237404, GRMN237404, HIST237404 | All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 237-405 | Berlin: History, Politics, Culture | F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM | What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin. All readings and lectures in English. | ARTH237405, GRMN237405, HIST237405, URBS237405 | All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 245-401 | Study of A Theme: Intro To Psychoanalysis | Susan C. Adelman Max C Cavitch |
BENN 231 | MW 05:00 PM-06:30 PM | This is an introduction to literary study through the works of a compelling literary theme. (For offerings in a given semester, please see the on-line course descriptions on the English Department website). The theme's function within specific historical contexts, within literary history generally, and within contemporary culture, are likely to be emphasized. | ENGL102401 | Arts & Letters Sector | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 246-401 | Arab Women & War | Huda Fakhreddine | WILL 4 | TR 03:00 PM-04:30 PM | 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 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 266-401 | Intro Modern Hebrew Lit: the Israeli Short Story Reinvented | Nili R Gold | COHN 493 | R 04:30 PM-07:30 PM | The objective of this course is to develop an artistic appreciation for literature through in-depth class discussions and text analysis. Readings are comprised of Israeli poetry and short stories. Students examine how literary language expresses psychological and cultural realms. The course covers topics such as: the short story reinvented, literature and identity, 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. | NELC259401, JWST259401, NELC559401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 269-404 | Fascist Cinemas | Cinema played a crucial role in the cultural life of Nazi Germany and other fascist states. As cinema enthusiasts, Goebbels and Hitler were among the first to realize the important ideological potential of film as a mass medium and saw to it that Germany remained a cinema powerhouse producing more than 1000 films during the Nazi era. In Italy, Mussolini, too, declared cinema "the strongest weapon." This course explores the world of "fascist" cinemas ranging from infamous propaganda pieces such as The Triumph of the Will to popular entertainments such as musicals and melodramas. It examines the strange and mutually defining kinship between fascism more broadly and film. We will consider what elements mobilize and connect the film industries of the Axis Powers: style, genre, the aestheticization of politics, the creation of racialized others. More than seventy years later, fascist cinemas challenge us to grapple with issues of more subtle ideological insinuation than we might think. Weekly screenings with subtitles. All readings and discussions in English. | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 269-405 | Fascist Cinemas | F 01:00 PM-02:00 PM | Cinema played a crucial role in the cultural life of Nazi Germany and other fascist states. As cinema enthusiasts, Goebbels and Hitler were among the first to realize the important ideological potential of film as a mass medium and saw to it that Germany remained a cinema powerhouse producing more than 1000 films during the Nazi era. In Italy, Mussolini, too, declared cinema "the strongest weapon." This course explores the world of "fascist" cinemas ranging from infamous propaganda pieces such as The Triumph of the Will to popular entertainments such as musicals and melodramas. It examines the strange and mutually defining kinship between fascism more broadly and film. We will consider what elements mobilize and connect the film industries of the Axis Powers: style, genre, the aestheticization of politics, the creation of racialized others. More than seventy years later, fascist cinemas challenge us to grapple with issues of more subtle ideological insinuation than we might think. Weekly screenings with subtitles. All readings and discussions in English. | ITAL257405, GRMN257405, CIMS257405 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. All Readings and Lectures in English Registration also required for Lecture (see below) |
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| COML 275-401 | Faces of Love: Gender, Sexuality and the Erotic in Persian Literature | Fatemeh Shams Esmaeili | COLL 314 | TR 04:30 PM-06:00 PM | Beloved, Lover and Love are three concepts that dominate the semantic field of eroticism in Persian literature and mysticism. The interrelation among these concepts makes it almost impossible to treat any one of the concepts separately. Moreover, there exists various faces and shades of love in the works of classical and modern Persian literature that challenges the conventional heteronormative assumptions about the sexual and romantic relationships between the lover and the beloved. A sharp contrast exists between the treatment of homosexuality and 'queerness' in Islamic law, on the one hand and its reflection in Persian literature, particularly poetry (the chief vehicle of Persian literary expression), on the other. This course introduces and explores different faces of love, eroticism and homoeroticism in the Persian literary tradition from the dawn of dawn of the Persian poetry in the ninth century all through to the twenty-first century. It offers a comprehensive study of representations and productions of heteronormativity, sexual orientation and gender roles with particular reference to the notion of love, lover and beloved in Persian literature. | NELC574401, COML574401, GSWS275401, GSWS575401, NELC290401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 282-401 | Mod Heb Lit & Cult Trans: the Image of Childhood in Israeli Lit & Film | Nili R Gold | WILL 421 | TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM | This course examines cinematic and literary portrayals of childhood. While Israeli works constitute more than half of the course's material, European film and fiction play comparative roles. Many of the works are placed, and therefore discussed, against a backdrop of national or historical conflicts. Nonetheless, private traumas (such as madness, abuse, or loss) or an adult s longing for an idealized time are often the central foci of the stories. These issues and the nature of individual and collective memory will be discussed from a psychological point of view. Additionally, the course analyzes how film, poetry and prose use their respective languages to reconstruct the image of childhood; it discusses the authors and directors struggle to penetrate the psyche of a child and to retrieve fragments of past events. | NELC159401, JWST154401, CIMS159401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 283-401 | Jewish Folklore | Dan Ben-Amos | MCNB 582 | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM | The Jews are among the few nations and ethnic groups whose oral tradition occurs in literary and religious texts dating back more than two thousand years. This tradition changed and diversified over the years in terms of the migration of Jews into different countries and historical, social, and cultural changes that these countries underwent. The course attempts to capture thei historical and ehtnic diversity of Jewish folklore in a variety of oral liteary forms. | NELC258401, JWST260401, FOLK280401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | |||
| COML 291-401 | What Is Capitalism? the Theories of Marx and Marxism | David C Kazanjian | BENN 222 | T 01:30 PM-04:30 PM | Today, many around the globe are reflecting on capitalism’s benefits and problems, in the hope of imagining and realizing a better future. This course will trace some of the origins of that inquiry. It will offer an introduction to the works of Marx and some of the varied traditions that have spun out of them; no prior familiarity with that work or those traditions is required. By reading Marx’s own writings as well as social theory influenced by them, and by reading literature and watching film, art, and popular culture from around the globe, we will consider a diverse array of answers to questions like: how does racial, gender, economic, and political inequality emerge and increase variously around the globe? What was the relationship between slavery and capitalism? What are ideology, alienation, and fetishism? How are activism and theory connected? Why does shopping make us feel so much pleasure, pain, or numbness? How might culture help us imagine our way out of the violence and inequality of actually existing social relations?<br /> <br /> |
ENGL294401 | |||||
| COML 300-401 | Foods and Cultures of Italy | Filippo Trentin | DRLB 3C6 | MW 03:30 PM-05:00 PM | Today, Italian cuisine is considered one of the most famous and attractive culinary traditions in the world, with “Italian food” referring to such globally popular dishes as pizza or pasta, as well as to quality products ranging from well-toasted coffee beans to expensive truffles and red wines. But the popularity of Italian food is a relatively recent phenomenon. In past centuries this category indicated sour wines, spicy meats, and poorly prepared dishes. What is Italian food really? When did its success start? And how did this category change throughout time? In this course we will answer these and other questions by exploring Italian history and culture through the lens of food. We will discuss films, cook books and treatises on taste, reading, for instance, the recipes included in Pellegrino Aretusi’s The Science of the Kitchen (1891) in relation to Italy’s political and cultural unification in the 19th-century; interpreting the representation of food in Luca Guadagnino’s film I Am Love (2009) in relation to philosophical treatises on taste by Plato and Aristotle; and examining the emergence of a multicultural and queer society in 21st-century Italy through the representation of food in Ferzan Ozpetek’s film His Secret Life (2001). This course is taught in English. No previous knowledge of the subject or language skills are required. | ITAL300401, CIMS300401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. No Prior Language Experience Required All Readings and Lectures in English |
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| COML 321-401 | National Literatures: the National Epic | David Wallace | VANP 627 | TR 01:30 PM-03:00 PM | You cannot build a wall to stop the free flow of literary and creative ideas. But in constructing narratives of national identity, states have long adopted particular texts as "foundational." This course traces how particular literary texts, very often medieval epics and romances, are adopted to become foundational for national literatures. Key moments of emphasis will be the early nineteenth century, the 1930s, and the unfolding present.<br /> <br /> Some texts immediately suggest themselves for analysis. The Song of Roland, for example, has long been fought over between France and Germany; each new war inspires new editions on both sides. The French colonial education system, highly centralized, long made the Chanson de Roland a key text, with the theme of Islamic attack on the European mainland especially timely, it was thought, during the Algerian war of independence. Germany has also seen the Niebelungenlied as a key text, aligning it with the Rhine as an impeccably Germanic: but the Danube, especially as envisioned by the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig, offers an alternative, hybridized, highly hyphenated cultural vision in running its Germanic-Judaic-Slavic-Roman course to the Black Sea.<br /> <br /> The course will not be devoted exclusively to western Europe. Delicate issues arise as nations determine what their national epic needs to be. Russia, for example, needs the text known as The Song of Igor to be genuine, since it is the only Russian epic to predate the Mongol invasion. The text was discovered in 1797 and then promptly lost in Moscow's great fire of 1812; suggestions that it might have been a fake have to be handled with care in Putin's Russia. Similarly, discussing putative Mughal (Islamic) elements in so-called "Hindu epics" can also be a delicate matter.<br /> <br /> Beowulf has long been celebrated as a foundational English Ur-text, and was compulsory reading for all English majors in Oxford until quite recently. But is set in Denmark, is full of Danes (and has been claimed for Ulster by Seamus Heaney). Malory's Morte Darthur, a romances written during the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses,was chosen to provide scenes for the queen's new robing room in 1834 (following the fire that largely destroyed the Palace of Westminster). But Queen Victoria found the designs unacceptable: too much popery and adultery.<br /> <br /> Some "uses of the medieval" have been exercised for reactionary and revisionist causes in the USA, but such use is much more extravagant east of Prague. And what, exactly, is the national epic of the USA? Moby Dick (mad captain pursues a whale), Walt Whitman, bard of Camden, NJ, Leaves of Grass, D. W. Griffiths, The Birth of a Nation (silent film of 1915, originally called The Clansman, with some vile racist neo-medievalism), Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (crossing from Europe to discover the Renaissance in Harlem)? <br /> <br /> Syllabus: to be finalised later, but candidate texts for inclusion may include:<br /> Ireland, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, medieval legends of the Red Hand of Ulster<br /> Iceland, Egil's Saga (key to independence movements in the 1930s)<br /> Wales, Mabinogion<br /> Italy, the three crowns (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, a medieval group formalised in the sixteenth century to represent a "stable" model for Italy-- which did actually achieve nation status until the 19th century. Also: the Aeneid as national Italian epic? Catherine of Siena as a national saint?<br /> England: problematic. Beowulf, Malory, Spenser, Milton?<br /> Uzbekistan, Dede Korkut<br /> France/ Germany/ Anglo-Norman England: La Chanson de Roland<br /> Turkey, Iskandersname (epic of Alexander, a figure claimed by many national literatures)<br /> Hungary, myths and legends of St Stephen (including the so-called "Crown of Hungary" transferred to the parliament building by President Viktor Orbán: it is now illegal, in Hungary, to research this object).<br /> Spain: El Cid, or the Libro de buen amor?<br /> Israel: the Bible (its history is its religion, its religion is its history; Ruth, Esther, Tobit, and Judith as historical novels-- discuss!)<br /> Iran/ Persia: Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds<br /> Saint Lucia, the Caribbean: Derek Walcot, Omeros<br /> territory unbounded: The Shahnameh ("Persian Epic as World Literature," Hamid Dabashi)<br /> Japan, The Tale of Genji (the paradox of a female-authored national text)<br /> China, novelle of the Tang dynasty (featuring the misadventures of students studying for exams)<br /> <br /> Assessment: short essay, longer essay with research component, class reports, class participation. |
ENGL321401 | Benjamin Franklin Seminars | ||||
| COML 369-401 | Literary Translation | Emily Wilson | PWH 108 | TR 10:30 AM-12:00 PM | This course is for graduate students and undergraduates with permission of the instructor. All students enrolled must have knowledge of at least one language other than English. We will study the history, theory and practice of literary translation, and participate in it. Readings will include theoretical works in translation studies, using selections from Lawrence Venuti's Translation Studies Reader and Schulte/Biguenet's Translation Theory Reader, with some supplemental readings; we will also look at comparative cases of multiple translations of the same original, and analyze how different translators make different interpretative/formal/aesthetic choices. Course assignments will include both a research paper, on the history and/or theory of translation, and an extended practical translation exercise, to be workshopped over the course of the semester, consisting of a literary translation of a text of the student's choice. | CLST569401, CLST369401 | |||||
| COML 501-401 | History Lit Theory | Sarah P. Brilmyer | BENN 17 | R 04:30 PM-07:30 PM | Over the last three decades, the fields of literary and cultural studies have been reconfigured by a variety of theoretical and methodological developments. Bracing and often confrontational dialogues between theoretical and political positions as varied as Deconstruction, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Queer Theory, Minority Discourse Theory, Colonial and Post-colonial Studies and Cultural Studies have, in particular, altered disciplinary agendas and intellectual priorities for students embarking on the professonalstudy of literature. In this course, we will study key texts, statements and debates that define these issues, and will work towards a broad knowledge of the complex rewriting of the project of literary studies in process today. The reading list will keep in mind the Examination List in Comparative Literature. We will not work towards complete coverage but will ask how crucial contemporary theorists engage with the longer history and institutional practices of literary criticism. | SLAV500401, CLST511401, ENGL601401, GRMN534401 | Undergraduates Need Permission | ||||
| COML 511-640 | Life Writing: Autobiography, Memoir and the Diary | Batsheva Ben-Amos | W 06:00 PM-08:00 PM | This course introduces three genres of life writing: Autobiography, Memoir and the Diary. While the Memoir and the diary are older forms of first persons writing the Autobiography developed later. We will first study the literary-historical shifts that occurred in Autobiographies from religious confession through the secular Eurocentric Enlightenment men, expanded to women writers and to members of marginal oppressed groups as well as to non-European autobiographies in the twentieth century. Subsequently we shall study the rise of the modern memoir, asking how it is different from this form of writing that existed already in the middle ages. In the memoirs we see a shift from a self and identity centered on a private individualautobiographer to ones that comes from connections to a community, a country or a nation; a self of a memoirist that represents selves of others. Students will attain theoretical background related to the basic issues and concepts in life writing: genre, truth claims and what they mean, the limits of memory, autobiographical subject, agency or self, the autonomous vs. the relational self. The concepts will be discussed as they apply to several texts. Some examples are: parts of Jan Jacques Rousseau's Confessions; the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; selected East European autobiographies between the two world wars; the memoirs of Lady Ann Clifford, Sally Morgan, Mary Jamison and Saul Friedlander. The third genre, the diary, is a person account, organized around the passage of time, and its subject is in the present. We will study diary theories, diary's generic conventions and the canonical text, trauma diaries and the testimonial aspect, the diary's time, decoding emotions, the relation of the diary to an audience and the process of transition from archival manuscript to a published book. The reading will include travel diaries (for relocation and pleasure), personal diaries in different historical periods and countries, diaries in political conflict (as American Civil War women's diaries, Holocaust diaries, Middle East political conflicts diaries). We will conclude with diaries online, and students will have a chance to experience and report about differences between writing a personal diary on paper and diaries and blogs on line. Each new subject in this online course will be preceded by an introduction. Specific reading and written assignments, some via links to texts will be posted weekly ahead of time. We will have weekly videos and discussions of texts and assigned material and students will post responses during these sessions and class presentations in the forums. | Online Course Only Online Course Fee $150 |
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| COML 530-401 | Pre-Modern Rhetorics | Rita Copeland | VANP 626 | T 12:00 PM-03:00 PM | This course offers an overview of the ancient, medieval, and early modern rhetorical traditions, and aims to work very broadly across cultural and textual histories. It should be useful for any students working in early and later periods (including post-Renaissance) who want a grounding in the intellectual and institutional history of rhetoric, the "discourse about discourse" that was central to curricular formation, aesthetics, politics, ideas of history, and ideas of cannons. We will read materials from sophistic rhetoric, from Plato and Aristotle, from Cicero, Quintilian, and rhetorical theoriests from late antiquity (including Augustine); we will work through medieval materials from monastic and cathedral schools to the universities, considering how Ciceronian rhetoric carries an overwhelming influence into Middle Ages; we will consider the professional stratification of various kinds of rhetorical production and theory in the late Middle Ages and look at some crucial literary embodiments of rhetoric as disciplinary force. | CLST530401, ENGL707401 | For PhD Students Only | ||||
| COML 544-401 | Environmental Humanities: Theory, Method, Practice | Bethany Wiggin | WILL 741 | W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM | Environmental Humanities: Theory, Methods, Practice is a seminar-style course designed to introduce students to the trans- and interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. Weekly readings and discussions will be complemented by guest spearkers from a range of disciplines including ecology, atmospheric science, computing, history of science, medicine, anthropology, literature, and the visual arts. Participants will develop their own research questions and a final project, with special consideration given to building the multi-disciplinary collaborative teams research in the environmental humanities often requires. | ENGL643401, GRMN543401, SPAN543401, ENVS543401 | Undergraduates Need Permission All Readings and Lectures in English |
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| COML 549-401 | Topics in 17th Century: What Is the Novel?: the First Books | Joan Elizabeth Dejean | VANP 605 | M 02:00 PM-04:00 PM | This course will be taught in English. We will read works written in a number of languages. Students have the option of reading these works in the original languages; class discussion will primarily be based on English translations. <br /> <br /> The novel is the iconic modern literary form. One recent theorist has even described the novel as “the most important form in Western art” (Guido Mazzoni). No other genre has been the object of an even remotely comparable amount of interest on the part of theorists. Commentators seek to determine when and where the novel was invented; they try to fix limits and to decide which works can truly be considered novels. For some, the story is clear-cut, and the novel’s “rise” can be easily charted (Ian Watt). For others, “the true story” of the novel is complex and multi-cultural, a tale of multiple origins and broad geographic diversity (Margaret Doody). <br /> <br /> Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this theoretical pluralism is that the phenomenon has such a long history: already in the 1670s, the first commentators ever to turn their attention to a literary genre whose prominence was achieved in the modern world rather than in antiquity were arguing in print over just these questions.<br /> <br /> We will read a variety of the most influential theories of the novel, from the 17th to the 21st centuries, including those of Bakhtin, Foucault, and Huet. We will read a number of what I’ll call “first books,” candidates proposed as the “first” novel, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote to Lafayette’s Princess of Clèves. We will discuss outlier works and ask, for example, if the original modern erotic/obscene fictions should be considered novels.<br /> <br /> We will read some of the most influential novels of the first two centuries of the form’s modern history, mainly from the two countries where the form first took shape, France and England. We’ll read novels in pairs in order to highlight features of these two national traditions: foundling narratives (Villedieu’s Henriette-Sylvie de Molière and Fielding’s Tom Jones), lives of female criminals (Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Prévost’s Manon Lescaut), epistolary novels (Richardson’s Pamela and Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons). In order to include more novels, we will also use the expression “first books” in a second way: we will read only the first parts of some immensely long works, the formats in which they were initially published. <br /> <br /> The questions at the center of our discussions will include: <br /> Does the novel have to be in prose?<br /> What are the limits between the novel and history – in other words, does the novel have to be fiction and recognized as such?<br /> <br /> Above all, we will consider the importance of a phenomenon unique in genre formation: a genre that took shape without ever adapting a set form, any rules – or even a fixed name.<br /> |
ENGL537401, FREN550401 | |||||
| COML 574-401 | Faces of Love: Gender, Sexuality, and the Erotic in Persian Literature | Fatemeh Shams Esmaeili | COLL 314 | TR 04:30 PM-06:00 PM | Beloved, Lover and Love are three concepts that dominate the semantic field of eroticism in Persian literature and mysticism. The interrelation among these concepts makes it almost impossible to treat any one of the concepts separately. Moreover, there exists various faces and shades of love in the works of classical and modern Persian literature that challenges the conventional heteronormative assumptions about the sexual and romantic relationships between the lover and the beloved. A sharp contrast exists between the treatment of homosexuality and queerness in Islamic law, on the one hand and its reflection in Persian literature, particularly poetry (the chief vehicle of Persian literary expression), on the other. This course introduces and explores different faces of love, eroticism and homoeroticism in the Persian literary tradition from the dawn of dawn of the Persian poetry in the ninth century all through to the twenty-first century. It offers a comprehensive study of representations and productions of heteronormativity, sexual orientation and gender roles with particular reference to the notion of love, lover and beloved in Persian literature. | NELC574401, COML275401, GSWS275401, GSWS575401, NELC290401 | Course is available to Freshmen and Upperclassmen. | ||||
| COML 591-401 | Theories of Nationalisms: Lineages of Literary Nat | David Wallace | VANP 627 | T 09:00 AM-12:00 PM | You cannot build a wall to stop the free flow of literary and creative ideas. But in constructing narratives of national identity, states have long adopted particular texts as "foundational." Very often these texts have been epics or romances designated "medieval," that is, associated with the period in which specific vernaculars or "mother tongues" first emerged. France and Germany, for example, have long fought over who "owns" the Strasbourg oaths, or the Chanson de Roland; new editions of this epic poem, written in French but telling of Frankish (Germanic) warriors, have been produced (on both sides) every time these two countries go to war. In this course we will thus study both a range of "medieval" texts and the ways in which they have been claimed, edited, and disseminated to serve particular nationalist agendas. Particular attention will be paid to the early nineteenth century, and to the 1930s. Delicate issues arise as nations determine what their national epic needs to be. Russia, for example, needs the text known as The Song of Igor to be genuine, since it is the only Russian epic to predate the Mongol invasion. The text was discovered in 1797 and then promptly lost in Moscow's great fire of 1812; suggestions that it might have been a fake have to be handled with care in Putin's Russia. Similarly, discussing putative Mughal (Islamic) elements in so-called "Hindu epics" can also be a delicate matter. Some "uses of the medieval" have been exercised for reactionary and revisionist causes in the USA, but such use is much more extravagant east of Prague. And what, exactly, is the national epic of the USA? What, for that matter, of England? Beowulf has long been celebrated as an English Ur-text, but is set in Denmark, is full of Danes (and has been claimed for Ulster by Seamus Heaney). Malory's Morte Darthur was chosen to provide scenes for the queen's new robing room (following the fire that largely destroyed the Palace of Westminster in 1834), but Queen Victoria found the designs unacceptable: too much popery and adultery. Foundations of literary history still in force today are rooted in nineteenth-century historiography: thus we have The Cambridge History of Italian Literature and The Cambridge History of German Literature, each covering a millennium, even though political entities by the name of Italy and Germany did not exist until the later nineteenth century. What alternative ways of narrating literary history might be found? Itinerary models, which do not observe national boundaries, might be explored, and also the cultural history of watercourses, such as the Rhine, Danube, or Nile. The exact choice of texts to be The exact choice of texts to be studied will depend in part on the interests of those who choose to enroll. Faculty with particular regional expertise will be invited to visit specific classes.<br /> <br /> Candidate texts:<br /> <br /> Ireland, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, medieval legends of the Red Hand of Ulster, the "great books" written in Irish houses that were later taken to England (but returned).<br /> <br /> Iceland, Egil's Saga (key to independence movements in the 1930s); the unique "repatriation" of Icelandic texts by Denmark in the 1970s.<br /> <br /> Wales, Mabinogion; Eisteddfod culture.<br /> <br /> Italy, the tre corone (Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, a medieval group formalised by Bembo in the sixteenth century to represent a "stable" model for Italy. Also: the Aeneid as national Italian epic; the cult of Catherine of Siena as a national saint in the 1930s.<br /> <br /> England: Beowulf, Malory, Spenser, Milton?<br /> <br /> France/ Germany/ Anglo-Norman England: La Chanson de Roland<br /> <br /> USA: Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, The Birth of a Nation (with its wacky and vile "medievalism"), The Big Sea (crossing from Europe to discover the Renaissance in Harlem)? <br /> <br /> Uzbekistan, Dede Korkut<br /> <br /> Turkey, Iskandersname (epic of Alexander, a figure claimed by many national literatures)<br /> <br /> Hungary, myths and legends of St Stephen (including the "Crown of Hungary" in the parliament building: it is now illegal, in Hungary, to research this object).<br /> <br /> Spain: El Cid, or the Libro de buen amor?<br /> <br /> Israel: the Bible (its history is its religion, its religion is its history; Ruth, Esther, Tobit, and Judith as historical novels)?<br /> <br /> Iran/ Persia: Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds<br /> <br /> territory unbounded: The Shahnameh ("Persian Epic as World Literature," Hamid Dabashi)<br /> <br /> Japan, The Tale of Genji (the paradox of a female-authored national text)<br /> <br /> China, novelle of the Tang dynasty (featuring the misadventures of students studying for exams) |
ENGL594401, ITAL594401 | Undergraduates Need Permission | ||||
| COML 602-401 | Historiography&Method | Mauro P. Calcagno | LERN CONF | F 02:00 PM-05:00 PM | Theories and models of historical investigation. Analysis of historiographic writings and musicological works exemplifying particular approaches, such as transnational, environmental/landscape, gender/sexuality, critical race studies, performance studies, archives, and the digital humanities. | ITAL602401, MUSC604401 | |||||
| COML 603-401 | Poetics of Narrative | Gerald J Prince | WILL 516 | T 02:00 PM-04:00 PM | An exploration of the poetics of narrative, with particular emphasis on classical and postclassical narratology. To be analyzed are texts by Maupassant, Joyce, Faulkner, and Hemingway. Taught in English. | FREN603401 | |||||
| COML 605-401 | Mod Lit Theory & Crit | Andrea Goulet | VANP 402 | F 02:00 PM-05:00 PM | This course will provide an overview of major European thinkers in literary theory of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will pay particular attention to the following movements: Structuralism and Deconstruction (Levi-Strauss, Jakobson, Barthes, Derrida), Social Theory (Foucault, Ranciere), Psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan, Abraham and Torok), Schizoanalysis (Deleuze and Guattari), Feminism and Queer Theory (Irigary, Kristeva, Sedgwick), Spatial Theory (Bachelard, DeCerteau, Lefebvre), and the Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer, Kracauer). Readings and discussion will be in English. | ENGL605401, FREN605401, GRMN605401 | Undergraduates Need Permission | ||||
| COML 612-401 | Hannah Arendt | Liliane Weissberg | T 03:00 PM-05:00 PM | The seminar will consider Hannah Arendt's early Jewish writings. It will then center on Arendt's major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (in particular, the sections on "Antisemitism" and "Imperialism"). Finally, we will discuss Arendt's controversial study on Eichmann in Jerusalem. <br /> <br /> |
GRMN612401, JWST612401 | Undergraduates Need Permission All Readings and Lectures in English |
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| COML 626-401 | Medieval Lit in Romance-Iberian Peninsula: Castilian, Portuguese & Catalan | Carlos Bento Dos Santos Pio Michael R Solomon |
BENN 139 | W 12:00 PM-03:00 PM | SPAN630401 | Undergraduates Need Permission | |||||
| COML 627-401 | South Asian Literature As Comparative Literature | Gregory Goulding | DRLB 4E19 | T 03:00 PM-06:00 PM | This course takes up the question of reading South Asian Literature both as a collection of diverse literary cultures, as well as the basis for a methodology of reading that takes language, region, and history into account. It takes as a starting point recent work that foregrounds the importance of South Asian language literatures, and their complex interactions, to an understanding of South Asian literary history, as well as critiques of the concept of world literature that question its underlying assumptions and frequent reliance on cosmopolitan languages such as English. In what ways can we describe the many complex interactions between literary cultures in South Asia, rooted in specific historical contexts, reading practices, and cultural expectations, while maintaining attention to language and literary form? How, in turn, can we begin to think of these literatures in interaction with larger conversations in the world? With these considerations in mind, we will examine works of criticism dealing with both modern and pre-modern literatures, primarily but not exclusively focused on South Asia. Topics will include the concept of the cosmopolis in literary and cultural history, the role of translation, the transformations of literature under colonialism, and twentieth century literary movements such as realism and Dalit literature. Readings may include works by Erich Auerbach, Frederic Jameson, Aijaz Ahmad, Gayatri Spivak, Aamir Mufti, Sheldon Pollack, David Shulman, Yigal Bronner, Shamshur Rahman Faruqi, Francesca Orsini, Subramanian Shankar, Sharankumar Kimbale, and Torlae Jatin Gajarawala. We will also examine selected works, in English and in translation, as case studies for discussion. This course is intended both for students who intend to specialize in the study of South Asia, as well as for those who focus on questions of comparative literature more broadly. | SAST627401 | |||||
| COML 677-401 | Ontogenesis, Morphology, Literature | Siarhei Biareishyk | WILL 23 | M 03:00 PM-05:00 PM | In recent years, the notions of form, formalism, and morphology have reentered contemporary debates across the humanities. This seminar considers the current resurgence of interest in form by tracing form's evolving concepts throughout modernity. It departs from the observation that experimentation with and debates on form in art and literature are inextricably linked to various notions of life and the living. These debates-this is the provisional thesis of the seminar-are the battlefield where literary and art criticism undermine the major presuppositions of the western metaphysical tradition (e.g., determinations of inside-outside, form-content, living-inorganic). On the one hand, the seminar will explore a selective genealogy of various attempts to dynamize the concept of form through theories of 1) ontogenesis (e.g., Spinoza, Simondon, Malabou), 2) morphology (e.g., Goethe, Propp, Goldstein), and 3) aesthetics (e.g., Baumgarten, Schlegel brothers, Adorno). On the other hand, in order to investigate the political, ideological, and methodological implications of differing concepts of form, the seminar will bring together texts from different disciplines, including literary studies (literary morphology, Russian Formalism), art history (Focillon, Kubler), On the other hand, in order to investigate the political, ideological, and methodological implications of differing concepts of form, the seminar will bring together texts from different disciplines ranging from literary studies (e.g., Jolles, Russian Formalism, Jauss), art history (e.g., Panofsky, Focillon, Kubler), philosophy (e.g., Wittgenstein, Blumenberg, Macherey), history of science (e.g., Vygotsky, Varela),and sociology (e.g., Tarde, DeLanda). Finally, the seminar will engage in close reading of exemplary literary and art works, and situate the findings on the conjunction of form and life in current debates on New Formalisms (e.g., Levine, Levinson, Kornbluh) and New Materialisms (e.g., Bennett, Grosz). | GRMN677401 | |||||
| COML 700-401 | Postcolonial Literature: J.M. Coetzee | Rita Barnard | BENN 323 | R 09:00 AM-12:00 PM | In this course we will consider the oeuvre of the South African novelist and Nobel Prize-winner, J.M. Coetzee and the literary, theoretical, and political issues it raises. The primary reading list will include Dusklands, In the Heart of the Country, Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace, the memoirs Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime, and Diary of a Bad Year. We will also study Coetzee’s wide-ranging academic writing, which addresses issues like the relationship between literature and history, authority and authorship, confession, censorship, torture, gender and sexuality, realism and autobiography, animal rights and environmentalism, the nature of the “classic,” translation, and more. We will examine Coetzee’s complex, elusive, and critical relationship to South Africa (his attitudes towards apartheid, colonial discourse, the state, etc.), as well as his significance in the broader international context: his relationship to writers like Kafka, Beckett, Nabakov, Dostoyevsky, and, more generally, to modernism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. The Coetzee seminar, in short, will be of interest to all graduate students: it is virtually a proseminar. Modernists, eighteenth-century specialists, comparatists, postcolonialists, feminists, and Africanists are all welcome. Note that this version of the course will also consider Coetzee's long-standing interest in cinema and film theory, his screenplay, some failed film versions of his books, and, hopefully, the promising new film of Waiting for the Barbarians starring Mark Rylands, Jonny Depp, and Gana Bayarsaikan. Requirements: an oral presentation on an assigned topic and a final essay on a topic of the student’s own choosing. Coetzee's work and the debates it has fueled present ideal opportunities for individualized research and archival work; seminar participants will also be able to draw inspiration from Coetzee scholars, who will occasionally come in for invited presentations and conversation.<br /> |
ENGL775401 | |||||
| COML 711-401 | Theory In/And East Asia | Stephen Poland | PWH 108 | F 10:00 AM-01:00 PM | "Theory" can be exciting and seductive to some scholars, but intimidating or pretentious to others. Unfortunately, this difference in feeling about theoretical scholarship and discussion has a tendency to produce a divide in academia between those who "do theory" and those who do not. This graduate seminar pursues the question of how theory can be engaged in the context of East Asian cultural studies, with the goal of collectively working through texts to understand how theoretical reflection opens up possibilities for productive conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Many critiques have been made of the way "traveling theory" serves as a Euro- American universal applied to the "raw material" of East Asian texts, or a transdisciplinary common language in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Instead, we will take such critiques as a starting point to pragmatically and creatively explore the intersections and interactions of "theory" and "East Asia," emphasizing the archival, historical, political, and institutional contexts that motivate theorization. In that spirit, special attention will be given to discussing what problems we find in our own work that require theoretical consideration, and how such considerations might contribute to, challenge, or transform theory originating outside of East Asia. Readings will primary be in English, but may also include Japanese, Chinese, or Korean depending on student interest and language abilities. | EALC711401 | https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML711401 | ||||
| COML 786-401 | "Auto-Bio-Graphies?" Italian Models of (Self)Identifying Narrations | Carla Locatelli | WILL 204 | T 03:00 PM-05:00 PM | Topics vary from year to year. | ITAL685401 | https://pennintouchdaemon.apps.upenn.edu/pennInTouchProdDaemon/jsp/fast.do?webService=syllabus&%3Bterm=2019C&%3Bcourse=COML786401 | ||||
| COML 787-401 | Tpcs in Contemporary Art: Photo-Painting | Kaja Silverman | JAFF 113 | M 02:00 PM-05:00 PM | "When industry erupts in the sphere of art," Baudelaire famously wrote in 1859, "it becomes the latter's mortal enemy, and in the resulting confusion of functions none is well carried out...If photography is allowed to deputize for art in some of art's activities, it will not be long before it has supplanted or corrupted art altogether...Photography must, therefore, return to its true duty, which is handmaid of the arts and sciences." History has not been kind to this argument. First, Henry Fox Talbot and many of his contemporaries attributed the photographic image to nature, not industry, and the same is true of a number of contemporary artists. Second, by 1842--three years after the official invention of photography--photographers had already begun hand-coloring their daguerreotypes, and a century and a half later Richter started smearing and spattering paint onto small photographs, and exhibiting them along with his abstract and figurative paintings. By the mid-1850's, many artists were also painting from photographs, sometimes by projecting them onto their canvases, and treating these projections as preparatory drawings. They called the resulting images photo-paintings. And although it became increasingly "disreputable" to work in this way as the century progressed, | ARTH794401, ENGL793401 | Permission Needed From Department | ||||
| COML 790-401 | Rec Issues in Crit Theor: Marx and Globality | David C Kazanjian | W 06:00 PM-09:00 PM | CANCELLED | ENGL790401 | ||||||
| COML 995-002 | Dissertation | David C Kazanjian | |||||||||
| COML 995-004 | Dissertation | Max C Cavitch | |||||||||
| COML 995-006 | Dissertation | Kevin M.F. Platt | |||||||||
| COML 995-046 | Dissertation |