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.

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.

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.

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 />
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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 />
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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 />
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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 />
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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 />
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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 />
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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 />

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.

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.

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.

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 &quot;foundational.&quot; 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 />
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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 />
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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 &quot;Hindu epics&quot; can also be a delicate matter.<br />
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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 />
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Some &quot;uses of the medieval&quot; 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 />
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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 &quot;stable&quot; 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 &quot;Crown of Hungary&quot; 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 (&quot;Persian Epic as World Literature,&quot; 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 />
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Assessment: short essay, longer essay with research component, class reports, class participation.

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.

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 />
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