The struggle to establish a non-racial democracy in South Africa was not the bloodiest anticolonial struggle of the twentieth century, but it was the one that captured the global imagination most powerfully. Upon his release from prison, Nelson Mandela emerged as one of the world’s most revered political figures. The process of negotiation that led to the transition was seen, all over the world, as a hopeful sign that protracted conflicts could be peacefully resolved. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s inquiry into the human rights abuses of the apartheid era became a model for truth commissions in several other countries. South African writers like Fugard, Gordimer, Coetzee, and Mda earned international renown for their literary response to this compelling historical transformation. But what is the future of South Africa and South African literature? Why has the new democracy failed to live up to its promise? Has it generated new forms of cultural expression and accrued a different kind of international resonance than in the apartheid era? Is it useful to compare South Africa and the USA, both countries with histories of racial oppression, and (in the age of Trump and Zuma) of corruption, xenophobia, misogyny, and gaslighting? Most importantly: how are we to imagine freedom today?

These are the questions that animate this seminar. Our discussions will span novels, creative non-fiction, plays, graphic novels, and films. The syllabus is likely to include a manageable number of the following texts: Percy Mtwa and Mbongeni Ngema, Woza Albert!, Fatima Dike, So What’s New?, Athol Fugard, Tsotsi andselections from The Port Elizabeth Plays and Statements, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (extracts or the comic-book version), Mda, Ways of Dying, Mark Behr, The Smell of Apples, Jacob Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, Zoe Wicomb, Playing in the Light, Ivan Vladislavic, The Restless Supermarket and Portrait with Keys, Marlene van Niekerk, Triomf, Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull, J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Njabulo Ndebele, The Cry of Winnie Mandela, Nadine Gordimer, Something Out There or The Pick Up, and Trevor Noah, Born a Crime. Some of the following films will also be selected: Mandela, Son of Africa, Father of a Nation; Invictus and The16th Man; Tsotsi; Jerusalema: Gangster’s Paradise; Hijack Stories, Otello Burning, District 9; and Dear Mandela. Also, for our final week: the special issue of Safundi on Trump, Zuma, and the Grounds of US-South African Comparison.

Requirements for this course include two mid-length papers (roughly 7-10 pp.) and a creative presentation. Please note that seminar participants are not expected to have any expert knowledge of South Africa (indeed, you might enjoy discovering an entirely new place), only a lively interest in the relationship between contemporary culture and politics.

Starting with the dual challenges of Enlightenment and Revolution at the close of the eighteenth century, this course examines the emergence of modern European thought and culture in the century from Kant to Nietzsche. Themes to be considered include Romanticism, Utopian Socialism, early Feminism, Marxism, Liberalism, and Aestheticism. Readings include Kant, Hegel, Burke, Marx, Mill, Wollstonecraft, Darwin, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.

Medieval Europe was undoubtedly gruff and violent but it also gave birth to courtly culture - raw worries transformed into knights who performed heroic deeds, troubadours wrote epics in their honor and love songs about their ladies, women of the elite carved out a place in public discourse as patrons of the arts, and princely courts were increasingly defined by pageantry from jousting tournaments to royal coronations. This course will trace the development of this courtly culture from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, from its roots in Southern France to its spread to Northern France and then to various kingdoms in Europe. Central themes will include the transformation of the warrior into the knight, the relationship between violence and courtliness, courtly love, cultural production and the patronage, and the development of court pageantry and ceremonial. This is a class cultural history and, as such, will rely on the interpretation of objects of art and material culture, literature as well as historical accounts.

Ancient epic and mythology had a curious and rich afterlife in the Middle Ages. Virgil and Ovid were taught in medieval schools, read for their moral content, and revered as fiction that concealed great philosophical value. Their influence also gave rise to the great literary form of the Middle Ages, romance: narratives that place a premium on erotic love, individual quests, the unpredictability of adventure, and imaginary or exotic settings. Yet despite what may appear to be merely gratifying entertainment, myth and romance did tremendous cultural work, enabling profound explorations of history, political values, ethnic identity, gender and sexuality, and social power.

We will spend some weeks reading Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses. Then we will turn to medieval reimaginings of classical myth and metamorphosis, including poetry by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and Chaucer, and anonymous works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The course requirements will be: one very short oral presentation on a research topic of your choice related to the reading, together with a short write-up of your research; one short critical paper; and one longer research paper (which can develop the subject of your oral presentation).

This course will examine contemporary Latin American and Latinx theatre and performance from a hemispheric perspective. In particular, we will study how Latin American and Latinx artists engage with notions of identity, nation, and geo-political and geo-cultural borders, asking how we might study "national" theatres in an age of transnational globalization. Our consideration of plays, performances, and theoretical texts will situate Latin American and Latinx theatre and performance within the context of its politics, culture, and history.

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.

The course explores an aspect of 20th-century poetry intensively; specific course topics will vary from year to year.

"A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism": This, the famous opening line of The Communist Manifesto, will guide this course's exploration of the history, legacy, and potential future of Karl Marx's most important texts and ideas, even long after Communism has been pronounced dead. Contextualizing Marx within a tradition of radical thought regarding politics, religion, and sexuality, we will focus on the philosophical, political, and cultural origins and implications of his ideas. Our work will center on the question of how his writings seek to counter or exploit various tendencies of the time; how they align with the work of Nietzsche, Freud, and other radical thinkers to follow; and how they might continue to haunt us today. We will begin by discussing key works by Marx himself, examining ways in which he is both influenced by and appeals to many of the same fantasies, desires, and anxieties encoded in the literature, arts and intellectual currents of the time. In examining his legacy, we will focus on elaborations or challenges to his ideas, particularly within cultural criticism, postwar protest movements, and the cultural politics of the Cold War. In conclusion, we will turn to the question of Marxism or Post-Marxism today, asking what promise Marx's ideas might still hold in a world vastly different from his own. All readings and lectures in English.

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.