World Literatures

WLT 100cw Topics: Introduction to World Literatures-Cannibals, Witches, Virgins (4 Credits)

An examination of the rewritings and adaptations of the three iconic figures of Shakespeare’s The Tempest—Caliban the demi-devil savage other, Sycorax the devil-whore, and Miranda the virgin-goddess—by writers from different geographies, time periods and ideological persuasions. Using texts such as Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban, Lemuel Johnson’s Highlife for Caliban, Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, the class seeks to understand how postcolonial, feminist and postmodern rewritings of The Tempest transpose its language and characters into critiques of colonialism, nationhood, race, gender and difference. Restrictions: WLT 100 may be repeated once with a different topic. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 100wl Topics: Introduction to World Literatures-What is World Literature? (4 Credits)

This course focuses on the global circulation of texts and ideas. With a historical arc that spans from the ancient world to the present, the course explores important cross-cultural influences and traces evolving ideas about “world,” “region,” and “nation” in the context of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history. The semester culminates by taking Nobel-prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (a major text in the Latin Boom of the 60s and 70s) as a case study for thinking about the the textual, social, political, and economic dimensions of the dynamic and evolving category of “world literature." (E) Literature

Fall

WLT 150 The Art of Translation: Poetics, Politics, Practice (2 Credits)

Translations are everywhere: on television news, in radio interviews, in movie subtitles, in international bestsellers. But translations don’t shift texts transparently from one language to another. Rather, they revise, censor and rewrite original works, to challenge the past and to speak to new readers. The course explores translation in a range of contexts by hearing lectures by experts in the history, theory and practice of translation. Knowledge of a foreign language is useful but not required. S/U only. Can be taken concurrently with FRN 295. Literature

Spring

WLT 177dp Colloquium: Topics in World Literatures-Dwelling Poetically (4 Credits)

To introduce the pleasures of poetry, this course travels through poems on themes of journeying and dwelling, voyage and return, travel and home, wandering, war and immigration. Reading ancient Chinese songs and Greek epic to contemporary docupoetry and rap, the course explores key elements of poetic art (voice, metre, tropes, image and suggestion). Students encounter less concrete effects as they confront ambiguity, develop interpretive imagination, and surmise poetry’s powers and stakes. What is a poem? How and when does poetry affect the world? The class also considers the art, ethics and politics of translation, and students compose and translate short poems. Restrictions: WLT 177 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 177ew Colloquium: Topics in World Literatures-Epic Worlds (4 Credits)

A comparison of the first literary works to emerge from oral story-telling traditions among several ancient, medieval, and modern peoples to express their highest ideals and sense of collective identity: the Mesopotamian "Gilgamesh," the Indian "Mahabharata," the Old Irish "Táin Bó Cúailnge," the Medieval Welsh "Four Branches of the Mabinogi," the Finnish "Kalevala" and the Nyanja (Congolese) "Mwindo." The course explores these epics as sites of cultural formation and moral contest, and especially seeks to understand their world-views, value systems, and trajectory of human history through time as these are revealed in the life-struggles of vividly imagined heroes and heroines. Restrictions: WLT 177 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. WI Literature

Spring, Variable

WLT 205 African Literature (4 Credits)

A study of the major writers and diverse literary traditions of Africa, with emphasis on the historical, political, social and cultural contexts of the emergence of writing, reception and consumption. The course pays particular attention to several questions: in what contexts did modern African literature emerge? Is the term "African literature" a useful category? How do African writers challenge Western representations of Africa? How do they articulate the crisis of postcoloniality? How do women writers reshape our understanding of gender and the politics of resistance? Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 214 Moonlit Lovers and Bloodstained Kings: Premodern Indian Literature (4 Credits)

Lovers meet in a moonlit grove, away from prying eyes. Kings dripping with blood loom over battlefields strewn with fallen enemies. Narratives full of intrigue and pathos abound in the premodern literatures of India and in this class students become sahṛdayas (“those with heart”)— sensitive readers and connoisseurs of these compelling tales. The course uses Indian literary and poetic theory to build a critical toolbox to analyze readings. Primary sources range from the fifth century BCE until the sixteenth century CE in a variety of India’s languages including Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Rajasthani. Though the focus is on premodern materials, the course explores these texts’ enduring legacies in contemporary art, culture, and politics. (E) Literature

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

WLT 218 Holocaust Literature (4 Credits)

What is a Holocaust story? How does literature written in extremis in ghettos, death camps or in hiding differ from the vast post-war literature about the Holocaust? How to balance competing claims of individual and collective experience, the rights of the imagination and the pressures for historical accuracy? Selections from a variety of genres (diary, reportage, poetry, novel, graphic novel, memoir, film, monuments, museums) and critical theories of representation. All readings in translation. No prerequisites. Historical Studies; Literature

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

WLT 222 Writing the Seas: Literatures of the Indian Ocean World (4 Credits)

The regions of Africa, South Asia, and the Arabian peninsula have been interconnected across the Indian Ocean for centuries. This course explores literary representations of this water body as a theatre of world history and contemporary relation, considering perspectives from the diverse but interconnected ecologies, cultures, belief systems, and aesthetic forms of a maritime region marked by colonization, forced migration, trade and cultural exchange. Students discuss how authors have represented the historical forces prompting movement of people and ideas, pay attention to how gender has differentiated experience, and consider translation in a densely multilingual zone of cultural contact. Prerequisite: At least one college level literature course. (E) Literature

Spring, Variable

WLT 231 Contemporary Arabic Literature (4 Credits)

Explores contemporary Arabic literature and culture, from the second half of the 20th century to the present. The course examines Arabic literature as it struggles to comprehend and, at times, redefine itself in the wake of the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. While texts emerge from discrete national identities, the course also focuses on their transnational concerns, paying attention to the sociopolitical and historical contexts that give rise to them. Discussions explore how literature provides a window into Bedouin life, the Palestinian experience, life in advanced petroeconomies, and contemporary Arab women’s experiences. (E) Literature

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

WLT 234 Banned! Art and Censorship (4 Credits)

What makes a book too dangerous to read? A film too obscene to watch? Who decides what stories should be silenced—and why? This course explores the history of censorship, artistic rebellion, and the power of “forbidden” narratives. The course starts from Plato’s decision to ban poets from his Republic, and from there surveys a range of banned books across time and space. From Don Quixote to Ulysses, the course examines why certain books and films have been deemed too shocking, subversive, or politically volatile for public consumption. What effects did censors fear these texts would have on readers or spectators? How can artistic form itself be perceived as dangerous? This course challenges students to think critically about the stakes of censorship, artistic freedom, and what makes art worth defending. (E) Literature

Fall, Spring, Annually

WLT 240 Imagining Black Freedom: African, Caribbean and African American Literature (4 Credits)

An examination of race, identity, and resistance in African, Caribbean, and African American literatures through the lens of coming-of-age novels. This course will enable students to critically engage the political and aesthetic imperatives of black writing by interrogating the thematics and legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racism. How do writers of Africa and the African diaspora appropriate the Bildungsroman as a literary form in their constructions of identity, freedom, and citizenship? What makes this genre particularly useful for the liberatory project of black imagination? Writers include Ngugi, Dangarembga, Wicomb, Cliff, Kincaid, Morrison and Wright. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 257 Language and Power in the Age of Global English (4 Credits)

How are understandings of literature shaped by the politics of language? This course explores approaches to the study of “World literature(s),” including important interventions from postcolonial and translation theory, in an increasingly monolingual world. The first half of the course considers such terms as cosmopolitan, global, modern, and universal; alongside counterpart notions of vernacular, local, traditional and particular. The course asks how language relates to ideas of nationalism, nativism, and to the making of canons. The course then narrows focus to how these terms and debates are inflected in African literatures with East Africa as the primary case study. Prerequisite: ENG 199, WLT 100, or other college level literature course. Restriction: Not open to first-years. (E) Literature

Spring, Variable

WLT 266md Colloquium: Topics in South African Literature and Film-Modern (4 Credits)

A study of South African literature and cinema from apartheid era to the present. The course focuses on the ways in which the political, economic and cultural forces of colonialism and apartheid have shaped culture and politics in contemporary South Africa. The course also pays attention to the ways in which literature and film helps us visualize the relationship between power and violence in apartheid and post-struggle South Africa. Enrollment limited to 18. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 270 Colloquium: Health and Illness: Literary Explorations (4 Credits)

From medieval Chinese tales to memoirs about SARS and COVID-19, this cross-cultural literary inquiry explores how conceptions of selfhood and belonging inform ideas about well-being, disease, intervention and healing. How do languages, social norms and economic contexts shape experiences of health and illness? From depression and plague to aging, disability and death, how do sufferers and their caregivers adapt in the face of infirmity or trauma? Our study will also consider how stories and other genres can help develop resilience, compassion and hope. Enrollment limited to 20. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 271 Writing in Translation: Bilingualism in the Postcolonial Novel (4 Credits)

A study of bilingualism as a legacy of colonialism, as an expression of exile, and as a means of political and artistic transformation in recent texts from Africa and the Americas. We consider how such writers as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya), Assia Djebar (Algeria), Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique) and Edwidge Danticat (Haiti/U.S.) assess the personal and political consequences of writing in the language of a former colonial power, and how they attempt to capture the esthetic and cultural tensions of bilingualism in their work. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 275 Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Sources, Tales, Transformations (4 Credits)

This course delves deep into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middleearth, focusing on The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and its prelude, The Hobbit (1937). The course looks back to Tolkien’s inspiration from medieval literature and traditional lore, and forward to the manifold adaptations of his works in diverse media. At the center of the course are Tolkien’s texts, which the course considers as a nexus of venerable and modern literary traditions, a repository for cultural criticism, a laboratory for linguistic experimentation, an environment for philosophical exploration, and a paradigm for multi-media worldbuilding. Cannot be taken S/U. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) Literature

Fall, Spring, Alternate Years

WLT 277 Jewish Fiction (4 Credits)

What is the relationship between the homeless imagination and imagined homecomings, political upheaval and artistic revolution, the particularity of national experience and the universality of the Jew? Focuses on four masters of the 20th-century short story and novel: Franz Kafka’s enigmatic narratives of modern alienation; Isaac Babel’s bloody tales of Revolution; Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yiddish demons and Nobel prize laureate S. Y. Agnon's neo-religious parables of loss and redemption. All readings in translation; open to any student with a love of great literature. Literature

Spring, Variable

WLT 300 Foundations in Contemporary Literature Theory (4 Credits)

This course serves as an introduction to a variety of practices and positions in critical theory. The first half of the course introduces major paradigms like psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. The second half traces the influence of these approaches on fields like gender and queer studies, media studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies. Using a combination of literary case studies and examples from contemporary culture, the course treats theory as a crucial tool for understanding the world around us. Recommended for students interested in thinking critically about art, culture, and politics, and for students interested in graduate school in the humanities. Enrollment limited to 25. Literature

Fall

WLT 340md Seminar: Topics in World Literatures-Media of Dissent (4 Credits)

What is the art of dissent? How have dissident writers, musicians, artists and activists pursued justice and repair? How do social movements use artistic media to voice resistance and make demands? To confront violence, exploitation and existential risks, the class looks at art, fiction, poetry, film, music and social media. Students practice visual analysis, close reading, historicization, scholarly research and debate, public writing and making their own media of dissent. Works from China and France, Russia, the United States and beyond. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. Literature

Fall, Spring, Variable

WLT 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)

Readings in the original language (or in certain cases translations) of literary texts read in or closely related to a course taken with a faculty member appointed in comparative literature. Students are encouraged to contact the instructor during the prior semester. Instructor permission required.

Fall, Spring

WLT 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)

Prerequisites: Requirements for the major. This course is a thesis to be written in both semesters of the senior year. A full draft of the thesis is due the first Friday of March. The final draft is due mid-April, to be followed by an oral presentation and discussion of the thesis. For more detailed requirements, see the WLT website, at the end of the list of courses. Department permission required.

Fall, Spring