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Comparative Literature Courses
UWM Schedule of Classes
Fall
UWinteriM
Spring
Summer
Comparative Literature Courses, Fall 2008
133 Contemporary Imagination in Literature and the Arts 3cr (U)
Class Number: 47096, Lec001, MWF 9:00-9:50 (Fountain)
Class Number: 47098, Lec002, MWF 11:00-11:50 (Fountain)
Class Number: 47100, Lec003, TR 11:00-12:15 (Henson)
Class Number: 47102, Lec004, TR 5:30-6:45 (Willkommen)
The goal of this course is to present the student with basic knowledge of the literary movements, authors, and texts of the 20th Century. This course will introduce Comparative Literature as a discipline. The students will define basic terms used in the study of the humanities, practice literary analysis/criticism, and gain an appreciation for the problems involved in literary translation. Requirements will include reading the assigned material, class attendance, participation and assignments. Satisfies the L&S Int'l req and the Breadth (HU) req.
135 Experiencing Literature in the 21st Century: 3cr (U) Topic: The Quest of the Holy Grail
Class Number 59705 Lec001 MW 2:00-2:50 (Bolduc)
Required Discussion Section
Class Number: 59706, Dis601, F 12:00-12:50 (TBA)
Class Number: 59707, Dis602, F 1:00-1:50 (TBA)
Class Number: 59708, Dis603, F 2:00-2:50 (TBA)
This course will trace the development and transformations of the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail from medieval sources to their modern-day interpretations in film and music. We will examine the myriad symbolic meanings of the grail and the spiritual qualities of those who are designated as its keepers, while exploring the adaptation of these medieval myths into modern film. Readings will include such authors as Chrétien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Sir Thomas Malory; films will include Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's interpretation of Wagner's opera Parsifal, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
192 Freshman Seminar Topic: Discovering Food: Myth, Ritual and Symbol
Class Number: 60073, Sem001, TR 9:30-10:45 (Fountain)
Throughout history the banquet has provided special inspiration for artists as demonstrated in literary texts, in paintings of the Masters, in music of great composers and in films of major directors. An artist may include a banquet to reflect diversity: of those eating, what is eaten, how it is eaten and what happens while it is being eaten leaving an archive of anthropological development and cultural history. The banquet in art is a revelation of individual character and social complexity. The participants in this seminar will search the shelves of the aesthetic market for representations of banquets in literature, art, film and music and will share them "at the table" as they converse with their "companions." Our goal will be to develop a methodology for discovering the powerful symbolic meaning that food and its sharing has for both the artist in making a work of art and for those interpreting it.
192 Freshman Seminar Topic: The Bible in African Cultures
Class Number: 60088, Sem001, TR 11:00-12:15 (Williams)
207 World Literature in Translation: Antiquity through the 1600s 3cr (U)
Class Number: 47104, Lec001, TR 11:00-12:15pm (TBA)
208 World Literature in Translation: The 17th to the 21st Century 3cr (U)
Class Number: 47106, Lec001, MW 2:00-3:15 (TBA)
230 Literature and Society 3cr (U) Topic: Women Writers and Sexuality
Class Number: 59666, Lec001, MW 2:00-3:15 (Pitt)
In this class, we will explore multiple ways in which sexuality has been constructed and understood through literature. We will study works by women from a diverse range of historical and cultural contexts, and we will analyze the assumptions about sexuality, gender, and sexual identity that these works embrace or challenge. We will also pay particular attention to the suggested relationships between sexuality and other elements of human existence. What can sexuality reveal about the relationship between the individual and society? In what ways has sexuality been associated both with "public" concerns, such as power and politics, and with "personal" concerns, like family and kinship? How has sexuality been "deployed" as a form of social resistance? And finally, how are literary texts able to reinforce, to resist, or to reconfigure these cultural constructions of sexuality?
230 Literature and Society 3cr (U) Topic: Nazi Invasion of Polish Life and Culture
Class Number: 51412, Lec401, MWF 10:00-10:50 (Fountain)
Required Discussion Section
Class Number: 53128, Lec601, F 9:00-9:50 (TBA)
Class Number: 53232, Lec602, F 10:00-10:50 (TBA)
Class Number: 53234, Lec603, F 12:00-12:50 (TBA)
An investigation into the historical, sociological, fictional, texts concerning the persecution of the Jewish and Catholic Peoples of Poland and the "foreign victims" brought to Poland by the Nazis for extermination. Students will be exposed to the rise of Nazism in Germany and its tragic intrusion into Polish history. The ethical and moral issues challenged traditional religious and humanistic teachings. Ordinary people were forced people to make decision to be victim, perpetrator, by-stander or rescuer. The people of each country under the Nazis experienced the effects of Nazi ideology differently. For example, Jewish life in Poland was much different from the assimilated Jewish Life in Germany or France. Catholic life in Poland was different than Catholic life in France. Through disciplined reading, the student will appreciate the history, literature and human witnesses of this momentous era of human failure and triumph.
231 Literature and Religion 3cr (U) Topic: Bible as Lit: The Christian Foundation
Class Number: 47108, Lec001, TR 12:30-1:45 (Fountain)
The Christian Scriptures have influenced artists as culture has developed from the beginning of the Common Era to the present. First objective: to recreate the community that produced the "New Testament" as well as other writings not so canonized. During the course of the semester, the student will come to appreciate more the way the Gospels were formed and the influential letters written to the newly formed Christian Communities as they spread concentrically from the cradle of the foundation encountering different cultures that challenged and, at times, were incorporated into the original Good News message values and concerns and histories of various cultures. Second objective: to give the student the opportunity to learn how and why these texts influenced future writers, musicians and painters who chose to use them as allusions to support their themes. Importance: The Christian Writings have been one of the rich sources for enjoyment of the Arts and a basis for other cultural expressions.
231 Literature and Religion 3cr (U) Topic: The Quaran as Literature
Class Number: 59670, Lec001, TR 9:30-10:45 (Seymour-Jorn)
This course will introduce students to the major themes and styles of the Quran. We will begin the course with a brief introduction to the life of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, and the contexts of revelelation. We will then read the text itself with the aid of relevant chapters by Fazlur Rahman, Issa Boulatta and other commentators. We will explore major narrative forms within the Quran, along with dominant images and perspectives on issues such as the relationship between humans and God, and the relationship between God and nature. We will discuss issues of exegesis and interpretation from a historical perspective, but we will also look at more contemporary concerns about readings of certain verses. Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Quran. Boullatta, Issa. Coming to Terms with the Quran. Ali, Ahmad. The Quran: A Contemporary Translation.
233 Literature and Politics 3cr (U) Topic: The Gangster Film in the East and West
Class Number: 60030, Lec001, TR 11:00-12:15 (Xu)
This class will study the gangster film as a genre originating in America and how after traveling to other parts of the world, especially Asia, it undergoes interesting changes while retaining important generic features. Although as in other continents the genre has been frequently bent, hybridized, or parodied to fit the cultural needs of the local, its transplant has also made it truly global. By comparing Asian gangsters with their Western counterparts in theme, style, visual content, and social function, we want to find out what common qualities bind them. A good knowledge of how this popular cultural form travels and finds home in the East may lead to a deepened understanding about the processes of global modernity that has been inexorably transforming the spatial and temporal structures of our lives. Our objectives are to learn to analyze film texts from different parts of the world with a comparatist approach, and to learn to construct interpretive arguments that are clear, coherent, persuasive, and well organized. The course satisfies the international requirement.
293 Machines Versus Humanity 3cr (U) Topic: Literature, Science, and Technology
Class Number: TBA, Lec001, TBA (Russell)
What is the role of science and technology in determining how we consider our identities through literature and other aesthetic forms? Do our philosophical ideas and theories about the possibilities inherent within the advances of science evoke fears of a loss of nature and human identity? Or, do we feel that the products of technology will assist us in overcoming our immanent limitations as individual and social beings? Ranging from German Gothic tales and Mary Shelley's classic proto-cyborg novel, Frankenstein, to art and literature concerned with the emerging recording technologies of photography and film in the early twentieth century, and on to the various contemporary media (literature, graphic novels, film, anime) exploring cybernetic bioengineering, information technology, and natural ecologies, we will examine the roots of our alternating fascination and dread with regard to science and technology across a wide historical spectrum and from a number of different national literatures. As we tend to think of ourselves as living in culture driven by the need for and dissemination of "information" as some kind of transparent truth or reflection of reality, what will emerge from this survey is a deeper appreciation for the ways in which science and technology, in various guises through time, have always been important lenses through which we view the essence of what it means to be human.
350 Topics in Comparative Literature 3cr (U/G) Topic: Love and Death in the European Novel
Class Number: 60029, Lec001, TR 2:00-3:15 (Paik)
It has been said that in a middle class society, the most important decision that a person has to make relates to his or her choice of spouse. In this course we will be looking at how the European novel of the 18th and 19th centuries explored this and other questions relating to romance. How are conceptions of love related to the issue of identity? What role did unrequited love and illicit desire play in the emergence of modern individuality? Readings may include Persuasion by Jane Austen, Elective Affinities by J. W. von Goethe, Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos, The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette, and The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.
360 Seminar in Literature and Cultural Experience 3cr (U/G) Topic: Arabic Women Writers in Translation
Class Number: 59671, Sem001, MW 9:30-10:45 (Seymour-Jorn)
This course will explore Arabic women's literary production. We will focus primarily upon novels and short stories from the Arab East (Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Iraq) and from Egypt. However, we will also look at some examples of short fiction and poetry from the Arab West (Algeria and Morocco). The course will explore narrative and other strategies that women writers use to represent female experience of gender ideologies, war, religion and family life. We will also explore women writers quest for identity in rapidly changing social, economic and political contexts. Throughout the course, we will make use of the texts to discuss the complex dynamic between Arab/Middle Eastern nationalisms and feminisms, and the ways in which women have been involved in these ideological movements. No prereq. Satisfies the L&S Int'l req. and GER(HU). Affiliated with Women's Studies and Cultures and Communities.
365 Literatures and Cultures of the Americas 3cr (U/G) Topic: Comparative Caribbeans
Class Number: 60319, Lec001, MW 3:30-4:45 (Pitt)
The Caribbean has long been a geographical and cultural crossroads of the hemisphere, and since 1492 has paradoxically functioned as both the central hub and the marginalized periphery of the transatlantic world. As Antonio Benítez-Rojo suggests, the "main obstacles to any global study of the Caribbean's societies, insular or continental, are exactly those things that scholars usually adduce to define the area: its fragmentation; its instability; its reciprocal isolation; its uprootedness; its cultural heterogeneity; its lack of historiography and historical continuity; its contingency and impermanence; its syncretism, etc." This course will explore the diverse and dynamic cultures of the region, providing multiple avenues through which to approach the study of the Caribbean and examining the complexities inherent in developing any comprehensive theory of the area, its culture, its history, or its arts.
371 Rethinking Global Security 3cr (U/G)
Class Number: 40218, Lec001, TR 2:00-3:15 (Paik)
* Cross-listed with Global Studies
What does security mean in an interconnected and interdependent world, where boundaries are uncertain and grievances can easily be magnified? How might we best address the leading threats of the present day - global warming, terrorism, new epidemics such as SARS and bird flu, and cyber-crime? What are the unseen or little-noticed hazards that a focus on the recognized dangers might lead us to overlook? This course will not only examine the fundamental issues associated with the concept of international security, but also look at problems relating to culture, religion, and ways of life that often go unaddressed in the notion of security as understood by many of the analytic frameworks provided by political science and international relations.
As the first of three courses in the global security track, this foundational course has the following three objectives: (1) to prompt critical reflection on basic concepts of security and an awareness of the changes it has undergone in the world today; (2) to develop frameworks for analyzing content from diverse forms of media with regard to the issues of security; and (3) to develop a comparative, historical, and global perspective on security issues. To those ends, much of our work here will include the reading and analysis of texts and the interpreting of texts as an exercise in both writing (with an emphasis on essay form) and oral presentation. All of our coursework requires careful reading and thinking, and necessitates the adequate use of evidence to support our interpretations.
533 Seminar in Trends in Modern Literature 3cr (U/G) Topic: Desire, Subjectivity, and Textuality
Class Number: 59672, Sem001, TR 3:30pm-4:45pm (Xu)
If desire, as Foucault makes clear, is bound up with all sorts of social and institutional practices and discourses-with questions of law, gender, and sexuality, with the discourses of medicine, theology, economics and so on, then studying how desire generates and is generated by literary texts inevitably opens onto the questions of history, politics, and ideology in literature. This seminar will examine how desire, in its mobile, endlessly displaced, and mediated form, constitutes in (post)modern literature an array of subjectivities forming a signifying chain of intertextual meaning. We shall explore how in the different parts of the world the drama of desire's transgression and containment plays out differently, thus inscribing subjectivities within different cultural norms and social orders, enabling as well different forms of resistance and subversion. The course will integrate a wide range of narrative fictions with critical essays in philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminist and postcolonial studies to achieve a deep understanding about the workings of desire in relation to language and textuality within different cultural traditions and modernities.
820 Translation Theory 3cr (G)
Class Number: 60100, Lec001, R 4:30pm-7:10pm (Terando)
This course offers a survey of translation theory from historical to contemporary thinkers. Students read statements about the role of translation in the development languages, cultures and societies, the process of translation and the role of the translator. Students also compare various translations of a given work to analyze the cultural and ideological forces shaping the translations. Finally, students hone their own abilities to engage in theoretical thought about translation. Prereq: Grad. standing.
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