The purpose of this course is to expand the repertoire of questions and analytical tools you bring to your reading, to sharpen your linguistic sensibilities, and to consider in what sense literature is an avenue for understanding cultural dimensions of medical practice, medical ethics, health and illness, and the body-mind relationship. We will be considering questions like the following:

How does the practice of medicine reflect cultural mythologies, beliefs, habits of mind, manners, use of language?

[Note:  Enrollment in this seminar is limited exclusively to Comparative Literature students who will be writing an Honors Thesis during the 2014-2015 academic year (or very soon thereafter), and who have both the required overall and in-the-major GPA.  Instructor’s approval is required; please check with the Comparative Literature Department’s Undergraduate Advisor, Anna del Rosario.]

In recent years, many of the most celebrated and widely-read authors of postcolonial literature have produced novels that engage with a variety of sub-genres within the field of crime fiction, including the “hardboiled” detective novel, the roman noir, and the serial killer novel. What might account for this literary turn toward the dystopian, toward texts constructed around mysteries and often marked by shocking descriptions of extreme violence?

Modern Greek is unique among languages in that it is the only modern language directly descended from Ancient Greek. In this course, the student studies reading, writing, pronunciation and use of contemporary spoken idiom, all within the historical and cultural context of the language. By the end of the course, the student should have a strong grammatical and linguistic foundation in Greek as it is spoken today.

(No Prerequisite)

In this course, we will approach the work of comparison by examining a number of texts by authors from Africa and the Caribbean, all written in self-conscious relationship to earlier works from the European canon. In what ways—and to what ends—do authors rework, reimagine, and rewrite canonical literature? How are similar stories, characters, and narrative structures transformed by authors writing from different historical, cultural, and geographic locations? What dynamics of power are revealed when postcolonial perspectives are brought to bear upon European texts?

One of the enduring appeals of novels is their ability to offer us access to other mind. Thus fictional characters can feel like close friends, and reading books can often be a practice in empathetic imagination, giving us the chance (at least for a few hundred pages) to walk in another’s shoes.

What can twenty-first century readers get out of reading works that were written in Greek and Latin thousands of years ago?  Is the primary goal historical understanding? the pleasure of an engaging story? a meditation on human emotions that transcend vast shifts in culture and time?

People today do not have enough poetry in their heads, and everyone should be able to recite one or two of their favorite poems. In addition to its purely personal benefits, knowing some poetry by heart has practical applications: in a tough job interview, you can impress the prospective boss by reciting just the right line, say, from Dylan Thomas: “do not go gentle into that good night/rage rage against the dying of the light.” Or at a party some time, you’ll be able to show off with a bit of T.S.

‘Modernism’ refers to a range of literary texts, music, and other media that have changed and revolutionized the intellectual and cultural landscape at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In all areas, traditional forms were replaced by new, innovative, and  experimental forms of cultural production. This happened in response to processes of industrialization, urbanization, and social challenges. Often, this progressive reinvention of the arts has been closely linked to the experience of the First World War and to revolutionary movements.

In this course, we will think about what transformation means as we read myths, poems, plays, and stories. Using selected texts as testing grounds for our inquiry, we will consider shifts in outward form and shifts in inward feeling.  We will pay attention to model narratives of transformative experience, including stories of awakening, love, and death, and attempt to develop a system of understanding the causes and consequences of individual and environmental change. We will also necessarily think about form—the form of a story, the form of a poem—how we recognize it and why.