Consider these clichés: Poetry is what gets lost in translation. Reading literature in translation is like kissing your mother through a veil. Translation is the art of failure. The dangers of translation lie on both sides of a tightrope: literal fidelity and creative betrayal. Discussions about translation often use these and similar binaries and metaphors to depict translation as derivative. In this seminar we will integrate theory and practice to develop a renewed appreciation for the complicated task of the translator.

What is historical trauma? How does it shape communities and individual lives, including those born generations after a traumatic event? How do literature and film grapple with history, knowledge, representation, and time in the wake of a traumatic event? How can creative practices facilitate the work of survival and repair? How have states instrumentalized and standardized trauma narratives with the aim of creating a coherent national identity?

From Louis Bonaparte’s 1798 conquest of Egypt to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), colonialism has been a determining force in the shaping of Arab modernity. For almost two centuries, the Arab region has undergone a major restructuring along the nation-state model after the dismantling of the Ottoman empire and the peripheral integration into global capitalism.

Taking writing in the widest sense possible to include inscription, drawing, and the making and unmaking of traces, this class will focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings about and with plants, while also considering the metaphor of “plant writing” as something performed by plants themselves. We will consider the analogy between “close reading” and the slow work of observation and description necessary to such writing.

This course will study sexuality and gender in two very different historical periods--ancient Greece and 19th-century Europe. Sexuality will be defined as including sexual acts (e.g., sodomy, pederasty, masturbation); sexual identities (e.g., erastes and eromenos); and sexual systems (e.g., kinship structures, subcultures, political hierarchies). Readings and lectures will focus on situating queer sexualities relative to dominant organizations of sex and gender.

This is the first semester of a year-long Modern Greek Language course designed for students with no previous knowledge of the language. We will study grammar, syntax, and vocabulary in order to learn Greek as it is written and spoken today. Students will practice the skills of speaking, reading, and writing throughout the semester. In addition to our study of the language, we will watch a few Greek films in order to learn about Greek culture and history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

At first glance, translation may seem straightforward—merely transferring words from one language to another. Yet, beneath this surface simplicity lies a labyrinth of challenges: How do we translate idioms unique to one language, or convey rhythm and rhyme, or handle culturally specific humor and slang? When we read a work in translation, are we truly engaging with any “original,” or are we encountering something entirely different?

This introduction to the study of literature in comparative contexts focuses on the essay in writing, film, and photography. As a form that wonders and wanders, taking readers down circuitous paths, in playful, exhilarating, and disturbing ways, the essay makes a habit of leaving us with more questions—often without the comfort of tidy closure or a domesticated subject. As students of the essay, we will analyze its exploratory disposition toward writing while developing a robust critical language to describe the work of the essay and its social implications and engagements.