“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin, my soul.  Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.  Lo.  Lee.  Ta”

Nikos Kazantzakis was influenced, like so many other writers of his Modernist generation, by several moral and ethical trends of thought. The author himself, in his semi-fictional autobiography Report to Greco, acknowledges the influence of Bergson and Nietzsche and at the same time, he expresses his admiration for Buddha, Christ, Lenin, etc. This course focuses on the fictional works of Nikos Kazantzakis and it examines how this writer handles issues of ethical and moral relativism and absolutism in his works of the imagination.

Please note: This course is sponsored by Slavic Studies but can be used to satisfy Comp. Lit major requirements. Please refer to explanation at the end of the description for more information.

We will be interested in a number of the philosophical and political questions certain French existentialist writers (Sartre and Beauvoir) set out to confront in their novels (in particular, those having to do with race, sexuality, and colonialism).   We will also be interested in some of the international networks in which their writing came to be caught up as a result.  We will consider how their reading of certain American novelists (in particular Dos Passos and Wright) influenced their own existentialist writing practice.  In our investigation of literary networks, we will consider the

This course is designed to explore foundational narratives of the Americas in the 19th century by focusing on the writings of Melville and Sarmiento. We will look at the ways in which these great masters of prose imagined the conflicts of the emerging liberal republic and the contradictions that they encountered as mid-nineteenth modernity came upon them.  In this context, the representation of the North/South divide and the fictions of nation, race, and otherness will be important for our discussions.

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)

How and why do literary texts designate themselves as coming from hell? We will investigate the question of what comparative literature is through the lens of texts that set out to contest the social and literary norms within which literature must constitute its meanings.  We will read a range of texts, mostly modern and Western, which the authors explicitly or covertly associate with the underworld of crime or evil and literary subversion.

This course will connect the structures of narrative with the structures of social life in two ways: we will examine the ways that social practices (such as marriage or class hierarchies) intersect with and shape the literary forms of narration; we will also examine the relationship between the language of social life (e.g.

While making no claim to proportional representation or thoroughness, this class tries to survey some of California’s literary and artistic output that directly addresses the intense hybridity of California’s history.  Looking at writing in various genres and media, this class will try to make the concept of California as unstable as those of race, ethnicity, and community.  Without snubbing the particularity of each text, we will look at what these contesting and at times even revisionist gestures have in common across genres, communities, personas and identities.  In addition to high lite

As has been often noted, the rise of the modern metropolis and the ascendancy of the novel go hand in hand.  But what is the nature of their relationship? Does the novel merely “represent” the city? Or do novels and other urban texts actually shape the metropolis and our experience of it?