>> Undergraduate-level CPLS courses
CPLS V3900: Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society. 3 pts.
H. Dabashi. W 2:10pm-4:00pm.
Introduction to concepts and methods of comparative literary and cultural study. Emphasis on comparative literature as a discipline, its relationship to theoretical currents, and to interdisciplinary areas of study. Topics include narrative and nation; subjectivity and identities; literature of travel, exile, and diaspora; oral, print, and visual culture.
Open only to students intending to declare a major in Comparative Literature and Society in spring 2009. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS W3937: The Culture of Democracy. 4 pts.
S. Gourgouris. M 11:00am-12:50pm.
The point is to examine democracy not as political system, but as a historical phenomenon characterized by a specific culture: a body of ideas and values, stories and myths. This culture is not homogeneous; it has a variety of historical manifestations through the ages but remains nonetheless cohesive. The objective is twofold: 1) to determine which elements in democratic culture remain fundamental, no matter what form they take in various historical instances; 2) to understand that the culture of democracy is indeed not abstract and transcendental but historical, with its central impetus being the interrogation and transformation of society.[Link to registrar listing]
CPLS V3995: Senior Thesis On Comparative Literature and Society. 3 pts.
Students who decide to write a senior thesis should enroll in this tutorial. They should also identify during the previous semester a member of the faculty in a relevant department who will be willing to supervise their work and who is responsible for assigning the final grade. The thesis is a rigorous research work of approximately 40 pages (including a bibliography formatted in MLA style). It may be written in English or in another language relevant to the student's scholarly interests. The thesis should be turned in on the announced due date as hard copy to the Director of Undergraduate Studies. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS W4411: Poetry and Decolonization. 3 pts. CANCELLED
CPLS BC3122: Big Brother: Poetics of Power. 3 pts.
P. Usher. TuTh 4:10p - 5:25p.
Explores the representation of institutional power and personal authority in world literature and international cinema through the lens of contemporary theory and with an emphasis on the fantasies of "Big Brother". Readings and screenings include Orwell, Nabokov, Kafka, Lucan, Winterson as well as Coppola, Hitchcock, Chaplin and Godard.[Link to registrar listing]
CPLS BC3125: Opera and Literature/Opera as Literature. 3 pts.
J. Crapotta. MW 11:00a - 12:15p.
What is an operatic text and how do we "read" it? Examination of the changing relationship between text and music in opera; operatic transformations of literature; opera's representation in literature; critical readings of opera (psychoanalytic, feminist, queer). Works by Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Debussy, and Britten.[Link to registrar listing]
CPLS BC3140: Europe Imagined: Images of the New Europe in 20th-Century Literature. 3 pts.
E. Grimm. TuTh 4:10p - 5:25p.
Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, A. Souif, O. Pamuk, C. Noteboom, W.G. Sebald, J. Barnes, and others.[Link to registrar listing]
CPLS BC3156: Figures in a Landscape: Literary Topographies from Homer to H.D. 3 pts.
N. Worman. MW 2:40p - 3:55p.
Exploration of how and why landscape imagery is deployed in the western literary tradition as a map of cultural values, aesthetic ambitions, ideological critique, and /or artistic authority. Readings will include Aristophanes' Frogs, Plato's Phaedrus, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Proust's Under the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, and H.D.'s poems. These will be supplemented with images from different periods of landscape painting. Secondary readings will take advantage of the recent explosion of interest in landscape and topographical imagery in many fields, including cultural geography and landscape architecture.[Link to registrar listing]
CPLS BC3997: Senior Seminar 4 pts.
E. Grimm. F 12:10p - 2:00p.
Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s). [Link to registrar listing]
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>> Graduate-level CPLS courses
CPLS G4240: The Secular Imagination. 3 pts.
S. Gourgouris. W 2:10pm-4:00pm.
This course focuses on the history of secularization and the political, philosophical, and psychoanalytic dimensions of secular mentalities. The purpose is to raise and explore the question: what distinguishes a secular mentality, if such a thing may be even considered as such? The course is not a study of secularism as a social-historical and political institution, but may be thought as the theoretical preliminary to such a study. Ultimately, we shall experiment with the idea of disengaging the ‘secular’ from its locked opposition with the ‘religious’ – all the while, raising a question as to why these signifying terms bear even a coherence and investigating how the term “the secular imagination” might be better understood as a force that undoes various uncritical and unexamined modes of identity-formation that seem to reign in our time. I don’t consider it a requirement, but I do think it’s a good idea that students are familiar with Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question” and Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS G4045: Translating Indigenous Languages in South Africa: Politics and Poetics. 1.5 pts.
A. Krog. Eight session mini-seminar: (Mondays and Wednesdays) April 6-29 6:10pm-8:00pm.
Literature that originates within an indigenous language, addressing indigenous audiences, is often full of meaning and significance that is relatively free of the presence of the dominating culture when compared to that produced when colonized people write in the colonizer's language and address themselves to the colonizer's ear—even when these literatures refer to colonial processes. In order to learn from these indigenous literatures, it is necessary to translate in order to learn to hear. This course introduces students to the problematic and the practice of translating indigenous language literatures in South Africa. Confronting indigenous language materials both orally and visually, students will be asked to consider the possibilities afforded by listening to indigenous literature while also reflecting upon the motives for wanting to understand what is being said by indigenous people and/or minority groups in South Africa and elsewhere. They will then analyze how these motives manifest themselves in and determine translational practice. Students will examine and attempt translations that are differently motivated by the values of foreignness, indigeneity and authenticity, while comparing strategies of fidelity—as these have been theorized and enacted by different translators. The course is organized around the reading, translation and analysis of biographical prose, love and political poems, as well as select testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Informed by readings in poststructuralist translation theory, students will then consider the forms of contradiction, difference and resistance legible in a decolonizing South Africa, while confronting the possibilities of both gain and loss in translation. Students with training in indigenous languages are especially welcome, but the course is open to all students who have knowledge of at least two languages. Interested graduate or undergraduate students should submit a one-paragraph statement explaining
their reasons for taking the course and detailing any classes they have taken concerning translation, especially regarding African languages. Applications should be emailed to Najeeba Rajah, Assistant Director, ICLS, at nrajah@columbia.edu. THE APPLICATION DEADLINE IS JANUARY 30, 2009.
[Link to registrar listing]
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