>> Undergraduate-level CPLS courses
CPLS BC3103: Holocaust Literature and Film.
A. Lang. MW 1:10pm-2:25pm, 324 Milbank (Barnard College).
Exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of realistic modes of depiction in literature and film of the Holocaust. The concepts of realism, experience, survival, and testimony will be discussed. Questions of narrative form, the impact of technology, and issues surrounding "post-modernism" will also enter. Readings of texts by Spiegelman, Celan, Perec, Levi, and Wiesel, as well as screenings of video testimony and films by Lanzmann, Spielberg and Resnais. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS V3675: Mad Love.
A. Mac Adam. MW 1:10pm-2:25pm, 323 Milbank (Barnard College).
The history of irrational love as embodied in literary and non-literary texts throughout the Western tradition. Readings include the Bible, Greek, Roman, Medieval, and modern texts. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS W3920: Words and Pictures.
A. Huyssen and O. Pamuk. M 4:10pm-6:00pm, 402 Hamilton.
The seminar explores the relationship between words and pictures through
history, emphasizing the visual aspects of the textual and the textual
aspects of the visual. The aim of the course is to discuss some major
representations of image-text relations in human thought and in the history
of the arts, especially in the relationship between painting and literature.
From Plato and Aristotle to Lessing, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, we will
read classical and modern texts that discuss and illustrate the philosophical
problems of the image-text relationship. Literary texts from Homer to
Baudelaire, Borges, and Sebald will be studied to explore the visual and
pictorial qualities of texts and narrative and illustrative dimensions of
pictures. Special attention will be paid to the art of ekphrasis, to the
tradition of emblems, and to the medium of miniatures both in the Christian
and Islamic traditions. Literary texts by Western and North European
travelers such as Goethe and Stendhal, which describe works of art and their
impact on the viewers, will be studied along with the writings of some major
painters (Leonardo, Delacroix, Kandinsky). Readings of short literary works by
Balzac, Wilde, Valery, Kracauer, Benjamin, and Borges that further explore,
illustrate, and describe the problems of representation and narration with
words and pictures. Limited to 20 students. Seniors only. Background in literary and art historical
studies
required. Students must submit as an application a short statement
outlining your rationale for taking the course as well as your class
standing and background in literature and/or art history. This
statement must be sent to Salvo Candela at sc2858 at columbia.edu. Students will be admitted on a first come, first served basis until the class is full. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS V3950: Colloquium in Literary Theory.
B. O'Keeffe. TR 9:10am-10:25am, 227 Milbank (Barnard College).
Examination of concepts and assumptions present in contemporary views of literature. Theory of meaning and interpretation (hermeneutics); questions of genre (with discussion of representative examples); a critical analysis of formalist, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, Marxist, and feminist approaches to literature. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS V3991: Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature and Society.
S. Gourgouris. M 11:00am-12:50pm, 402 Hamilton.
Required of all comparative literature and society majors. Intensive research
in selected areas of comparative literature and society. Topic for 2008-2009:
TBA. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS V3995: Senior Thesis in Comparative Literature and Society.
Independent study.
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]
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>> Graduate-level CPLS courses
CPLS G4090: Humanism and the Human.
S. Gourgouris. T 2:10pm-4:00pm, 902 International Affairs Building.
Reconfiguring the modern legacy of humanism in light of new demands of thinking about the humanities. Response to challenges of both anti-humanist and post-humanist critiques by positing the question "What is human?" in the domains of psyche, pedagogy, politics, as well as through the prisms of feminist epistemology and recent philosophical ruminations on the animal. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS G4180: Crime: Practices and Representation.
P. Piccato and F. Negrón-Muntaner. W 9:00am-10:50am, 802 International Affairs Building.
This seminar studies crime from historical and cultural perspectives. We will focus on the history of crime (historical trends; transgression, punishment and identities; class and enforcement, gendered violence) and the cultural representations of crime (movies and literature). The premise is that representations and practices of crime are mutually constitutive. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS G4230: Aporia of the Community: The "French" Debate: Blanchot, Nancy, Lyotard, Derrida.
E. Balibar. Five session mini-seminar: Oct. 2, 6, 9, 13, 16 (Mondays and Thursdays), 6:00pm-9:00pm, Komoda Seminar Room, HB1-7 Heyman Center.
A critical moment in the history of the question of the "community" arose within French philosophy in the decade 1983-1994. It had a twofold background (at least) in the crisis of the "communist" ideals and the developments of the new paradigm of "communication," and became a landmark of the so-called "post-structuralist" orientation. The seminar will discuss it by focusing on the exchanges between Blanchot, Nancy, Lyotard and Derrida around the possibility of a "negative" use of the collective subject ("us"). [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS G4900: Introduction to Comparative Literature and Society.
B. Edwards. W 2:10pm-4:00pm, 401 Hamilton.
An introduction to changing conceptions in the comparative study of literatures and societies, giving special attention to the stakes of interdisciplinary method in comparative scholarship. We will investigate the debates around comparativism in a number of fields, and our discussions will focus on rubrics of inquiry that combine strategies of research, analysis, and argumentation from multiple disciplinary formations: e.g. postcolonial studies, cultural studies, media studies, urban studies, globalization studies, feminism, translation studies. There will be regular faculty visitors drawn from a variety of departments in the humanities and social sciences at Columbia. Enrollment is limited and the seminar is designed for grad students working toward a degree in Comparative Literature and Society. Students are expected to have a preliminary familiarity with the discipline in which they wish to do their doctoral work. Readings may include some of the following: fiction by Tayeb Salih, W.G. Sebald, Bessie Head, Jamaica Kincaid; critical scholarship by Goethe, Hegel, Marx, Auerbach, Benjamin, Fanon, C.L.R. James, Bourdieu, Levi-Strauss, Clifford, Appadurai, Apter, Buck-Morss, Moretti, Damrosch, Harvey, Jameson, Said, Ranciere, Kittler, Butler, Trouillot, and Spivak. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS G8050: Technologies of Empire.
V. de Grazia and L. Liu. T 2:10pm-4:00pm, 406 International Affairs Building.
This course examines the mutually-embedded evolutions of technology and empire in the modern era. We will try to develop new theoretical models for thinking about political rule, machine rationality, and human life. Among other things, we will discuss mechanisms of socio-economic organization, knowledge and cultural production, communication and visual inscriptions and their use in establishing the forms of hegemony we associate with imperial rule. With an emphasis on the 19th and 20th century developments in surveillance, mapping, international legal protocols, cybernetics, population control, and so on, we will include a comparative dimension to address earlier forms of empire through the lens of technology and its implications for understanding the modern world. The course will bring some of the latest scholarship from across the disciplines of history, literature, anthropology, philosophy, and Science, Technology and Society to bear on the question of how modern technologies have transformed our understanding of the body, race, gender, and what this entails for imperial rule. The seminar serves as a starting point for an open and ongoing discussion on the methods and aims of empire studies and their implications for comparative work. Readings and discussion emphasize both history and theory with the goal of building on the conceptual terrain of the New Empire Studies in such a way as to encourage historical perspective, conceptual rigor, and self-reflection. [Link to registrar listing]
CPLS 89823: Human Rights and the Question of Culture.
K. Thomas and T. Keenan. M 4:10pm-7:00pm, 646 Greene Hall (Law School).
By instructor permission only: Please contact kthomas at law.columbia.edu or tk2003 at columbia.edu for more information. What makes culture a question for international human rights discourse? This interdisciplinary seminar explores the diverse uses of culture as a concept in contemporary human rights theory and practice. Members of the seminar will be given an opportunity to examine the universalizing methods and aspirations of traditional -- and some not-so-traditional -- human rights programs and to measure these against another style of argument and analysis whose genealogy is thought or asserted to be more specifically cultural.
The seminar will introduce and discuss concepts from a variety of disciplines which might be used to understand and interrogate the categories that underwrite the opposition between human rights and culture. We will then examine the specific strategies of rhetoric and representation that construct and sustain the relationship between human rights and culture as a real or imagined problem, in academic debate and in the world of international law and power politics. Weekly seminar meetings will focus on close reading and discussion of a broad range of materials: transcripts of legal proceedings, international treaties, conventions and declarations, commission reports, and court judgments; scholarly work in law, history, literary and cultural studies, as well as political science and theory; journalism; literature, film and video. [Link to registrar listing]
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