Graduate Courses
CPLT 501: Introduction to Renaissance Studies
An introduction to the major texts, issues, and methods in the interdisciplinary study of the Renaissance, with an emphasis on northern Europe.
CPLT 504 Proseminar in Translation Studies
This graduate proseminar combines a historically minded introduction to Translation Studies as a field with a survey of its interdisciplinary possibilities. The proseminar is composed of several units (Histories of Translation; Geographies of Translation; Scandals of Translation), each with a different approach or set of concerns, affording the students multiple points of entry to the field. The Translation Studies coordinator provides the intellectual through-line from week to week, while incorporating a number of guest lectures by Yale faculty and other invited speakers to expose students to current research and practice in different disciplines. The capstone project is a conference paper-length contribution of original academic research. Additional assignments throughout the term include active participation in and contributions to intellectual programming in the Translation Initiative.
CPLT 509 Advanced Literary Translation
Students apply to this workshop with a project in mind that they have been developing, either on their own or for a senior thesis, and they present this work during the class on a regular basis. Practical translation is supplemented by readings in the history of translation practice and theory, and by the reflections of practitioners on their art. These readings are selected jointly by the instructor and members of the class. Topics include the history of literary translation—Western and Eastern; comparative approaches to translating a single work; the political dimension of translation; and translation in the context of religion and theology. Class time is divided into student presentations of short passages of their own work, including related key readings; background readings in the history of the field; and close examination of relevant translations by accomplished translators. Students receive intensive scrutiny by the group and instructor.
Permission of the instructor required.
Robyn Creswell robyn.creswell@yale.edu
CPLT 510 The Mortality of the Soul: From Aristotle to Heidegger
This course explores fundamental philosophical questions of the relation between matter and form, life and spirit, necessity and freedom, by proceeding from Aristotle’s analysis of the soul in De Anima and his notion of practical agency in the Nicomachean Ethics. We study Aristotle in conjunction with seminal works by contemporary neo-Aristotelian philosophers (Korsgaard, Nussbaum, Brague, and McDowell). We in turn pursue the implications of Aristotle’s notion of life by engaging with contemporary philosophical discussions of death that take their point of departure in Epicurus (Nagel, Williams, Scheffler). We conclude by considering Heidegger’s analysis of mortality as pursuing the implications of Aristotle’s notion of the constitutive form of the soul.
This course explores fundamental philosophical questions of the relation between matter and form, life and spirit, necessity and freedom, by proceeding from Aristotle’s analysis of the soul in De Anima and his notion of practical agency in the Nicomachean Ethics. We study Aristotle in conjunction with seminal works by contemporary neo-Aristotelian philosophers (Korsgaard, Nussbaum, Brague, and McDowell). We in turn pursue the implications of Aristotle’s notion of life by engaging with contemporary philosophical discussions of death that take their point of departure in Epicurus (Nagel, Williams, Scheffler). We conclude by analyzing Heidegger’s notion of constitutive mortality, in order to make explicit what is implicit in the form of the soul in Aristotle.
This course explores fundamental philosophical questions of the relation between matter and form, life and spirit, necessity and freedom, by proceeding from Aristotle’s analysis of the soul in De Anima and his notion of practical agency in the Nicomachean Ethics. We study Aristotle in conjunction with seminal works by contemporary neo-Aristotelian philosophers (Korsgaard, Nussbaum, Brague, and McDowell). We in turn pursue the implications of Aristotle’s notion of life by engaging with contemporary philosophical discussions of death that take their point of departure in Epicurus (Nagel, Williams, Scheffler). We conclude by analyzing Heidegger’s notion of constitutive mortality, in order to make explicit what is implicit in the form of the soul in Aristotle.
Martin Hägglund martin.hagglund@yale.edu
CPLT 512 Essays: Moral Political and Literary
The course surveys the essay as a genre of writing and thinking, from Montaigne to Virginia Woolf. Among the authors are Bacon, Hume, Johnson, Hazlitt, Emerson, Shaw, Gandhi, Sartre. This is a cross-listed graduate seminar in English and Comparative Literature in the Ivy Consortium, taught in alternate weeks at Columbia University and Yale. We test Adorno’s thesis that the essay is the distinctively modern and emancipatory form of writing.
CPLT 515: Proseminar
This course introduces key problems and debates in the discipline of Comparative Literature. It examines changing theorizations of comparative method and world literature, from the eighteenth century (Goethe, Madame de Stael, Herder, Marx and Engels) to contemporary debates about translation and World Literature as a pedagogical initiative. It also explores landmark works of literary theory and historiography (Propp, Levi-Strauss, Bakhtin, Barthes, Adorno, Benjamin, Sartre, Althusser, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Kittler), looking particularly at the overlap of formal and contextual methods and of linguistic, aesthetic, cultural, philosophical and political concerns. This course is required for first and second year Comparative Literature graduate students; participants from related disciplines also welcome. The course is taken pass/fail: no term-paper, but emphasis on wide reading and intense discussion.
CPLT 515: Proseminar in Comparative Literature
Introductory proseminar for all first- and second-year students in Comparative Literature (and other interested graduate students). An introduction to key problems in the discipline of Comparative Literature, its disciplinary history, and its major theoretical and methodological debates (including philology; Marxist, structuralist, and poststructuralist approaches; world literature; translation). Emphasis on wide reading and intense discussion, in lieu of term paper. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory; offered every other year.
CPLT 516: Narrative in Law and Literature
“Whoever tells the best story wins,” a recent book addressed to corporate executives tells us. Our culture gives a large importance to what psychologist Jerome Bruner called “the narrative construction of reality.” This seminar studies narrative constructions in both law and literature, asking: how narrative creates human meanings and spurs human actions, how it creates and interprets temporality; how narratives of the past establish legal authority and modes of interpretation, ranging from originalism to textualism to purposivism; how narratives are used to persuade, to win arguments, to produce conviction. The seminar studies cases from such areas as religious rights, affirmative action, Fourth Amendment protections, as well as theories of legal interpretation and literary narratives in an effort to understand the uses of narrative and how they may be analyzed. Open to law students and graduate students in Comparative Literature, English, and other humanities departments. The seminar is for two units (for law students); oral presentations, class participation, and term paper required.
CPLT 524 Critique and Crisis
In our time, when everyone is suspected of being hypercritical, it is not surprising that the limits of critique, its function, and institutional location are called to question. The idea of “post-critique” has been much discussed in recent years. This course develops critical models, primarily from the German tradition, in order to show the great variety of options available beyond the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Topics include post-critique, the history of critique/criticism, the Romantic concept of critique, traditional vs. critical theory, historicism, philology vs. hermeneutics, science (Wissenschaft) vs. the critique of positivism. Main protagonists include Kant, Schiller, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Max Weber, Lukács, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, Koselleck, Szondi, Gadamer, Gumbrecht, Latour, Felski.
Kirk Wetters kirk.wetters@yale.edu
CPLT 547 Zählen und Erzählen: On the Relation Between Mathematics and Literature
Mathematical and literary practices of signs have numerous connections, and despite current debates on digital humanities, algorithm and the “end of the book”, the relation between calculus and writing can be traced back to around 3000 BC, when the graphé was split up into figure and character. The seminar explores this relationship by focusing on four different fields, which can be discussed separately but do exhibit numerous overlappings: a) Leibniz’ invention of infinitesimal calculus and its relation to the idea of narration from the Baroque to romanticism through to the twentieth century novel, (b) the relation between probability calculus, statistics, and novel writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, (c) the role of cypher for aesthetic and poetic questions starting with Schiller’s Letters on the esthetic education of men, to Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten, and Jenny Erpenpeck’s The old child, and (d) the economic impact of computation on poetic concepts, e.g. the role of double entry bookkeeping or models of circulation in romantic theories of money and signs. We discuss Leibniz’ Theodizee, texts on the infinitesimal calculus and his concept of an ars combinatoria, novels like The Fortunatus, Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Stifter’s “The gentle law”, Gustav Freiytag’s Debit and Credit, and Musil’s Man without content, Novalis’s notes on mathematical questions of his time, and economic texts such as Adam Müller’s Attempt on a theory of money.
CPLT 547: Slavery, Dependency, and Genocide in the Ancient and Premodern World
Covers the subject of class and ethnic repression from the third millennium B.C.E. to the mid-second millennium C.E. Analyzes textual, epigraphic, and iconographic sources for slavery, dependency, and genocide in Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Han, Germanic, Angkorian, Vietnamese, Burmese, Malay, Mayan, and Aztec cultures.
CPLT 548: The Trilogy of Mosteghanemi
Examination of the social injustices of the conservative, post-colonial Maghreb as they are clearly-and intentionally-visible in twentieth-century, contemporary literature of the region. Because of the candid themes of poverty, unemployment, prostitution, drug and alcohol use, corruption, homosexuality, isolation, and rape, much of the literature has been banned in North Africa, finding audiences instead in Europe and North America.
CPLT 549 Memory and Memoir in Russian Culture
How do we remember and forget? How does memory transform into narrative? Why do we read and write memoirs and autobiography? What can they tell us about the past? How do we analyze the roles of the narrator, the author, and the protagonist? How should we understand the ideological tensions between official historiography and personal reminiscences, especially in twentieth-century Russia? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of a few cultural celebrities’ memoirs and autobiographical writings that are also widely acknowledged as the best representatives of twentieth-century Russian prose. Along the way, we read literary texts in dialogue with theories of memory, historiography, and narratology. Students acquire the theoretical apparatus that will enable them to analyze the complex ideas, e.g., cultural memory and trauma, historicity and narrativity, and fiction and nonfiction. Students acquire an in-depth knowledge of the major themes of twentieth-century Russian history—e.g., empire, revolution, war, Stalinism, and exilic experience—as well as increased skills in the analysis of literary texts. Students with knowledge of Russian are encouraged to read in the original. All readings are available in English.
How do we remember and forget? How does memory transform into narrative? Why do we read and write memoirs and autobiography? What can they tell us about the past? How do we analyze the roles of the narrator, the author, and the protagonist? How should we understand the ideological tensions between official historiography and personal reminiscences, especially in twentieth-century Russia? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of a few cultural celebrities’ memoirs and autobiographical writings that are also widely acknowledged as the best representatives of twentieth-century Russian prose. Along the way, we read literary texts in dialogue with theories of memory, historiography, and narratology. Students acquire the theoretical apparatus that will enable them to analyze the complex ideas, e.g., cultural memory and trauma, historicity and narrativity, and fiction and nonfiction. Students acquire an in-depth knowledge of the major themes of twentieth-century Russian history—e.g., empire, revolution, war, Stalinism, and exilic experience—as well as increased skills in the analysis of literary texts. Students with knowledge of Russian are encouraged to read in the original. All readings are available in English.
CPLT 552: Readings in Modern Chinese History
In this course we read and discuss recent English-language monographs on modern Chinese history. The primary focus is topics that span the Qing to twentieth century and contain international, transnational, and comparative implications. No knowledge of Chinese required; open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor.
CPLT 554: Novel Minds: The Representation of Consciousness from Austen to Woolf
Close study of selected novels by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, with particular attention to the representation of consciousness and the development of the free indirect style. Our reading of fiction is supplemented by narrative theory drawn from James, Wayne Booth, Käte Hamburger, Ann Banfield, Gérard Genette, Dorrit Cohn, and others.
CPLT 555 Postcolonial Middle Ages
This course explores the intersections and points of friction between postcolonial studies and medieval studies. We discuss key debates in postcolonialism and medievalists’ contributions to those debates. We also consider postcolonial scholarship that has remained outside the purview of medieval studies. The overall aim is for students, in their written and oral contributions, to expand the parameters of medieval postcolonialism. Works by critics including Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Leela Gandhi, Lisa Lowe, Robert Young, and Priyamvada Gopal are read alongside medieval romances, crusade and jihād poetry, travel literature, and chronicles.
CPLT 556: Rhetorics of the Ancient World
This interdisciplinary course takes as its starting point Greco-Roman rhetoric as a codified system and explores its relevance for contemporary interpretation of ancient texts. Moving back and forth between rhetoric as a set of norms and rhetoric as a condition of discourse, we engage with contemporary rhetorical studies in Classics and Biblical studies. Topics include rhetoric and narrative, exemplarity and imitation across the literary and spiritual realms, “anti-rhetoricism,” embedded rhetorical performances (e.g., speeches, oratory, etc.), and nonverbal forms of persuasion (e.g., visual, emotional, etc.).