Undergraduate Courses

LITR 130: How to Read

Introduction to techniques, strategies, and practices of reading through study of lyric poems, narrative texts, plays and performances, films, new and old, from a range of times and places. Emphasis on practical strategies of discerning and making meaning, as well as theories of literature, and contextualizing particular readings. Topics include form and genre, literary voice and the book as a material object, evaluating translations, and how literary strategies can be extended to read film, mass media, and popular culture. Junior seminar; preference given to juniors and majors.

Course multi titled as HUMS130

Professor: Katie Trumpener
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2017
Day/Time: Monday, Wednesday 1:00p.m.-2:15p.m.

LITR 140, How to Compare

This course is an exploration of literary comparison from methodological as well as historical perspectives. We compare texts within genres, across genres and media, across periods, and between cultures and languages. We consider questions such as whether all comparisons must assume a common ground, and whether there is always an implicit politics to any comparison. Topics range from theories of translation and ekphrasis to exoticism and untranslatability. Readings include classics by critics such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and Kristeva, and writers such as Marie de France, Nezami, and Calvino. It also engages with the literature of our own moment: we will read a newly-translated novel by the Chilean writer Nona Fernàndez, and the exiled Iranian poet Kayvan Tahmasebian will visit the class for a conversation. We will also discuss films (Parajanov and Barta) and a new Russian computer game.

This course fulfills an introductory requirement for students considering one of the majors in the Comparative Literature department, but all are welcome, and the methodologies and questions discussed in the class are useful for any kind of humanistic inquiry.

Professor: Samuel Hodgkin
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2020
Day/Time: Tuesday, 3:30-5:20pm

LITR 140: How to Compare

Exploration of literary comparison. Study of different literary and aesthetic objects, as well as different means and ends that such comparisons can have. Topics range from theories of translation and ekphrasis to proper use of archives. Readings include works by Borges, Andre Breton, Chen Kaige, Hafiz, Dickinson, Ovid, Durrenmatt, Murasaki Shikubu, Mambety, and Segalen; the paintings of Mantegna, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio; as well as the Pancatantra, Arabian Nights, and the oral epics of the Haida. Junior seminar; preference given to juniors and majors.

Professor: Robyn Creswell, Professor: Marta Figlerowicz
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:00p.m.-2:15p.m.

An exploration of literary comparison from methodological as well as historical perspectives. We compare texts within genres (stories and stories), across genres (poems and paintings), across periods (classical and modern), and between cultures and languages. We consider questions such as whether all comparisons must assume a common ground, and whether there is always an implicit politics to any comparison. Topics range from theories of translation and ekphrasis, to exoticism and untranslatibility. Readings include texts by Auerbach, Borges, Andre Breton, Hafiz, Victor Segalen and Edward Said; and films by Chen Kaige and Pasolini.

Professor: Robyn Creswell, Professor: Jing Tsu
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Wednesday, 2:30pm-4:20pm

This course is an exploration of literary comparison from methodological as well as historical perspectives. We compare texts within genres, across genres and media, across periods, and between cultures and languages. We consider questions such as whether all comparisons must assume a common ground, and whether there is always an implicit politics to any comparison. Topics range from theories of translation and ekphrasis to exoticism and untranslatability. Readings include classics by critics such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and Kristeva, and writers such as Marie de France, Nezami, and Calvino. It also engages with the literature of our own moment: we will read a newly-translated novel by the Chilean writer Nona Fernàndez, and the Iranian poet Kayvan Tahmasebian will visit the class for a conversation. We will also discuss films (Parajanov and Barta) and a new Russian computer game.

This course fulfills an introductory requirement for students considering one of the majors in the Comparative Literature department, but all are welcome, and the methodologies and questions discussed in the class are useful for any kind of humanistic inquiry.

Professor: Samuel Hodgkin
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2022, Term: Fall 2022
Day/Time: TTH 9:00a.m. - 10:15a.m.

LITR 143 World Cinema

Development of ways to engage films from around the globe productively. Close analysis of a dozen complex films, with historical contextualization of their production and cultural functions. Attention to the development of critical skills. Includes weekly screenings, each followed immediately by discussion.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2021
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 9:25a.m.-10:15a.m.

LITR 143: World Cinema

Development of ways to engage films from around the globe productively. Close analysis of a dozen complex films, with historical contextualization of their production and cultural functions. Attention to the development of critical skills. Includes weekly screenings, each followed immediately by discussion.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2023
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm, Film Screenings Tuesdays

Development of ways to engage films from around the globe productively. Close analysis of a dozen complex films, with historical contextualization of their production and cultural functions. Attention to the development of critical skills. Includes weekly screenings, each followed immediately by discussion.

Professor: Dudley Andrew, Professor: Marta Figlerowicz
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 11:35am-12:50pm Screening Monday 6:30pm-9:30pm

LITR 151: The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

Overview of the different text genres attested in ancient Egypt. Critical analysis of primary sources and their important role in the reconstruction of the history and cultural aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization.

Prerequisite: general introductory class on the Egyptian history and culture, or permission of the instructor.

Professor: Christina Geisen
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30pm-5:20pm

LITR 152: Sanskrit Classics in Translation

The chief genres of Sanskrit secular literature set against the background of the cultural history of ancient India. Various literary styles compared with those of other world literary traditions.

Professor: David Brick
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Thursday, 1:30-3:20

LITR 153, Classics in Africa and the Black Diaspora

The reception and appropriation of Greco-Roman classics in Africa and the black diaspora during the twentieth century. The same classical canon that had been used to furnish arguments for colonialism, imperialism, and racism read by black writers and artists in ways that subverted those arguments. Works include drama from Nigeria and South Africa, Caribbean poetry and autobiography, novels by Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, and the Odysseus collages of Romare Bearden.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2020
Day/Time: Thursday, 1:30p.m. - 3:20p.m.

LITR 154 The Bible as a Literature

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness.

Professor: Leslie Brisman
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.

LITR 154 The Bible as Literature

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness.

1 credit for Yale College students
Professor: Leslie Brisman
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2023
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

LITR 154, The Bible as a Literature

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness.

Professor: Leslie Brisman
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2020
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.

LITR 154: The Bible as Literature

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness.

Professor: Leslie Brisman
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2023
Day/Time: TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

Study of the Bible as a literature—a collection of works exhibiting a variety of attitudes toward the conflicting claims of tradition and originality, historicity and literariness.

Pre-1800 with completion of supplementary assignments in the language of the King James Bible. If there is sufficient interest, a second section will be offered.

Professor: Leslie Brisman
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 2:30p.m.-3:45p.m.

LITR 157 Rewriting Ancient Greek Classics in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction

“We are still mythical” as Kae Tempest intones in Brand New Ancients (2013). This course analyzes creative rewritings of ancient Greek literature in contemporary Anglophone fiction, spanning the novel, lyric poetry, and drama. We consider why and how authors continue to turn to ancient Greek literature and myth to give form and fresh meaning to contemporary experience, ranging from the narratives that we use to articulate our personal, inner lives to the forces of culture, politics, and society. The authors studied in this course come from several different countries and write from diverse cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, and queer backgrounds. In addition to analyzing rewriting as the creation of original literature and the counter-canonical use of the Classics, we also study what happens to the alterity of antiquity in the process of adaptation and rewriting. Above all, this course is an opportunity to read and discuss some of the most scintillating contemporary Anglophone fiction. The authors on the syllabus are Anne Carson, Natalie Diaz, Michael Hughes, Daisy Johnson, Tayari Jones, David Malouf, Jonah Mixon-Webster, Alice Oswald, Kamila Shamsie, Kae Tempest, and Ocean Vuong. Please consult the syllabus for preparatory reading.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2021
Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30p.m. - 3:20p.m.

LITR 161 Imagining Global Lyric

What is lyric? And what might a multi-dimensional, expansive study of the lyric across cultures, languages, and media look like? This course investigates the possibility of studying lyric poetry in cross-cultural and transmedial ways by combining traditional humanistic approaches with new methods opened by the digital humanities. We begin by examining the lyric poem’s privileged position within a Western literary canon and exploring other conceptions of “lyric” in non-Western literary traditions. We then take an anthropological approach and trace the pervasiveness of lyric poetry in the world by focusing on four key questions: (a) what is lyric and how is it related to various literary genres? (b) what is the relationship between lyric and the visual image; (c) can lyric be translated across forms and languages? (d) how does lyric uniquely articulate our relationship to the natural world? Participants engage with primary texts in Yale’s special collections and contribute to a digital project to compile an exhibit of lyric poetry across the world—a project that highlights the importance and challenges of defining just what a lyric poem is. This is a Franke Seminar in the Humanities.

1 credit for Yale College students
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Fall 2023
Day/Time: MW 1pm-2:15pm

LITR 165: The Invention of the Classic

The discourse of classicism from antiquity to modern times. Contemporary debates over the value of the classics in education; the emergence of classics as a discipline; changing definitions of the classic across time; notions commonly associated with the classics such as timelessness, beauty, and canon. Readings from Cicero, Horace, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Winckelmann, Eliot, Gadamer, Foucault, Kermode, Calvino, and Nussbaum.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30pm-3:20pm

LITR 166: How Poetry can Change the World

Poetry in its different forms has been declared by philosophers, poets, and leaders sometimes a great threat, sometimes a great promise. Behind the fears and hopes lies the assumption that poetry has something essential to do with the world. Poetry acts on the world. We explore this presupposition. What is poetry that can change the world? What is a world that poetry can touch? Our primary postulates are that poetry changes the world by influencing our conception of its inner relations: with the self, with an other, in a community, within a state. The course begins with the early formulation of the question in Greek antiquity, which was highly influential on its later manifestations in European thought. We proceed to read and think alongside a selection of poems and theoretical works from the 19th and 20th century, by Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Luce Irigaray, as well as the poets Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Percy Shelley, and others. We then look at how poetry stood in its historical time, reading poetry of resistance and nationalist poetry, written in Cuba, Palestine, and Nazi Germany. At last, in our attempt to ask the question in our time, we read poetry and theoretical texts–mainly from the present–engaged with different struggles of our time: of the figuration of the self and its world, sexuality and gender, and the ecosystem.

Professor: Paul North
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2023
Day/Time: W 1:30pm-3:20pm