Undergraduate Courses
LITR 284: Mad Poets of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century French (and some German) poetry explored through the lives and works of poets whose ways of behaving, creating, and perceiving the world might be described as insane. Authors include Hölderlin, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Apollinaire, Breton, Artaud, and Celan.
Lectures in English; readings available both in original language and in English translation.
Course multi titled as GMAN214/FREN270
Instructor: Thomas Connolly
LITR 285: The Modern Novel in Brazil and Japan
Brazilian and Japanese novels from the late nineteenth century to the present. Representative texts from major authors are read in pairs to explore their commonalities and divergences. Topics include nineteenth-century realism and naturalism, the rise of mass culture and the avant-garde, and existentialism and postmodernism.
No knowledge of Portuguese or Japanese required.
LITR 286 Pessoa, Lispector, Rosa, Saramago
Study of works in translation by four contemporary masters in the Portuguese language, Fernando Pessoa, Clarice Lispector, João Guimarães Rosa and José Saramago. These authors radically experiment with prose in order to question notions of identity, existence, and meaning.
LITR 289 Literature of the Americas, North and South
Readings of U.S. and Latin American short stories and novels to explore related themes and narrative structures. Topics include the literary dialogue between Anglo and Latin American writers and their comparative treatments of history, myth, memory, and war. Paired readings of Poe and Cortázar; Bierce and Fuentes; Crane and Borges; and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Conducted in English; a section in Spanish available depending on demand. Readings of Latin American texts in Spanish for Spanish and Literature majors.
LITR 289: Literature of the Americas, North and South
Readings of U.S. and Latin American short stories and novels to explore related themes and narrative structures. Topics include the literary dialogue between Anglo and Latin American writers and their comparative treatments of history, myth, memory, and war. Paired readings of Poe and Cortázar; Bierce and Fuentes; Crane and Borges; and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Conducted in English; a section in Spanish available depending on demand. Readings of Latin American texts in Spanish for Spanish and Literature majors.
LITR 290 Machado de Assis: Major Novels
A study of the last five novels of Machado de Assis, featuring the author’s world and stage of Rio de Janeiro, along with his irony and skepticism, satire, wit, narrative concision, social critiques, and encyclopedic assimilation of world literature.
LITR 294 World Cities and Narratives
Study of world cities and selected narratives that describe, belong to, or represent them. Topics range from the rise of the urban novel in European capitals to the postcolonial fictional worlds of major Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone cities.
Conducted in English.
Study of world cities and selected narratives that describe, belong to, or represent them. Topics range from the rise of the urban novel in European capitals to the postcolonial fictional worlds of major Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone cities.
Conducted in English.
Kenneth David Jackson k.jackson@yale.edu
LITR 295 Caribbean Diasporic Literature
An examination of contemporary literature written by Caribbean writers who have migrated to, or who journey between, different countries around the Atlantic rim. Focus on literature written in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both fiction and nonfiction. Writers include Caryl Phillips, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jamaica Kincaid.
An examination of contemporary literature written by Caribbean writers who have migrated to, or who journey between, different countries around the Atlantic rim. Focus on literature written in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both fiction and nonfiction. Writers include Caryl Phillips, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jamaica Kincaid.
Fadila Habchi fadila.habchi@yale.edu
An examination of contemporary literature written by Caribbean writers who have migrated to, or who journey between, different countries around the Atlantic rim. Focus on literature written in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both fiction and nonfiction. Writers include Caryl Phillips, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jamaica Kincaid.
LITR 295: Caribbean Diasporic Literature
An examination of contemporary literature written by Caribbean writers who have migrated to, or who journey between, different countries around the Atlantic rim. Focus on literature written in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, both fiction and nonfiction. Writers include Caryl Phillips, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jamaica Kincaid.
LITR 299: Colonial Narrative, Postcolonial Counternarrative
Readings of paradigmatic, colonial era texts that have provoked responses and rewritings from postcolonial writers and filmmakers. In some cases the rewriting is explicit and direct, in other cases the response is more oblique. Readings may include: Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest after Shakespeare’s Tempest, Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation after Camus’s The Stranger, and Claire Denis’s film Chocolat after Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy.
LITR 301 Putin's Russia and Protest Culture
Survey of Russian literature and culture since the fall of communism. The chaos of the 1990s; the solidification of power in Putin’s Russia; the recent rise of protest culture. Sources include literature, film, and performances by art collectives. Readings and discussion in English; texts available in Russian.
Marijeta Bozovic marijeta.bozovic@yale.edu
LITR 301: Putin's Russia and Protest Culture
Survey of Russian literature and culture since the fall of communism. The chaos of the 1990s; the solidification of power in Putin’s Russia; the recent rise of protest culture. Sources include literature, film, and performances by art collectives. Readings and discussion in English; texts available in Russian.
Survey of Russian literature and culture since the fall of communism. The chaos of the 1990s; the solidification of power in Putin’s Russia; the recent rise of protest culture. Sources include literature, film, and performances by art collectives. Readings and discussion in English; texts available in Russian.
LITR 302 France by Rail: Trains in French Literature, Film, and History
Exploration of the aesthetics of trains in French and Francophone literature and culture, from the end of the nineteenth-century and the first locomotives, to the automatically driven subway in twenty-first century Paris. Focus on the role of trains in industrialization, colonization, deportation, decolonization, and immigration. Corpus includes novels, poems, plays, films, paintings, graphic novels, as well as theoretical excerpts on urban spaces and public transportation. Activities include: building a train at the CEID and visiting the Beinecke collections and the Art Gallery.
May not be taken after FREN 306.
LITR 303 Socialist '80s: Aesthetics of Reform in China and the Soviet Union
This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the complex cultural and political paradigms of late socialism from a transnational perspective by focusing on the literature, cinema, and popular culture of the Soviet Union and China in 1980s. How were intellectual and everyday life in the Soviet Union and China distinct from and similar to that of the West of the same era? How do we parse “the cultural logic of late socialism?” What can today’s America learn from it? Examining two major socialist cultures together in a global context, this course queries the ethnographic, ideological, and socio-economic constituents of late socialism. Students analyze cultural materials in the context of Soviet and Chinese history. Along the way, we explore themes of identity, nationalism, globalization, capitalism, and the Cold War. Students with knowledge of Russian and Chinese are encouraged to read in original languages. All readings are available in English.
LITR 304: Books, Displays, and Systems Theory
A status report on the book as a medium in an age of cybernetic technology and virtual reality. The contentious no-man’s land between books and contemporary systems.
Course multi titled as FILM357/GMAN602/GMAN408/CPLT621
LITR 305: Advanced Literary Translation
A sequel to LITR 348 or its equivalent, this course brings together advanced and seriously committed students of literary translation, especially (but not only) those who are doing translation-related senior theses. Students must apply to the class with a specific project in mind, that they have been developing or considering, and that they will present on a regular basis throughout the semester. Discussion of translations-in-progress are supplemented by short readings that include model works from the world of literary translation, among them introductions and pieces of criticism, as well as reflections by practitioners treating all phases of their art. The class is open to undergraduates and graduate students who have taken at least one translation workshop. By permission of the instructor.
Prerequisite: LITR 348.