Undergraduate Courses
LITR 195 Medieval Songlines
Introduction to medieval song in England via modern poetic theory, material culture, affect theory, and sound studies. Song is studied through foregrounding music as well as words, words as well as music.
LITR 195: Norse Sagas
Introduction to a wide range of sagas—prose texts similar to novels—written in medieval Iceland, to better understand the customs, ethics, social hierarchies, and values they express as well as their literary style and artistry. Written in a strikingly realistic style, themes encompass exploration and settlement of new lands, blood feud and honor codes, gender roles, and the paranormal.
Course multi titled as HUMS138
LITR 198: The Tale of Genji
A reading of the central work of prose fiction in the Japanese classical tradition in its entirety (in English translation) along with some examples of predecessors, parodies, and adaptations (the latter include Noh plays and twentieth-century short stories). Topics of discussion include narrative form, poetics, gendered authorship and readership, and the processes and premises that have given The Tale of Genji its place in “world literature.” Attention will also be given to the text’s special relationship to visual culture.
No knowledge of Japanese required. A previous college-level course in the study of literary texts is recommended but not required.
LITR 199: Germanic Heroic Legend
Course multi titled as GMAN305/HUMS137
LITR 200 From Gilgamesh to Persepolis: Introduction to Near Eastern Literatures
This course is an introduction to Near Eastern civilization through its rich and diverse literary cultures. We read and discuss ancient works, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis, and “The Song of Songs,” medieval works, such as A Thousand and One Nights, selections from the Qur’an, and Shah-nama: The Book of Kings, and modern works of Israeli, Turkish, and Iranian novelists and Palestianian poets. Students complement classroom studies with visits to the Yale Babylonian Collection and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, as well as with film screenings and guest speakers. Students also learn fundamentals of Near Eastern writing systems, and consider questions of tradition, transmission, and translation. All readings are in translation.
Permission from the instructor required.
LITR 205 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 histography and personal reminiscences, especially in 20th-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 20th-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 enables them to analyze the complex ideas, e.g. cultural memory and trauma, historicity and narrativity, and fiction and non-fiction. Students finish the course with an in-depth knowledge of the major themes of 20th-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 language. All readings are available in English.
LITR 210 Art and Resistance in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine
This interdisciplinary seminar is devoted to the study of protest art as part of the struggle of society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It focuses on the example of the Soviet and post-Soviet transformation of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The period under discussion begins after the death of Stalin in 1953 and ends with the art of protest against the modern post-Soviet dictatorships of Alexander Lukashenka in Belarus and Vladimir Putin in Russia, the protest art of the Ukrainian Maidan and the anti-war movement of artists against the Russian-Ukrainian war. The course begins by looking at the influence of the “Khrushchev Thaw” on literature and cinema, which opened the way for protest art to a wide Soviet audience. We explore different approaches to protest art in conditions of political unfreedom: “nonconformism,” “dissidence,” “mimicry,” “rebellion.” The course investigates the existential conflict of artistic freedom and the political machine of authoritarianism. These themes are explored at different levels through specific examples from the works and biographies of artists. Students immerse themselves in works of different genres: films, songs, performances, plays and literary works.
This interdisciplinary seminar is devoted to the study of protest art as part of the struggle of society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. It focuses on the example of the Soviet and post-Soviet transformation of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. The period under discussion begins after the death of Stalin in 1953 and ends with the art of protest against the modern post-Soviet dictatorships of Alexander Lukashenka in Belarus and Vladimir Putin in Russia, the protest art of the Ukrainian Maidan and the anti-war movement of artists against the Russian-Ukrainian war. The course begins by looking at the influence of the “Khrushchev Thaw” on literature and cinema, which opened the way for protest art to a wide Soviet audience. We explore different approaches to protest art in conditions of political unfreedom: “nonconformism,” “dissidence,” “mimicry,” “rebellion.” The course investigates the existential conflict of artistic freedom and the political machine of authoritarianism. These themes are explored at different levels through specific examples from the works and biographies of artists. Students immerse themselves in works of different genres: films, songs, performances, plays and literary works.
LITR 216: The Theology, Philosophy, Hassidism, and Politics of Martin Buber
An overview of the intellectual contributions of Martin Buber, one of the most influential Jewish thinkers in the 20th century. Study of his writings, including philosophical tractates; political analyses especially of Zionist ideology and the movement’s activities; literary writing and Hassidic tales, collections, and adaptations; his challenging writing on the Israeli-Arab conflict; and many theological innovative, paradigm-changing publications.
Course multi titled as PHIL209/GMAN216/JDST328
Instructor: Hannan Hever, Asaf Angermann
LITR 218: The Faust Tradition
The development of the Faust motif through time, from the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the twentieth century. Readings from the English adaptation of the original German chapbook and from works by Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Goethe, Wilde, Bulgakov, and Thomas Mann. Screenings of films with a Faustian theme.
LITR 219: Law and Literature in Kleist, Kafka, and Arendt
Introduction to the field of “law and literature” with a focus on German authors that have played an important role in its constitution. Topics include the depiction of legal topics in literary texts (law in literature), the textuality of legal forms (law as literature), and the structural affinity of law and literature as it is reflected in both literary and legal genres. Texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kleist, Kafka, Benjamin, Arendt, Cover, Foucault, Derrida, Agamben, Posner, Felman, Vismann, Jelinek.
Course multi titled as GMAN359/HUMS331
Instructor: Katrin Trüstedt
LITR 221: Fernando Pessoa
Course multi titled as PORT380/PORT970
Instructor: K. David Jackson
LITR 224 Proust Interpretations: Reading Remembrance of Things Past
A close reading (in English) of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past, with emphasis upon major themes: time and memory, desire and jealousy, social life and artistic experience, sexual identity and personal authenticity, class and nation. Portions from Swann’s Way, Within a Budding Grove, Cities of the Plain, Time Regained considered from biographical, psychological/psychoanalytic, gender, sociological, historical, and philosophical perspectives.
R. Howard Bloch howard.bloch@yale.edu
Pierre Saint-Armand pierre.saint-amand@yale.edu
LITR 232 Paul Celan
An undergraduate seminar in English exploring the life and work of Paul Celan (1920-1970), survivor of the Shoah, and one of the foremost European poets of the second half of the twentieth century. We will read from his early poems in both Romanian and German, and his published collections including Der Sand aus den Urnen, Mohn und Gedächtnis, Von Schelle zu Schelle, Sprachgitter, Die Niemandsrose, Atemwende, Fadensonnen, Lichtzwang, and Schneepart. We will also read from his rare pieces in prose and his correspondence with family, friends, and other intellectuals and poets including Bachmann, Sachs, Heidegger, Char, du Bouchet, Michaux, Ungaretti. A special focus on his poetic translations from French, but also Russian, English, American, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Hebrew. Critical readings draw from Szondi, Adorno, Derrida, Agamben, and others. Readings in English translation or in the original languages, as the student desires. Discussions in English.
None.
LITR 239 Dionysus in Modernity
Modernity’s fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.
Modernity’s fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.
George Syrimis george.syrimis@yale.edu
Modernity’s fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.
LITR 239: Dionysus in Modernity
Modernity’s fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.
Course multi titled as WGSS209/MGRK216/CLCV216
Modernity’s fascination with the myth of Dionysus. Questions of agency, identity and community, and psychological integrity and the modern constitution of the self. Manifestations of Dionysus in literature, anthropology, and music; the Apollonian-Dionysiac dichotomy; twentieth-century variations of these themes in psychoanalysis, surrealism, and magical realism.
LITR 240 Goethe's Faust
Goethe’s Faust, with special attention to Faust II and to the genesis of Faust in its various versions throughout Goethe’s lifetime. Emphasis on the work in context of Goethe’s time and in the later reception and criticism. Reading knowledge of German beneficial but not required.
Kirk Wetters kirk.wetters@yale.edu
Jan Hagens jan.hagens@yale.edu