Undergraduate Courses
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.
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 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 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 306 Karl Marx's Capital
A careful reading of Karl Marx’s classic, Capital volume 1, a work of philosophy, economy, and critical social theory that has had a significant global readership for over 150 years. During our work with the book, we also make reference to Capital volume 2, as well as interpretations by influential readers.
This is a Franke Seminar in the Humanities at the Whitney Humanities Center. Students who enroll in the seminar will also attend special weekly colloquia with visiting scholars.
LITR 306: The Danube in Literature and Film
The Danube River in the film, art, and literature of various Danubian cultural traditions, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Geography and history of the region that includes the river’s shores and watershed; physical, historical, and metaphoric uses of the Danube; the region as a contested multilingual, multicultural, and multinational space, and as a quintessential site of cross-cultural engagement. Readings and discussion in English.
LITR 307: Walter Benjamin and the Modernization of the Nineteenth-Century Paris
The radical modernization of Paris under the Second Empire (1851–70) as seen through the eyes of Walter Benjamin. Focus on Benjamin’s Arcades Project, a compendium that charted developments such as Parisian mass transit and streamlined traffic, the construction of apartment houses, and the dissemination of mass media. Readings from other literary texts on the same events include works by Balzac, Zola, and Aragon.
Course multi titled as GMAN645/CPLT589/GMAN374
LITR 310: Love in the Western World
Consideration and definition of the varieties of love by which we still live and which came into being in late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages.
Course multi titled as FREN227/HUMS257
LITR 311: Persian Literary Classics
Survey of classical Persian literature in English translation, focusing on seven major writers: Firdawsi, Nizami, ‘Attar, Sa‘di, Rumi, Hafiz, and Jami. No knowledge of Persian required.
LITR 314: Imperial and Anti-Imperial Writing
Examination of different modes of fiction developed across the twentieth century by writers from several continents as they engaged with immediate actualities and long aftermaths of European and American imperial involvements in Ireland, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the United States. Focus on modernist, realist, romance, epic, and historical narrative forms and on their cross-fertilization and critical possibilities. Authors may include Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, C. L. R. James, Doris Lessing, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Marguerite Duras, Monique Truong, Joseph O’Neill, and Ronan Bennett.
Course multi titled as ENGL319
Instructor: Joseph Cleary
LITR 315: Conversations between Ancient Greece, Africa, and the Black Diaspora
Investigation of the ways that black diasporic artists have engaged with, revised, and re-imagined Greco-Roman Classics, in order to both expose and critique discourses of racism, imperialism, and colonialism, and as a fertile source of mythological material. Students engage with a diverse array of materials, including collage, graphic novels, novels, oral literature, poetry, and film.
Course multi titled as CLCV239/AFST239/AFAM230
Instructors: Emily Greenwood, Sarah Derbew
LITR 317 Marxist Theory of Literature
The role of Marxist thought in understanding literary institutions and texts in the twentieth century. Marx’s theory of ideology; Lukacs’s theory of literature as the basis for development of Marxist literary theory; the Frankfurt and materialistic schools. Readings include works by Raymond Williams, Catherine Belsey, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Macherey, and Frederic Jameson.
LITR 317: Marxist Theory of Literature
The role of Marxist thought in understanding literary institutions and texts in the twentieth century. Marx’s theory of ideology; Lukacs’s theory of literature as the basis for development of Marxist literary theory; the Frankfurt and materialistic schools. Readings include works by Raymond Williams, Catherine Belsey, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Macherey, and Frederic Jameson.
The role of Marxist thought in understanding literary institutions and texts in the twentieth century. Marx’s theory of ideology; Lukacs’s theory of literature as the basis for development of Marxist literary theory; the Frankfurt and materialistic schools. Readings include works by Raymond Williams, Catherine Belsey, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Macherey, and Frederic Jameson.
LITR 318: The Arabian Nights, Then and Now
Exploration of Arabian Nights, a classic of world literature. Topics include antecedents, themes and later prose, and graphic and film adaptations
LITR 319: Selfhood, Race, Class, and Gender
Examination of the fundamental notion of “the self” through categories of race, class, and gender as dimensions for understanding personhood. Introduction to major philosophical frameworks for thinking about “the self” from antiquity to the present; case studies from across the world and in different media, placing contemporary debates about these issues in historical perspective.
Course multi titled as WGSS269/ENGL230/ER&M225/HUMS402
LITR 320: Culture of Cold War in Europe
European culture during and after the Cold War. Focus on the relation of politics and dominant ideologies to their correlative literary and cinematic aesthetics models and to popular culture. Themes include totalitarianism, Eurocommunism, decolonization, espionage, state surveillance, the nuclear threat, sports, and propaganda.
Course multi titled as HIST275J/FILM368/MGRK233
LITR 323 Animals in Literature and Theory
Consideration of the role animals play in our aesthetic, ethical, political, and scientific worlds through reading of fiction, poetry, philosophy, and critical theory. Topics include: animal sentience and experience; vegetarianism; animal fables; pet keeping; animals alongside disability, race, and gender; and the representation of animal life in the visual arts.