Undergraduate Courses
LITR 361: Animation: Disney and Beyond
Survey of the history of animation, considering both its aesthetics and its social potentials. The focus is on Disney and its many alternatives, with examples from around the world, from various traditions, and from different periods.
LITR 364: British Cinema
Survey of the British film tradition, emphasizing overlap with literature, drama, and art; visual modernism; documentary’s role in defining national identity; “heritage” filmmaking and alternative approaches to tradition; and auteur and actors’ cinema.
LITR 368 The Third Reich in Postwar German Film, 1945 to Present
Close study of the intersection of aesthetics and ethics with regard to how German films, since 1945, have dealt with Nazi history. Through the study of German-language films (with subtitles), produced in postwar East, West, and unified Germany, students consider and challenge perspectives on the Third Reich and postwar Germany, while learning basic categories of film studies.
Jan Hagens jan.hagens@yale.edu
LITR 368: The Third Reich in Postwar German Film, 1945-2007
Close study of the intersection of aesthetics and ethics with regard to how German films, since 1945, have dealt with Nazi history. Through the study of German-language films (with subtitles), produced in postwar East, West, and unified Germany through 2007, students consider and challenge perspectives on the Third Reich and postwar Germany, while learning basic categories of film studies.
LITR 368: Third Reich in Postwar German Film, 1945-2007
Close study of the intersection of aesthetics and ethics with regard to how German films, since 1945, have dealt with Nazi history. Through the study of German-language films (with subtitles), produced in postwar East, West, and unified Germany through 2007, students consider and challenge perspectives on the Third Reich and postwar Germany, while learning basic categories of film studies.
Course multi titled as GMAN273/FILM319
LITR 374: German Cinema 1918-1933
The years between 1918 and 1933 are the Golden Age of German film. In its development from Expressionism to Social Realism, this German cinema produced works of great variety, many of them in the international avantgarde. This introductory seminar gives an overview of the silent movies and sound films made during the Weimar Republic and situate them in their artistic, cultural, social, and political context between WWI and WWII, between the Kaiser’s German Empire and the Nazis’ Third Reich. Further objectives include: familiarizing students with basic categories of film studies and film analysis; showing how these films have shaped the history and the language of film; discussing topic-oriented and methodological issues such as: film genres (horror film, film noir, science fiction, street film, documentary film); set design, camera work, acting styles; narration in film; avantgarde cinema; the advent and use of sound in film; Realism versus Expressionism; film and popular mythology; melodrama; representation of women; modern urban life as spectacle; film and politics. Directors studied include: Grune, Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Pabst, Richter, Ruttmann, Sagan, von Sternberg, Wiene, et al.
LITR 379 Radical Cinemas in the Global Sixties
“1968” has become a cipher for a moment of global turmoil, social transformation and cultural revolution. This class explores the “long global sixties” through cinema produced across continents. At the height of the Cold War between two blocks in the “East” and the “West,” the “Third World” emerged as a radical political project alternative to a world order shaped by centuries of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and capitalist exploitation. Liberation, emancipation, independence, anticolonialism, decolonization, and revolution became key words in the global political discourse. Leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America created a new international platform, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that challenged the Cold War bi-polarity. Radical filmmakers who belong in this period experimented with strategies of storytelling and of capturing reality, calling into question rigid distinctions between “documentary” and “fiction” and “art and politics.” The goal was not to “show” reality, but to change it. We study a world-wide range of examples that involve filmmakers’ collaborations across The Americas, Western Europe, North Africa, South and South-East Asia. Taught in English; films are subtitled but knowledge of other languages may be useful.
LITR 382 German New Waves in Cold War Europe
Comparative study of New Wave cinema in East and West Germany, with a focus on aesthetic ferment, institutional barriers, and transformation. Berlin as the best place to follow Europe’s emerging cinematic New Waves before 1961. Distinctive approaches developed by young filmmakers in East and West Germany to political and documentary filmmaking, to the Nazi past and the Cold War, and to class, gender, and social transformation.
Knowledge of German helpful but not necessary.
Katie Trumpener katie.trumpener@yale.edu
LITR 386: Fate and Chance in Art and Experience
This seminar is co-taught with Sheila Heti. It discusses shifts in how the unchosen is conceived and how it is valued, across a range of contemporary fields and historical models–from Greek tragedy to contemporary performance art, from Protestant aesthetics of fate and grace to the I Jing and its interpreters, from mathematical and physical approaches to chance to the rise of astrology. Students consider when and where we ourselves operate with a belief in something like fate. The goal to explore whether and how a contemporary concept of fate may come into focus.
LITR 388: The Education of Princes: Medieval Advice Literature of Rulership and Counsel
In this course we read “mirrors for princes,” a type of political writing by courtiers and advisors. The genre flourished in the courts of medieval Europe and the Islamic world. We learn about the ethical and moral considerations that guided (or were meant to guide) rulers in their conduct, in the formulation of their policies, and about theories of rule and rulership. The works we read are from several cultural, religious, and political traditions, and include: Christine de Pizan, A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne; Erasmus, Education of a Christian Prince; Ibn al-Muqaffa’, Kalilah and Dimnah, John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Book of the Statesman; Machiavelli, The Prince; Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government. All texts are in English translation.
LITR 393 The Short Spring of German Theory
Reconsideration of the intellectual microclimate of German academia 1945-1968. A German prelude to the internationalization effected by French theory, often in dialogue with German sources. Following Philipp Felsch’s The Summer of Theory (English 2022): Theory as hybrid and successor to philosophy and sociology. Theory as the genre of the philosophy of history and grand narratives (e.g. “secularization”). Theory as the basis of academic interdisciplinarity and cultural-political practice. The canonization and aging of theoretical classics. Critical reflection on academia now and then. Legacies of the inter-War period and the Nazi past: M. Weber, Heidegger, Husserl, Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, Jaspers. New voices of the 1950s and 1960s: Arendt, Blumenberg, Gadamer, Habermas, Jauss, Koselleck, Szondi, Taubes.
German reading and some prior familiarity with European intellectual history is helpful but not essential.
LITR 398: Interpreting Film Masterpieces
Exploration of seven auteurs from Europe and Hollywood, 1937–1967. Assessment of methods that deepen appreciation of the films and the medium.
LITR 399 Reality and the Realistic
A multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of reality in Euro-American culture. What do we mean when we say something is “real” or “realistic?” From what is it being differentiated−the imaginary, the surreal, the speculative? Can we approach a meaningful concept of the unreal? This course wagers that representational norms do not simply reflect existing notions of reality; they also shape our idea of reality itself. We study the dynamics of realism and its counterparts across a range of examples from modern art, literature, philosophy, and religion. Readings may include: Aimé Cesaire, Mircea Eliade, Karen Barad, Gustave Flaubert, Sigmund Freud, Renee Gladman, Saidiya Hartman, Arthur Schopenhauer. Our goal is to understand how practices of representation reveal something about our understanding of reality, shedding light on the ways we use this most basic, yet most elusive concept.
LITR 403: The City in Literature and Film
Consideration of the architecture, town planning, and symbolic functions of various cities in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and East Asia. Discussion of the representation of these cities in literature and film. Works include older Soviet and Chinese films about Shanghai and contemporary films about Hong Kong and Beijing.
Course multi titled as RUSS403/FILM442
LITR 406: World Literature
The concept of world literature, from its origins in eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism represented by Herder and Goethe up to contemporary critical debates (Apter, Casanova, Cheah, Damrosch, Dharwadker, I. Hesse, Moretti, Mufti, Pollock, Said, Spivak). World literature in relation to national literature, German-language, and Jewish literature; translation, untranslatability, the effect of markets, diaspora, politics. Literary critical readings supplemented by exemplary literary texts in multiple genres. Student contributions based on individual linguistic backgrounds.
Course multi titled as GMAN713/JDST679/JDST327/GMAN411/CPLT587/HUMS342
LITR 409 Internet Cultures, Histories, Networks, and Practices
Examination, through the lenses of histories, network studies, and cultural studies, of how human beings have seemingly overnight learned to use and depend on computer networks for various kinds of work, military operations, pursuits of scientific knowledge, religious proselytizing, political organization, searches for mates and social communities, illegal activities, and infinite varieties of play.
LITR 410 Interpretations: Simone Weil
Intensive study of the life and work of Simone Weil, one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers. We read the iconic works that shaped Weil’s posthumous reputation as “the patron saint of all outsiders,” including the mystical aphorisms Gravity and Grace and the utopian program for a new Europe The Need for Roots. But we also examine in detail the lesser-known writings Weil published in her lifetime–writings that powerfully intervene in some of the most pressing debates of her day. Reading Weil alongside contemporaries such as Trotsky, Heidegger, Arendt, Levinas, and Césaire, we see how her thought engages key philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic problems of the twentieth century: the relation between dictatorship and democracy; empire and the critique of colonialism; the ethics of attention and affliction; modern science, technology, and the human point of view; the responsibility of the writer in times of war; beauty and the possibility of transcendence; the practice of philosophy as a way of life.
LITR 414: Non-Cynical Social Thought
Living together is difficult. How do some people do it? How can we do it less badly, or much better, or in the very best way? In this seminar we read sources from several disciplines that describe positive modes of conviviance. Much social thought is cynical, starting from where we are not and mapping why we haven’t gotten there. Some social thought is revolutionary, looking for an exit, casting hopes toward the future. What both of these lack is contents. Without ignoring the massive difficulties involved, we try to fill this in with images of viable and livable groups, collectives, festivals, syndicates, congregations, planets.
LITR 418: The Classics of Modern Hebrew Literature
Overview of the Poetics, Culture, History, and Political dynamics of Modern Hebrew Literature as national literature over the last 300 years. The course traces the literary development of its diasporic condition in Europe through the Hebrew Literature that is created in the Israeli Jewish sovereignty. The course is taught in Hebrew and the readings of literary texts are also in Hebrew.
No background in Jewish literature, Hebrew literature, or Jewish culture is required.
LITR 423 Politics and Literature in Modern Iran and Afghanistan
This course traces the emergence of modern Persian literature in Iran and Afghanistan, introducing the contemporary poets and writers of fiction who created this new literary tradition in spite of political, social, state, and religious constraints. Our readings include Iranian novelists working under censorship, Afghan memoirists describing their experience in a warzone, and even contemporary writers living in exile in the US or Europe. Major writers include Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, Sadegh Hedayat, Simin Behbahani, Forugh Farrokhzad, Homeira Qaderi (who will visit the class), and Khaled Hosseini.