Undergraduate Courses

LITR 180: Women in the Middle Ages

Medieval understandings of womanhood examined through analysis of writings by and/or about women, from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Introduction to the premodern Western canon and assessment of the role that women played in its construction.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:30p.m. - 3:45p.m.

Medieval understandings of womanhood examined through analysis of writings by and/or about women, from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Introduction to the premodern Western canon and assessment of the role that women played in its construction.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 1:00pm-2:15pm

Medieval understandings of womanhood examined through analysis of writings by and/or about women, from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Introduction to the premodern Western canon and assessment of the role that women played in its construction.

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

LITR 182: Medieval Romance

A study of some of the principal forms of Arthurian, chivalric, courtly, and parodic romances of medieval French and English tradition.

Professor: R. Howard Bloch, Professor: Ardis Butterfield
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:00p.m.-2:15p.m.

LITR 184: Women and the Supernatural in Medieval Literature

Study of medieval texts from a wide geographic and chronological range, all of which prominently feature female characters that exhibit supernatural features or practice magic. Narratives about fairies, witches, hags, and monstrous women analyzed in order to explore intersections of gender and sexuality, Otherness, ethics, violence, fantasy, and related themes in medieval culture.

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

LITR 194: The Multicultural Middle Ages

Introduction to medieval English literature and culture in its European and Mediterranean context, before it became monolingual, canonical, or author-bound. Genres include travel writing, epic, dream visions, mysticism, the lyric, and autobiography, from the Crusades to the Hundred Years War, from the troubadours to Dante, from the Chanson de Roland to Chaucer.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 2:30p.m.-3:20p.m.

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.

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

LITR 196 Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain

Introduction to the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Muslim Andalusia from the tenth century through the twelfth. Major figures of the period and the cultural and philosophical questions they confronted. The Judeo-Arabic social context in which the poetry emerged; critical issues pertaining to the study and transmission of this literature. Readings from the works of several poets.

Readings in translation. Additional readings in Hebrew available.

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

LITR 196: Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain

Introduction to the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Muslim Andalusia from the tenth century through the twelfth. Major figures of the period and the cultural and philosophical questions they confronted. The Judeo-Arabic social context in which the poetry emerged; critical issues pertaining to the study and transmission of this literature. Readings from the works of several poets.

Readings in translation. Additional readings in Hebrew available.

Professor: Peter Cole
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2018
Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30p.m.-3:20p.m.

Introduction to the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Muslim Andalusia from the tenth century through the twelfth. Major figures of the period and the cultural and philosophical questions they confronted. The Judeo-Arabic social context in which the poetry emerged; critical issues pertaining to the study and transmission of this literature. Readings from the works of several poets.

Readings in translation. Additional readings in Hebrew available.

Professor: Peter Cole
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2023
Day/Time: W 3:30pm-5:20pm

LITR 197 War, Literature, and Politics in the Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance was a time of significant political and social unrest. These disorders are reflected in the writings of the period’s major authors, who often coded these struggles in gendered terms. The objectives of this course are to familiarize ourselves with these works, and in particular with the lively debate that questioned women’s ability to fight in wars, especially in the Italian sixteenth century; to sharpen our skills as readers of works that feature heroic female warriors and so-called “effeminate” male knights; and to explore and perhaps demystify the universal gendering of war. The course considers Classical and Renaissance philosophical literature, epic poems penned by men and women, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, as well as short biographies of women in combat. Authors include, Plato, Aristotle, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Fonte and Marinella.  All texts are available in English translation.

Professor: Gerry Milligan
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Monday, 3:30p.m. - 5:20p.m.

LITR 201 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister

A detailed study of Goethe’s 1795/96 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – the first novel of the nineteenth century and the prototypical novel of education (Bildungsroman); engagement with critical and scholarly reception starting with Schiller and Schlegel, theories of the novel and transformations of modern society.

Readings and discussion in English.

Professor: Kirk Wetters
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Wednesday, 1:30p.m. - 3:20p.m.

LITR 202 Nabokov and World Literature

Vladimir Nabokov’s writings explored in the context of his life story and of the structures and institutions of literary life in Russian émigré circles. Themes of exile, memory, and nostalgia; hybrid cultural identities and cosmopolitan elites; language and bilingualism; the aims and aesthetics of émigré and diasporic modernism in novels and other media. Additional readings from works of world literature inspired and influenced by Nabokov. Readings and discussion in English.

Professor: Marijeta Bozovic
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2021
Day/Time: Monday & Wednesday, 1:30p.m. - 2:20p.m.

LITR 209 Desire in Yiddish Literature

What does “desire” mean to a Yiddish writer? Desire most commonly refers to sexuality and the erotic life. The object of desire may be a person, but it can also be a thing, an idea, an art form, and more. How does our milieu affect our sense of who or what we desire?  Yiddish writers have always been necessarily multicultural, multilingual, trans-continental in knowledge and perspective. They responded to an extraordinarily diverse array of political and social movements including emigration/immigration, various forms of nationalism, socialism, religious belief, rejection of religious observance. In exploring the short fiction and poetry that address these concerns, we consider authors whose names may be familiar to some (e.g., Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholem Aleichem); we read authors who are largely unknown despite English translations of their work (e.g., Celia Dropkin, Lamed Shapiro, Yankev Glatshteyn, and more). Experimenting with modern literary forms and modern personal and political choices, these authors reveal the remarkable range of Yiddish writing in the twentieth century. (All works are read in English translation; no knowledge of Yiddish is required for this course.)

Professor: Anita Norich
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:30p.m. - 3:20p.m.

LITR 212 USA: Travelers, Immigrants, Exiles from Italy (1920-2001)

The course focuses on the experiences of Italian travelers to North America. Its goal is to promote a critical historical consciousness of the social, political, and cultural reality of the Italian presence in the United States from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Students engage with a variety of media: from letters and diaries to memoirs and unpublished documents, from novels and poems to music and films. Through close readings and literary analyses, this class considers the historical and cultural context of each source, eliciting reflections in at least three key areas: national identity, transcultural encounters, and the relevance of the arts for travelers, migrants and exiles.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2021
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 11:35a.m. -12:50p.m.

LITR 212: USA: Travelers, Immigrants, Exiles from Italy (1920-2001)

The course focuses on the experiences of Italian travelers to North America. Its goal is to promote a critical historical consciousness of the social, political, and cultural reality of the Italian presence in the United States from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Students engage with a variety of media: from letters and diaries to memoirs and unpublished documents, from novels and poems to music and films. Through close readings and literary analyses, this class considers the historical and cultural context of each source, eliciting reflections in at least three key areas: national identity, transcultural encounters, and the relevance of the arts for travelers, migrants and exiles.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2019
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 11:35am-12:50pm

LITR 214 The Modern French Novel

A survey of major French novels, considering style and story, literary and intellectual movements, and historical contexts. Writers include Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Camus, and Sartre. Readings in translation. One section conducted in French.

Professor: Alice Kaplan, Professor: Maurice Samuels
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2021
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30p.m. - 2:20p.m.

A survey of major French novels, considering style and story, literary and intellectual movements, and historical contexts. Writers include Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Camus, and Sartre. Readings in translation. One section conducted in French.

Professor: Maurice Samuels, Professor: Alice Kaplan
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Tuesday & Thursday, 1:30p.m. - 2:20p.m.

LITR 219: The Waste Land

The seminar looks closely at the most influential poem of the 20th century, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Attention to the poem both as a work of radical modernist experiment and as carrying on a kaleidoscopic dialogue with world literature. Taking our cue from the notes Eliot added to the poem we read selections from the Buddha’s Fire Sermon, the Upanishads, versions of the Holy Grail myth, Dante’s Inferno, The Tempest, Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, and F.H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality. Further reading includes Eliot’s earlier poetry, especially “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and his own criticism of the period, including “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “The Metaphysical Poets,” and “Ulysses, Order and Myth.” We also consider critical appraisals of the poem by Virginia Woolf, F.R. Leavis and Ralph Ellison, be attentive to comparable aesthetic innovations of the period in painting and music (cubism, Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, ragtime), and listen to audio recordings of Eliot (and others) reading the poem. Meditation throughout on the poem as a collage of allusions forming a complex work of art.

At least one course that involves close reading literary prose or poetry.  

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

LITR 220: Milan Kundera: The Czech Novelist and French Thinker

Close reading of Kundera’s novels, with analysis of his aesthetics and artistic development. Relationships to French, German, and Spanish literatures and to history, philosophy, music, and art. Topics include paradoxes of public and private life, the irrational in erotic behavior, the duality of body and soul, the interplay of imagination and reality, the function of literary metaphor, and the art of composition.

Readings and discussion in English.

Professor: Karen von Kunes
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2020
Day/Time: Thursday, 1:30pm-3:20pm