Undergraduate Courses

The course discusses exemplary novels in German language after 1945 from West and East Germany and Germany after Reunification, as well as from Austria and Switzerland. Part I, “Zero Hour - or Not,” on the political critique of Nazi Germany and the attempt at an aesthetic clean break (e.g., Gunther Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann, Max Frisch); Part II “1968: Revolution or New Interiority,” on social protest versus aesthetic internationalism (e.g., Peter Handke, Christa Wolf, Hubert Fichte, Thomas Bernhard); Part III, “The Attempt at Being Contemporary,” on German and German speaking societies in the global world (e.g., Elfriede Jelinek, Yoko Tawada, Rainald Goetz). While “contemporaneity” is the particular mark of the last section, all works desire to critically intervene in their historical moment. Giving an account of this desire is the goal of the course. Contextualization as needed; close reading of selected passages as the mode of work in the course; all works are provided in English translation and German.

This is a course on the interrelations between philosophical and literary writing beginning with the English Revolution and ending with the beginnings of Romanticism. We read major works in empiricism, political philosophy, and ethics alongside poetry and fiction in several genres. Topics include the mind/body problem, political ideology, subjectivity and gender, and aesthetic experience as they take philosophical and literary form during a long moment of historical change.

This course is an approach to a cultural history of the Inquisition from its inception and methods, to its theories and practices, all the way until its abolition—although, has it ever been totally abolished? We read literary and non-literary texts about heresy, the antichrist, autos de fe, religious protest, or magic and witchcraft.

This course studies the relationship between immigration and literature. In our present, immigration is often framed as an urgent political and economic question. But the lived experiences of being an immigrant―feeling displaced from one’s home, learning a foreign language, nostalgically yearning for the past and hopefully anticipating the future―are also rich sites for literary exploration. Tracking journeys from India, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Zimbabwe to the United States, we read widely in contemporary literature and postcolonial theory to explore how writers unpack the complexities of immigration and identity in the twenty-first century. While we examine the historical and cultural contexts underlying these texts, our guiding thread is experimentation. The writers we study make us rethink immigration―as a political and a literary subject―through the use of innovative literary forms and cultural media: sound documentaries, playlists, novels structured like passports, and archival histories, among others. Authors include Amitava Kumar, Valeria Luiselli, Teju Cole, NoViolet Bulawayo, Ling Ma.

Identity is at the heart of our present social conflicts, from campus debates about power and privilege, to movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too, to the resurgence of ethnic nationalism. But what is identity, after all? How does it come into being? What role do “nature” and “culture” play in that process, and are they separable? To what extent are we defined by our belonging to identity categories such as race, class, gender, and sexuality? How free are we to create our own identities? What makes me “me”? Is there a true self? This class explores the complexities of identity through readings in modern literature, philosophy, and social theory, from psychoanalysis to critical race theory, romanticism to postmodernism, autobiography to autofiction. Authors include J.-J. Rousseau, William Wordsworth, R. W. Emerson, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, G. H. Mead, Erik Erikson, Judith Butler, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Djuna Barnes, Nella Larsen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Saidiya Hartman, Claudia Rankine, Ben Lerner, Maggie Nelson, Camille Paglia.

Questions of identity are at the heart of personal experience and present social conflicts, from campus debates about power and privilege, to movements for racial and gender justice, to the global resurgence of ethno-nationalism. But what is identity, after all? How does it come into being? What role do “nature” and “culture” play in that process, and are they separable? To what extent are individuals defined by group identity? How free are we to create our own identities? What makes me “me”? Is there a true self? This class explores the complexities of identity through readings in modern literature, philosophy and social theory. Authors include William Wordsworth, R. W. Emerson, Walt Whitman, G. W. F. Hegel, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, D. W. Winnicott, John Forrester, Janet Malcolm, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Zadie Smith, Saidiya Hartman, Jacqueline Rose, Amia Srinivasan, Nella Larsen, James Agee and Walker Evans, Stanley Cavell.

This seminar explores the politics and poetics of memory in a time of unfinished decolonization. It also provides students with a working introduction to anticolonial, postcolonial, and decolonial critique. Together we bring key works on the topics of state violence, trauma, and testimony into contact with literary works and films by artists of the former French and British empires in Africa. Reading literary and theoretical works together permits us to investigate archival silences and begin to chart a future for the critical study of colonial violence and its enduring effects. Literary readings may include works by Djebar, Rahmani, Ouologuem, Sebbar, Diop, Head, Krog. Films by Djebar, Leuvrey, Sembène, and Sissako. Theoretical readings may include works by Arendt, Azoulay, Césaire, Derrida, Fanon, Mbembe, Ngũgĩ, Spivak, and Trouillot.

An extended research project. Students must petition the curriculum committee for permission to enroll by the last day of classes in the term preceding enrollment in LITR 492. For students expecting to graduate in May, the senior essay is due in the office of the director of undergraduate studies according to the following schedule: (1) by September 8, a three-page prospectus signed by the student’s adviser; (2) by February 16, a full rough draft (not notes); (3) by April 13, the completed essay. December graduates should consult the director of undergraduate studies for required deadlines. The minimum length for a yearlong senior essay is forty pages.

An extended research project. Students must petition the curriculum committee for permission to enroll by the last day of classes in the term preceding enrollment in LITR 493. For students expecting to graduate in May, the senior essay is due in the office of the director of undergraduate studies according to the following schedule: (1) by September 9, a three-page prospectus signed by the student’s adviser; (2) by February 10, a full rough draft (not notes); (3) by April 14, the completed essay. December graduates should consult the director of undergraduate studies for required deadlines. The minimum length for a yearlong senior essay is forty pages.