Ph.D. In Literature
Course Descriptions
Fall 2004
Students can take a minimum of three courses and a maximum of
four, not including language acquisition courses. (Language classes
do not count toward the 9 credit.) Every effort should be made
to acquire language proficiency as early as possible. Please bear
in mind, the language exams will be rigorous and must be satisfied
by the end of the third semester of residence.
Students are required to consult with the Program
Director/and or Director of Graduate Studies prior to enrolling
in any course. Students should select their courses from the listings
described in this booklet. However, in special circumstances and
with prior authorization from the Program's Director and/or Director
of Graduate Studies, graduate level courses not listed here can
be taken for credit.
Students are reminded of the Program's requirements
in Core, Primary and Related Fields. With the advice of the Director/
Director of Graduate Studies, and/or advisors in their field students,
will, at the appropriate time, be expected to demonstrate what
constitutes Primary and Related fields of study.
Courses will be scheduled on the following days:
M = Monday
T = Tuesday
W = Wednesday
H = Thursday
F = Friday
TH = Tuesday & Thursday
Please note: this listing of courses may change
for various reasons.
World Literature Required Course for all first year
students
LIFE-WRITING: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Bloomer, Doody, Afsaruddin, and Glodblatt
LIT 580 C Wednesday (W) 12:30 – 3:15
Writing about a life, giving a shape to something called a life–this
is a perpetual concern of writers in different parts of the world,
and of many different kinds of writers–historians, novelists,
psychologists included. The concept immediately introduces complex
aesthetic, political, and philosophical questions: What is this
“self” about whom a narrative is spun? What is the
difference between biography and autobiography? What is the relation
to fiction?
Life- writing seems intimately related to theology, as we may
see in the New Testament, or in the stories of Moses or Buddha–and
also in the meditations of Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century
CE, the work of the Sufi mystic Al-Ghazzali in the twelfth century,
or the narratives of the Baptist John Bunyan in the 17th century.
Travel writing (including stories of “discovery”)
seems largely life-writing in masquerade. What we call ‘history”
engages in extensive accounts of individual life and experience,
while the existence of a political entity such as a state or empire
is often (if sometimes unconsciously) rendered as analogous to
a “life”. Poets and novelists have long played with
writing lives, and presenting individuals engaged in life-writing,
when (as in theological discourse) the “life” is a
paradigm and an emblem. The “life” may involve seeking,
wandering through a labyrinth or wilderness, searching for some
desired object or relief in alienation and loneliness. The exile
or wanderer may turn to autobiography, yet such life-writing is
perilous for the writer, the narrator inviting us to decode him/
herself while offering us various tropes and devices endeavoring
to trying to conceal as well as to reveal.
Our study includes narratives of antiquity and of
modern times, of the East and the West, investigating various
ways in which we have given meaning to the individual and the
communal experience through the production of a “life”.
Among other things, we may expect to find many clues as to our
notions of the function of narrative, and ways of arranging dynamic
concepts such as motive, agency, affection, emotion. Narratives
to be studied may be long or short, and include fiction and non-fiction.
TEXTS:
Ancient Egyptian : The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor
Classical:
Plato, Phaedo (contains the description of the death of Socrates)
Ovid Epistles (Epistulae ex Ponto) ( poems as an exile’s
letters)
Suetonius , Lives of the Emperors (selections)
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe
Arabic and Near Eastern :
Arabic Odes, trans. Michael Sells ( selections)
Al-Ghazzali, Deliverance from Error ( al- Munqidh Min Al Dalal)
–trans Montgomery Watt;
Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta
Far Eastern: Chinese and Japanese :
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagun
Xiao Hong, Tales of Hulan River
Western: Early Modern
Texts selected from the following :
Montaigne (selected essays)
Pepys’ Diary. ( selections)
Bunyan :Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Daniel Defoe : Robinson Crusoe
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Prévost, L’Histoire d’une Grecque moderne
Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers ( The Sorrows of Young
Werther)
Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson.
Western: Modern:
Flaubert, Un Coeur Simple
Freud, Dora (Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse)
Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Literary Theory & Crit. Required Course for all first year
students
PHILOLOGY AND WELTLITERATUR
Buttigieg
LIT 585 B Monday (M) 1:30 – 4:15 PM
The Literature Programs course on Literary Theory deals with theories
of different time and places with emphasis on the critical problems
that arise when what we call "Literature" is investigated
in a multicultural context. Issues that may be expected to arise
include the following the problems of translation, the meaning
of metaphor, hermeneutics complexity, the meaning of the word
"style" the relation between oral and written literatures.
Eric Auerbach's essay, from which this course derives
its title, serves as a point of departure for exploring the possibility
of developing an approach to literary history and literary interpretation
that: (a) attends to the historical, cultural and aesthetic specificity
of the individual literary work and (b) at the same time, brings
into relief the complex ways in which cultures interact, overlap,
and modify one another. The course will focus primarily on the
pertinent works of Vico, Herder, and the German Romantics, Auerbach
(and other historicists), Arnold, C. L. R. James, Raymond Williams,
and Edward W. Said, as well as selections from the writings of
Fanon, Ngugi, Lamming, Cesaire, and others.
FOR. LANG. ACQUISITION
Ryan-Scheutz & Dubreil
LIT 501 B Thursday (H) 12:30-3:00
This course introduces language instructors to the theoretical
background and debates that inform current teaching methodologies
for second language learning. Language instructors will learn
to develop a communicative classroom environment that blends listening,
speaking, reading, and writing while building toward a proficiency
goal. Students will familiarize themselves with key concepts in
linguistics and research methodologies. They will gain a historical
perspective on theories of second language acquisition and foreign
language teaching methodologies and be encouraged to develop informed
views of their own. Projects include presentations, peer observations,
self assessment, small research components, micro-teaching demos,
and developing basic elements of the FL teaching portfolio.
PRACT. IN TEACHING FRENCH
S. Dubreil
LLRO 501F 11:45-12:45 W
This course will prepare students to teach elementary French courses.
It will cover basic teaching techniques/methods used in the ND
French curriculum, setting up and maintaining a grade book, course
management, as well as test design and evaluation techniques.
PRACT. IN TEACHING SPANISH
A. Farley
LLRO 501E 12:30-1:30 W
This weekly practicum is designed for graduate students who serve
as Spanish Teaching Assistants in the Department of Romance Languages.
The course focuses on the development of organizational and presentation
skills needed to excel as a foreign language teacher. Students
carry out micro-teaching projects and collaborate to develop a
portfolio of their own activities based upon the principles learned
in the course.
PRACT. IN TEACHING ITALIAN
C. Ryan-Scheutz
LLRO 501I 3:15-4:30 T
This course is designed for graduate students in the M.A. program
in Italian/PhD. Lit and is mandatory during their first year of
teaching. It complements the theoretical basis for foreign language
teaching methodology provided in LLRO and gives students hands-on
practice with the organizational tasks and pedagogical procedures
that are pertinent to their daily teaching responsibilities.
CLASSICS
GREEK TRAGEDY
Wood
LIT 517 Monday & Wednesday (MW) 1:30 – 2:45 PM
This course introduces fifth century Greek tragedy to students
who have at least an intermediate comprehension of ancient Greek.
The focus of the course will be on language and translation but
the essentials of Athenian dramatic culture will not be ignored.
A complete play of Euripides and selections from Aeschylus and
Sophocles will be read.
SOCRATIC LITERATURE
Vacca
LIT 518 Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 11:00 AM– 12:15 PM
This course will study the character and philosophical significance
of Socrates within the context of the intellectual ferment of
late Fifth Century Athens. The Greek primary texts that constitute
the heart of the course are Plato's Laches and Lysis and sections
of Xenophon's Memorabilia. Issues that arise from those texts,
like the ideal of rational character and Socrates' great interest
in Eros, will provide opportunities for student research and classroom
discussions.
GREEK & ROMAN MYTHOLOGY
McLaren
LIT 519 Monday, Wednesday & Friday (MWF) 9:35 – 10:25
AM
The major mythical tales and figures from the classical world
which have influenced world literature. Study of the Olympic and
vegetation cults. Homer and Hesiod, national and local myth, Syncretism,
Mysteries.
LATIN LYRIC
Schlegel
LIT 514 Monday, Wednesday & Friday (MWF) 1:55 – 2:45
PM
This course examines the lyric poetry of Catullus and Horace,
with the basic goal of training the student in the language, preoccupations,
and meter of Roman lyric. In the latter part of the course we
will look at some examples of Roman Elegy, Propertius, Ovid, and
Sulpicia, for purposes of comparison.
LIVY
Krostenko
LIT 518 A Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 12:30 – 1:45 PM
This course will cover selections from Livy's history, including
the foundation legends, Hannibal's attack on Rome, and the suppression
of the Bacchanalian cult. Topics to be considered will include
Livy's use of sources; Roman military techniques and tactics;
Roman expansionism; Livy's relation to the Augustan literary and
social agenda; and Livy's place in the history of Latin prose.
ENGLISH
MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
LIT 522A
Descriptions to Come
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
LIT 524 C
Descriptions to Come
MIDDLE ENGLISH LIT
LIT 535
Descriptions to Come
LATINO/A LITERATURE
Theresa Delgadillo
LIT 752 E Monday & Wednesday (MW) 4:30-5:45 PM
In this course we will read Latino/a fiction, poetry, essays,
drama and film. We will explore the specific literary and social
histories of various Latino/a subgroups as well as the relationship
between Latino/a literature and the literature of the Americas.
FRENCH
LOVE POETRY AND THE RENAISSANCE
DellaNeva
LIT 532 Wednesday (W) 3:30 – 6:00 PM
This course will focus this year on the love poetry of the most
prominent poet in sixteenth-century France, Ronsard. Some attention
will also be given to the poetry of the "satellites"
surrounding this Pléiade poet, especially Du Bellay and
Baïf. Special attention will be given to the role of Petrarchism
(including selected readings from Petrarch's Italian poems in
translation). Topics for discussion will include the development
of the sonnet, the concept of the canzoniere genre, rhetoric,
literary commonplaces, mythology, imitative techniques, intertextuality,
and feminist literary criticism. While the number of poems assigned
will be relatively small, it is expected that these will be prepared
thoroughly in advance of the classroom discussion, in which all
students will participate actively. Students will be expected
to do close readings in the form of oral explications as well
as oral presentations of pertinent literary criticism and of their
own research in progress.
FRENCH LIT. IN THE AGE OF FAITH
Boulton
LIT 534F Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 9:30 – 10:45 AM
This course will introduce the classic works and genres of medieval
France from 1100-1300, including the epic, the medieval romance,
lyric poetry and drama. Love in its various forms, including mystical
love of God, will be a unifying theme among the various works.
Works to be discussed will include the Chanson de Roland, the
poetry of Thibaut de Champagne and Rutebeuf, a romance by Chrétien
de Troyes, the Miracles of Gautier de Coinci, and the Jeu d'Adam.
19TH CENTURY SHORT STORY
Toumayan
LIT 564 F Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 12:30 – 1:45 PM
This course will focus on the development of the genre of short
narrative during the nineteenth century in France. Representative
works of Balzac, Nerval, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Flaubert, Gautier,
Mérimée, Maupassant, Nodier and Villiers de l'Isle
Adam will be considered. We will examine distinctive features
of the various aesthetics of Romanticism, Realism and Symbolism
as well as generic considerations relating to the conte fantastique.
INTERTEXTS: FRANCE AND NORTH AFRICA
Perry
LIT 573 F Tuesday (T) 3:30 – 6:00 PM
This course will explore textual relations between French and
North-African literary works as one possible opening onto inter-cultural
dialogue. We will first look at French writers and artists who
visited or resided in Morocco and Algeria from the early nineteenth
through the late twentieth centuries and who were seemingly guided
by an aspiration to understand the cultures they encountered.
We will examine aesthetic representations as well as the travel
diaries and correspondence of painters such as Eugène Delacroix,
Théodore Chassériau, Eugène Fromentin, and
Henri Matisse; the travel narratives of Fromentin (Une année
dans le Sahel), Pierre Loti (Au Maroc), and Isabelle Eberhardt
(excerpts from Écrits sur le sable); short stories by Eberhardt,
and novels by Albert Camus (L'Exil et le royaume), J.M.G. Le Clézio
(Désert), Michel Tournier (La Goutte d'or), and Didier
Van Cauwelaert (Un aller simple). In the latter part of the semester
we will explore North-African texts that respond in some way to
the works previously examined. Writers will include the Algerians
Assia Djebar (Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, L'Amour la
fantasia) and Malika Mokeddem (Le Siècle des sauterelles),
as well as the Moroccans Driss Chraibi (Le Passé simple)
and Tahar BenJelloun (Cette aveuglante absence de lumière).
Studies by Edward Saïd (Orientalism) and Fatimah Mernissi
(Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society),
among others, will enable us to approach Islamic culture as well
as the issues of French colonialism and the condition of women
in North Africa. Discussions conducted in French.
GERMAN
19TH CENTURY GERMAN LITERATURE
Dyck
LIT 567 Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 11:00 – 12:15 PM
This course will provide the students with an opportunity to read,
discuss, and analyze representative 19th century novellas by such
authors as Kleist, Keller, Meyer, Storm, and Hauptmann. These
texts will be treated as both literary and historical documents.
The course will examine the literary techniques common to the
novella and offer a historical survey of the various theories
of this rich and especially German genre. It will also attempt
to access the works through the contextual framework of the social
and politico-economic events and trends of the 19th century in
German-speaking countries. Finally, particular emphasis will be
placed on the psychological implications of the works.
SELF DEF & QUEST FOR HAPPINESS
Profit
LIT 577 Monday & Wednesday (MW) 1:30 – 2:45 PM
Everyone from the ancients to the most technologically conscious
CEOs tell us that those who succeed know the difference between
the important and the unimportant and that they allocate their
time accordingly. But how does one make these choices? If in fact
success and happiness are synonymous, as some would claim, which
way lies success, lies happiness? And what are the guideposts?
What really matters? In an age such as ours, does
anything have lasting value? Do I really matter? Do I make a difference?
At what point can legitimate self-interest, however, cross the
line and develop into narcissism? If I am most assuredly defined
by my beliefs and my deeds, what then do I believe, what do I
do? In the final analysis, who am I?
If literature, as so many maintain, not only mirrors
but also foretells world events, how have several twentieth century
authors, representing diverse national traditions, formulated
the answers to these seminal questions? Readings will include:
Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great
Gatsby, Albert Camus, The Stranger, Max Frisch, Homo Faber.
IRISH
IDEOLOGY, POETRY & POLITICS IN JACOBITE
IRELAND
O’Buachalla
LIT 547 Tuesday & Thursday (TH) 3:30 – 4:45 PM
Jacobitism, or allegiance to the cause of the House of Stuart
(from Latin Jacobus ‘James’ the deposed James II),
was the common voice of political dissent in 18th century Ireland,
Scotland and England. Irish Catholic advocacy of the Stuart cause
had already become a political orthodoxy in the course of the
17th century and when the Stuarts were deposed by William of Orange
(‘King Billy’) later succeeded by the Hanoverians
(1714) the culture of dispossession and displacement and the rhetoric
of return and restoration became firmly entrenched in the political
ideology of Catholic Ireland. This course will examine the development
of Irish Jacobitism in its various literary, historical and ideological
aspects in addition to placing it within its wider British and
European context in the 18th century.
MEMORY, MEANING & MIGRATION
Angela Bourke
LIT 591 I Tuesday & Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Memory, Meaning and Migration in Irish Oral Tradition Walter Benjamin’s
much-quoted 1936 essay, “The Storyteller: Reflections on
the Works of Nikolai Leskov” notes that while “people
imagine the storyteller as someone who has come from afar, they
enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home, making
an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions.”
This tension between going away and staying at home, found at
the heart of oral storytelling, plays itself out in important
ways in the history of Irish migration. A large proportion of
those obliged by famine and poverty to migrate from Ireland to
the United States and Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries
could neither read nor write, and many spoke only Irish. Oral
storytelling was therefore a major means through which migrants
communicated their experiences to younger generations and, through
return visits by a few, to those at home. Various genres of oral
storytelling in Irish and English deal, sometimes obliquely, with
migration, while a number of recent scholarly and creative works
have compared oral traditions of Irish migration with other narratives
of the same experience. Participants in this course will study
legends and folktales told in Irish, as well as dictated and transcribed
memoirs, scholarly studies, literary texts, and films. Students
will be expected to prepare topics for and contribute to class
discussion, and to write a total of three papers, the third of
which may be a revised draft of the first or second. Translations
of Irish-language texts will be available, so no prior knowledge
of Irish is required; students taking Irish language, however,
will have an opportunity to work with primary material in Irish,
and to compare Irish-language texts with their English translations.
MODERNISM & MODERNITY
Seamus Deane
LIT 572C TH 6:00-8:30 PM (Note: Meets until October 28, 2004)
One of the questions the course will address will be the distinctions
that have been made between modernism -- a set of predominantly
aesthetic practices -- and modernity, a condition that has a specifiable
chronology and genealogy. For modernism, the course readings will
concentrate on works from Ireland, Britain, and the USA in the
period from 1890-1940. The authors involved will be Joyce, Synge,
Bowen, Yeats and Beckett; Woolf and Ford Madox Ford; Scott Fitzgerald
and T.S. Eliot. Some readings from Habermas, Adorno and Frederic
Jameson will also be required.
ITALIAN
DANTE'S WORLD OF BOOKS
Baranski & Zygmu
LIT 525I Tuesday (T) 12:30 – 3:00 PM
Dante's World of Books aims to examine the oeuvre and career of,
arguably, the most original and influential writer in Western
culture from three closely interlinked perspectives. First, the
course provides an overview of all Dante's writings, the books
he actually produced. Second, it explores his intellectual formation
and his attitude towards the literary tradition-the books that
were probably present in his 'library'.
Third, it will assess the manner in which Dante
synthesized his different ideological and poetic interests in
order to develop an incisive and powerful assessment and critique
of humanity's position in the order of divine creation. In the
Middle Ages, the created universe was often metaphorically described
as "God's book" or the "book of creation".
The course thus attempts to investigate the complex inter-relationship
that Dante forged between his books and the 'book' of the Supreme
Artist, a popular and highly influential medieval image for God
the Creator.
MODERN ITALIAN POETRY
Welle
LIT 572 Thursday 3:30-6:00 PM
Addressed to graduate and advanced undergraduates, this course
focuses on Italian poetry in the twentieth century. Major Italian
poets and poet/translators to be studied include D'Annunzio, Gozzano,
Marinetti, Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, Pavese, Quasimodo, Fortini,
Pasolini, Sanguineti, Zanzotto, Rosselli, Giudici, Magrelli, Valduga
and D'Elia. The role of translation in the evolution, transmission
and diffusion of modern Italian poetry will also be considered.
PORTUGUESE
LUSO-BRAZILIAN LITERATURE & SOCIETY
DaMatta & Ferreira-Gould
LIT 573 P Wednesday (W) 3:30 – 6:00 PM
This course will focus on questions of national identity in the
Luso-Brazilian world. We will examine how social and cultural
issues are perceived, conceptualized, represented, and understood
in and by literature. The course will pay particular attention
to how literature depicts important human problems such as gender
and race relations, the crafting of national identity and national
heroes, class conflict, family structure, and some ideological
values such as success, love, happiness, fairness, misfortune,
destiny, honesty, equality, and faith. Authors to be studied will
include Manuel Antônio de Almeida, Machado de Assis, Jorge
Amado and Guimarães Rosa, on the Brazilian side, and Miguel
Torga, João de Melo, José Saramago and Lídia
Jorge, on the Portuguese side. Conducted in English with readings
in Portuguese or English (discussion group available in Portuguese).
SPANISH
FROM RECONQUEST TO RENAISSANCE: MED SPANISH
LITERATURE
D. Seidenspinner-Núnez
LIT 520F Thursday (H) 3:30-6:00
The defining feature of medieval Spain is the Reconquest, the
fluctuating repossession of lands conquered by Muslim invaders
in 711 that lasted from seven to more than seven hundred years.
This course will survey the masterworks of the Spanish Middle
Ages within the ideological, social, cultural, and political context
of reconquest Spain and will include the kharjas, Poema de mio
Çid, romancero, Los milagros de nuestra Señora by
Gonzalo de Berceo, Conde Lucanor by Don Juan Manuel, Libro de
buen amor by Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Talavera by Alfonso Martínez
de Toledo, Cárcel de amor by Diego de San Pedro, Celestina
by Fernando de Rojas, and miscellaneous selections. Primary texts
in Spanish will be supplemented with critical, scholarly, cultural,
and theoretical readings in Spanish and English.
ARGENTINE NARRATIVE 20 C.
Verani
LIT 571E Monday & Wednesday (MW) 11:45 – 1:00 PM
This course will study major examples of 20th century Argentine
narrative (novel and short story). The emphasis will be on close
readings of the texts along with recent developments in critical
theory. Readings will include works by Julio Cortázar,
Tomás Eloy Martínez, and Ricardo Piglia, among others.
Discussions will be conducted in Spanish and active participation
is expected
MODERNIZATION IN LATIN AM: URBAN CHANGES, TECH, &
DESIRES AT THE TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY
Olivera-Williams
LIT 570 E Monday (M) 12:45 – 3:15 PM
When Latin American countries entered the world market around
1875, they changed their traditional ways and rural economies
in order to replicate the economic characteristics, social structure
and political organization of northwestern contemporary societies.
These changes dramatically painted new images for the urban areas,
especially the most "modern" capital-cities in the region,
Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, Mexico, and Havana.
In this seminar, we will have the opportunity to see images of
these cities at the turn-of-the-century and to compare them with
the Mecca of modernity, New York City. We will discover the emergence
of a modern sensitivity in Latin America, touched by technological
advances and desires of being "authentic" in the midst
of changes, through pictures of that time and readings of selected
authors of the so- called "Modernismo." Writers such
as Cuban José Martí, who lived and wrote in New
York City (1880-1895), Mexican Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera,
Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, Argentine Leopoldo Lugones,
Uruguayans José Enrique Rodó, Julio Herrera y Reissig
and Delmira Agustini, among others, will enable us to reflect
on the thoughts of Latin American intellectuals regarding the
advantages and disadvantages of modernization as well as their
ideas on the different development of the two Americas at a pivotal
time in their history. Conducted in Spanish.
Very important information below:
The above list of courses is not exhaustive and there may be other
courses that you may take per your interest and what new courses
may be developed by the Fall.
However, the following two courses all incoming students are required
to take.
Life-Writing: Biography and Autobiography LIT 580
C Wednesday (W) 12:30 – 3:15
Doody, Bloomer, and guest faculty
Literary Theory & Crit. LIT 585 B Monday (M)
1:30 – 4:15 PM
Philology and Weltliteratur
Buttigieg
