Comparative Literature

This course explores moving image works and related media forms through the lens of migration and diaspora. It will look at the role of aesthetics, affect, gender, race, temporality, and intimacy in the stories that historically marginalized makers tell, and the kinds of narrative and formal experimentation they develop to critically revisit notions of home, memory, and community across different geographies. Readings from film and media scholarship, transnational cultural and ethnic studies, queer and gender studies as well as short creative and personal writings will guide our theoretical framework and help us articulate the various ways in which media are deeply imbricated with both the violent and reparative realities of border-crossing.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society from which it emerges. This course focuses on the complex relations between literature and society and to write and speak about them in an academic way. The course considers the characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts. In this course students consider key literary debates via the analysis of different texts from a number of different perspectives in literary studies. Students learn to see literature as a cultural phenomenon and are able to reflect academically on ethical and aesthetic aspects of literature; become familiar with different theoretical and critical movements; know a number of case studies, in which literary texts have influenced ethical debates; are able to write and speak about these kinds of issues in an academic way; acquire a supra-lingual perspective on literature.

This course introduces students to the study of Comparative Literature through 19th-century novels from France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the UK. All texts are read in English translation. Students are introduced to a representative and canonical range of fictional works, with focus on one literary genre - the novel - and one over-arching theme. Lecturers, seminar leaders, and secondary criticism all model a variety of comparative approaches for students and promote discussion of the discipline.

This course explores the impact that the complex relationship between humans and nature has on climate and biodiversity. It discusses the historical evolution of humanity's approach to nature and those representations in Latin American literature. It focuses on the cultural/environmental implications of extractivism, histories of land use, the social impact of economy on bodies and the biosphere, the political use of nature, non-human/human relations, the emergence of Latin American environmental thinking, ecocriticism, modern Latin American literature, and some of the most important political and cultural debates of the continent in recent history. 

This course provide an overview of the key aspects and trends of contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature, placing particular attention on areas of influence and contact between the two traditions. Topics covered include: the literary and cultural dialogue between Spain and Latin America; Spanish and Latin American Modernism vs. the Generation of '98; the poetic vanguards on both sides of the Atlantic; realism, magic and fantasy; Spanish postwar literature; women in the Hispanic world; transcendence, fragmentation, and transatlantic dialogue in the 20th century; literary trends in postmodern Spain and Latin America.

This course examines the psychological dimensions of prominent literary texts and looks at the complex relationship between literature and psychology from a broad range of perspectives. Students will read a range of literary texts with a view to understanding—both analytically and empathetically—problems and adaptations, focusing particularly on trauma in its various manifestations. Further, instead of simply considering the resulting post-traumatic "pathologies" the property of individuals, the course adopts a psychosocial lens to emphasise the broader social dimensions underpinning maladaptive psychological formations, as well as their (frequently unconscious) transgenerational transmission. It concludes with a reflection on the little or big "madnesses" that may lie hidden within the very fabric of what is considered to be "sane" and "normal" in Western society.

This course explores translation theories and their practical applications. Each session focuses on a specific theory or approach to translation, followed by an analysis of a translated text. The course aims to understand the crucial role of translation as a cultural and social practice and to become familiar with the major issues in translation theory and comparative literature.

This course studies the history of English literature, exploring key texts from each literary period, and examines English literary texts from cultural and social perspectives. In particular, the course analyzes literary classics such as Beowulf and works by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and Kazuo Ishiguro, situating them in their cultural and social contexts.

This project-based learning (PBL) course examines how the literary works of Han Kang, the 2024 Nobel laureate, are transformed and reimagined through digital media. Focusing on her distinctive narrative techniques, the course explores Han’s treatment of violence, trauma, and feminist resistance, with particular attention to the Gwangju Uprising and the embodied experience of her characters. Students analyze, remix, and remediate Han’s texts using digital storytelling tools and practices enriched by meta-information such as hashtags, rankings, and user comments, while critically examining the institutions and platforms that shape these technologies to engage diverse audiences. Through close reading, creative adaptation, and critical discussion, participants gain a deeper understanding of Han Kang’s poetic and experimental style, the socio-political contexts behind her writing, and the complexities of translating her work for a global readership. The course culminates in individual and collaborative digital projects highlighting the evolving relationship between contemporary Korean literature and digital culture.

This course explores texts for children and young adults in a historical and contemporary perspective. Students are introduced to children’s literature studies as an interdisciplinary field, related to theory, concepts, and analytical strategies from comparative literature, childhood studies, book history, and media studies. It analyzes works by canonical authors such as Astrid Lindgren, Hans Christian Andersen, and Lewis Caroll, as well as contemporary texts and media, and relates them to transnational and transmedial interpretations and adaptations. The relationship between children’s literature and changing concepts of childhood and youth is discussed, also in relation to different aspects of identity formation in local and global contexts.