Comparative Literature

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.

This course provides instruction and practice in the art of philosophical reflection and the skill of critical argument through the study of some of the core (Western) texts in the humanities and social sciences. While the focus is on analytical reading and critical thinking, there is an equal emphasis on expressing and presenting one’s ideas in writing, as well as engaging in dialogue on how to interpret and explain concepts and the practices they capture. 

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, published in German in 2015, is a politically charged novel about the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Richard, an older German with a GDR background, gets involved with, and befriends, a number of African refugees at a protest camp on Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg. A former Classics professor who was recently forced into retirement, he empathizes with the refugees, who are not allowed to work under German asylum laws. Richard researches their plight and helps them with administrative and everyday tasks, even giving piano lessons to one of them. After a break-in at Richard’s house, he and his friends question their own prejudices and attempt to learn from the experience. The novel serves as a starting point for the exploration of the political and human rights issues surrounding the situation of African refugees in Berlin. Some additional materials are provided to round out the discussion.

This seminar examines the close relationship of textuality, storytelling and subjectivity in three canonical modernist texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. Students study the period of Modernism and the distrusts and questions of the claim of human reason to be a reliable means for understanding and controlling the world. Key topics include narrative strategies within a newly structured world, textual experiments as empowering spaces for the shaken subject, and textual patterns emphasized in order to compensate for the loss of a more tangible world order. Additionally, the texts focus on textual representation served as a 'hyper-realist' depiction of the chaotic state of decay whereas story telling provided a potential panacea in a world devoid of meaning.