Comparative Literature

The course considers the literature of nuclear disaster from 1986 to the present, comparing Chernobyl to selected literary responses to the Fukushima accident of 2011, and attempt to show some major tendencies in these works. Some questions the course may ask as the texts are read: How do writers capture the invisible threat of radiation? What is the larger political context they operate in? What forms can literature take in the face of disasters that are both local and global, and whose consequences exceed normal human temporality?

The course is an introduction to the COMMEDIA: INFERNO, PURGATORIO, AND PARADISO with particular attention to key cantos. Students read texts and apply methodological tools for the analysis of literary texts. Required reading includes COMMEDIA by Dante Alighieri. Students are also required to read essays in Italian from a list provided by the course instructor.

This course introduces African oral and written literature in the indigenous languages. Students discuss literary aspects of both oral and written literature and the various functions and purposes they serve in society. The course includes a description and analysis of various genres of African oral and written literature.

This course introduces Bachelor students to the evolution of African literary canons from the late 19th to the 21st centuries. Emphasis is laid on acquainting students to central debates that have preoccupied African writers and how these debates have unmasked the complexities of African societies before and at the dawn of colonialization. In exploring the texts, developing basic skills such as reading, interpreting, analyzing, and critiquing novels, short stories, drama, and poetry is a major objective of the seminar. Further, debates regarding the historical and cultural contexts of the literary productions shall be engaged in the course of the seminar. To have a better appreciation of African literatures, texts, and critical discourse from the African Diaspora shall be part of the literary corpus. The course also discusses major theoretical approaches to literature such as, structuralism, narratology, new historicism, and African feminist critical perspectives. The postcolonial theory is, however, a major critical discourse in the seminar.

This course analyzes Francophone literature and the stylistic choices authors make to enhance and create certain points in their writing. It focuses on contemporary Francophone literature with a postcolonial approach, its different forms in comedy/humor/irony, and different genres such as the novel, poetry, theater, and essay. It covers historical background and analyzes different literary details.

A survey of Chinese narrative with its differing topical approaches: justice, history and fiction, romance, and the supernatural. Students are expected to comprehend the legacy of Chinese culture by examining its continuing articulations of archetypes and masterpieces. This class explores diverse narrative forms across time and genre: from the Han dynasty inceptions of historical records to Lu Xun`s personal essays; from the Tang romance to the Ming-Qing vernacular fiction; from the musical theatre in the Yuan dynasty to the revolutionary model plays during the Cultural Revolution, and also to contemporary cinematic representations of those popular themes.