Comparative Literature

This course examines how Shakespeare has been adapted and appropriated in a variety of performance contexts. Students address and debate issues such as cultural and textual authority, authorship, gender, sexuality, national identity, ethnicity, adaptation, and appropriation. Possible topics, contexts and texts through which these issues are addressed may include, but are not limited to authorship; decolonization, postcolonial and settler cultures; queering Shakespeare; feminist performance; heritage and tourism; festivals; translation; popular culture; education. 

This course discovers various representations of India through the cross-study of literary and cinematographic works of the twentieth century. Students read works including A BARBARIAN IN ASIA by Henri Michaux and A CERTAIN IDEA OF ​​INDIA by Alberto Moravia; and view works including ABOARD THE DARJEELING LIMITED by Wes Anderson and the documentary by Louis Malle, GHOST INDIA.

The 19th century saw the reinvention of the subterranean. From the sewers in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables to the striking miners of Émile Zola’s Germinal, novelists began exploring the space beneath their feet. By the turn of the century, the opening of the Paris catacombs to the public and the construction of the metro system fueled the collective imagination, while the hidden strata of history and consciousness were being charted by the developing fields of archaeology and psychoanalysis. In the early to mid-20th century, the subterranean was as much a metaphor as it was a reality, with artists and philosophers drawing inspiration from newly discovered prehistoric cave paintings and the French Resistance returning once again to Hugo’s sewers. This class follows modernity as it goes underground. This course discusses topics including French and Parisian history and culture, urban text and its expressions in literature and film, and historical events and reinterpreting them in the context of their reliance on hidden historical and cultural undercurrents.

This course provides an introduction to the field of postcolonial theory by way of literature produced in former colonies of the British Empire, with particular focus on Australia and New Zealand. It covers their histories as a nation, information about the indigenous communities that live there, and applications of postcolonial theory onto these two countries. Understanding is mainly based through two novels, THE SECRET RIVER by Kate Grenville and THE WHALE RIDER by Witi Imaheara. The novels are examined through various aspects, including but not limited to gender, nature, and "The Other."

This course examines contemporary literary works, phenomena, and 'events'. Topics include Why do we read Literacy?, How to read Poetry, How to read a Novel?, what is poetic, Korean Literature as World Literature, Adventure and Survival Epic, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Literature in the Age of Climate Change, Disaster, Apocalypse, Dystopia, and Inside and Outside literature.