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.

Postcolonialism first emerged as a discipline in the United States in the 1980s, but it has its roots in the work of anticolonial writers from the first half of the twentieth century. Postcolonial theory looks at the interaction between European nations and the societies they colonized and, in doing so, raises questions about concepts such as power, race, language and identity. Literature plays a key role in the anti-colonial struggle as it can offer an alternative vision to the official history of colonization. This course introduces students to some of the key concepts in postcolonial theory through the study of two novels, THE SECRET RIVER (2005) by the white Australian author Kate Grenville and THE WHALE RIDER (1987) by the Maori writer Witi Ihimaera.

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.