Comparative Literature

Conventional histories of French literature usually begin with the Chanson de Roland (c.1100), which is viewed as an inaugural text for a great tradition of national literature that runs smoothly through to the present and fosters a timeless ideal of France. However, this vision does not stand up to scrutiny – the “idea of France” turns out to be retroactive and fluid from the outset, then heavily contingent, in the post-medieval period, on changes of regime, on differences of class, gender, education or ethnicity, and on general cultural and political trends such as (to name but a few examples) Jacobinism, Romanticism, Republicanism, Fascism, Communism. This course examines how “France” and French national identity is constructed by studying a selection of key French literary texts from a variety of periods, including a postcolonial reflection on what it means to be “French.” 

This course examines how our place in the world is defined by gender. It introduces students to questions of gender in the culture and literature of Spanish America. The topic is studied through a number of cultural expressions, including prose, poetry, theatre and film, from a variety of countries and across various historical periods.

The course examines the ways in which Brazilian fiction has articulated and responded to the experiences of social, economic, and political upheaval in the second half of the 20th century, with a focus on Brazil's authoritarian tradition, in particular the traumatic military dictatorship of 1964-85 and the process of Democratic Transition in the 1980s and 90s. Themes explored include: anonymity and identity - personal and national; love, sexuality, and the family; censorship and repression; ideas of a Brazilian revolution or utopia; popular and mass culture; marginality and exile; history, journalism, and alternative approaches to narrative. 

This course uses a literary approach to political themes founded on the reflective and aesthetic values of certain works. This approach is supplemented by a philosophical, moral, and political reading of the works from an internal and external viewpoint which place them in their historical context and measure their weight outside of that context. This course develops a reflection on the political fable genre. After a general introduction (overview of Rabelais, Boccalini, Swift, Voltaire, Orwell, Huxley), the course centers on a formal, structural, and moral analysis of two famous collections of fables which use a philosophical and ironical approach: the 12 books of La Fontaine's fables and the 33 chapters of Tchouang-tseu as an art on the variation. In these different philosophical, satirical, didactic fables, the course studies the following double dimensions: political/moral, lucidity/illusion, wisdom/folly, animal/human, direct allusion/indirect allusion, and irony/humor. The art of the variation is defined in the different arts and contexts.

This course is an examination of modern and contemporary English literature through the lens of multiculturalism. The focus of the course changes from semester to semester, foregrounding different sets of literary texts by writers concerned with issues of race, identity, and the multicultural dynamics of the English-language world. Possible topics include: race and sexuality, First Peoples’ literature and cultures, jazz and African American literature, cultural politics, immigration and literature, Asian American literature, and Hispanic literature and culture. Students read a variety of literary genres, including novels, plays, and creative non-fiction, by writers who are concerned with issues of colonialism, race, language, and identity within multicultural societies. Some of the important questions the course addresses are: what are the concerns of so-called “ethnic” writers in contemporary cultures of the English-language world, what is the relationship between identity politics and literature, and how can we use critical race analysis as a part of literary study?

The course provides a thorough introduction to key texts in gothic fiction (1770-present) and in gothic criticism. In this course, study the Gothic mostly in literature, with several excursions to other media, for the gothic is also found in painting, architecture, film, popular music and fashion. Gothic provides the imaginative space to explore the blurring boundaries between the real and the imagined, the visible and the invisible, reason and emotion, the political and the personal, the living and the (un)dead. Gothic has been regarded as a mode to express and channel cultural fears about repressed colonial histories, vicious aspects of family life, prohibited sexuality, and silenced gender. Alternatively, it has been read as confirming protestant, middle-class and heterosexual norms and values. In this course we will try to account for these ambiguities and related questions in our close readings of Gothic novels, stories, poems and films. There are two seminar-style classes per week, and students are expected to do all assigned reading in advance of each session. Because the course is dynamic and discussion-based, there is a focus on partner/small-group work and short writing exercises. Students are responsible for starting off the group discussions on the literature for an assigned session as well as bringing to class any specific questions related to the material.