Courses in Translation and Related Topics at Yale
Spring 2025 Translation Courses
Undergraduate Courses
Bilingual Imaginaries: Thinking, Writing and Living across Languages (LITR 030)
Instructor: Jane Mikkelson
This course examines what it means to exist in more than one language. For some, another language might be natively known, or laboriously acquired to the point of fluency in adult years; others may live with a second language that has been partially lost, suppressed, or broken (and perhaps later revived and reclaimed). We read poems, plays, short stories, and novels in which various proficiencies in another language are met with restlessness, exuberance, anxiety, humor, and ingenuity. Thinking about how language and identity are bound together in vital and surprisingly elastic ways, we consider how knowledge of a second language can impress itself on the imagination, on literature—even on one’s very sense of self. This course helps students acquire critical reading and writing skills, with a particular focus on close reading, textual analysis, formulating academic arguments, and essay-writing. Enrollment limited to first-year students.
How to Compare (LITR 140)
Instructor: Samuel Hodgkin
This course is an exploration of literary comparison from methodological as well as historical perspectives. We compare texts within genres, across genres and media, across periods, and between cultures and languages. We consider questions such as whether all comparisons must assume a common ground, and whether there is always an implicit politics to any comparison. Topics range from theories of translation and ekphrasis to exoticism and untranslatability. Readings include classics by critics such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and Kristeva, and writers such as Marie de France, Nezami, and Calvino. It also engages with the literature of our own moment: we will read a newly-translated novel by the Chilean writer Nona Fernàndez, and the Iranian poet Kayvan Tahmasebian will visit the class for a conversation. We will also discuss films (Parajanov and Barta) and a new Russian computer game. This course fulfills an introductory requirement for students considering one of the majors in the Comparative Literature department, but all are welcome, and the methodologies and questions discussed in the class are useful for any kind of humanistic inquiry.
Japanese Poetry and Poetics (LITR 181)
Instructor: Kurtis Hanlon
Core concepts and traditions of classical Japanese poetry explored through the medium of translation. Readings from anthologies and treatises of the ninth through early twentieth centuries. Attention to recent critical studies in transcultural poetic theory. Inspection and discussion of related artifacts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Yale University Art Gallery. Readings and discussion in English. No knowledge of Japanese required. Previous study of literary texts is recommended but not required.
Reading and Translating Modern Japanese Literature (EALL 286)
Instructor: Luciana Sanga
In this class, we read Natsume Sōseki’s canonical 1908 novel Sanshirō in its original Japanese. One of the most beloved works of modern Japanese literature, Sanshirō features an eponymous protagonist struggling to navigate college life, love, and friendship. I provide vocabulary lists as well as the historical background necessary to understanding the text, with a focus on its format as a newspaper serialization. Students are expected to come to class having carefully read the assigned chapter. We translate selected passages into English and discuss the text in the context of its initial publication venue and beyond. Students gain a deep understanding of this Japanese classic and become more aware of some recurrent challenges in translating Japanese into English. Prerequisite: third year Japanese or equivalent.Graduate students from any discipline who wish to take the class should email the instructor.
Politics of East Asian Digitial Media Culture (EALL 298)
Instructor: Tian Li
East Asian digital media culture, ranging from cinema, television, musical video, to online games, has (re)shaped the global and national/regional imaginings of East Asia. The Post-Cold War intensification of intra-Asian interactions has precipitated the rise of a Pan-Asian regional identity wherein the nation-state is not yet obsolete. What role does screen culture play in the border-crossing interplay among languages, ideologies, aesthetics, and affect? How do we understand the storytelling and politics of East Asian screen cultures in relation to its historical and social context? How does screen culture capture local/global desires in a digital time? Within the contemporary media ecologies, how does screen culture create an audiovisual relation that traverses screen and actuality? How do screen culture continue to push forward the history of transformation of sign system from the written words to visual moving images in the contemporary sensory over-loaded world of screens. This course deals with issues of (trans)nationalism, (un)translatability, locality and globality, (post)modernity, virtuality and actuality, and politics of gender. Students learn how to think and write about screen cultures of East Asia in particular and of contemporary screen culture in general.
The Modern French Novel (LITR 214)
Instructors: Alice Kaplan and Maurice Samuels
A survey of major French novels, considering style and story, literary and intellectual movements, and historical contexts. Writers include Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, Camus, and Sartre. Readings in translation. One section conducted in French.
Advanced Literary Translation (LITR 305)
Instructor: Robyn Creswell
A sequel to LITR 348 or its equivalent, this course brings together advanced and seriously committed students of literary translation, especially (but not only) those who are doing translation-related senior theses. Students must apply to the class with a specific project in mind, that they have been developing or considering, and that they will present on a regular basis throughout the semester. Discussion of translations-in-progress are supplemented by short readings that include model works from the world of literary translation, among them introductions and pieces of criticism, as well as reflections by practitioners treating all phases of their art. The class is open to undergraduates and graduate students who have taken at least one translation workshop. By permission of the instructor. Formerly ENGL 483.
Prerequisite: LITR 348.
The Practice of Literary Translation (LITR 348)
Instructor: Peter Cole
This course combines a seminar on the history and theory of translation (Tuesdays) with a hands-on workshop (Thursdays). The readings lead us through a series of case studies comparing, on the one hand, multiple translations of given literary works and, on the other, classic statements about translation—by translators themselves and prominent theorists. We consider both poetry and prose from the Bible, selections from Chinese, Greek, and Latin verse, classical Arabic and Persian literature, prose by Cervantes, Borges, and others, and modern European poetry (including Pushkin, Baudelaire, and Rilke). Students are expected to prepare short class presentations, participate in a weekly workshop, try their hand at a series of translation exercises, and undertake an intensive, semester-long translation project. Proficiency in a foreign language is required. Previously ENGL 456.
The Greek Diaspora in the United States (LITR 375)
Instructor: Maria Kaliambou
The seminar explores the history and culture of the Greek diasporic community in the United States from the end of the 19th century to the present. The Greek American experience is embedded in the larger discussion of ethnic histories that construct modern America. The seminar examines important facets of immigration history, such as community formation, institutions and associations, professional occupations, and civic engagement. It pays attention to the everyday lives of the Greek Americans as demonstrated in religious, educational, and family cultural practices. It concludes by exploring the artistic expressions of Greek immigrants as manifested in literature, music, and film production. The instructor provides a variety of primary sources (archival records, business catalogs, community albums, personal narratives, letters, audiovisual material, etc.). All primary and secondary sources are in English; however, students are encouraged to read available material in the original language.
The Quran and its Interpreters (LITR 415)
Instructor: Shawkat Toorawa
We spend the first third of the course reading the Quran, studying its written compilation and redaction; its narrative structure; its rhetorical strategies; its major themes; its connections to and departures from other Scripture; translation and the problems associated with it. In the next two thirds we engage with the rich tradition of commentary, exegesis, and interpretation it has occasioned—legal, literary, theological, and visual, from classical readings and materials all the way up to the modern period and present day. We also look at the ways the Quran has been interpreted in different media, notably the visual arts. We pay special attention to certain surahs (chapters), including The Heifer (2, Baqarah), Joseph (12, Yusuf), The Cave (18, Kahf), Ya Sin (36), and several prominent short surahs. Topics include the Devil; Jesus and Mary; Moses and the Children of Israel; the nature of the Divine; the status of women and men; the impact of the Qur’an on political and religious thought; and its influence of the Qur’an on literature.
Translating Judaism (LITR 426)
Instructor: Peter Cole
This course combines elements of a translation workshop and a seminar that focuses on the Jewish history of translation. We consider comparative renderings of key texts and secondary reflections on the process of translation itself—from Scripture (biblical prose and poetry) to medieval literature (religious, philosophical, and belletristic prose as well as poetry), and on to modern and contemporary fiction, non-fiction, religious texts, and poems. Students are required to have competence in at least one foreign (and preferably Jewish) language and to develop semester-long projects that are brought into the workshop part of the class on a regular basis. Competence in at least one language apart from English. A working knowledge of Hebrew, Yiddish, or any other "Jewish language" is desirable, but not required.
Thought Experiments: Connecting Literature, Philosophy and the Natural Sciences (LITR 483)
Instructor: Paul Grimstad
The course looks closely at the intersection of literature, philosophy and natural science through the lens of the thought experiment (suppositional reasoning about What If? scenarios). Do thought experiments yield new knowledge about the world? What role does narrative or scene setting play in thought experiments? Can works of literary fiction or films function as thought experiments? Readings take up topics such as personal identity, artificial intelligence, meaning and intentionality, free will, time travel, the riddle of induction, “trolley problems” in ethics and the hard problem of consciousness. Authors may include Mary Shelley, Plato, Albert Einstein, Iris Murdoch, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lucretius, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Nelson Goodman, Rene Descartes, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Derek Parfit, Rivka Galchen, Alan Turing, Daniel Dennett, Octavia Butler, as well as films (Oppenheimer) and television shows (Black Mirror). Students should have taken at least one course involving close analysis of works of literature or philosophy.
Literary Translation: Contemporary Workshop (FREN 192)
Instructor: Nichole Gleisner
This course will focus on translating contemporary literature by exploring concerns of writers and translators working in the French and Francophone field today. Each week, students will translate an excerpt from a wide variety of texts written in French: prose, poetry, graphic novels, YA, science fiction, long-form journalism. We will also read and craft literary criticism, paying special attention to reviews of books in translation as we seek to understand and define the role of the translator in our current day. How does literary criticism complement the work of translation? In what ways is the current mode of approaching translations in reviews lacking? How can we develop criteria to evaluate works in translation that acknowledge the role of the translator ? How do these activities – both translating and reviewing – enrich scholarly communities, webs of thought, networks of writers, students’ own ways of approaching and understanding a text? Students will translate and workshop selections each week as well as undertake the translation of a significant portion (25-35 pages) of a contemporary text of their own. Course may be taken after FREN 150 or with permission of the instructor.
The Senior Essay – Translation Concentration (FREN 492)
Instructor: Thomas Connolly
A one-term research project completed under the direction of a ladder faculty member in the Department of French and resulting in a substantial translation (roughly 30 pages) from French to English, with a critical introduction of a length to be determined by the student in consultation with the advising ladder faculty member. Materials submitted for the translation concentration cannot be the same as the materials submitted for the translation courses. For additional information, consult the director of undergraduate studies.
The Senior Essay in the Intensive Major – Translation Concentration (FREN 496)
Instructor: Thomas Connolly
Second term of a yearlong research project completed under the direction of a ladder faculty member in the Department of French and resulting in a translation of considerable length (roughly 60 pages), from French to English, with a critical introduction of a length to be determined by the student in consultation with the advising ladder faculty member. Materials submitted for the translation concentration cannot be the same as the materials submitted for the translation courses. For additional information, consult the director of undergraduate studies.
Readings in Comparative World English Literatures (ENGL 128)
Instructor: Varies by Section
An introduction to the literary traditions of the Anglophone world in a variety of poetic and narrative forms and historical contexts. Emphasis on developing skills of literary interpretation and critical writing; diverse linguistic, cultural and racial histories; and on the politics of empire and liberation struggles. Authors may include Daniel Defoe, Mary Prince, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, C. L. R. James, Claude McKay, Jean Rhys, Yvonne Vera, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, J. M. Coetzee, Brian Friel, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Alice Munro, Derek Walcott, and Patrick White, among others.
Introduction to Linguistic Phylogenetics (LING 219)
Instructor: Edwin Ko
The goal of linguistic phylogenetics is to establish the relationships among the world’s languages. This course surveys the history of linguistic phylogenetics that has employed quantitative and computational methods in the past century. Another goal of the course is to provide students with an overview of more recent computational methods originally developed for studying evolutionary biology but extended and adapted for use in studying linguistic change.
The Psalms, A Cultural History of Ancient Prayer (HIST 412J)
Instructor: Stephen Davis
This course introduces students to the Book of Psalms and its significant cultural and religious impact in ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course is organized in three units. Unit 1 focuses on the text of the Psalms, with special attention to their literary forms, editorial organization, and early ritual context in ancient Israel. Unit 2 focuses on the reception and use of the Psalms in late ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with special attention to matters of translation, interpretation, worship, prayer, and scriptural authority. Unit 3 focuses on material and sensory encounters with the Psalms from antiquity to the present day within these three religious traditions—case studies related to tactile and visual contact with the physical book, oral and aural engagement through song or chant, and embodied forms of writing, reciting, and enacting the Psalms in the context of ritual practice, including magical spells. The goal of the course is thus to trace the life and afterlife—to write the textual and extra-textural “biography,” as it were—of a major biblical book.
Elementary Akkadian II (AKKD 501)
Instructor: Avital Romach
Introduction to the language of ancient Babylonia and its cuneiform writing system, with exercises in reading, translation, and composition.
The Age of Akhenaton (ARCG 244)
Instructors: Nadine Moeller, John Darnell
Study of the period of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton (reigned 1353–1336 B.C.E.), often termed the Amarna Revolution, from historical, literary, religious, artistic, and archaeological perspectives. Consideration of the wider Egyptian, ancient Near Eastern, African, and Mediterranean contexts. Examination of the international diplomacy, solar theology, and artistic developments of the period. Reading of primary source material in translation.
Introduction to Classical Hieroglyphic Egyptian II (EGYP 501)
Instructor: John Darnell
A two-term introduction to the language of ancient pharaonic Egypt (Middle Egyptian) and its hieroglyphic writing system, with short historical, literary, and religious texts. Grammatical analysis with exercises in reading, translation, and composition.
Natural Language Processing (CPSC 477)
Instructor: Arman Cohan
Linguistic, mathematical, and computational fundamentals of natural language processing (NLP). Topics include part of speech tagging, Hidden Markov models, syntax and parsing, lexical semantics, compositional semantics, machine translation, text classification, discourse, and dialogue processing. Additional topics such as sentiment analysis, text generation, and deep learning for NLP.
Indigenous Oral Expression in the Americas (HIST 340J)
Instructor: Polly Lauer
This writing-intensive seminar is designed for students interested in learning how to conduct research about Indigenous histories of the Western hemisphere. This course centers the place of oral communication and spoken word in articulating historical knowledge in Indigenous communities throughout the Americas. As a de-colonial methods tutorial, the class introduces students to diverse forms of spoken practice, which transports them between various geographies and regions to learn from wide-ranging Indigenous thinkers, media makers, and creators. Over the course of the semester, students immerse themselves in an auditory archive. Each week, students engage a different form of orality—poetry, song, storywork, etc.—by listening/watching/reading a primary source that is accompanied by theoretical readings. Students reckon with the politics of knowledge in historical research, considering the diversity and plurality of Indigenous identities, the significance of place and time, and the boundaries between genres. They also interrogate the limits of their own positionality and the influence of translation, while learning how to relate ethically and appropriately to sources produced by Indigenous communities. This final point is especially relevant in reading the theoretical texts—some of which are authored by non-Indigenous scholars—and in preparing students for undertaking future research.
From Yajnavalkya to Schopenhauer: The Philosophy of the Upanishads (PHIL 372)
Instructor: Aleksandar Uskokov
In this course we read closely a selection from the Upaniṣads, the earliest texts of philosophical significance on the Indian subcontinent. We focus on problems such as cosmogony and first principles; mind, self, and the eternal soul; the highest good; philosophical dialogue and debate; philosophy, narrative, and matters of style; etc. Alongside the Upaniṣads, we read their canonical and most influential systematization the Brahma-sūtra (ca. 4th century C.E.); six classical post-Upanisadic philosophers: Gaudapāda (6th century), Śaṅkara (early 8th century), Bhāskara (late 8th century), Sarvajñtman (late 10th century), Rāmānuja (11-12th century), and Jīva Gosvāmin (16th century); some Buddhist responses to Upanisadic ideas; the reception of Upanisadic literature from Indo-Persian through 19th century European philosophy; as well as the place of the Upaniṣads in ideas such as the holy, philosophia perennis, and mystical experience within the discipline of religious studies. Thus, through the course students will become acquainted of the Upaniṣads both in their own historical context and in global world literature. All readings in are English translation.
Graduate Student Classes
Ekphrasis and Art Criticism (FREN 668)
Instructor: Carol Armstrong
Ekphrasis in its ancient Greek sense refers to the vivid description of an object, animal, person, place, scene, or event undertaken as an exercise in oral rhetoric. In that original context, the practice of ekphrasis was meant to “paint” a picture in the mind of the listener, and thus pointed to both the imagistic capacities of verbal language, and the integral link between the image and the imagination. In the twentieth century, ekphrasis acquired a narrower meaning: poetry addressed to or modeled on works of visual art. While informed by both of those understandings, this seminar considers ekphrasis both more broadly, in terms of genre, and more narrowly, in relation to a partial history of art criticism as a modern form of writing in the anglophone and European worlds, with a focus on the eighteenth through the twentieth century. It treats the different writerly modes now understood to be embraced by the term ekphrasis: not only poetry, but also the prose poem and the novel, as well as the Salon and art review. It also touches on such issues as the Renaissance inversion of the phrase ut pictura poesis; the competition between the arts of word and image; the presence or absence of illustrations; the modern relations between genres and mediums and the question of mediation; and the address of the different arts to the subjectivity of the reader/spectator. In addition to weekly presentations, a short preliminary paper, and a final research paper, students organize and contribute to a workshop on ekphrasis based on their own ekphrastic exercises, undertaken in the Yale Art Gallery. (Some class time is devoted to those exercises.) This seminar is the second of two (the first is HSAR 667); our hope is that students from both seminars will collaborate on this final event.
Principles of Language Teaching and Learning (FREN 670)
Instructor: Fernando Rubio
Introduction to the basic principles of second-language acquisition theory, focusing on current perspectives from applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Topics include language teaching methodology, communicative and task-based approaches, learner variables, intercultural competence, and models of assessment.
Chaucer and Translation (FREN 802)
Instructor: Ardis Butterfield
An exploration of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340–1400), brilliant writer and translator. Using modern postcolonial as well as medieval theories of translation, memory, and bilingualism, we investigate how texts in French, Latin, and Italian are transformed, cited, and reinvented in his writings. Some key questions include: What happens to language under the pressure of crosslingual reading practices? What happens to the notion of translation in a multilingual culture? How are ideas of literary history affected by understanding Chaucer’s English in relation to the other more prestigious language worlds in which his poetry was enmeshed? Texts include material in French, Middle English, Latin, and Italian. Proficiency in any one or more of these languages is welcome, but every effort is made to use texts available in modern English translation, so as to include as wide a participation as possible in the course. Formerly ENGL 545.
Translation and Area Critique (EALL 851)
Instructor: Paul McQuade
This course examines the productive intersection of Translation Studies with contemporary Area Studies. Students engage with the history of translation and multilingualism, translation as critical hermeneutic and philosophy, and key texts in both disciplines. Students examine the historical axiomatics of Area Studies in order to leverage translation as a critical mode to explore new horizons within the discipline related to issues of language, gender, race and ethnicity, postcolonialism, and cultural criticism beyond the limits of the nation-state.
Dialect Diversity in English Literature (ENGL 3150)
Instructor: Peter Grund
Eliza Doolittle (in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion), Huckleberry Finn (in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Joseph (in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights), and Janie Crawford (in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God) are examples of speakers who use a non-standard dialect in English literature. While these are well-known examples, the use of such dialects (including Cockney, Southern American English, Yorkshire English, and African American English) is common throughout the history of English literature when representing certain characters’ voices; and some works are written entirely in non-standard dialects. In this course, we explore the use and function of dialects of English in a range of literary genres across history (from Old English to Present-Day English) and across the English-speaking world. We use tools and interpretive frameworks from literary scholarship and linguistics to analyze, understand, and explain the use of dialect. We answer questions such as what types of features are used and created to signal dialect; how accurate the usage is in terms of representing actual dialect; and what social, literary, and aesthetic purposes dialect usage may serve. This exploration also makes it necessary to consider critically what it means to write in standard English, why some dialects are evaluated negatively and others positively, and what the implications are of such evaluations for speakers both inside and outside the fictional world.
The Earliest English Literature (ENGL 3502)
Instructor: Emily Thronbury
An introduction to the rich literary tradition of early medieval England (c. 650 - c. 1100). Emphasis on the diversity of ways the early English people approached, preserved, and appreciated the written word. Readings include poems, histories, travel narratives, and riddles; all readings in Modern English. Formerly ENGL 153.
What was Latinx Literature (ENGL 4831)
Instructor: Joseph Miranda
With the arrival of “Latinx,” the last decade was defined as a moment of rupture and break with traditional notions of latinidad. Artists and activists asserted refusal and historical reckoning as the mode of doing politics and aesthetics. Now, pessimistic about Latinx as a signifier of a unified political project, the generational tides have shifted to “Latine.” This seminar asks what is “Latinx literature” and why are the methods of “Latinx studies” considered revolutionary or disruptive? What ideas were rooted in prior generations of feminist and queer collectives that sustained life when the arrival of a decolonial future seemed forever deferred and withheld from reach? We examine contemporary artists alongside historical antecedents to reevaluate what literary and social forms can help us challenge a racialized, heteronormative conception of citizenship. One possibility is that Gloria Anzaldúa—rightly critiqued for her relation to mestizaje —might be helpful in this moment of growing nationalism and hostility towards migrants to think about other ways of organizing life aside borders and the nation. We read across a long and varied arc of creative expression to consider forms that endure amidst colonial duress. For example: the serial, montage, anthology, performance collective, and inter-linked storytelling. Artists up for discussion may include Natalie Diaz, John Rechy, and Jesús Colón. Students will engage these works alongside theorists like José Esteban Muñoz and Juana María Rodríguez. Previously ENGL 331.
Law and the Humanities (CPLT 991)
Instructor: Jesus Velasco
This seminar suggests one possible introduction to the field and scholarship of law and humanities, from the perspective of philology and literary studies. Philology and law and philology and the humanities sport a historical relation of affinity that we explore. This affinity is not exclusively intellectual (an elective affinity between ideas and interests, as Weber puts it in his work on Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism), but also material: Philology, a central piece in humanistic traditions, is in itself an arch-discipline that shapes and studies the linguistic foundations of many other disciplines. Philology works consciously, but also unconsciously at a more elementary level across entire populations of both monolingual and multilingual societies. There would be no legal discipline without philology—but one can also say and vice versa, as many of the philological methods and procedures invoke legal thinking in a very deep way. We read theoretical sources from several periods as well as contemporary scholarship on the field of law and humanities. We touch on different legal traditions in several languages.
Latin American Political Thought II: Neocolonial, Anticolonial, Decolonial: 1930-2020 (AMST 966)
Instructor: Moira Fradinger
This is the second part of a year-long seminar that started in the fall. The year-long plan introduces students to two centuries of Latin American political thought in the form of social and literary essays produced since the times of independence. It studies how Latin American writers and politicians have theorized the political/cultural heritage of the colony. The second part of the seminar (spring) starts with the 1940s and the rise of populism, engages heavily the sixties, seventies, and eighties and ends with writings on current indigenous movements across the region but especially in the Amazon. During the fall we engage in the nineteenth-century debates over “American identity” that were foundational to the newly constituted nation-states and the turn of the twentieth-century ideas about colonialism and neocolonialism. The spring explores debates over cultural independence, the movement of “indigenismo,” mestizaje, transculturation and heterogeneity, the sixties continuation of “negritude,” the reworking of the metaphor of “cannibalism” to account for the cultural politics of the region, concepts such as “internal colonialism” and “motley society,” and the polemics over the region’s capitalist modernity and postmodernity (authors include Fanon, Léon Damas, Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Theotonio dos Santos, Angel Rama, Retamar, Pino Solanas, Octavio Getino, Aníbal Quijano, Cornejo Polar, Edmundo O’Gorman, Antonio Candido, Darcy Ribeiro, Pablo González Casanova, León-Portilla, R. Kusch, René Zavaleta Mercado, Arturo Escobar, Rita Segato, Bolívar Echeverría, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Marisol de la Cadena, Viveiros de Castro, David Kopenawa). Weekly sessions are conducted in Spanish, and most of the readings are Spanish, French, and Portuguese materials (with a few Anglo-Caribbean sources). Students are provided with English translations if they prefer so and are allowed to write their papers in English.
The Word is My Fourth Dimension (ART 604)
Instructor: Kameelah Rasheed
The course title comes from the 2012 English translation of Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva (1973). This course invites us to make work that engages with text and writing and explore the artists who push us to consider new relationships to language. Beyond the page, we explore text practices across various substrates and environments: the browser, the wall, the body, the sky, and the land. We consider legibility, translation, duration, embodiment, quantum physics, and pleasure in generating and studying text-based practices. Classes include opportunities for play, discussions, short lectures, and making. Assignments in this class include one presentation, one summative text-based work, one short essay, and active class participation. In the background of the course, we slowly read Lispector’s Água Viva as a haunt in our study of those who attempt to wrangle language.
World Literature in Theory and Practice (CPLT 551)
Instructor: Samuel Hodgkin
“World literature studies” has emerged over the past generation at institutions across the U.S. as a pedagogical alternative to comparative literature, although whether it constitutes a real conceptual challenge to the discipline or a mere rebranding remains to be seen. In scholarship, the phrase “world literature” originally stood for the effort to make Western comparative literature less Eurocentric, but it is used by its advocates and critics to refer to a bewildering array of incompatible methods and objects of study, from world systems theory to translation and reception studies and the stakes of the concept of a world as such. This seminar prepares participants to enter an academic and publishing sphere in which the idea of world literature is everywhere, but its meaning is an object of general contestation. Theorists discussed include Apter, Brouillette, Casanova, Cheah, Damrosch, Even-Zohar, Goethe, Gorky, Herder, Mahler, Moretti, Orsini, Pollock, Spivak, and the Warwick Research Collective. Literary case studies include Ismailov, Kadare, Pavic, and a range of literary anthologies from the past two centuries. Over the course of the semester, students work together to trace their chosen writers and literary movements through a variety of reception and translation contexts.
Modern Chinese Literature (EALL 548)
Instructor: Jing Tsu
An introduction to modern Chinese literature. Topics include Sinophone studies, East Asian diaspora, theories of comparison, technologies of writing and new literacies, realism, translation, globalization, scientism, and culture.
Biopolitics of Human-Nonhuman Relations (ENV 796)
Instructor: Michael Dove
Advanced graduate seminar on the “post-humanist” turn toward multi-species ethnography. Section I, introduction to the course. Section II, perspectivism: ontological theory and multi-species ethnography; human consciousness and the environment; and mimesis in human-prey relations. Section III, entanglements: translating indigenous knowledge; the history of natural history; and the politics of environmentalism. Section IV, metaphors: non-human imagery in political discourses; and geologic/volcanic imagery. Section V, student selections of readings; and student presentations of their seminar papers. Section VI, conclusion: plants as teachers; and a lecture by the course TF. Three hour lecture/seminar. Enrollment capped.
Chinese and Japanese Christian Literature (REL 941)
Instructor: Chloe Starr
What effect did Christianity have on modern Chinese literature, and what sort of Christianity emerges from Chinese Christian literature? Is Endō Shusakū the only Japanese Christian writer (and does Martin Scorsese’s film do justice to Endō's novel Silence)? This course tackles such questions by tracing the development of a Christian literature in China and Japan from late Imperial times to the beginning of the twenty-first century, with particular focus on the heyday (in China) of the 1920s and ’30s, and on the Japanese side, on Endō's postwar novels. Using texts available in English, the course examines how Christian ideas and metaphors permeated the literary—and revolutionary—imagination in East Asia. Though rarely clearly in evidence, the influence of Christianity on Chinese literature came directly through the Bible and church education and indirectly through translated European and Western literature. The course tests the aesthetic visions and construction of the human being from texts set among Japanese samurai in Mexico to the revolutionary throes of modern China. Area V.
The Russian Fin de Siecle (RUSS 692)
Instructor: Jinyi Chu
This course offers an interdisciplinary overview of modernist culture in Russia. Focus is on how poets, prose writers, artists, intellectuals, and politicians (from Merezhkovsky to Stravinsky, from Diaghilev to Lenin) interacted with each other and how imperial Russia developed its own modernist culture in global context. Topics include close readings of poetry and prose; institutions of art and media; literary journals and groups; translation and book market; European thoughts in Russia; theosophy and literature; modernist sexuality; prerevolutionary urban culture; gentry life; dance, music, costume design; Russia between East and West; revolution and modernism. Students establish an in-depth understanding of the cultural milieu in Russia from the 1890s to the 1910s and are introduced to the scholarly discourses on Russian modernism.