Undergraduate Courses Spring 2008

CL202: Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Literature
Professor Chris Livanos -
950 Van Hise - 263-3851
Lecture: MW @ 12:05 5208 Soc. Science

The Monstrous in Modern Literature

We will examine how and why the human imagination creates non-human monsters. The monster helps humanity define what we are by showing clearly what we are not. Sometimes we disown our own undesirable traits by projecting them onto monstrous others and having an imaginary hero destroy them.

In preparation for the study of modern monsters, we will read two texts from the Middle Ages--Dante's Inferno , the Icelandic Saga of the Volsungs . In addition to preparing us to read Tolkien, The Saga of The Volsungs will show us examples of transgressors whose crimes cause them to forfeit their humanity and become monsters or animals. Here we will discuss how portrayal of the animal differs from portrayal of the monster, and how humanity relates to each.

In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis we will discuss different interpretations of Gregor Samsa's transformation into an enormous insect and ask whether or not his new monstrous identity allows him to transcend social norms. (He can walk on walls, after all, unlike you or I).

Mary Shelley provides a modern twist on the monster story by sympathizing with the monster as a well-meaning but misunderstood social outcast. We will finally examine H.P. Lovecraft's construction of extraterrestrial, malign, and superhuman monsters as the embodiment of the modern fear that man is not the center of the universe, the measure of all things, or really very significant at all.

Tentative Reading List:

Dante: The Inferno
The Saga of the Volsungs
J.R.R. Tolkien The Children of Hurin
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis
H.P. Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness
C. S. Lewis Out of the Silent Planet
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels
William Shakespeare The Tempest, Richard III

CL203: Introduction to Cross-Cultural Literary Forms
Topic: "Classic" Fascism, Culture, and Literature: Italy, Germany, Japan
Professor Mary Layoun -
938 Van Hise - 262-9767
Lecture: MW @ 1:20
5208 Soc. Science

During the 1920s and 30s the rise of fascist movements was followed by the establishment of fascist regimes in several European countries--most famously, in Germany and Italy. But the influence of fascism as movement and/or state power was palpable and in some cases ascendant elsewhere as well. In Japan the same period saw the rise of a movement and the establishment of a regime for which the name of "fascism" has often been contested if not refused. Yet the situation in Japan from the late 20s through the end of the war shares a great deal with what Bertram Gross calls "classic fascism" (Friendly Fascism, 1980). What is "classic fascism"? Is its historical experience a unique one limited only to the 1920s - 1940s in Europe (and Japan)? What is its significance in the early 21st century?

Beginning with the question of fascism, its relationship to the modern and to mass movements, and its move from movement to state power in Italy, Germany, and Japan, we will investigate the constitutive roles in fascism of: gender, sexuality, culture, myth, and technology.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
• active class participation, requiring both your intellectual and material presence in lecture and section;
• three take-home essay exams at approximately the 6th and 10th weeks and for the final exam;
• an interview / report of 2 pages due after spring break;
• attendance at three evening film showings, dates to be announced;
• occasional in-class writing exercises.

Course Readings will likely include:
John Dos Passos: The Big Money
Roger Griffin: Fascism, A Reader
Stuart Hood: Introducing Fascism
Alan Moore: V for Vendetta
Ignazio Silone: Fontamara
and a substantial reader of poetry, short stories, and historical and critical essays.

Comparative Literature 354 -Novel: Tradition of Menippean Satire
MWF 1:20/ 478 Van Hise
Professor Max Statkiewicz -
958 Van Hise - 262-7862

After criticizing the derivation of the genre of the novel in the West from the so-called Greek novels or romances, the celebrated theoretician of the novel, Mikhail Bakhtin, refers to the ancient "serio-comical genres" – such as Socratic dialogues, Lucian's fantastic stories, and Menippean satire in general – as the genuine source of "the novel as the genre of becoming." But can there be such a genre at all, at least in the classical sense of the term "genre," that is, in the sense of a fixed set of rules that stabilize a particular "kind" or "form" of literary discourse? This is what we are going to investigate. After considering some examples of the ancient Greek and Roman satires, we shall read modern, early and late, short stories, novellas, and novels particularly relevant to the problematic of the "genre of becoming." The suggested reading might include Plato's Symposium, Petronius' Satyricon, Lucian's True Story, Voltaire's "Macromegas" or Candide, Dostoievsky's "Dre
am of a Ridiculous Man" or Notes from Underground, Nabokov's Pale Fire, Borges' "The Library of Babel" and other stories, Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, Gombrowicz's Cosmos, Pynchon's "Entropy" and Crying of Lot 49, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Peri Rossi's The Ship of Fools, Cortázar's Hopscotch.

Those who are particularly interested in this problematic might send me their suggestions for reading. If nothing else, these suggestions might become the topic for their papers.

Comparative Literature 377 / Medieval Period - 14th Century
Meets with Medieval 551
Lecture: MW 8:00 - 9:15 AM / 495 Van Hise
Discussion: M @ 4:00 / 495 Van Hise
Professor Chris Livanos -
950 Van Hise - 263-3851

War, religious division, and a plague that devastated the population made people in fourteenth-century Europe question their most fundamental social spiritual beliefs. The period was also marked by unprecedented creative output in English, Italian, and other literary languages that were beginning to challenge the prestige of Latin. We will discuss five major texts from England , Italy and Spain composed while Europe was making the uneasy transition from the Middle Ages to the modern period. In class discussions, we will focus especially on themes of authority and perspective as we examine how all of our authors write from ever-changing points of view.

Four an additional credit, students may enroll in an optional discussion section that will read Dante's Purgatory and Paradise .

Dante: Inferno
Petrarch: Canzoniere
Boccaccio: Decameron
Juan Ruíz: The Book of Good Love
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

Comparative Literature 466 - Topics in Visual Culture: Word & Image
Meets with Art History 430
MW 2:30-3:45 / L140 Elvehjem
Instructor: Jill Casid

The general aim of the course is to introduce key issues, theories, and methods in visual cultures studies, providing a changing topical focus that addresses new research in this developing interdisciplinary area. Word & Image introduces ways of approaching the analysis of text and image (e.g., iconology, semiotics, deconstruction, poststructural challenges to the distinction between word and image, and discourse analysis) and historical and contemporary practices with word & image interaction from ancient codices, medieval manuscripts, early modern emblem books, and the early modern revolutions in print to Surrealist, Futurist and Dada artworks and publications, the photo-essay, modern and contemporary conceptual art, and contemporary graphic novels. The course will also extend to current work on new media, hypertext, and the new logics of word-image relations. The course will be a combination of lecture and discussion. The course readings will all be in a reader with the possible exception of one or two novels. Course requirements will consist of several short writing assignments leading up to a final project which may take the form of either a research paper or a creative project in word-image experimentation. Participants are strongly encouraged to work on an area that will have direct usefulness to their developing "portfolio" or specialization. There
is no expectation that students will have background in art history.

The course is cross-listed with comparative literature to ensure broad interdisciplinary participation.