This course offers advanced, intensive examination of specific issues in World Literature, often those at the center of current critical interest. Examples may include translation issues; cross-cultural fertilizations; competing conceptions of world literature; literature in a global economy. May be repeated for credit with different topics.
| Distribution Area | Prerequisites | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Arts and Humanities- or -Global Learning | 1 course |
Romanticism (1770-1850) was one of the most innovative periods in European literature, setting the stage for modern literature by transforming the conventions of lyric poetry and perfecting the form of the novel. It also coincided with the height of competition between Europe's major empires. This course will examine how the context of empire shaped the central tenets of modern sexuality in the West--companionate marriage, compulsory heterosexuality, and racially endogamous coupling--and how writers during the Romantic period used poetry, fiction, and travel writing to express the danger and allure of varieties of sexuality deemed as "other." We will also engage writers from the colonies who bore witness to how colonization impacted the ordering of intimate and domestic life in their native lands. Organized around the geographic centers of imperial expansion and contestation, our readings will span canonical authors from the Romantic period like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo; women writers such as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Jane Austen, and Claire de Duras; colonial writers such as Rifa'a at-Tahtawi, Henry Ferozio, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, and Ignace Dau; and key texts in postcolonial theory and Black feminist thought.
Across various times and places, the concept of "the satan"--found in texts like Job 1:6 (Hebrew: "the adversary")--has consistently proven to be a rich source of intellectual engagement: Satan, it seems, is "good to think with" (then and now). This course employs transdisciplinary approaches to investigate the contours and functions of the (sometimes-mundane, sometimes-magnificent, always-interesting) satanic imaginary as expressed in literature throughout history. Tying together select ancient (then) expositions from Abrahamic traditions (Judaism | Christianity | Islam) with select (now) [more] contemporary expressions, we will explore the host of positions and interests such voices bring to their discourses on Satan (and the satanic). How might we contextualize the diverse ways that "then and now" folk relate to the satanic? What discourses and relations of power are at work in "then and now" satanic musings? More broadly, how might we imagine our relationships with the "then and now" satanic imaginary, while growing in (self-)critical awareness of the ideological/contextual nature of engaging with the past, present, and future? Come and see!