Current Course Listings
CMLIT 501 PROSEMINAR IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Instructor: Caroline Eckhardt .For further information, contact Dr. Eckhardt (e82@psu.edu). M 12:20 – 1:20 p.m. & W 2:30 – 4:25 p.m., Schedule # 807349, 306 Burrowes Building
What is the current shape of the discipline of Comparative Literature? This course considers both practical matters, such as research techniques; and theoretical concerns, such as the nature and assumptions of literary study as undertaken from a variety of comparative perspectives. Together, we will (1) read the discipline, looking at Comparative Literature as a field of teaching, research, and study: (2) consider a sampling of theoretical and critical approaches to the study of literature as transnational cultural production; (3) become acquainted with some of the tools and expectations of comparative scholarship; and (4) practice research design and several forms of professional writing. Guest faculty will describe a range of research projects currently under way. This course is required of first-semester graduate students in Comparative Literature, and recommended for students taking a minor in this field.
CMLIT 502 Concurrent with PHIL 597A - THE HISTORY OF CRITICISM I
Instructor: Dennis J. Schmidt. For further information, contact Dr. Schmidt (djs61@psu.edu). T 2:30 – 5:30 p.m., Schedule # 807352, 306 Burrowes Building
The purpose of this course is threefold: to look at the origins of literary and aesthetic criticism both as a practice and as theory; to trace the history of the development of this idea up to the Enlightenment; to examine some of the key concepts framing the project of criticism. A number of questions will inaugurate this course: How does a text come into being? What transformations does writing introduce into poetic practices and into the problem of understanding such texts? What is the meaning and role of reading for the text? How does the problem of interpretation emerge? The problem of the relation of texts and interpretations will guide our readings throughout the semester. While we focus on literary texts, we cannot ignore the importance of juridical and religious texts in the development of the notions of interpretation and criticism. Most of the semester will be devoted to tracing the development of these questions in the Western literary critical tradition; however, about one-third of the semester will take up these themes in other traditions. Readings include works by Homer, Aristophaness, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Longinus, Horace, Augustine, Wang Bi, Confucius, Maimondides, and Boccaccio.
CMLIT 506 /Concurrent with English 541 RHETORIC, PERFORMANCE, DESIRE: MEDIEVAL INVENTIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY
Instructor: Robert Edwards. For further information, contact Dr. Edwards (rre1@psu.edu). T 9:05 a.m. – 12:05 p.m., Schedule #947674 , 059 Burrowes Building
This seminar will explore the ways in which medieval writers represent erotic attachment, moral and social agency, and the project of writing. Our aim is to understand critically and historically a wide range of mimetic, persuasive, and performative strategies and techniques. These features permit medieval texts to describe, constitute and frequently interrogate the private and public spheres and to negotiate the roles of authors and readers within them. We will look at literary texts and other documents as well as influential modern scholarship on invention, description, adornment, language, gender theory, love, and desire. Our primary texts cover a range of discursive forms (epistolary, didactic, allegorical, prosimetrum, pastoral, and visionary). We will read the correspondence of Peter Abelard and Heloise, the _De amore_ of Andreas Capellanus, the _Romance of the Rose_ (arguably the most important poem of the Middle Ages), Dante's _Vita Nuova_, Boccaccio's "Questioni d'amore," and Chaucer's Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_. Depending on their preferences and background, students will read the texts in the originals or in English translation. The seminar will require several class presentations, an abstract with annotated bibliography, a conference-length paper (10-pages), and a final article-length version of the paper (15-20 pages).
CMLIT 543 -AFTER BORGES: THE INTERNATIONAL LEGACY OF JORGE LUIS BORGES
Instructor: Djelal Kadir. For further information, contact Dr. Kadir (kadir@psu.edu). M 2:30 – 5:30 p.m., Schedule # 896728, 306 Burrowes Building
A reading and research seminar that takes Jorge Luis Borges as pivotal figure of literary and meta-literary discourses in the global context of modern literature and its international practitioners. The seminar will explore such issues as language and narrative modes, philosophy and trans-discursive paradigms, influence and literary traditions, genre and subterfuge, modernity and post-modernism, systematicity and the counter-intuitive, violence and humor, necessity and randomness, gender and geometry, writing and reading, coitus and cognition, production and reproduction, ephimerae and immortality. Readings will range from Borges's precursors such as E.A.Poe, Franz Kafka, Macedonio Fernández, and successors such as the Italian Italo Calvino, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the Chinese writer Yu Hua, the German Gerhard Kopf, the Chilean Luis Sepúlveda, the U.S. writer Oliver Sacks, the Israeli writer Dan Tsalka , the Serbian Danilo Kis, Moroccon writer Tahar ben Jellun, French writer Michel Rio, among other authors that the participants in the seminar may wish to explore in conjunction with the Borges corpus.
CMLIT 580 CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY PERFORMATIVITY
Instructor: Charlotte Eubanks .For further information, contact Dr. Eubanks (cde13@psu.edu). R 3:30 – 6:30 p.m., Schedule # 807358, 306 Burrowes Building
From the development of performative linguistics in the early decades of the 1900s, to the fusion of theatre and anthropology in the 1970s, to the more recent establishment of formal academic departments of Performance Studies, notions of “performance,” “the performative,” and “performativity” have comprised one of the most rapidly growing fields of literary inquiry over the past century. Scholars, authors, performers and activists have sought to apply new theories of performativity to issues as varied as hate speech, oral literature, medieval spirituality, reader response, gender and race identity, writing aesthetics, textual studies and indeed drama. This seminar will explore the three major origins of performance studies: theatre, linguistics, and anthropology—though not necessarily in that order. One recurrent topic of conversation will be the nature of performance studies: Is it a methodology? A hermeneutic? A theme or mode of inquiry? A theory (or set of theories)? Simply a cluster of related questions? Though our focus will be on ‘straight theory,’ we will also be considering various non-Western concepts.
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