Spring 2025 Courses

CMLIT 10 – Introduction to World Literatures 

1. Section 001 MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Willard Bldg 351               Aditya Mohan Bahl
2. Section 002 TuTh 3:05PM – 4:20PM       Willard Bldg 370               Magali Armillas-Tiseyra
3. Section 003  MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM  Hammond Bldg 214       Yanqing Shen
4. Section 004 Web                                                                         TBA

Satisfies General Education (GH), United States (US), International Cultures (IL), Other Cultures (BA) requirements. As a one-semester introduction to the range and diversity of world literature from the ancient past to the present, CMLIT 10 is intended to help you read (or listen to) a work of literature from any time or place and to appreciate it more fully – whether it belongs to the more familiar types of literature you may have read in the Western tradition or is a fable, folktale, hero story, play, or narrative from another cultural tradition. You will practice expressing your ideas through written exams and in-class and on-line discussions/activities. Discussion sessions allow interaction with the instructor and with other students in the class. This course presents a global sampling of masterpieces of world literature. Students will become familiar with various literary genres and become proficient in the analysis of the similarities and differences between texts from many different time periods and cultures. CMLIT 10 is a prerequisite for the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 11 – The Hero in World Literature 

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM                     Thomas Bldg 122                      Dr. Patrick Cheney

This course fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts Humanities requirement, or the United States and International requirement. This course will examine the concept of heroism and of heroes throughout the world in different time periods and different literary genres. We will examine different types of heroes and theories of heroism, as well as gender relations involved in concepts of heroes/heroines, and the roles of anti-heroes, villainous heroes, and the enemies of heroes. Heroes represent the most ideal values of a particular society. By examining heroes revered by a variety of societies, a greater awareness of values both specific to individual cultures and universal across cultures can be reached. Through comparisons of a variety of heroes, literary and social roles in the formulation and manipulation of heroic types can be assessed. The objectives of this course include expanding students’ awareness of the values of different cultures, examining the consequences of value systems as explored in literature, and increasing their skills of critical analysis on a body of literature designed to encourage the student to accept, reject, or question specific ideas of good and evil, proper behavior, and appropriate action within cultural contexts. CMLIT 11 is one of the many choices of survey courses which count towards the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 100 – Reading across Cultures

1. Section 001 TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM                   Hammond Bldg 214    Nergis Erturk
2. Section 002 TuTh 3:05PM – 4:20PM                     Boucke Bldg 311         Linda Istanbulli

CMLIT 100, Reading Across Cultures, is an introductory course to the discipline of Comparative Literature. The course is generally based upon a central theme (or series of themes) around which the reading assignments are chosen. Through a range of traditional (poems, short stories, drama, novellas, novels) and non-traditional (film, multimedia, hypermedia) texts from around the world, students will develop the ability to analyze literature in a variety of ways. Students will examine works both within their individual and diverse cultural contexts, and in relation to broader themes that transcend the boundaries of time and place. As an introductory course, CMLIT 100 is intended to lay a solid foundation for further study in any college-level courses on cultures and/or literature. Through an examination of a wide range of world literature, we will explore the practical aspects of what it means to deal with literary works in a comparative global context. The course is intended to help you develop your analytical and comparative skills and to simultaneously introduce you to a wide variety of interesting world literatures. The course is a prerequisite for the CMLIT major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 101 – Race, Gender, and Identity in World Literature 

1. Section 001 TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM               Willard Bldg 169        Andrea Martinez Teruel
2. Section 002 MoWeFr 3:35PM – 4:25PM            Willard Bldg 370        Tembi Charles

GH;US;IL (BA)This course examines issues of race, gender, religions, and ethnicity as expressed in literary, social, and cultural contexts. We will address these questions in works from a variety of traditions and time periods. Literary works from around the world show a wide range of response to the “other” — idealization of difference as exotic, fear of difference as threat, the desire to suppress difference or force it into conformity, the recognition of difference within ourselves, etc. The scope includes authors who are themselves members of racial, sexual or ethnic groups with which you may be less familiar. You will also consider the question of who and what constitutes identity as perceived by oneself and by others.

CMLIT 105 – The Development of Literary Humor 

TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM                      Willard Bldg 169                                    Muyun Zhou

 (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. CMLIT 105 is a broadly international course dealing with the nature of comedy and humor in literature. You will read samples from a broad spectrum of humor, including comedy, wit, satire, parody, irony, and farce. Through discussion and writing, you will also examine the techniques through which humor criticizes human nature, analyzes society, and expresses differing world views. The syllabus may be represented chronologically or divided into topics or literary forms that suggest various emphases, functions, and objects of literary humor. This course will provide opportunity to discuss both the widespread, or even universal, aspects of literary humor, and the diversity of literary humor across cultures and time periods. At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to understand and compare various literary forms and social, political, and cultural contexts that define humor and to assess the extent to which literary humor is or is not translatable across cultures or ethnic communities, or other groups. This course fulfills requirements for the Comparative Literature major, the World Literature minor, General Education Humanities, Bachelor of Arts Humanities, and General Education International/Intercultural Competency.

CMLIT 106: The Arthurian Legend

MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM                    Willard Bldg 169                       Gavin Davis

(GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course is designed to familiarize students with the legends about and surrounding King Arthur and the Round Table fellowship. Through a series of readings, students will survey the development of the legends of Arthur from their beginnings in early medieval Europe to their modern adaptations in many cultures around the world. The Arthurian legend is an ideal vehicle for showing the ways in which literary works capture and express changing value systems in different cultural and historical situations, and thus the course is a good example of comparative (international) approaches to literary study. Classes will discuss the changing cultural’ ideals represented, the different characterizations of the central figures, and the literary, techniques employed. Lectures and discussions will be supplemented by overheads, slides, music, and films or film clips dealing with Arthurian themes. Throughout, the course will ask why and how the stories of Arthur and the Round Table fellowship have captured the imagination of artists, political and religious leaders, and readers throughout the ages and around the world. Finally, it will ask how the practical concerns of daily life are developed in this literature-for example, how does this highly imaginative literature address practical concerns such as striking a balance between one’s short-term goals and personal gratifications, and one’s long-range obligations to other people? This course fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts Humanities requirement, and the IL requirement.

CMLIT 107: The Literature of Exploration, Travel, Migration, and Exile

*this is a combined section (CMLIT 147N) 

TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM                      Willard Bldg 251                        Dr. Anna Ziajka Stanton

(GH;IL)(BA) CMLIT 107 examines the notions of exploration, travel, migration, and exile through the lenses of time, space, language, and genre. We will consider questions of home, of place, of identity, and of belonging through literary and cultural productions that depict crossings both real and imaginary, voluntary and forced, geographic and personal. Through reading, discussion, and writing, we will examine and compare the different roles that travel can play in the imaginations of both the individual writers and the cultures from which they come. We will not only explore recurrent themes and timeless topics, but also the ways in which travel writing can both reinforce and subvert the basic value-systems, stereotypes, or other assumptions present in its cultural context. To that end, we will consider how literature of travel, migration, and exile address questions of gender, race, class, colonialism, human rights, the environment, social institutions, and political organization. Throughout our study, we will ask the following questions: What are the historical, social, and psychological conditions under which a person embarks on a journey, and what does a person search for in other places? How does the experience of travel transform one’s relation to oneself, one’s home culture, and the world at large? How are people understood, or misunderstood, during encounters made in the context of journeying? How is literature and language itself a space of traversal? This course fulfills requirements for the Comparative Literature major, the World Literature minor, General Education Humanities, Bachelor of Arts Humanities, and General Education International/Intercultural Competency.

CMLIT 108 – Myths and Mythologies*

*this is a combined section course (RLST 108)

1. Section 001. MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM            Willard Bldg 351            Justin Halverson
2. Section 002. MoWe 4:00PM – 5:15PM               Willard Bldg 268            Justin Halverson

(GH;IL)(BA) World mythology: myths primarily of non-Western cultures, based on selected areas and traditions around the world. This course offers a survey of several different cultural traditions as expressed in myth, as well as discussion of myth in its literary, social, geographical, political, and religious contexts. Various theories of the evolution and analysis of myth will be examined. Mythological traditions from around the globe will be compared in order to determine qualities which they share and examine ways in which they are unique. This course will help you see the world in new and exciting ways, based on the wide variety of global myths. At the same time, you will consider the permanent human issues which connect all of these traditions to each other, to the modern world, and to you. CMLIT 108 is one of the choices of survey courses, which count toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor. This course also fulfills the General Education humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts humanities requirement, and the International Cultures requirement.

CMLIT 112N – Introduction to Global Drama, Theatre, and Performance 

1. Section 001. TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM Willard Bldg 371                Henry Morello
2. Section 002. TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM Willard Bldg 351                Prerna Pradhan
3. Section 003. TuTh 3:05PM – 4:20PM Hammond Bldg 215          Prerna Pradhan

 (IL) (US) (GA) (GH) (Integrative: Interdomain). Introduction to Global Drama, Theater, and Performance will enable students to discover the power and excitement of drama in a global context. Students will encounter a variety of cultural contexts as they observe how playwrights portray local histories and lifestyles, in settings from many parts of the world. The course will offer (1) an introductory overview of concepts and terms associated with understanding drama and the technical aspects of theater. It will present (2) traditional dramatic forms such as tragedy, comedy, history play, allegory, Noh, etc., as seen in plays prior to the twentieth century; and (3) the dramatic contributions of multiple cultural groups in the U.S., with African American, Asian American, Latino, and other U.S. plays seen not in isolation, but in relation to world drama. (4) the course will consider ways in which drama, as a form of world literature, can have an international and intercultural impact, both in earlier periods and recently, when global circulation and international collaboration are increasingly frequent. Finally, (5) this course will look at world drama and theater from a design and performance perspective. Class work may include lectures or presentations by the instructor, presentations by students, web based activities, and focused discussions.

CMLIT 113 – Jewish Myths and Legends 

            * This is a combined section class (JST 113 / CAMS 113 / RLST 113)

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM                 Willard Bldg 371                        Taylor Gray

(GH;IL) The impact of the Bible on Western Culture is immense. Beyond its religious importance, the motifs and images from its myths and stories permeate literature and art, providing a basic frame of reference that for much of history could be taken for granted. A degree of familiarity with these motifs so as to be truly fluent is no longer common, and so it requires special effort to discern allusions to biblical traditions. Moreover, these traditions are not static: religious communities continually re-interpret them and appropriate them in very different contexts. Many prominent traditions in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not appear explicitly anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, but are the product of imaginative and ingenious interpretation and retellings. Why, for example, is Noah an example of a righteous person in Christian tradition, but in rabbinic tradition is more often portrayed as a profane, earthly-minded man who was saved only because he was the least bad of an evil generation? Why is Moses commonly portrayed with horns in medieval art? Underlying such different traditions are centuries of debate and reflection on these texts as sacred scripture, and competing religious communities often authorized their distinctive beliefs and practices by reading them into scripture. The differences are often too subtle to discern apart from careful comparison. This course will explore the boundaries between Scripture and tradition by means of a close examination of the myths and stories in the Hebrew Bible and their subsequent interpretation and retellings in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Using methods from comparative mythology and folklore, as well as comparative midrash, our procedure will be to compare these traditions closely with the biblical text, asking: What are the main motifs in the mythology of Judaism? Does Judaism have a coherent mythology? How do their myths compare with the myths of their neighbors? Where did these myths come from? How do these traditions relate to the Bible? What was the function of these myths? Why are there competing myths? How is it possible that Judaism affirms belief in only one God, but has myths that include other divine beings? We will also compare with later interpretive traditions (Jewish, Christian, Islamic). Can we trace trajectories of interpretation? Can we discern particular interpretive methods in operation? We will seek to answer: what do these re-workings of the traditions tell us about the development and function of Scripture, and the social circumstances of the communities? Finally, we will seek to detect reflections of these interpretive traditions in literature and art from the medieval to the modern periods. The course is organized around major topics in the Jewish Scriptures: God, creation, heaven and hell, Torah, Sabbath, Abraham and other ancestors, Israel and holy land, exile, and Messiah. Throughout we will consider how sacred stories function to form ethical perspectives and values.

CMLIT 120 – The Literature of the Occult 

TuTh 3:05PM – 4:20PM                          Willard Bldg 273                        Dr. Jonathan Eburne

(GH;IL)(BA) This course introduces you to the world of the occult—magic, pseudoscience, traditional rituals, mysterious experiences, and fantastic beings. In reading and discussing major works of literature that involve “occult” thinking, this course aims to explore the far horizons not only of art, but of reason itself. Rather than assigning ideas about supernaturalism, absurdity, and dreams to the dustbin of intellectual history, we will study how a diverse body of authors have engaged with these kinds of thought to shed light on our complicated world.

Throughout this course, we will encounter a wide array of esoteric beliefs and practices and gain a solid understanding of the contested forms of knowledge and expertise they represent. You will develop the ability to interpret literary texts with respect to their political, cultural, and social backgrounds as well as their implications for contemporary thinking. Meanwhile, this course approaches the occult not as a fixed object but as a historical construct defined in relation to the legitimate knowledge of the time. We will investigate issues of cultural difference, colonization and imperialism, and the politics of knowledge by looking at how the “occult” and the “non-occult” consider, interact with, and convert into one another. The course reading will feature a parallel between texts from Western and non-Western traditions. This course fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts Humanities requirement, or the United States and International Cultures requirement. 

CMLIT 122 – Global Science Fictions 

TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM            Hammond Bldg 215                 Ming En Joshua Tee

(GH;US;IL) (BA) A study of the relationships between science, literature, and film, from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course examines science fiction and the fictions of science from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Course content includes a history of the idea of science, of its engagement with and by fictional, filmic, dramatic, and poetic narratives, within an explicitly comparative framework that includes material from Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Students will develop a theory of genre and its development over time; they will recognize regional, cultural, and historical differences and forms of change that affect the intellectual development of the arts and sciences.

CMLIT 128N – The Holocaust in Film and Literature*

          *this is a combined section course (GER/ENG/JST 128N)

1. Section 001. MoWeFr 4:40PM – 5:30PM Willard Bldg 371            Lisa Sternlieb
2. Section 002. TBA                         WEB                             Bettina Brandt

This class studies how art, literature, film, and other media can help us to gain a perspective on one of the most horrific events in human history, the Holocaust: the genocidal murder of more than six million men, women, and children (mostly Jewish) under the Nazi regime during World War II. We will also examine the theoretical questions involved in any attempt to capture what appears to be beyond our comprehension, in terms of moral outrage and the sheer scale, inhumanity, and bureaucratic efficiency. To this end we will study literary works, such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, films such as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, as well as photographs, poems, artworks, installations, museum architecture, the design of monuments and other artifacts. We will also examine questions of memorialization (Holocaust museums and memorials), national guilt, survivor’s guilt, stigmatization, and the ethics of historical representation.

CMLIT 131 – Crime and Detection in World Literature

TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM                                       Willard Bldg 351                   Adam DeCaulp

This course studies the origins and development of crime and detective literature from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. The course traces literary and cinematic investment in issues of crime, violence, detection, forensics, and social justice through a variety of historical and cultural contexts primarily focused on American, French, Japanese, and Korean works, ranging from the industrial era to the modern/contemporary world. Some of the questions addressed may include reigning myths about law and order; the rise of urban societies and mass culture; the construction of the detective figure, the witness, the criminal, and the victim as models of subjectivity; issues of gender and sexual violence; and the nature of knowledge as in instrument of social, legal, and moral order. Students will learn about the history of the idea of crime and its relationship with literary form. They will develop ideas about the contribution of literary thinking to ideas of social justice, as well as a theory of genre and its development over time; they will recognize regional, cultural, and historical differences and forms of change that affect the intellectual development of literature, film, and detection.

CMLIT 143 – Human Rights and World Literature 

1. Section 001. MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM Hammond Bldg 217            Sam Otieno
2. Section 002. TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM Willard Bldg 173                  Suleyman Bolukbas

(GH;US;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. “Human rights” refers to basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law. But these ideas have not always been a part of human thought and some scholars believe that without certain forms of literature today’s understanding of human rights would not exist. Through comparative analysis of a variety of human rights storytelling genres that reflect a range of contexts, this course will suggest that it is impossible to understand human rights without also thinking about the stories that create and sustain their idea. One main premise of this course is that the representation of human rights violations is always a vexed undertaking. It is both urgent and necessary, while also incomplete and inadequate. In order to explore this dilemma, this course focuses on the intersection between human rights advocacy and the various cultural forms that explicitly attempt to participate in human rights discourse. The course will cover a variety of cultural forms such as comic books, movies, photography, novels, testimonials, poetry, plays, etc. that reflect on human rights atrocities such as slavery, the Holocaust, war, dictatorships, apartheid, genocide, and more. At the center of the course are questions about aesthetics and ethics. What are the risks and obligations of human rights storytelling and how are these linked to specific cultural forms and aesthetic practices? This course examines a range of human rights stories through a balance of context and close reading, where stories are studied both for what they say and how they say it.

CMLIT 147N – Displacement and Migration

*this is a combined section (CMLIT 107) 

TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM          Willard Bldg 251            Dr. Anna Ziajka Stanton

(GH-GS;US;IL)(BA) Why do we live in a world where so many people must flee their homes to survive? This course focuses on the rise in forced migration in response to violence, persecution, war, natural disasters, poverty, and environmental degradation from the late twentieth century onward. In the news media, the story of “the global refugee crisis” tends to be told through images of unprecedented disaster and spectacular havoc. To historicize displacement, students will consider the legacies that have led to violence and conflict, giving special consideration to European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. They will further learn about the impact of World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War on the emergence of the modern human rights architecture and on legal definitions that remain relevant to this day. 

To investigate this wide-ranging global topic, this course brings together frameworks and contributions from the social sciences and the humanities, inviting students to study the histories, experiences, and voices of those living in a world that moves. Students will engage with artistic representations of displacement through literature and film, in dialogue with migrant testimonies, archival material, international agreements, legal documents, and statistical data. This course adopts a comparative approach, inviting students to consider regimes of (im)mobility from a number of global contexts. Finally, to connect the international content of this course to the local environment, the class will also consider how forcible migration has reshaped communities in Pennsylvania.

Given the large scope of the course topic, students can expect some variance in course content as reflective of faculty expertise and interest. Course activities might include interactions with guest speakers, representatives from organizations, interviews with various stakeholders, field trips, creative work, and participation in a public showcase. Students are encouraged to contact the listed instructor for more detailed information.

CMLIT 153 – International Cultures: Film and Literature

MoWeFr 3:35PM – 4:25PM                                Willard Bldg 167                   Vasilije Ivanovic

(GH;US;IL)(BA) This course will compare narrative and artistic techniques employed by literature and film in portraying different social and cultural environments, which will range widely around the globe and may include Africa and the Middle East, East Asia, and South America, as well as European and North American examples. Students will view films and read novels or other texts such as short stories, plays, and poems. The purpose of this course is to have students examine how the selected artists have developed their intentions and their subject matter in their respective medium, literature or film, and to allow students to study modes of narration across different cultures and media. Through a combination of lectures and comparative discussions, students will examine how components, including plot, genre, environment, character, and point of view are developed in films and fiction from diverse cultures. The course will also discuss techniques that are exclusive to each medium such as editing and cinematography. The comparative nature of the course allows students to understand, evaluate, and appreciate both the universal and unique qualities of the human condition. The study of narrative technique will help students develop analytical skills in discussing and writing about the literary and cinematic expression of cultural values.

CMLIT 184 – The Short Story

MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM                                    Music Bldg 117                        Tembi Charles

This course is designed to introduce students to the art of the short story and to acquaint them with some of its most talented writers. During the semester we will read short stories from various cultures and countries, ranging from stories written in the early nineteenth-century to those written within the last few years. Readings will include works from authors like Hawthorne, Melville, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bierce, Chekhov, Kafka, Chopin, Crane, Gilman, James, Cather, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Hemingway, Lawrence, Orwell, O’Connor, Baldwin, Olson, Silko, Erdrich, Ondaatje, Barth, Barthelme, Atwood, Mukherjee, Walker, Tan, Calvino, Garcia Marquez, and Cortazar. All readings will be in English. This course is intended to help one learn how to read fiction, how to understand it, and how to talk about it. The desire to tell stories and to be told stories is one of the most basic human needs, and all cultures have been defined in part by the stories they hear and the stories they tell. We are not born knowing how to read the short story or any fiction for that matter. Rather it is a skill that one acquires, and the more one does it, like playing tennis or any other activity, the better one becomes at it, for we learn what to look for. We will explore the historical development of the short story genre, and examine how historical contexts relate to the content and style of the stories under discussion. We will become familiar with how stories are put together and with the vocabulary that is used to discuss fiction–terms such as plot, narrative, character, tone, language, closure, irony, imagery. and so forth. CMLIT 184 is not required for the CMLIT major but may be selected to fulfill one of the course requirements for the major or the World Literature Minor. This course also fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts Humanities requirement, and International Cultures requirement.

CMLIT 191N – Introduction to Video Game Culture

TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM              Wartik Lab 111              Dr. Eric Hayot

(GA/GH) This course is a comparative introduction to the nature and history of video games as cultural artifacts, from Pong to online role-playing. It introduces students to academic discussion on and creative work in new digital forms including hypertexts, video games, cell phone novels, machinima, and more. Students will survey major debates over the meaning and value of video games, and study some of the major theoretical terms and perspectives developed to elaborate the cultural and sociological value of video games. The course extends students’ skills in literary interpretation to a variety of new objects, and makes them aware of the role medium plays in aesthetic development and production. Students will leave with a far sharper understanding of how the interpretive tools used in the humanities can be extended to include new media, and with a sense of the historical role video games have played and will continue to play in global cultural production. Because the course is historically focused, it will spend significant time looking at the differential development of video games in three major regions: the United States, Europe, and East Asia (especially Japan).

400-LEVEL SEMINARS**

** open to first-year students with instructor permission and/or anyone with 3 prior credits in the study of literature. 400-level courses are especially useful for, but not restricted to, students considering the CMLT Major or WLIT Minor. CMLIT 400Y is a required course for the CMLIT Major and World Literature Minor. For more info: https://complit.la.psu.edu/undergraduate/major

CMLIT 406 – Women and World Literature

*this is a combined section course (CMLIT 446)

TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM              Willard Bldg 370                        Dr. Nergis Ertürk

How do women writers and cultural producers from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA} conceive of themselves as active subjects participating in the making of their collective histories? How do they appreciate and articulate their experiences at different intersections of class, religion, culture, and race? In what ways do their aesthetic engagements reflect, negotiate, or challenge processes that attempt to homogenize the fundamental complexities that they face in their lives? What modalities of agency do their literary discourses envision and facilitate?

Taking these questions as a point of departure, this course will offer students a critical and analytical engagement with short stories, novellas, autobiographies, and films produced by women from the Middle East and North Africa. Following a comparative approach, we will draw upon materials that eut across a range of historical junctures and national contexts with an eye toward the sorts of theoretical interventions these texts stage against dominant paradigms and power structures. Through a diverse collection of readings, lectures, and discussions, students will critically engage with key notions that have been central to the reformulation of feminism, including power, subjectivity, agency, embodiment, performativity, and cultural translation.

CMLIT 415 — World Graphic Novels 

MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM                                     Hosler Building 218A                 Dr. Jonathan Abel

This course considers the graphic novel (also known as graphic fiction, comics, or sequential narrative) as an emergent literary medium and global phenomenon. The course focuses on texts that engage issues of contemporary identity, ethnicity, sexuality, technology, and/or history (personal, family, and national). These graphic novels engage these issues through the medium of text joined with image. This course explores the aesthetic of sequential narrative, its methods of production and consumption, and its place in a contemporary culture of reading. Assigned texts include titles from the United States, France, Japan, Italy, Canada and Norway. All texts will be read in English translation. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 429 – New Media and Literature       

1. Section 001 MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Willard Bldg 173                  Vasilije Ivanovic
2. Section 002*. MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM Wagner Bldg 201                Brian Lennon

*this is a combined section course (ENGL 429)

An introduction to new media in liaison with literature, literariness, and literary study, with a focus on new media’s digital and computational character. We will consider the novelty of electronic screen media, in a print culture of newspapers, magazines, and the simulation and remediation of older by newer media, and of newer by older media; the residuality of modern print culture in a “postmodern” technocratic society; and the broader questions of technology, temporality, and modernity that shape these concepts.

Beginning with a tour of literary uses of computational media, we will look at early examples of computer-generated literary writing; learn about the importance of randomness in expressive or creative uses of computing; examine new media poetry produced as an extension of ongoing work in traditional paper-based print literature; study the literary and cultural history of password authentication and discuss a poem encrypted and embedded in an artist’s book; and examine examples of time-based or streaming electronic or digital literature. Subsequently, we will turn from literary uses of computational media to conventional literary depictions of technologically extended literary cognition– in other words, new media as literary experience — in contemporary speculative fiction, and to literary depictions of cultures of new media in the contemporary novel. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 435 — Cultures of Globalization

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM                             TBA                                          Dr. Shuang Shen 

This course focuses on the cultural and literary effects of the process of globalization, with an emphasis on world literatures and transnationalism. It invites students to think about the ways in which the globalization of culture, politics, and/or the economy affects literary production, and the ways in which such literary features as genre, form, medium, style, and theme in turn reflect and attempt to shape our understanding of the global and its becoming. The course will have a significant focus on primary material (literature, film, other media) and secondary material (philosophy, journalism, criticism, and so on). It will introduce students to the main theoretical concepts that govern thinking about globalization and global culture, as well as to important literary and cultural texts that articulate those values. It will prepare them for further research in comparative literary studies and in the critical history of globalization. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 438 – Fantastic Worlds: International and Comparative Perspectives

MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM                Willard Bldg 169                        Dr. Amrita De

This course will explore a wide range of “fantastic” narrative voices, crossing the boundaries of genres, periods, and nations, through literary and visual texts from the 19th century to contemporary eras, and from Asia to Americas. Students will examine various types of literary techniques and concepts, such as magic realism, grotesque realism, the absurdity, the fantastic, etc., and learn how texts best capture/grasp thenature of “realities” in their creation of “fantastic” worlds. Students will develop more profound understanding of literatures through global lenses, develop and refine critical thinking, in speech and writing, and comparative methods of literary analysis, and develop communications skills in essays, response papers, class discussions, presentation and research papers. Instructional objectives:1) Students will develop more profound understanding of literature’s through global lenses 2) Students will develop and refine critical thinking, in speech and writing, and comparative methods of literary analysis 3) Students will develop communications skills in essays, response papers, class discussions, presentation and research papers.

CMLIT 446 – Postcolonial Literature and Culture

*this is a combined section course (CMLIT 406)

TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM              Willard Bldg 370                        Dr. Nergis Ertürk

This course examines ecological aspects of postcolonial literature and culture. Focusing largely, although by no means exclusively, on regions of the globe colonized by European powers in the 15^th-20^th centuries, we will explore how nature features in literary works and films produced in and about these regions, during and after the colonial period, whether as a backdrop to the unfolding dramas of colonial conquest and its aftermath; as a witness to, and participant in, events of violence, remembrance, recovery, and survival involving colonized peoples; as manifesting forms of alterity and difference that resist normative European inscriptions of history, geography, and selfhood; and as an inspiration for ways of knowing, feeling, being, and creating that affirm the human as a planetary subject inescapably entangled with other animate and inanimate things on the Earth. Primary texts will be contextualized by readings in postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, theories of animality and the more-than-human, Anthropocene theory, and indigenous theory. No prerequisites; counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 455 – Ethics, Justice, and Rights in World Literature 

TuTh 3:05PM – 4:20PM             Willard Bldg 169                        Dr. Elizabeth Gray

This course will consider how literature and culture address common concerns, including morality, justice, equality, and agency from different perspectives, aesthetic styles, and formal constraints. Students will consider how cultural texts, like legal and philosophical texts, have the power to influence politics and society. Literature is important for understanding ethics, justice, and rights because it teaches ways of thinking and of relating to others that are central to social values. How do we develop the commitment to social equity? How do stories develop ideas of altruism, of prejudice, of pathos, and more in their audience? What role does culture play in developing the moral imagination required to think through social crises? Each class will explore one or more interrelated topics through a variety of cultural and philosophical works. Readings might include works by Melville, Shakespeare, Kafka, Glaspell, Morrison, Capote, Garcia Marquez, and others. Topics might include: formalism; the paradoxes of equity; narrative, storytelling, and framing; custom, law and the political order; law, society, and power; interpretation, authority, and legitimacy; punishment, retribution, and redemption; and others. This course will provide an opportunity to think about the law and ethics in a new way, to read engaging works of fiction and non-fiction, and to examine the humanistic and philosophical perspectives that are at the core of the ethical imagination.

CMLIT 489 – Contemporary World Fiction 

TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM                        Willard Bldg 067                        Dr. Magali Armillas-Tiseyra

The purpose of this course is to expose students to the developments in world fiction in the last 50 years and to expose them to a range of authors from a number of countries. This course, then, also involves getting to know the novel-writing histories of those countries and in many cases, the recent histories of those countries (for example, in novels like Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Garcia Marquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude). The class will approach these fictions from a variety of thematic, historical, and/or generic vantages. Authors under consideration will vary from class to class, but may include writers such as Pamuk, Grass, Murakami, and Marquez. Time allotted for the study of the works under consideration will vary.

CMLIT 496 – Independent Studies 

If you are interested in pursuing an Independent Study in Comparative Literature/ World Literature, please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Jonathan Eburne (eburne@psu.edu).

CMLIT 497 – Special Topics : Classical Epic

* combined section (CAMS 410)

MoWe 4:00PM – 5:15PM                        Willard Bldg 174                        Jake Nabel

Description TBA