What’s new? What’s next? Seminars in Comparative Literature, Fall 2026
Comparative Method in Literary Studies
Professors Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, Rosemary Jolly, & Jonathan Abel
These three one-credit micro-seminars (or one aggregate 3-credit seminar) introduce students to crucial aspects of literary study and praxis. While based on the discipline of comparative literature, these five-week seminars also explore interdisciplinary topics and methods of interest to students in other literary fields. Unit 1 focuses on close reading, Unit 2 on research method and design, and Unit 3 on genres of academic writing.
Studies in Literary Genres: Evolving forms of Internet Literatures
Professor Jonathan Abel
This graduate seminar explores evolving forms of internet literatures, including hypertext fiction, flash fiction, serialized web novels, webtoons, digital poetry, interactive fiction, and networked narratives. We will situate these emergent genres within the historical context of theoretical discourse on genre, emphasizing its dynamic and historically embedded nature rather than a fixed taxonomy. Drawing on foundational insights from various traditions, such as Aristotle, Bakhtin, Todorov, Derrida, Frow, and Miller, the course examines genres as shifting configurations of discursive practice influenced by material conditions like infrastructures, media, institutions, and communities of use. The course highlights the affordances of digital media, focusing on nonlinearity, interactivity, seriality, platform-specific composition, and mass participatory authorship. Special attention will be given to ludic structures, procedural poetics, glitch aesthetics, and other forms of formal play that challenge the boundaries between reading, writing, and gaming. The course will read internet-born literatures from diverse regions, including Chinese serialized web fiction, Japanese cell phone novels (keitai shōsetsu), Korean webtoon narratives, Latin American electronic microfiction, African digital short fiction, and digitally native poetry projects. These works will be juxtaposed with Anglo-American hypertext and electronic literature, treating them not as peripheral curiosities but as primary sites where genre theory’s most pressing questions about canonicity, generic instability, the politics of classification, and the relationship between medium, form, and readerly play are being actively tested.
The Global Anthropocene
Professor Anna Ziajka Stanton
This graduate seminar approaches the Anthropocene as a “threshold concept”— in Timothy Clark’s phrasing—that forces a fundamental rethinking of how we study art and culture in the face of planetary environmental crisis. Yet in addition to familiarizing ourselves with some of the most influential paradigms developed to respond to this challenge, by Chakrabarty, Haraway, Latour, Morton, and others, we will also entertain critiques of the very premise of the Anthropocene as a concept that is inescapably anthropocentric; overly dependent on a narrowly normative and decontextualized idea of the human; too Euro-American in its theoretical genealogies and preoccupations; and/or inadequately forceful to effect real change in the face of ecological disaster in spite of scholars’ best efforts. Taking these critiques as a point of departure, we will thus spend much of the semester engaging with notions of human-Earth relations that reflect a broader set of global intellectual frameworks, including those rooted in indigenous, non-Western, and minoritized traditions of thought and imagination. Materials covered will include primary texts (literature and films, predominantly of non-Anglophone origin but all available to read/watch in English translation) and a range of secondary readings on the Anthropocene and complementary topics.
Theory and Praxis of Teaching Global Literatures
Professor Nergis Ertűrk
This course is a professional development seminar that introduces and prepares graduate students for teaching careers at the college and university level. Organized as both a practicum and a discussion seminar, the course alternates between hands-on skill-building and reading-driven discussion. Throughout the semester, we will work on the practical skills of designing and building a literature course in comparative and transnational contexts, focusing on syllabus construction, lesson planning, assignment creation, discussion leading, grading, and classroom management. Through our study of readings by bell hooks, Jacques Rancière, Marc Bousquet, David Golumbia, and Ethan Mollick, we will also examine the conditions of teaching in the present, addressing the structure of the contemporary university, the hegemony of Big Tech, and the material and institutional forces that shape the scene of teaching. The course aims to give you both the skills you need to become deliberate and reflective teachers of literature and the foundational critical perspectives to form your own teaching ethos. By the end of the semester, you will have assembled a teaching portfolio, including a syllabus, a teaching philosophy statement, and sample course materials, that you will need when applying for teaching positions in the North American academy. You will also have acquired the necessary intellectual frameworks for understanding the broader challenges facing higher education today and situating yourselves within current debates. Topics to be discussed include building an inclusive and accessible classroom community, grading philosophy, academic integrity, the impact of AI, and the politics of technology in the classroom.
Critical Studies in Global Korean Literature and Culture
Professor Jooyeon Rhee
This course introduces students to key texts and trends in modern Korean literature and culture from a global perspective. It examines the most prominent literary and visual works that articulate the intricacy of modern Korean culture at the intersections of major historical, ideological, and environmental forces and issues in the twentieth century such as colonialism, cultural imperialism, Cold War politics, democratic movement, feminist movement, environmental injustice, etc. Students will also read literary and cultural criticism and theories to improve their analytical ability that will be demonstrated in their writings. The cross/inter-cultural approach used in this course invites students to acquire a global perspective on the traditions of Korean and Korean diaspora literature and culture. Students are encouraged to develop their research projects through the major research paper assignment.