Fall 2023 Courses

CMLIT 001— Introduction to Western Literatures Through the Renaissance

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Willard Bldg 067 Instructor TBA

This course provides a survey of Western literary tradition and considers a variety of genres — such as epic, drama, sonnet, essay, saga, chronicle, folktale, and novel — with attention to the literary and historical contexts which these works reflect in the Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance (Early Modern) periods. Universal themes and cultural values, along with individual differences, will be discussed and compared in works from such authors as Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, and Marguerite de Navarre. Comparative study focuses on the understanding and appreciation not only of the individual works, but also of their influence on other literary works and artistic forms and the ways in which they relate to their cultures. You will articulate and compare interpretations of texts spanning 2500 years of Western literary history. The variety of the Western tradition will lead you to an understanding and critical discussion of the process by which certain works become regarded as “great.” This course will also allow you the pleasure of encountering a wide variety of creative literary expressions from three distinct periods. This course also fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts Humanities requirement, and International Cultures requirement.

CMLIT 003 —Introduction to African Literatures

MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM Willard Bldg 351 Tembi Charles

This course provides an introduction to the variety of African literary production, from early oral epic traditions, through the colonial/post-colonial period, to recent Nobel Prize winning authors. We will read texts written in English or translated into English from French or African languages, including several recorded from the oral tradition, as well as some texts from the African Diaspora. These literatures come from different geographic and cultural areas of Africa and are composed in a variety of forms (novel, drama, epic, poetry), and range in date from 2,000 BCE to the colonial period to the modern national era. The focus of the course, however, is on the 20th century. We will also consider the ways in which history, culture, and geography impact literary production. African literary and cultural influences on Western traditions may also be explored. This course fulfills a requirement for the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor. This course also fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement and the Bachelor of Arts Humanities and Other Cultures requirement. It also satisfies the United States and International Competence requirement.

CMLIT 004 —Introduction to Asian Literatures (Also ASIA 004)

TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM Willard Bldg 258 Dr. Nicolai Volland

Satisfies General Education (GH), International Cultures (IL), Other Cultures (BA) requirements. This course is designed to act as a gateway to Asian literatures and cultures – through English translation – of selected fictional and cinematic texts from Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Asian diaspora literature (our main focus is on literature of modern Asia). Exploring the historical and cultural contexts of each work, we will pay attention to the ways in which each text depicts the diversities within geographical areas (for instance, “Japanese culture” is not monolithic than “U.S. Culture” is, and writers might see the same social reality in quite differently). The cross/inter-cultural approach used in this course invites students to acquire a global perspective on the rich traditions of Asian cultures and literatures. Students are expected to develop the ability to comparatively analyze and express, in speech and writing, their views through the reading of literary texts and watching of films.

CMLIT 005— Introduction to Literatures of the Americas

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM Willard Bldg 351 Andrea Martinez Teruel

(GH;US;IL)(BA) This allows you to explore the great variety of literatures of the Americas, including translations of texts written in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Amerindian languages, as well as texts originally written in English. Readings include many genres and artistic forms dealing with histories and accounts of “American” issues, such as conquest, nationalism, slavery, diaspora, and immigration. You will also consider the various influences among these traditions in terms of time period and genre. This course investigates the literary and cultural notion of “America,” and what it means to be “American,” in terms of the entire hemisphere. We will deal with issues of race, ethnicity, class, religion, as well as other vital concerns of identity and “Americanness” as reflected in both oral and written literary traditions through the history of the Americas. At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to understand and make – comparisons among the many “American” literary traditions. This course fulfills requirements for the Comparative Literature major, the World Literature minor, General Education Humanities, Bachelor of Arts Humanities, and General Education United States and International Competency.

CMLIT 005— Introduction to Middle Eastern Literatures

TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM Chambers Bldg 208 Dr. Anna Ziajka Stanton

This course provides an introduction to the diverse literatures of the region known as the Middle East. Through a study of translations of works from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew and other languages as well as Anglophone Middle Eastern literatures, students will study Middle Eastern literatures and cultures in their diversity. Approaching works from the modern period in the context of shared histories of modernization, secularization, postcolonial nation-building, and globalization, this course will emphasize important thematic continuities across modern literatures of the region. Though the focus will be on the modern period, students will also be introduced to the rich literary networks of the so-called premodern era, exploring past literary connections and their legacies for the present. The relationship between literature, film, and other media may also be explored. Topics to be discussed may include Orientalism, Middle Eastern refugee and migration literatures, cross-cultural encounters, women’s and minority writings, prison and protest literatures, petrofiction and climate fiction. This course fulfills the General Education Humanities requirement, the International Cultures requirement, and the Bachelor of Arts Humanities and Other Cultures requirement.

CMLIT 10 – Introduction to World Literatures

1. Section 001 TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM Willard Bldg 262 Dr. Magali Armillas-Tiseyra

2. Section 002 MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Sackett Bldg 107 Muyun Zhou

3. Section 003 Web Dr. Henry Morello

The development of literature around the world—from epic, legend, lyric, etc. in the oral tradition to modern written forms. (GH;IL)(BA) 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. This course also fulfills the General Education humanities requirement, the Bachelor of Arts humanities requirement, and the United States and International requirement.

CMLIT 083 First-Year Seminar in Comparative Literature

1. Section 001 MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM Willard Bldg 369 Dr. Jonathan Eburne

“Reading and Writing with Surrealism”

This course explores theoretical and practical concepts in the history of poetry and poetics. The focus of the course in Fall 2023 will be surrealism, the international movement in poetry, art, politics, and thought that celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024 (dating from the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism in 2024).

This course is interested in the history and practice of experimental poetry. Like all comparative literature courses, it pursues the reading and writing of poetry through discussions of poetic forms from a wide variety of national and linguistic origins, and ranges widely across mediums and social forms. Students will develop a broad array of interpretive skills appropriate to poetry and poetics; they will acquire a knowledge of a wide variety of poetic forms; they will undertake comparative analyses of poems and poetic structures; they will learn how to think about poetics beyond the written page. No prerequisites; counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

2. Section 002 TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM Sackett Bldg 325 Dr. Mandisa Haarhoff

“Crime Farm Literature”

What does the emergence of the farm crime literary genre alongside South Africa’s land reformation process and the white genocide movement contribute to post-apartheid discourse? How does the farm function as a site for the staging of sovereignty, inter-subjective relation, and freedom in South Africa? How does the farm crime novel build on and challenge the preceding Plaasroman (English and Afrikaans) genre? How does the focus on animals in the genre invite an interrogation of the Human and the double-edged sword of empathy? This course analyses crime farm literature to engage settler colonialism, slavery, black criminalization, white vulnerability, and the way the land is mythologized in these works. The course also interrogates the depiction of Black people as settler adjacent invaders in farm crime literature and how the mythology of the black peril functions within these texts. We will read literary criticism and theory that attends to the range of issues animated in these texts drawing from settler colonial studies, discourse on land, black radical thought, indigenous studies, and animal studies. Assignments will include a visual analysis, in class engagement and oral presentations, and a final paper. No prerequisites; counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 100 – Reading across Cultures

MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM Willard Bldg 268 Dr. Keru Cai

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 MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM Hammond Bldg 214 Merve Sen

2. (HONORS) Section 002 TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM Willard Bldg 269 Dr. Mandisa Haarhoff

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

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Theatre Bldg 230 Bangce Cheng

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

1. Section 001. MoWe 4:00PM – 5:15PM Hammond Bldg 220 Dr. Justin Halverson

2. Section 002. MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM Boucke Bldg 311 Dr. Justin Halverson

3. Section 003. Web Instructor TBA

(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 173 Dr. Henry Morello

2. Section 002. TuTh 12:05PM – 1:20PM Willard Bldg 173 Dr. Henry Morello

(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 122 – Global Science Fictions

TuTh 4:35PM – 5:50PM Willard Bldg 371 Dr. Shuang Shen

(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 (combined section)

1. Section 001. MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM Willard Bldg 358 Dr. Lisa Sternlieb

2. Section 002. TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM Willard Bldg 358 Dr. Sabine Doran

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 130 – Banned Books

TuTh 10:35AM – 11:50AM Willard Bldg 367 Dr. Elizabeth Gray

(GH;IL)This course examines one of the most documented events in the history of book reception – the banning of books. Bannings provide a useful window onto the myriad functions of culture in social identity formation. In order to understand how and why offense is given and taken, students will learn to place texts in a specific context of their historical production and reception and also to extrapolate connections between disparate moments when taboos were named. Incorporating examples from a range of global systems of censorship, the course examines differences in the modes and effects of repression and the sometimes surprising connections between church and monarchy, fascism and democracy. This course raises the following questions: How has censorship been justified? When, if ever, is censorship justifiable? What are the grounds on which censorship can be judged successful or incomplete? Who censors? Who is censored? What are local categories of censorship? Though books are banned for reasons of blasphemy, sedition, and obscenity in various guises in several cultures, are these global categories? How do writers write against a ban? How do they write within it? What are the roles of importation, technologies of circulation, and geography in the censorship of texts? How do border-crossings and forms of miscegenation offend? Is there a unifying aesthetics to books that offend? The course will help students understand value systems and historical contexts in which they were produced and in which they caused offense. It will also ask students to draw connections between seemingly unrelated moments of offense in order to assist students in developing both analytical and expressive abilities. The course is designed to be suitable for all students, whether or not they have previously studied literature or comparative literature.

CMLIT 131 – Crime and Detection in World Literature

MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM Willard Bldg 169 To be Announced

(GH;IL)This course studies the origins and development of crime and detective literature from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. Beginning with early Greek tragedies, the course traces literature’s investment in issues of crime, violence, detection, forensics, and social justice through a variety of historical and cultural contexts; this may include the classical era, the early modern period, the Enlightenment, the industrial era, and 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 justice. 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 and detection alike.

CMLIT 143 – Human Rights and World Literature

1. (HONORS) Section 001. TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM Willard Bldg 271 Dr. Magali Armillas-Tiseyra

2. Section 002. MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM Earth and Eng Sciences 118 Abigail Cowan

Even though the UN Declaration of Human Rights maintains that all human beings are equally entitled to the same basic rights and freedoms, it is often the case that—to quote George Orwell— “some [humans] are more equal than others.” This course will attempt to untangle this discrepancy between the language of political declarations and the real-life experiences of humanity in different parts of the world. We will put universal and continental declarations of human rights in conversation with different literary and cultural products that critically examine this notion of the universality of human rights. We will also reflect on the belated emergence and ratification of the UN Declaration (Dec. 1948), the Bogota Declaration (May 1948), the San José Pact (1976), the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), the Banjul Charter (1981), and the Asian Human Rights Charter (1986), by discussing literary representations of human rights violations stretching well beyond 1948. Although the course brings together a wide range of literary texts and genres from different parts of the world, it does exclude more than it includes because of the limitations of time. For this reason, you will be called upon as critical thinkers to reflect on your own act of reading about human rights and human rights violations, and to expand beyond the content of this course through your final projects.

CMLIT 153 – International Cultures: Film and Literature

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM Willard Bldg 351 Andrea Martinez Teruel

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 191N – Introduction to Video Game Culture

MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM Willard Bldg 265 Vasilije Ivanovic

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 400Y: Seminar in Literary Criticism and Theory

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM Willard Bldg 173 Dr. Nergis Erturk

This advanced seminar in criticism and theory will examine modern and contemporary practices of literary and cultural “theory” in ways that highlight the moral, psychological, and political interests that guide cultural analysis. This course considers theory to be a form of thought- at once analytical and speculative- that is practiced by writers, philosophers, scientists, and critics alike. Our readings will thus include literary texts that engage in abstract thought as well as critical studies whose relationship to literature is central to their analytical or social/scientific methods. Throughout the semester we will focus on Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and postcolonial theory, examining their conceptualization of language and representation as fundamentally political acts and pursuing new topics concerning commodity fetishism, the culture industry, Orientalism, and the historical construction of race, gender, and sexuality. We will conclude the course by exploring new directions in contemporary theory, addressing questions concerning posthumanism and environmental criticism. This is a writing-intensive course (“writing across the curriculum”) and thus of interest for anyone exploring ways to incorporate cultural and literary analysis within their writing. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 406 – Women and World Literature

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM Sackett Bldg 109 Instructor TBA

How do women writers and cultural producers around the world 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 a range of geopolitical sites and time periods. Following a comparative approach, we will draw upon materials that cut 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. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 408 – Heroic Literature

TuTh 1:35PM – 2:50PM Sackett Bldg 318 Dr. Patrick Cheney

Traditional heroes, their traits and adventures; typical themes and examples chosen from the epics and sagas of world literature. This course counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 429 – New Media and Literature (also ENGL 429)

TuTh 1:35PM- 2:50PM Business Building 105 Dr. Brian Lennon

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 446 – Postcolonial Literature and Culture

TuThu 12:05PM – 1:20PM Hammond Bldg. 217 Dr. Anna Ziajka Stanton

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 15th-20th 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 471- Poetry and Poetics: Reading and Writing with Surrealism

MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM Willard Bldg 369 Dr. Jonathan Eburne

This course explores theoretical and practical concepts in the history of poetry and poetics. The focus of the course in Fall 2023 will be surrealism, the international movement in poetry, art, politics, and thought that celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024 (dating from the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism in 2024).

This course is interested in the history and practice of experimental poetry. Like all comparative literature courses, it pursues the reading and writing of poetry through discussions of poetic forms from a wide variety of national and linguistic origins, and ranges widely across mediums and social forms. Students will develop a broad array of interpretive skills appropriate to poetry and poetics; they will acquire a knowledge of a wide variety of poetic forms; they will undertake comparative analyses of poems and poetic structures; they will learn how to think about poetics beyond the written page. No prerequisites; counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

CMLIT 497.001- SPECIAL TOPIC: “Crime Farm Literature”

TuTh 9:05AM – 10:20AM Sackett Bldg 325 Dr. Mandisa Haarhoff

What does the emergence of the farm crime literary genre alongside South Africa’s land reformation process and the white genocide movement contribute to post-apartheid discourse? How does the farm function as a site for the staging of sovereignty, inter-subjective relation, and freedom in South Africa? How does the farm crime novel build on and challenge the preceding Plaasroman (English and Afrikaans) genre? How does the focus on animals in the genre invite an interrogation of the Human and the double-edged sword of empathy? This course analyses crime farm literature to engage settler colonialism, slavery, black criminalization, white vulnerability, and the way the land is mythologized in these works. The course also interrogates the depiction of Black people as settler adjacent invaders in farm crime literature and how the mythology of the black peril functions within these texts. We will read literary criticism and theory that attends to the range of issues animated in these texts drawing from settler colonial studies, discourse on land, black radical thought, indigenous studies, and animal studies. Assignments will include a visual analysis, in class engagement and oral presentations, and a final paper. No prerequisites; counts toward the Comparative Literature major and the World Literature minor.

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).

For more information about the Comparative Literature Major or the World Literature Minor, or the Integrated BA/MA Program in Comparative Literature, visit: https://complit.la.psu.edu/undergraduate/major