Results for COMPLIT

Preference to freshmen. The problem of performance including the performance of gender through the plays of Shakespeare. In-class performances by students of scenes from plays. The history of theatrical performance. Sources include filmed versions of plays, and readings on the history of gender, gender performance, and transvestite theater.

Why choose jihad? An introduction to Islamic ethics. Focus on ways in which people have chosen, rejected, or redefined jihad. Topics include jihad in the age of 1001 Nights, feminist jihad, jihad in Africa, al-Qaida and Hamas, and the hashtag #MyJihad. All readings and discussion in English.

This class introduces key literary texts from Japan's modern era (1868-present), locating these works in the larger political, social, and cultural trends of the period. Primary texts include: Futabatei Shimei's Floating Clouds, Higuchi Ichiyô's Child's Play, Natsume Sôseki's Kokoro, Kobayashi Takiji's Cannery Boat, Ôe Kenzaburô's The Catch, and Yoshimoto Banana's Kitchen. Examination of these literary works will be contextualized within larger political trends (e.g., the modernization program of the Meiji regime, the policies of Japan's wartime government, and postwar Japanese responses to the cold war), social developments (e.g., changing notions of social class, the women's rights movement, and the social effects of the postwar economic expansion), and cultural movements (e.g., literary reform movement of the 1890s, modernism of the 1920s and 30s, and postmodernism of the 1980s). The goal of the class is to use literary texts as a point of entry to understand the grand narrative of Japan's journey from its tentative re-entry into the international community in the 1850s, through the cataclysm of the Pacific War, to the remarkable prosperity of the bubble years in the 1980s.

This course explores Turkish cultural and political history over the last century with a focus on the city of Istanbul. We will examine the opposing concepts that have been used to define the city (e.g., East/West, past/present, local/migrant, preservation/development) and competing memories of its diverse inhabitants through art, film, literature, and music. This course is an excellent preparation for students wishing to spend a quarter with the Bing Overseas Studies Program in Istanbul, Turkey, although it is open to any interested student. All readings and screenings will be in English.

This course explores the central place Africa holds in prose writing emerging during early and modern periods of globalization across the Atlantic, including the middle passage, exploration and colonialism, black internationalism, decolonization, immigration, and diasporic return. We will begin with Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), a touchstone for the Atlantic prose tradition, and study how writers crossing the Atlantic have continued to depict Africa in later centuries: to dramatize scenes of departure and arrival in stories of self-making or new citizenship, to evoke histories of racial unity or examine psychic and social fragmentation, to imagine new national communities or question their norms and borders. Our readings will be selected from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish-language traditions. And we will pay close attention to genres of prose fiction (Conrad, Condé, Olinto), epic and prose poetry (Césaire, Walcott), theoretical reflection (Gilroy, Glissant, Mudimbe, Benitez-Rojo), and literary autobiography (Barack Obama, Saidiya Hartman).

How has Western culture constructed the world's oceans since the beginning of global ocean exploration? How have imaginative visions of the ocean been shaped by marine science, technology, exploration, commerce and leisure? Authors read might include Cook, Equiano, and Steinbeck; Defoe, Verne, Stevenson, Conrad, Woolf and Hemingway; Coleridge, Baudelaire, Moore, Bishop and Walcott. Films by Painlevé and Bigelow. Seminar co-ordinated with a spring 2015 Cantor Arts Center public exhibition. Visits to Cantor; other possible field trips include Hopkins Marine Station and SF Maritime Historical Park.

(Staff)

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Undergraduates enroll in 222 for 5 units, graduate students enroll in 322 for 8 units.

This course introduces students to the ways literature has been used to think through the ethics of human subjects research and experimental medicine. We will focus primarily on readings that imaginatively revisit experiments conducted on vulnerable populations: namely groups placed at risk by their classification according to perceived human and cultural differences. We will begin with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), and continue our study via later works of fiction, drama and literary journalism, including Toni Morrison's Beloved, David Feldshuh's Miss Evers Boys, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann and Vivien Spitz's Doctors from Hell, Rebecca Skloot's Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Each literary reading will be paired with medical, philosophical and policy writings of the period; and our ultimate goal will be to understand modes of ethics deliberation that are possible via creative uses of the imagination, and literature's place in a history of ethical thinking about humane research and care.

Drawing on poems, theoretical texts, and audio-visual materials, this course seeks to retrace the struggle for a modern poetic language in Iran from the time of the Constitutional Revolution (1905/6) to the Islamic Revolution (1979), and beyond. Topics include: the unresolved relationship between tradition and modernity; poetry as a vehicle of enlightenment and revolution; the quest for a new poetic expression of love; the construction of historical memory through literature; responses to the experience of modern alienation; the figure of the poet as dissident; and the subversive force of poetic form itself. Poets include: Iraj Mirz¿, `¿ref Qazvini, Nim¿ Yushij, A¿mad Sh¿mlu, Hushang Ebteh¿j S¿yeh, Siavosh Kasr¿¿i, Sohr¿b Sepehri, Mehdi Akhav¿n S¿les (¿¿le¿), Forugh Farrokhz¿d, and Esm¿¿il Kho'i. Secondary readings include texts by Theodor W. Adorno, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emile Benveniste, Maurice Blanchot, Michel de Certeau, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Paul Ric¿ur. Taught in English.

This course is an introduction to basic orthographic conventions and grammatical characteristics of Ottoman Turkish through readings in printed material from the 19th and 20th centuries. Selected readings will range from poetry to prose, from state documents, newspaper and journal articles to reference works. Course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Prior knowledge of modern Turkish is required (Completion of COMPLIT 248A, COMPLIT 248B Reading Turkish I&II and COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish OR AMELANG 184 & 185 First & Second Year Turkish OR a solid knowledge of Turkish grammar.) Please contact the instructor for more information.

A broad engagement with Indian cinema: its relationship with Indian politics, history, and economics; its key thematic concerns and forms; and its adaptation of and response to global cinematic themes, genres, and audiences. Locating the films within key critical and theoretical debates and scholarship on Indian and world cinemas. Goal is to open up what is often seen as a dauntingly complex region, especially for those who are interested in but unfamiliar with its histories and cultural forms.

This course is the continuation of COMPLIT 248A Reading Turkish I and COMPLIT 248B Reading Turkish II. Refining advanced grammar, reading, and translation skills in modern Turkish through intensive reading and translation from a variety of source texts. Emphasis on Turkish cultural, historical, literary, and political texts depending on students' academic interests. Prerequisites COMPLIT 248A & B or prior knowledge of Turkish and consultation with the instructor is necessary.

Today Iranian plays - both in traditional and contemporary styles - are staged in theater festivals throughout the world play their role in forming a universal language of theater which combine the heritages from countries in all five continents. Despite many obstacles, some Iranian plays have been translated into English and some prominent Iranian figures are successful stage directors outside Iran. Forty-six years ago when "Theater in Iran" (a monograph on the history of Iranian plays) by Bahram Beyzaie was first published, it put the then contemporary Iranian theater movement--which was altogether westernizing itself blindly - face to face with a new kind of self-awareness. Hence in today's generation of playwrights and stage directors in Iran, all know something of their theatrical heritage. In this course we will spend some class sessions on the history of theater in Iran and some class meetings will be concentrating on contemporary movements and present day playwrights. Given the dearth of visual documents, an attempt will be made to present a picture of Iranian theater to the student. Students are expected to read the recommended available translated plays of the contemporary Iranian playwrights and participate in classroom discussions.

Introduction to great Arabic prose writing from the 700s and the dawn of Islam to the 2010s and the Arab Spring. Al-Jahiz, Naguib Mahfouz, and more. Includes focus on the skills needed to read and understand, from grammar to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the internets. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor.

An analysis of apophatic discourses of love in medieval Persian mystical texts. The philosophical underpinnings and implications of Sufi thought are discussed in this course. However, the principal aim is to shed light on the radical poetic force of the Persian texts. Topics to be addressed include the fundamentally oral, temporal nature of mystic speech; the relation of the speaking ¿I¿ to the unknown and unknowable Other; the discourse of love in which God and the beloved are one; the linguistic fragmentation of mystical discourse, straining against the edges of meaning; the possibility of salvaging mystical experience in language; and, finally, the question of apophasis as a theologically and politically subversive act. Primary readings include texts by Ab¿ Sa¿¿d Abi¿l-Khayr, A¿mad Ghaz¿l¿, , ¿Ayn al-Qo¿¿t Hamad¿ni, A¿mad Sam¿¿ni, R¿zbeh¿n Baqli, Far¿d al-D¿n ¿A¿¿¿r, and Jal¿l al-D¿n R¿m¿. The primary texts will be complemented by readings from Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Ric¿ur, among others. Taught in English.

This course presents and reflects on some of the canonical works of Hebrew literature, from biblical era to the present. Discussing works such as the Wisdom Books and selections from the Midrash; and reflecting on important periods such as the Golden Age of Jewish Culture in Spain, the Renaissance, and contemporary Israeli literature, we will highlight linguistic innovation, as well as crucial thematic and philosophical concerns. Readings include the Book of Job, Psalm, Ibn Gabirol, Mapu, Rachel, Goldbegr, Agnon, S. Yizhar, Amichai, Oz and more.

Focus is on Virgil's Aeneid and its influence, tracing the European epic tradition (Ariosto, Tasso, Camoes, Spenser, and Milton) to New World discovery and mercantile expansion in the early modern period.

Drawing on philosophy, theory, literature, and the arts, this graduate students seminar examines the concept of the contemporary and asks what it means to belong to our historical age: how do thinkers, writers, and artists make sense of the man-made catastrophes of the modern era; how by employing innovative thinking and aesthetics they allow us to consider the human condition as well as politics and ethics in our time. Philosophical readings include Arendt, Rorty, Agamben, Bauman, Taylor; literary readings include Marilynne Robinson, J. M. Coetzee, Phillip Roth, Sebald, Kluge, Celan among others.

This course examines the Gothic as a both a narrative subgenre and an aesthetic mode, since its 18th century invention. Starting with different narrative genres of Gothic expression such as the Gothic novel, the ghost tale, and the fantastic tale by writers such as Walpole, Radcliffe, Sade, Poe, and E.T.A. Hoffmann, the course goes on to ask how the Gothic sensibility permeates a wide range of 19th century cultural phenomena that explore the dark side of Enlightenment, from Romantic poetry and art to melodrama, feuilleton novels, popular spectacles like the wax museum and the morgue. If time permits, we will also ask how the Gothic is updated into our present in popular novels and cinema. Critical readings will examine both the psychology of the Gothic sensibility and its social context, and might be drawn from theorists such as Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Zizek.

This course explores the central place Africa holds in prose writing emerging during early and modern periods of globalization across the Atlantic, including the middle passage, exploration and colonialism, black internationalism, decolonization, immigration, and diasporic return. We will begin with Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), a touchstone for the Atlantic prose tradition, and study how writers crossing the Atlantic have continued to depict Africa in later centuries: to dramatize scenes of departure and arrival in stories of self-making or new citizenship, to evoke histories of racial unity or examine psychic and social fragmentation, to imagine new national communities or question their norms and borders. Our readings will be selected from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish-language traditions. And we will pay close attention to genres of prose fiction (Conrad, Condé, Olinto), epic and prose poetry (Césaire, Walcott), theoretical reflection (Gilroy, Glissant, Mudimbe, Benitez-Rojo), and literary autobiography (Barack Obama, Saidiya Hartman).

A double exploration of experiment in the novel from 1719 into the 19th century. Taking off from Zola's The Experimental Novel," consideration of the novel's aspect as scientific instrument. Taking the idea of experimental fiction in the usual sense of departures from standard practice, consideration of works that seem to break away from techniques of "realism" devised prior to 1750. Texts by: Sterne, Walpole, Burney, Sade, Godwin, Lewis, and Goethe. Substantial readings in the theory of the novel.

How do literary texts and the investigation into language allow us to think through, debate, and re-imagine our relation to others, and even the idea of alterity? And what ethical and political considerations feed into these discussions?

Gathering and analyzing data, constructing hypotheses and designing experiments to test them, writing programs [if needed], preparing visuals and texts for articles or conferences. Requires a year-long participation in the activities of the Lab.