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COMPLIT 36A: Dangerous Ideas (ARTHIST 36, EALC 36, ENGLISH 71, ETHICSOC 36X, FRENCH 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36, TAPS 36)

Ideas matter. Concepts such as progress, technology, and sex, have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like cultural relativism and historical memory, play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these "dangerous" ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space.
Terms: Win, Spr | Units: 1 | Repeatable 4 times (up to 4 units total)
Instructors: ; Safran, G. (PI)

COMPLIT 43: Modernity and Politics in Middle Eastern Literatures (HUMCORE 131)

This course will investigate cultural and literary responses to modernity in the Middle East. The intense modernization process that started in mid 19th century and lingers to this day in the region caused Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary cultures to encounter rapid changes; borders dissolved, new societies and nations were formed, daily life westernized, and new literary forms took over the former models. In order to understand how writers and individuals negotiated between tradition and modernity and how they adapted their traditions into the modern life we will read both canonical and graphic novels comparatively from each language group and focus on the themes of nation, identity, and gender. All readings will be in English translation. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Karahan, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 44: Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia (CHINA 24, HUMCORE 133, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24)

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Reichert, J. (PI); Xu, L. (PI)

COMPLIT 100: CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People (DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153)

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities at different moments in time, including Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, colonial Mexico City, imperial Beijing, Enlightenment and romantic Paris, existential and revolutionary St. Petersburg, roaring Berlin, modernist Vienna, and transnational Accra. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation).
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

COMPLIT 122: Literature as Performance:

Focus is on the evolution of dramatic literature through some of its great milestones from antiquity to present. Readings include selected plays (alongside video recordings/film adaptations) and secondary works on theater and performance. Through readings, discussion, and written work, students will analyze theater as an embodied genre that moves in time, space and thought. Works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett, Ibsen, Hansberry, Williams, and Soyinka.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
Instructors: ; Barletta, V. (PI)

COMPLIT 138: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 145C: Narratives of Enslavement (AFRICAAM 145, CLASSICS 145, CLASSICS 245)

Widely dispersed narratives by and about enslaved persons are our focus. We'll explore the concept of 'slave narrative' by comparing texts from the ancient Mediterranean, the Cape of Good Hope, West Africa and the United States. We'll consider famous autobiographies alongside less familiar material such as court trial records. What are the affordances, what are the limits of such narratives as historical evidence? What notions of enslaved experience emerge? How close can we come to understanding the experiences of the enslaved? How different do such experiences seem when compared across time and space? Note: graduates and advanced undergraduates wishing to read original Greek and Latin texts should register for Reading Greek and Roman Slavery (Classics 142/242) in addition.
Terms: Win | Units: 5
Instructors: ; Parker, G. (PI)

COMPLIT 148: Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts (COMPLIT 267, FRENCH 260A, MUSIC 146N, MUSIC 246N)

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-4 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

COMPLIT 161E: Narrative and Narrative Theory (ENGLISH 161)

An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative. nEnglish majors must take this class for 5 units.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 176: Forms of Poetry at Home and Abroad: A Workshop (ILAC 176)

Poets have long relied on formal structures to write into surprise and wonder. We know of structures such as the sonnet and the sestina, but what about the corrido, ghazal, haiku, jintishi, landay, lira, l¿c b¿t, qa¿¿da, pantoum, romance, rondeau, sijo, than-bauk, and triolet? How might we reimagine poetic forms in English by looking to the past at home and abroad?In this poetry workshop, you will write an original poem each week. Assigned readings will illustrate the development of specific forms from language traditions around the world and the ways in which they've crossed into English-language poetry. Previous experience with creative writing not required.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-CE
Instructors: ; Santana, C. (PI)

COMPLIT 184B: Nationalism, Cultural and Political (COMPLIT 384, ILAC 184, ILAC 384)

Is there a non-political nationalism? Does the term "post-nationalism" designate a political reality? Or does "transnational" add meaningfully to the more traditional term "international" in reference to dynamics occurring between or among nations? The seminar will analyze the emergence of the concept "nationalism" with Herder's political writings, the opposition between cultural nation and political state, the connection between democracy and the rise of the nation state and the reaction against nationalism in the wake of authoritarian movements in the 20th century and the challenge to popular sovereignty connected with the problematization of the nation. Texts by Rousseau, Herder, Fichte, Weber, Berlin, Huizinga, Miguel de Unamuno, Prat de la Riba, Eugeni d'Ors, Ortega y Gasset, among others. Taught in English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Resina, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 199: Senior Seminar

What is theory, and how (and why) do we do it in Comparative Literature? Senior seminar for Comparative Literature Senior majors only.
Terms: Win | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

COMPLIT 202: Feminist and Queer Theories and Methods Across the Disciplines (FEMGEN 103, FEMGEN 203)

(Graduate Students register for PHIL 279A or FEMGEN 203) This course is an opportunity to explore a variety of historic and current feminist and queer perspectives in the arts, humanities, and social science research. NOTE: This course must be taken for a letter grade and a minimum of 3 units to be eligible for WAYS credit. The 2 unit option is for graduate students only.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-5 | UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP

COMPLIT 206: Travel Literature, Empire and the (Un)making of Masculinities (FEMGEN 206F)

This course will investigate the interconnection between travel writing and gender politics between roughly 1850 and the present. How does travel gender space? How does travel writing express and subvert understandings of masculinity? How do gender nonconforming bodies travel and narrate travel?
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Daub, A. (PI); Yu, K. (TA)

COMPLIT 208: The Cosmopolitan Introvert: Modern Greek Poetry and its Itinerants

Overview of the last century of Greek poetry with emphasis on modernism. Approximately 20 modern Greek poets (starting with Cavafy and Nobel laureates Seferis and Elytis and moving to more modern writers) are read and compared to other major European and American writers. The themes of the cosmopolitan itinerant and of the introvert, often co-existing in the same poet, connect these idiosyncratic voices. The course uses translations and requires no knowledge of Greek but original texts can also be shared with interested students. Note: The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Ioannidis, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 238: Literature and the Brain (COMPLIT 138, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F)

How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?
Terms: Win | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 238B: Dante's "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" (ITALIAN 238B, ITALIAN 338B)

Reading the second and third canticles of Dante's "Divine Comedy." Prerequisite: students must have read Dante's "Inferno" in a course or on their own. Taught in English. Recommended: reading knowledge of Italian.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 248B: Reading Turkish II

This course is the continuation of COMPLIT 248A Reading Turkish I, which served as an introduction to the structures of the Turkish language necessary for reading. It is designed to develop reading competence in Turkish for graduate students. Undergraduates should consult the instructor before enrolling for the course. Essential grammar, syntax points, vocabulary, and reading skills will be emphasized. This is not a traditional language course that takes an integrated four-skill approach; it focuses only on reading, and as a result we will be able to cover advanced material in a short amount of time. This course is conducted in English, but students will be exposed to the sounds of Turkish, and will have the opportunity to practice pronunciation in class. COMPLIT 248B is followed by COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish for Research in the Spring.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Karahan, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 249B: Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (GLOBAL 249B)

Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.
Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors: ; Beyzaie, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 253: Losing My Mind: Madness, Race, and Gender in Latin America (ILAC 253, ILAC 353)

What does it mean to lose our minds? Is the mind even ours to lose? How do race, gender, and social status inform our understandings and experiences of insanity? In this bilingual course we will explore figurations of madness, mental illnesses, and other kinds of crises of the self in Latin American cultural objects, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. We will examine testimonies of religious experiences, novels, medical treatises, short stories, intimate diaries, and visual materials on disorderly states of mind and fragmented identities produced in territories that are today Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Perú, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic, among others. In our examination of these objects and their historical contexts, we will discuss how colonial and state authorities have used psychiatric labels to control and regulate the lives of Afro-descendants and women in Latin American territories. We will also examine the ways in which men and women of color navigated through these labels in order to evade punishment, engage in creative processes, or simply live their lives. Readings will be in Spanish and English (when translated from Portuguese). Advanced knowledge of Spanish is required.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Fraga, I. (PI)

COMPLIT 264: Crossing the Atlantic: Race Identity in the "Old" and"New" African Diasporas (AFRICAAM 264, CSRE 265, FRENCH 264E)

In this course, we will think critically about what we have come to call the African diaspora. We will travel the world virtually while exploring a selection of classic and understudied texts, in order to interrogate the relationship between culture, race, gender and identity in the "old" and "new" African diasporas. From literary texts to popular culture, we will relate each weekly reading to a hot topic. Our goal is to think cross-culturally and cross-linguistically about the themes covered by putting exciting works in conversation. The diverse topics and concepts discussed will include race, class, gender, identity, sexuality, migration, Afro-Caribbean religions, performance, violence, the body, metissage, Negritude, Negrismo, multiculturalism, nationalism, Afropolitanism and Afropean identities.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

COMPLIT 267: Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts (COMPLIT 148, FRENCH 260A, MUSIC 146N, MUSIC 246N)

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Terms: Win | Units: 2-4
Instructors: ; Kretz, H. (PI)

COMPLIT 316: Scholarship and Activism for Justice (CSRE 316)

A collective-based course where participants determine readings on scholarship and activism, invite guest speakers, plan activities to put into action our ideas, values, philosophies.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 1 | Repeatable 24 times (up to 24 units total)
Instructors: ; Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)

COMPLIT 346: Comparative Literature Pro-seminar

An introduction to the professional practice of Comparative Literature, the seminar addresses the nature of the discipline, its historical and recent issues, and prospects for the future. Required of all entering Comparative Literature graduate students; others may enroll with permission of the instructor.
Terms: Win | Units: 1-3
Instructors: ; Greene, R. (PI)

COMPLIT 348: US-Mexico Border Fictions: Writing La Frontera, Tearing Down the Wall (ILAC 348)

A border is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome, crossed, and cursed; motivates bodies to climb over walls; and threatens physical harm. This graduate seminar places into comparative dialogue a variety of perspectives from Chicana/o and Mexican/Latin American literary studies. Our seminar will examine fiction and cultural productions that range widely, from celebrated Mexican and Chicano authors such as Carlos Fuentes (La frontera de cristal), Yuri Herrera (Señales que precederan al fin del mundo), Willivaldo Delgaldillo (La Virgen del Barrio Árabe), Américo Paredes (George Washington Gómez: A Mexico-Texan Novel), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), and Sandra Cisneros (Carmelo: Puro Cuento), among others, to musicians whose contributions to border thinking and culture have not yet been fully appreciated such as Herb Albert, Ely Guerra, Los Tigres del Norte, and Café Tacvba. Last but not least, we will screen and analyze Orson Welles' iconic border films Touch of Evil and Rodrigo Dorfman's Los Sueños de Angélica. Proposing a diverse and geographically expansive view of the US-Mexico border literary and cultural studies, this seminar links the work of these authors and musicians to struggles for land and border-crossing rights, anti-imperialist forms of trans-nationalism, and to the decolonial turn in border thinking or pensamineto fronterizo. It forces us to take into account the ways in which shifts in the nature of global relations affect literary production and negative aesthetics especially in our age of (late) post-industrial capitalism. Taught in English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Saldivar, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 355: The French-Speaking World: Literature, Culture, and Translation (CSRE 355, FRENCH 355)

A survey of literatures and cultures of the French speaking world outside of Europe. We will examine a variety of literary genres as we explore works from the Caribbean, the Maghreb, West Africa, North America, Asia, and the Indian Ocean. Topics include: the politics of language, the making of literary classics, world literature and translation, decolonization, nationalism, gender, sexuality, race, and identity. Taught in French.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Seck, F. (PI)

COMPLIT 384: Nationalism, Cultural and Political (COMPLIT 184B, ILAC 184, ILAC 384)

Is there a non-political nationalism? Does the term "post-nationalism" designate a political reality? Or does "transnational" add meaningfully to the more traditional term "international" in reference to dynamics occurring between or among nations? The seminar will analyze the emergence of the concept "nationalism" with Herder's political writings, the opposition between cultural nation and political state, the connection between democracy and the rise of the nation state and the reaction against nationalism in the wake of authoritarian movements in the 20th century and the challenge to popular sovereignty connected with the problematization of the nation. Texts by Rousseau, Herder, Fichte, Weber, Berlin, Huizinga, Miguel de Unamuno, Prat de la Riba, Eugeni d'Ors, Ortega y Gasset, among others. Taught in English.
Terms: Win | Units: 3-5
Instructors: ; Resina, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 397: Graduate Studies Colloquium

Colloquium for graduate students in Comparative Literature. Taught in English. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr | Units: 1 | Repeatable 15 times (up to 15 units total)
Instructors: ; Saldivar, J. (PI)

COMPLIT 398L: Literary Lab (ENGLISH 398L)

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.
Terms: Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 2-5 | Repeatable 2 times (up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ; Algee-Hewitt, M. (PI)

COMPLIT 399: Individual Work

For Comparative Literature department graduate students only. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-15 | Repeatable for credit

COMPLIT 680: Curricular Practical Training

CPT course required for international students completing degree. Prerequisite: Comparative Literature Ph.D. candidate.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-3 | Repeatable for credit
Instructors: ; Greene, R. (PI)

COMPLIT 802: TGR Dissertation

Doctoral students who have been admitted to candidacy, completed all required courses and degree requirements other than the University oral exam and dissertation, completed 135 units or 10.5 quarters of residency (if under the old residency policy), and submitted a Doctoral Dissertation Reading Committee form, may request Terminal Graduate Registration status to complete their dissertations.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 0 | Repeatable for credit
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