Results for COMPLIT

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zionism, the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and the potentials for the future. We will take a close look at novels by Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, in order to understand multiple perspectives, and we will also consider works by authors from the North America and from Europe.

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.

Preference to freshmen.This course considers a variety of animal characters in Chinese and Western literatures as potent symbols of cultural values and dynamic sites of ethical reasoning. What does pervasive animal imagery tell us about how we relate to the world and our neighbors? How do animals define the frontiers of humanity and mediate notions of civilization and culture? How do culture, institutions, and political economy shape concepts of human rights and animal welfare? And, above all, what does it mean to be human in the pluralistic and planetary 21st century?

An introduction to the "theatrical" dimensions of literature in different cultures based on a view of the staging arts as a specific segment within phenomena of "performance". Documentation and discussions of the history of western drama as a central axis within the debate about the cultural status of other forms of performance art that are normally not culturally canonized within this genre (eg. sports).

Literary inventiveness and social significance of novelistic forms from the Great Depression to the present.

Translation lies at the heart of all intercultural exchange. This course introduces students to the specific ways in which translation has shaped the image of Japan in the West, the image of the West in Japan, and Japan's self-image in the modern period. What texts and concepts were translated by each side, how, and to what effect? No prior knowledge of Japanese language necessary.

How literary works outside the realm of Western culture struggle with questions such as identity, minority, and the issue of the Other. How the Arab is viewed in Hebrew literature, film and music and how the Jew is viewed in Palestinian works in Hebrew or Arabic (in translation to English). Historical, political, and sociological forces that have contributed to the shaping of these writers' views.nnGuest lectures about the Jew in Palestinian literature and music.

This course introduces students to the histories of Asians in America, specifically as these histories are part of a broader Asia-US-Pacific history that characterized the 20th century and now the 21st. We will combine readings in history, literature, sociology, with community-based learning.nnThe course takes place over two quarters. The first quarter focuses on gaining knowledge of Asian America and discussion key topics that students wish to focus on collaboratively. During this first quarter we also learn about community-based learning, set up teams and projects, and develop relationships with community organizations. The second quarter students work with student liaisons (senior students who have experience in service learning) and complete their work with the community¿there are no formal class meetings this second quarter. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center). Course can be repeated once.

This course is an examination of contemporary Turkish cinema in a social and political context. The course will focus on films and directors that revived Turkish cinema starting with the mid-1990s with a focus on key issues pertaining to belonging, denied identities, masculinity, nationalism, silencing of women, and urbanization. The course aims to provide an overview of contemporary Turkish cinema and society in cultural, political, and social framework. There will be approximately two hours of film screening and two hours of classroom discussion/seminar (in English) each week. All films are in Turkish with English subtitles.

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.

(Staff)

This course will focus on helping to design, conceptualize, and populate an international human rights website. No knowledge of web design or of human rights is necessary to get started on this project. We have technical assistance available, though hopefully this course will attract students with those skills as well. Similarly, we will be learning about human rights as we build the site, explore and share resources and ideas, and reflect on the content. Preliminary site viewable at teachinghumanrights.org

Senior seminar for Comp Lit Senior majors only.

In this course we will discuss selections from writings by Marx, Simmel, Keynes, and Hayek that focuses on money, a key but neglected aspect of their work. It is money that drives todays economies, rather than "business", the "market", "capital", or the "state". It is this exclusive concern with monetary phenomena that uniquely defines these authors and characterizes their work as philosophical rather than economic, sociological or anthropological.

A comprehensive introduction to and historical analysis of Emile Zola's literary work as foundational for the late-nineteenth century literary movement that we call "Naturalism." The analysis of Zola's novels will be embedded in the historical situation of France in the transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic, with special emphasis on the epistemological situation of that time. Knowledge of French desirable but participation through English translations will be possible.

Study literary classics about readers and reading (by Austen, Dickinson, Wilde, Benjamin, Eliot, Orwell, Borges, Calvino, Bechdel, etc.) and compare with digital reading/writing today: fan fiction and online expansions of "the book", literary collaborations online, changing notions of "author", "reader", "work", literary-social interactions. Our literary close readings will also introduce some useful new digital tools and methods for literary studies (annotation, editing, and research tools, web-based public social interactions, innovative digital humanities projects in literary studies today). No technical prerequisites.

This course will have three components. The first will be a set of readings on the history and ethos of modern human rights. These readings will come from philosophy, history, political theory. The second component will consist of readings from various global locations that involve human rights in various ways, predominantly as they interface with issues of environmental justice. Finally, this course will involve students in creating and populating a website that will be not only the archive of our work in class but also build a set of resources to be shared with others (we will be adding partners from different locations to speak to us online from their locations as well as to share resources and ideas). We will come away from this class with a good introduction to human rights history and philosophy; a set of insights into a variety of imaginative workings-out of human rights and environmental justice issues from different global locations, and a rich web resource.

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.nnCOMPLIT 248B is followed by COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish for Research in the Spring.

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.nThese 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.nIn 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:nWhat changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment?nThough unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran?nAnd in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran?

Introduction to Classical Arabic Prose and to the classics of Arabic prose ¿ from the 700s and the dawn of Islam to the 2010s and the Arab Spring. Focus on skills needed to read and understand, from syntax and morphology to dictionaries, encyclopedias, memorization, and the internets. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor.

Drawing on literature, the arts, political discourse, museums, and new media, this course asks why and how we take interest in the watershed events of the modern era; how does contemporary culture engages with modern, made-made disasters such as the World Wars or 9/11? Readings and viewings include the literature of G. Grass, W. G. Sebald, Ian McEwan, Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy; the cinema of Kathryn Bigelow and Steven Spielberg; speeches by Barak Obama; and the theoretical writing of Walter Benjamin, Hayden White, Fredric Jameson, among others. Taught in English.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.

This course introduces students to fundamental concepts of international human rights and uses these concepts to frame problems of inequality, marginality, exclusion and injustice that are chronic across the globe¿including the United States. Focusing on Ferguson as a point of inflection, this course will consider police repression of political protest in a comparative context. The course will also use the lens of fundamental human rights to explore a state¿s failure to investigate and prosecute, and its failure to protect its citizens from violations committed by agents or from non-state agents. In each thematic unit, we will examine the United States in a comparative lens, and will consider how we understand, frame, mourn and contest the violations of rights in literature, the visual arts, and in social and political action. We will continuously examine the role of the arts in disseminating, shaping and deepening our understanding of multiple dimensions of human rights violations. At the same time, we will consider how these cultural products reflect on, illuminate, contest or problematize advocacy texts and sources of international law. We will examine texts from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, among other countries, as well as documents from international and regional human rights bodies.

A comparative analysis of João Guimarães Rosa's (1908-1967) work, with special attention to the novel Grande Sertao-Veredas, translated by a Stanford professor, launched by A. Knopf in 1963. Rosa's fiction disturbs gender, racial, and literary divisions by the creation of a Babelic Brazilian Portuguese language from the sertao. Students increase their literary vocabulary with new terms, nonada and conconversa, and a gallery of Indigenous, Afro-Americans, mestizos, and foreigners' characters. Discussions in English; readings in Portuguese and Spanish.

Provides students with an overview of some major genres in the history of the modern novel, along with major theorists in the critical understanding of the form. Novels might include works by Cervantes, Defoe, Lafayette, Radcliffe, Goethe, Scott, Balzac, Melville, and Woolf. Theorists might include Lukacs, Bakhtin, Jameson, Gallagher, Barthes, Kristeva, and Bourdieu. *PLEASE NOTE: Course for graduate students only.*

Emphasis on world-system theory, theories of coloniality and power, and aesthetic modernity/postmodernity in their relation to culture broadly understood.

This course is an examination of contemporary Turkish cinema in a social and political context. The course will focus on films and directors that revived Turkish cinema starting with the mid-1990s with a focus on key issues pertaining to belonging, denied identities, masculinity, nationalism, silencing of women, and urbanization. The course aims to provide an overview of contemporary Turkish cinema and society in cultural, political, and social framework. There will be approximately two hours of film screening and two hours of classroom discussion/seminar (in English) each week. All films are in Turkish with English subtitles.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.