1 - 10 of 33 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.

We may "know" "who" we "are," but we are, after all, social creatures. How does our sense of self interact with those around us? How does literature provide a particular medium for not only self expression, but also for meditations on what goes into the construction of "the Self"? After all, don't we tell stories in response to the question, "who are you"? Besides a list of nouns and names and attributes, we give our lives flesh and blood in telling how we process the world. Our course focuses in particular on this question--Does this universal issue ("who am I") become skewed differently when we add a qualifier before it, like "ethnic"?

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?

This course takes students on a trip to eight capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. 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); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges.

Introduction to the discipline of comparative literature and to the theory and practice of interpretation. How should we best read novels, plays, short stories, poetry, and a variety of other forms of literary expression? What role has literature played in human societies in different times and places? Primary works (a novel, several poems, and a play) represent different national literatures that gain from a comparative perspective. Fulfills the Writing-in-the-Major requirement. Gateway to the Comparative Literature Major.

The recent elections in the United States, the BREXIT vote, and the rightward movement in many European nation states all may be taken as indexes to the ways race plays a central role in politics. Race and ethnicity show up in policies over immigration, refugees, citizenship, policing, incarceration, and other topics and issues. This all puts tremendous pressure on human rights discourse.nThe foundational document of modern human rights is the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted at a time when the newly-established United Nations recognized the need for rights for a new post-war, and increasingly post-colonial world. Our course will study the basis of human rights historically and philosophically with particular attention to the relation between human rights and anti-racist work. What are the possibilities and challenges?nA unique and exciting part of the course is that it is an international collaboration with classes at the University of Wurzberg, Germany, and the University of California at Merced. Using the Stanford-based TeachingHumanRights.org website, we will create a three-campus project that puts students and instructors together as an international community of scholar-activists.

Theater as performance and as literature. Historical tension between text and spectacle, thought and embodiment in western and other traditions since Greek antiquity. Dramas read in tandem with theory, live performances, and audiovisuals.

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.