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"?

Come to discuss literature and comparative literary studies in a relaxed and informative class, over lunch. You will meet comparative literature faculty and graduate students who will share their work, their experiences, and interests in literature. Discussions will range from the challenges and excitement of studying medieval Chinese poetry to blogging about the humanities; the relation of different cultures¿ notions of aesthetics and the role literature plays, and much more. Topics will also be generated by class participants. No pre-requisites.

Focusing on the emotional structure of love and passion in Chinese films, the course will investigate the structures of feelings and moral relations in modern Chinese history from the 1940s till the present. Examining the interplay between private desire, romantic sentiment, family relations, and political passion, we will explore how men and women in China grapple with emotional and social issues in modern transformations. We will consider romantic love, the uplifting of sexuality into political passion, the intertwining of aesthetic experience with politics, nostalgia in the disenchanted modern world, and the tensions between the individual¿s self-realization and the community¿s agenda. Students will learn to ¿read¿ films as a work of art and understand how film works as expression of desire, impulse, emotional connections, and communal bonding during times of crisis. Course work includes a midterm exam (25%) and a final exam (25%), a weekly 250-300 word reflection on the film of the week (10%), participation and oral presentation in class (10%), and a paper of 5-7 pages to be submitted after the midterm week (30%).nStarting from the second week, film screening will begin 6: 30 pm Monday before classes on Tuesday and Thursday. The course does not encourage private viewing. At least 5 dinners will be provided for movie-screening events.

This winter Stanford students in any discipline are invited to enroll in an experimental, 2-unit course that will put us in conversation with undergraduate students at the University of Wuerzberg, Germany and at UC Merced. We will be going through a common reading list and blogging with each other across the Stanford-based TeachingHumanRights.org website. The course will be led by Professors Heike Raphael-Hernandez at Wuerzberg, Nigel Hatton at UCM, and David Palumbo-Liu at Stanford. We will be reading texts on human rights, with a focus on race. Besides blogging together, we will create live chats. This is an absolutely unique chance to engage in an international discussion on rights and race, with invaluable perspectives shared beyond the physical classroom and national boundaries.

Nabokov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel "The Gift," "Lolita" (the novel and screenplay), and "Pale Fire." Readings in English. Russian speakers will be encouraged to read Russian texts in original.

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.