121 - 130 of 246 results for: Literary history

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.

What is "close reading"? This course is a survey and discussion of close reading and its formative role in twentieth century literary criticism and studies. Technique, explication, interpretation, method, practice, judgement: we will discuss various understandings of close reading's tasks, its history, and its implications for how and why we read literature. Readings include foundational texts (I. A. Richards, William Empson, Cleanth Brooks; Jane Gallop, Jonathan Culler, Eve Sedgwick, etc.) and contemporary debates (John Guillory, Jonathan Kramnick, N. Katherine Hayles, etc.).

This course approaches the history of narrative theory from the German perspective: we will read canonical and foundational texts that have shaped the way we read and study narrative - from the usual suspects (Gerard Genette, Yuri Lotman, Tzvetan Todorov, Algirdas Julien Greimas) to the (here) lesser known German theorists of narrative forms and literary theory (Frank K. Stanzel, Käte Hamburger, Monika Fludernik, Siegfried J. Schmidt). Alongside these theoretical approaches, we will read two German novels, which we'll use as experimental playground to better test and understand how and why literary theory can help us construct models of reading, world-making, human experience, and storytelling. Towards the end of the course, we'll switch to the open questions and future of narrative theory: what media of long-form storytelling come after the novel? What do they have in common with, say, the novels of J.W. Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, Lou Andreas-Salomé, or Ingeborg Bachmann? How would we expand narrative theory to include today's most important and engaging sites of storytelling (like video games or serial television)? Taught in German.

This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.

What is "close reading"? This course is a survey and discussion of close reading and its formative role in twentieth century literary criticism and studies. Technique, explication, interpretation, method, practice, judgement: we will discuss various understandings of close reading's tasks, its history, and its implications for how and why we read literature. Readings include foundational texts (I. A. Richards, William Empson, Cleanth Brooks; Jane Gallop, Jonathan Culler, Eve Sedgwick, etc.) and contemporary debates (John Guillory, Jonathan Kramnick, N. Katherine Hayles, etc.).

This course approaches the history of narrative theory from the German perspective: we will read canonical and foundational texts that have shaped the way we read and study narrative - from the usual suspects (Gerard Genette, Yuri Lotman, Tzvetan Todorov, Algirdas Julien Greimas) to the (here) lesser known German theorists of narrative forms and literary theory (Frank K. Stanzel, Käte Hamburger, Monika Fludernik, Siegfried J. Schmidt). Alongside these theoretical approaches, we will read two German novels, which we'll use as experimental playground to better test and understand how and why literary theory can help us construct models of reading, world-making, human experience, and storytelling. Towards the end of the course, we'll switch to the open questions and future of narrative theory: what media of long-form storytelling come after the novel? What do they have in common with, say, the novels of J.W. Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, Lou Andreas-Salomé, or Ingeborg Bachmann? How would we expand narrative theory to include today's most important and engaging sites of storytelling (like video games or serial television)? Taught in German.

This course focuses on the historical interconnectedness of pre-modern cultures, necessarily decentering Europe to explore cultural exchange across the world, including the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, in the period 600-1600 CE. Providing students with a historical foundation to more modern courses in COLLEGE, The Global Middle Ages introduces a wide variety of sources, and equips students with the tools of critical inquiry necessary to evaluate and contextualize historical witnesses. In decentering Europe as the geographical focus of study, the course also aims to decenter teleological narratives that have tended to claim modernity for so-called 'developed' (western) nations, while denigrating other regions as 'medieval' (understood as chaotic, violent, and irrational). Chronology, long presented as neutral fact is acknowledged in this course as both constructed and political. Drawing on work by historians, art historians, and literary historians, we work in this course to reconsider the pre-modern world in a global context, informed by new trends in global history as well as the emerging field of pre-modern critical race studies.

This course takes students on a tour through the culture, literature, and history of Mexico guided by 10 emblematic images. From the mythical foundation of Mexica (Aztec) Tenochtitlan to the Mexican Revolution to the present day, Mexico has sustained strikingly beautiful and complex visual cultures. They include the painted books of the Mexica known as codices; the feather mosaics of Indigenous amanteca; costumbrista paintings of typically Mexican customs; maps that sustained Indigenous struggles for land rights; photos of the brave soldaderas (women soldiers) in the Mexican Revolution; Diego Rivera's sweeping murals and Frida Kahlo's striking self-portraits; and the "moving images" of Mexican Golden Age Cinema. Each week of this course features a lecture and a discussion session on one emblematic image to be studied alongside secondary images and short literary and historical texts. Beginners are welcome in this introductory course. Taught in Spanish.

This course investigates the relationship between culture, revolutionary decolonization, and post-colonial trajectories. It probes the multilayered development of 20th and 21st-century African literature amid decolonization and Cold War cultural diplomacy initiatives and the debates they generated about African literary aesthetics, African languages, the production of history, and the role of the intellectual. We will journey through national cultural movements, international congresses, and pan-African festivals to explore the following questions: What role did writers and artists play in shaping the discourse of revolutionary decolonization throughout the continent and in the diaspora? How have literary texts, films, and works of African cultural thought shaped and engaged with concepts such as "African unity" and "African cultural renaissance"? How have these notions influenced the imaginaries of post-independence nations, engendered new subjectivities, and impacted gender and generational dynamics? How did the ways of knowing and modes of writing promoted and developed in these contexts shape African futures?