printer friendly pageDLCL 121: Performing the Middle Ages
Through an analysis of medieval courtly love, religious, satirical, and Crusade lyrics, we will study the rise of a new subjectivity; the female voice; the roles of poet, audience, and patron; oral and manuscript transmission; and political propaganda. Special attention will be given to performance as a reimagining of self and social identity. Authors include Bertran de Born, Marie de France, Hildegard von Bingen, Walther von der Vogelweide, Dante, and Chaucer. Students will have the opportunity to produce a creative project that brings medieval ideas about performance into dialogue with modern conceptions. Taught in English, all texts in translation. NOTE: for AY 2018-19
FRENCH 166 Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting counts for
DLCL 121.
Last offered: Autumn 2016
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
DLCL 141: Poems, Poetry, Worlds (COMPLIT 121)
What is poetry? How does it speak in many voices to questions of philosophy, history, society, and personal experience? Why does it matter? The reading and interpretation of poetry in crosscultural comparison as experience, invention, form, sound, knowledge, and part of the world. The readings address poetry of several cultures (Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Occitania, Peru) in comparative relation to that of the English-speaking world, and in light of classic and recent theories of poetry.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
DLCL 143: The Novel and the World (COMPLIT 123)
This course will trace the global development of the modern literary genre par excellence through some of its great milestones from the 18th century to the present. Includes works by Flaubert, Bulgakov, Baldwin, and Bâ.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Karahan, B. (PI)
DLCL 293: Literary Translation (COMPLIT 293, ENGLISH 293)
An overview of translation theories and practices over time. The aesthetic, ethical, and political questions raised by the act and art of translation and how these pertain to the translator's tasks. Discussion of particular translation challenges and the decision processes taken to address these issues. Coursework includes assigned theoretical readings, comparative translations, and the undertaking of an individual translation project.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Santana, C. (PI)
EDUC 116N: Howard Zinn and the Quest for Historical Truth (HISTORY 116N)
With more than two million copies in print, Howard Zinn's A People's History is a cultural icon. We will use Zinn's book to probe how we determine what was true in the past. A People's History will be our point of departure, but our journey will visit a variety of historical trouble spots: debates about whether the US was founded as a Christian nation, Holocaust denial, and the "Birther" controversy of President Obama.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Wineburg, S. (PI)
ENGLISH 5A: WISE: Unfinished Novels
Few species of writing are more exquisitely uncomfortable than a novel that is not (and never will be) finished. An author dies, or loses interest, or flouts convention: whatever the cause, unfinished novels demand an especially dynamic relationship between reader and text, precipitating either wild flights of imagination or scrupulous detective work, if not both at once. In the nineteenth century, a period obsessed with all things comprehensive and complete, such fragmentariness would have appeared still more challenging, even subversive. Closely reading works by Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens, along with select critical interpretations, this course will invite participants to ask: what do unfinished novels reveal to us that finished ones cannot? What peculiar insights do they give us into the processes and pressures of literary production? And what exactly is our role in consuming them?nNote: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Enrollment is by permission (contact vbeebe@stanford.edu). For more information go to
https://english.stanford.edu/writing-intensive-seminars-english-wise.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Redmond, M. (PI)
ENGLISH 5B: WISE: Mental Health and Literature, Mid-century to Present
Is there something wrong with us, or with our world? Rising rates of clinical depression and other conditions have rendered mental health a pressing cultural concern, especially for young adults, leading institutions of higher education to expand resources to support student needs. But we have not always thought about mental health the ways we do today. In this course we read landmark literary texts from midcentury to present that both reflect and shape cultural constructions of mental health. From Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970) to Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation (1994)to Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), we examine how literature destabilizes would-be binaries between mental health and mental illness. How do intersectional identity factors such as gender, race, and class inform whose mental illness is deemed deserving of treatment and whose is instead criminalized? Honing our critical writing skills by learning to employ the tools of cultural criticism, feminist theory, and critical race studies, we also engage selections from Doris Lessing, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Esmé Weijun Wang, and others. Traversing short stories, essays, drama, poetry, memoir, and novels, this timely multi-genre course equips us to historically contextualize and meaningfully respond to the current mental health crisis.nNote: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Enrollment is by permission (contact vbeebe@stanford.edu). For more information go to
https://english.stanford.edu/writing-intensive-seminars-english-wise.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Mukamal, A. (PI)
ENGLISH 5C: WISE: Revelation and Apocalypse: Literature at the End of the World 1300-2000
Apocalyptic thinking never goes out of fashion, nor does literature that deals with the end times. This course explores two major categories of apocalyptic thinking-- largely defined by religious and medical discourses--and the connection between the two. From Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, to early modern reckonings inspired by fire and plague, to Romantic-era sci-fi by Mary Shelley, to Station Eleven, a 2014 novel which takes place after an apocalyptic flu pandemic, we will read both millenarians and millennials, considering different visions of the end of the world, and what may come after. We'll also ask, what are the stakes--what historical concerns and cultural obsessions are revealed, after all--in these varied prophetic imaginings?nNote: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Enrollment is by permission (contact vbeebe@stanford.edu). For more information go to
https://english.stanford.edu/writing-intensive-seminars-english-wise.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Smith-Drelich, H. (PI)
ENGLISH 5D: WISE: Bad Reading: Pleasure and Politics in Literary Value
As students of literature, we aspire to be good readers of the texts we encounter. But to see ourselves as good readers is implicitly(perhaps even complicitly)to set ourselves against another form of literary consumption: bad reading, and, by association, bad readers. Yet what makes reading "bad" or "good"? And who decides? The more we look, the less self-evident or definitive the distinction becomes,our footing precipitously dropping away into questions about our own reading practices and how society values them. The precarious label "bad reading" comes into even sharper relief when we consider that the term has long been associated not just with certain modes of reading, but also with certain classes of readers and certain kinds of books, from gory gothic thrillers and racy romances to sci-fi and comics. In this course, we will trace the definitions and stakes of bad reading from the nineteenth century to the present day, through sources ranging from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf to contemporary think-pieces on young adult literature and race in publishing. Along the way, we will aim both to discover whether bad reading is really so bad after all, and to understand how ideologies of gender, class, and race have shaped our conceptions of literary value.nNote: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Enrollment is by permission (contact vbeebe@stanford.edu). For more information go to
https://english.stanford.edu/writing-intensive-seminars-english-wise.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Jordan, J. (PI)
ENGLISH 5H: WISE: Dialogue in American Literature
What would literature be without conversations between characters? Dialogue is what brings fiction to life. In the words of literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, 'the speaking person' is what 'makes a novel a novel.' In this course, we explore the crucial role dialogue plays in literature, treating every sentence of narrative fiction as a choice between characters, speech and some other mode of representation. We will pay close attention to both how fiction represents speaking persons and how dialogue interacts with the novel's other discourses. What can the dialogue scene as a formal unit tell us about narrative structure? How does dialogue shape plot? How does it animate character? Who gets to speak for themselves and which voices are passed over or suppressed? To explore these questions of form and politics, we'll read select works of fiction (by authors including Herman Melville, Zora Neale Hurston, and Margaret Millar) in conversation with major works of narrative theory.nNote: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. Enrollment is by permission (contact vbeebe@stanford.edu). For more information go to
https://english.stanford.edu/writing-intensive-seminars-english-wise.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors:
Lindemann, C. (PI)
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