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COMPLIT 128: Literature of the former Yugoslavia (REES 128, SLAVIC 128)

What do Slavoj Zizek, Novak Djokovic, Marina Abramovic, Melania Trump, Emir Kusturica, and the captain of the Croatian national football team have in common? All were born in a country that no longer exists, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). This course will introduce masterpieces of Yugoslav literature and film, examining the social and political complexities of a multicultural society that collapsed into civil war (i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s. In English with material available in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian.

Last offered: Autumn 2019

COMPLIT 140: The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (FEMGEN 141B, HISTORY 261P, ITALIAN 141)

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will con more »

As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.

Last offered: Winter 2023 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

COMPLIT 230: Re-Orienting Modernity: Lepers, Hermits, Mutes

Lepers, hermits, mute dervishes, hallucinating doppelgangers, and the possessed: do these marginal figures stand for the paradoxes of modernity far from the Western center? What does modernity mean for the Global South, in particular the Islamic East? Is there an indigenous modernity, beyond Western influence? In the course, we will look at how key texts and films produced in the run-up to Iran¿s 1979 Islamic Revolution build on a modernist aesthetic while at the same time displacing the West¿s claims to progress and enlightenment. Drawing on postcolonial theories, the recent transnational turn in literary studies, and close analyses of the works themselves, we will examine ideas of center and periphery, power, identity, and selfhood in order to re-orient our understanding of modernity. As a final project, students may choose to submit a critical essay, film, collection of poems, and/or an original work of art. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.

Terms: Spr | Units: 3-5

COMPLIT 249B: Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (GLOBAL 249B)

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. These 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. In 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: What more »

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. These 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. In 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: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.

Terms: Aut, Win | Units: 1-3 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

Instructors: Beyzaie, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 302: Film Series: Understanding Turkey Through Film (COMPLIT 102)

Join us in our quest to understand the great transformation in Turkey and its impact on its people through cinema. Set against the backdrop of the expansion of capitalism and the fundamental cultural, political and social change in the last decade, the movies in this series tell the uneasy stories of individuals whose lives are affected by this disruptive change. By examining the link between the individual experiences and societal change, the films confront issues such as globalization, gender and racial hierarchies, urban transformation, state repression, male domination, and the women's struggle in Turkey. We will watch eight Turkish films for this course. After introductions by Dr. Alemdaroglu or Dr. Karahan that artistically, historically, and politically contextualize the films we will have a discussion and Q&A session led by instructors or invited guest scholars of Anthropology, Film Studies, Political Science, Women and Gender Studies or film directors themselves. The students and interested Stanford community will be provided with the streaming links for the movies at the beginning of each week to screen them on their own time, and the discussion sessions will be held on the scheduled class time on Thursday. All films will be in Turkish with English subtitles.

Last offered: Autumn 2021

COMPLIT 315: Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 115, SLAVIC 156, SLAVIC 356)

How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.

Last offered: Spring 2022

COMPLIT 371: Politics, Aesthetics, Critical Ecology: Artworks and the Environment (CHINA 371)

Climate change and environmental crises have given rise to critique and reflection. This class will bring together issues of aesthetics, politics, and artworks around environmental issues. The introductory phase will involve students with key issues in ecocritical literature by reading Timothy Clark's Literature and the Environment. Moving on to the critical ecology of the Frankfurt School, the class will study the critiques of anthropocentrism, the Enlightenment, and capitalist production as the source for domination over nature and over other humans. We will explore Marxist critiques of capitalist production and alienation in John Foster and Brett Clark's writings about metabolic rifts, toxic colonialism, and alienation of labor and nature. A look at ecological thoughts in the ancient Chinese tradition will be enriched by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese eco-critical literature and film, including Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide and Jia Zhangke's Still Life. Chinese is not required. PhD students are required to write a term paper of 20-25 pages. MA and undergraduate students will write short essays in response to the questions from readings and discussion.

Terms: Aut | Units: 2-5 | Repeatable for credit

Instructors: Wang, B. (PI)

COMPLIT 374: Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (GERMAN 274)

What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.

Last offered: Winter 2023

CSRE 23: Race and the War on Drugs: Long Roots and Other Futures (ANTHRO 23B)

Current discussions of the war on drugs reference Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration as a starting point. This class will encourage students instead to see the war on drugs beyond seemingly self-evident margins and imaginaries. In this course, we will explore the racialized and gendered history of coca and cocaine in the Americas, and follow the war on drugs as it targets different aspects of drug production and consumption within and beyond the borders of the United States. In examining how drugs and drug policies have been used as tools of discrimination and exploitation from colonialism through to present systems of mass incarceration, we will analyze racialization as it is constructed and experienced through time and imposed onto nations and bodies. Readings and discussion will emphasize Black and Latinx feminist theories, critical race theory, and decoloniality, drawing on anthropological and interdisciplinary scholarship while incorporating other forms of writing (prose, fiction, poetry) and media (graphic novels, visual art, film clips, documentaries). Students will learn to interrogate the longstanding racialized and gendered roots of the drug war and explore critical calls towards other futures.

Last offered: Winter 2020

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