Graduate Course Offerings for Spring 2025
Modern Languages amp Linguistics
EALC-Chinese
#1
Graduate course number: FOL 5934
Course Title: Introduction to general linguistics
Instructor: Dr. Zhiying Qian
Time: M 4:50-7:20
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to key areas of linguistic theory and analysis, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Students will examine language structure, relationships between languages, and the principles governing linguistic variation and change. The course will also cover topics such as language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Emphasis is placed on developing analytical skills and applying theoretical frameworks to linguistic data from diverse languages, preparing students for advanced research in the field.
Notes: This course is open to graduate students with no prior background in linguistics courses. Please reach out to Dr. Qian if you have questions.
#2
Graduate course number: FOW 5595
Course Title: Studies in East Asian War Cinema
Instructor: Dr. (Aaron) Feng Lan
Time: Th 4:50-8:20pm
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course studies major war films produced in China, Japan, and South Korea. The modern histories of these countries have been shaped by military conflicts, ranging from civil wars to regional and world wars. These wars have profoundly impacted these countries in each of their own nation-building struggles, their relations with one another, and their positions in the world. Over the past several decades, memories of such wars have been invoked over and over again on the silver screen in these countries. In this course we will explore issues and topics essential to the making of war films, including representations of history, nationalism, gender politics, traumatic memories, East Asian war ethics, and aesthetics/cinematics of violence. More importantly, we will analyze and evaluate these war films not only in the sociopolitical contexts of each nation but also from transnational and comparative perspectives. No knowledge of East Asian languages is required.
EALC-Japanese
#1
Course number: JPW 5400
Course Title: Life-Writing in Japan
Instructor: Dr. Matt Mewhinney
Time: T Th 9:45–11:00
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes (but the student must have advanced reading proficiency in Japanese—a placement test might be required.)
Course Description:
This course explores the theory, history, and practice of “life-writing” in Japan. The English term “life-writing” first appeared in the seventeenth century and means “biography,” a word that literally means “the writing of a life.” In Japan, life-writing includes multiple genres of writing that record personal experiences: biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, “sketches from life,” the I-novel, epistolary writing, and so on. Through close examinations of various genres of life-writing in Japanese and introductions to secondary readings in English, students will learn how to read and think about the relationship between literary language and the representation of self, other, and everyday experience. All primary texts are presented in the original Japanese. Authors include Masaoka Shiki, Natsume Sōseki, Kajii Motojirō, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Kōda Aya, Shimura Fukumi, Murata Sayaka, and Murakami Haruki. This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPN4930. Graduate students enrolled in JPW5400 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve translation from Japanese into English as well as critical reflection on the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.
#2
Graduate course number: JPT 5935-1
Course Title: Contemporary Japanese Literature
Instructor: Dr. Franz Prichard
Time: T Th 1:20-2:35
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course introduces the creative perspectives on contemporary life in Japan illuminated by works of literary and visual media. Students will survey the environmental, social, and cultural histories that inform Japan’s present day as expressed by Japan’s leading authors and artists. The course will foster critical skills in interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to the study of contemporary Japanese literary and visual culture in regional and global contexts. All primary texts are presented in translation, including works by Ishimure Michiko, Ito Hiromi, Kawakami Mieko, Kobayashi Erika, Li Kotomi, Murata Sayaka, Suzuki Izumi, Yoshimoto Banana, Yu Miri, and more. This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPT4124. Graduate students enrolled in JPT5935-1 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve critical reflection on the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.
#3
Graduate course number: JPT 5525
Course Title: Japanese Media Studies
Instructor: Dr. Franz Prichard
Time: T 3:05pm-5:20pm amp Th 3:05pm - 4:20pm
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course surveys Japan’s vibrant media mix cultures spanning the histories of anime, cinema and gaming through the intersections of film and media studies. Charting the emergence of “new” media technologies from silent film to augmented reality in Japan, this course introduces students to major works of animated film, cinema, manga, television anime, and video games within their social-historical contexts. Building on interdisciplinary studies, we will examine the changing forms of work and play, sentiment and sensation, thought and materiality, mediation and social relation that defined Japan’s modern media mix ecologies and platforms. All primary texts are presented in English translation. This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPT4503 Japan’s Media Mix. Graduate students enrolled in JPT 5935-2 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve critical reflection on the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.
French
#1
Graduate course number: FRW 5595
Course title: Listening to Modern France/ À l'écoute du XIXe siècle
Instructor: Dr. Aimée Boutin
Time: T Th 3:05-4:20
Language of Class Discussion: FRENCH
Reading knowledge required in target language: YES
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course description:
How do writers evoke the bustle of French cities, the quiet of rural landscapes, the vocal presence of actors or opera singers, or the sounds of warfare before the invention of sound recording? This course on the sound worlds of nineteenth-century France adopts a ‘Sound Studies’ approach to explore modern French culture, in order to reconsider modernity beyond the visual. Selected works of literature, songs, opera, and other cultural expressions make the case for the importance of auditory cultures before the full-blown development of sound reproduction, recording, and telecommunications in the twentieth century. Students will build their knowledge of major aesthetic movements and historical events of the long nineteenth century while developing methods to analyze how ambient sounds, music, oral culture, and sound technologies shaped and circulated ideas about place, identity, war, and politics. Readings include Balzac, Sand, Hugo, Berlioz, Mérimée, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Zola, Verne, and Proust. In French.
#2
Graduate course number: FRW 5775
Course Title: Francophone Afrotopias
Instructor: Dr. Michelle Bumatay
Time: T Th 11:35– 12:50
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
Taking its cue from Afrotopia, the 2016 essay written by Senegalese philosopher and public scholar Felwine Sarr, this course examines poetry, novels, and films by Francophone African authors and filmmakers that present various visions of Africa as it is, as it might have been, and as it could be. Through an analysis of utopias, distopias, and alternate realities, we will explore how African authors and filmmakers respond to their respective sociohistorical contexts during and following the official end of French colonization and examine their many strategies for engaging audiences in imagining other possibilities. This class will be conducted in English with all readings in English (French students are recommended to complete the readings in French). Students have the option to submit the written coursework in French or in English.
German
#1
Graduate course number: GEW 5595
Course Title: Studies in a Theme: Berlin Babylon. History and Representation of the First German Republic (1919-1933)
Instructor: Dr. Dana Weber
Time: M W 4:40 - 6:05 pm
Course Description:
The Weimar Republic (1919-1933), Germany’s first successful attempt to establish a democratic government, was an era of contrasts. Hedonism and prudery, excess for some and poverty for many, relative sexual liberalization, technological advances, and political unrest were nowhere more obvious than in Berlin’s Roaring Twenties. Through authentic materials from the era and its contemporary popular culture representations – especially Volker Kutscher’s thriller series adapted in the tv show "Babylon Berlin" – the course introduces to a historical period whose culture and politics could have opened a progressive future for Germany had the Nazi overtake not ended it. By readings and creative engagements with texts and films from the Weimar era and contemporary representations of this period, students will gain historical, literary, and media knowledge they will enhance their critical skills and explore lessons that the Weimar era’s successes and failures can teach us about our time. Course discussions, materials, and assignments are in German and English.
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Not required, but welcome!
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
#2
Graduate course number: GEW 5597
Course title: Modern German Culture
Instructor: Dr. Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe
Time: T Th 11:35AM - 12:50
Course description:
This course will discuss the word HEIMAT in the German conversation in the 20th-and 21st-century using literature, philosophy, art, music, film, and architecture.
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Italian
#1
Graduate course number: ITA 5900
Course title: Studies in Italian Languages and Literatures: HistoricalRomance Linguistics
Instructor: Dr. Kathleen Prantil
Time: T Th 9:45 -11:00
Course description:
The main objective of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the interconnectedness of the Romance languages through detailed linguistic analysis of phonologicalandmorpho-syntactic changes in the development from Latin into various Romance varieties. Advanced knowledge of a Romance variety is strongly advised, but no linguistics background is assumed.
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
#2
Graduate course number: ITA 5705
Course Title: Trecento Writers/ Dante's Worlds
Time: T Th 3:05-4:20
Instructor: Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall
Course description:
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Dante’s Commedia is its ability to oscillate between the foreign and the familiar. The commentary tradition testifies to the poem’s perennial foreignness: even the first readers required explanation of the text’s complex detail, local history, and obscure figures. Dante’s own sons produced some of the earliest commentaries, and within the Western canon the amount of commentary produced on the Commedia is second only to that on the Bible. Yet as we read the Commedia in the 21st century, seven centuries do not stand in the way of a profound sympathy between Dante’s world and our own. His insights into the human condition remain relevant, continuing to inform our understanding of how one might best live. In this course we will follow Dante’s path through the afterlife, heeding both its familiarity and its foreignness, as it winds through questions of ethics, politics, theology, poetics, and social life in medieval Italy and beyond.The course will center on a reading of Dante's Purgatorioand Paradiso. It will be conducted in English students of all disciplines are welcome!
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
#3
Graduate course number: FOL5934/ LIT5038
Course Title: Problems and Studies in Modern Languages and Literatures /Studies in Poetry
Time: W 3:05-6:05pm
Instructors: Dr. Silvia Valisa (MLL) and Dr. Barbara Hamby (ENG)
Course Description:
This course explores the art of translation from a multiplicity of languages and approaches. After grounding what it means to translate (today, yesterday and tomorrow), we will delve into the techniques and the magic of communicating across cultures, time and space. The seminar includes conversations with poets and translators from different languages (Ukrainian, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Bulgarian and Japanese among others) and an in-class translation workshop. It is aimed at giving students the opportunity to work on their own translation portfolio and to explore publication venues.
Linguistics
#1
Course number: LIN 5932
Course title: Topics in Linguistics – Corpus Linguistics, Text Analysis, and Deep Learning
Instructor: Dr. Tom Juzek
Time: T Th 3:05-4:20
Language of instruction: English.
Is the course is open to students from other programs/departments: Yes!
Course description:
This course introduces the fundamentals of corpus linguistics, text analysis and the application of deep learning to textual data. Students will learn about creating and processing corpora, conducting text classification and clustering, and leveraging transformer models for linguistic tasks. Advanced topics, such as the development of chatbots and addressing bias in deep learning models, will also be explored. Throughout the course, students will engage with state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with a particular focus on AI-assisted programming, to apply these skills for linguistic insights. A set of assignments includes a practical programming component and a conceptual component, like analyzing language change in existing corpora or utilizing Large Language Models like ChatGPT for language analysis. By the end of this course, students will have a comprehensive understanding of how to apply text analysis and transformer models as computational techniques to solve complex linguistic problems.
Slavic
#1
Course number: RUW 5375
Course title: The Russian Short Story
Instructor: Dr. Lisa Wakamiya (Slavic) and Dr. Mark Winegardner (Creative Writing)
Time: W 6:35PM - 9:35PM
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course is cross-listed with Creative Writing and will be team-taught by Lisa Wakamiya (Modern Languages) and Mark Winegardner (Creative Writing) to consider the Russian short story from the perspectives of craft and cultural history. It will focus on the short story in the 19th and 20th centuries, the major writers, and their representative works. No reading knowledge of Russian is required those who know Russian are encouraged to read the works in the original.
#2
Course number: SLL5205
Course title: Epic Song in Southern and Eastern Europe in S25.
Instructor: Dr. Rob Romanchuk
Time: T Th 9:45-11:00
Language of Class Discussion: English, with separate tutorials for students in the Slavic program in construing Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Ukrainian, and North Russian epic texts in the original. Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Reading knowledge required in target language: No
Course Description:
In southeastern Europe—Greece, the Sunni Muslim and Orthodox Christian Slavic lands, Romania, and Albania—epic song in its oral-traditional form survived almost to the present day. This modern epic was shaped in and by the Ottoman Empire, and our seminar focuses on the songs of that shared space orecumene: the epic of the Turks’ Slavic coreligionists in Bosnia, where Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord tested the theory of oral composition and that of the Turks’ subjects or foemen elsewhere in Europe, in particular Greece, Serbia, and southern Ukraine. The expansion of or resistance to Ottoman power and the concomitant encounter of Muslim and Christian are central to all these epics. Beyond Ottoman Europe, this seminar surveys the later Ukrainian epic (which focuses on resistance to Polish rule) as well as the Russian (which preserves,inter alia, some pre-Ottoman Ukrainian, and more generally Slavic, song plots). As Pamela Lothspeich says, epic is about power. Yet epic may serve to justify power or to resist unjust power: the epic ofexpansionis met by the epic ofresistance. Moreover,non-heroic epic, dealing with family conflict and sung by women, often forms a counterpoint toheroic epicsung by men. Due to their tribal or nationalistic appeal—as listeners “identify with a hero of their blood, cast in their mold” (Richard M. Dorson)—epic songs have been reborn in recent years asparticularistworks, serving to mobilize populations in nationalist movements and wars. Yet epic songs also have an enduring,universalappeal as chronicles of the deeds of those “who live for action and for … honour” (C. M. Bowra). Finally, epic song is the royal road to the study oforal tradition, an “exciting and rapidly expanding field” (John M. Foley) synthesizing Parry and Lord’s study of oral-formulaic composition with anthropology, musicology, and performance studies.
Spanish
#1
Course number: SPN 5776
Course title: Acquisition of Spanish phonology
Instructor: Dr. Matthew Patience
Time: T Th 4:50-6:05
Reading knowledge required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course description:
This course will introduce the fundamental theories, techniques and methodologies concerning the acquisition of phonetics and phonology in a second language, and their application to Spanish. We will survey seminal and current research on the acquisition of Spanish phonology, and we will explore instructional strategies that you can use to assist students in improving their Spanish pronunciation.
#2
Course number: SPN 5900
Course title: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939: History, Politics, and Culture.
Instructor: Dr. Enrique Álvarez
Time: T Th 1:20-2:35
Reading knowledge required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course description:
In this course we will explore the connections between history, politics, and cultural production, taking as our object of study the ideological polarization of Spanish society in the 1930s. We will consider the fractures of the Spanish social body through the study of the military and political course of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 along with its literature, graphic art, and political rhetoric. The course will be taught and discussed in its entirety in Spanish. In some cases, however, we will be using some materials in English because of their quality and/or significance to specific topics of the course covered at a given moment.
#3
Graduate course number: SPW 6934-0001
Course title: Latin American Indigenous Mythology
Instructor: Juan Carlos Galeano
Time: M 6:35PM - 9:05PM
Reading knowledge required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course description:
This course focuses on the myths, folktales, and poetry of indigenous cultures of the Amazon basin and other places of Latin America. It explores the literary and humanistic implications of Latin American Indigenous mythology. Special emphasis will be placed on how legends, and Indigenous cosmologies help contemporary societies to construct better sustainable ways in our interactions with the Earth. All course activities will be conducted in Spanish.