MLL Graduate Course Offerings

Fall 2024

 

EALC-Chinese
#1
Graduate course number: ASN 5825Course Title: East Asian Humanities
Instructor: Feng Lan
Time: MW, 3:05-4:20pm, Fall 2024
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 in Asian Humanities is designed as a continuous conversation with selected major historical, religious, philosophical, and literary works from East Asian traditions. Texts covered in the course, although formed and transmitted in the particular historical, geographical, and cultural contexts of East Asia starting about three millennia ago, nonetheless invite students to join in and carry on their discussions concerning general and common human conditions and issues that are still inevitably encountered in the present world. May be repeated to a maximum of six semester hours.

 

#2
Graduate course number: CHI 5856
Course Title: Classical Chinese
Instructor: Yanning Wang
Time: TR, 11:35am-12:50pm. Fall 2024
Language of Class Discussion: Chinese
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the grammar, vocabulary, and style of classical Chinese, by reading, translating, and analyzing authentic writings that embody Chinese cultural traditions. It also helps students who desire to read modern Chinese texts in the formal, professional, and academic styles. Students are also expected to review major publications on learning classical Chinese

 

#3
Graduate course number: LIN 5932
Course Title: Second Language Sentence Processing
Instructor: Zhiying Qian
Time: M, 4:50-7:20pm , Fall 2024
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 is an advanced seminar course on adult second language sentence processing. Throughout the course, students will perform a critical examination of theories and studies on L2 sentence processing. Topics such as the resolution of syntactic ambiguities, the processing of filler-gap dependencies, prediction in sentence processing, and the processing of inflectional morphology will be discussed.

 

 

EALC-Japanese
#1
Graduate course number: JPW 5100
Course Title: The Art of Translating Japanese
Instructor: Matt Mewhinney
Time: Tues. & Thurs. 9:45–11:00 AM
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 examines the art of translating literary Japanese. Students read representative works of translation theory, explore how translators of Japanese have approached the task of translation, compare Japanese literary works in translation with the original, and participate in a collaborative workshop where students translate a Japanese literary work into English.

Authors presented in English include Walter Benjamin, Roman Jakobson, Antoine Berman, Jorge Luis Borges, Edward Seidensticker, Meredith McKinney, and John Nathan.

Authors presented in Japanese include Matsuo Bashō, Tawada Yōko, Natsume Sōseki, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Hayashi Fumiko, Yokomitsu Riichi, and Murakami Haruki.

This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPW4551. Graduate students enrolled in JPW5100 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve critical summaries of existing research as well as critical discussions of the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.

#2
Graduate course number: JPT 5935
Course Title: Contemporary Japanese Media Ecologies
Instructor: Franz Prichard
Time: Tues. & Thurs. 1:20–2:35 PM
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:
Study of contemporary Japan’s vibrant media cultures through major works of literature, film, anime, manga and more. The course will survey the entangled transformations of Japan’s urban and media ecologies and attend to the multi-sensorial vocabularies of embodiment, environment, and aesthetic experience found in significant media texts and media studies discourses. Students will develop competence working with interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to the study of contemporary Japan’s media cultures through weekly discussions, midterm and final writing assignments, as well as opportunities for creative engagements with the material.
This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPT4934. Graduate students enrolled in JPT5935 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve critical summaries of existing research as well as critical discussions of the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.

 

French
#1
Graduate course number: FRW 5586 (fall 2024)
Course Title: Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes: Self, Reason, and the Passions in French Culture and Literature of the Late Renaissance and Early Classicism
Instructor: Dr. Reinier Leushuis
Time: TR 1:20-2:35 PM
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 will be an in-depth exploration of the works of these three key humanist minds of the early modern and classical period. We will first focus on Montaigne’s Essays, which we will utilize as a prism to understand both late French Renaissance culture and the major values of humanist literature, such as the emulation of ancient rhetorical forms and philosophical schools (e.g. Stoicism, Epicureanism, skepticism), the importance of education, the concern with the individual in its socio-political and religious surroundings, and the valorization of the self as a source of doubt, judgment, and knowledge. We will also address the literary form of the essay as a protean literary space that can absorb the poetics of a variety of other genres (poetry, dialogue, oratory, etc.). Montaigne’s Essays will then form the springboard for our exploration into the thought of Descartes and Pascal. We will read their works not so much for the impact they had on theology and/or philosophy (which is addressed in courses on Western philosophy), but for a) the way in which they both continue and transform early modern humanist concerns of self, judgment, knowledge, truth, reason, and the emotions; and b) their literary and rhetorical staging of these concerns. For instance, we will assess to what extent the famous notions of Descartes’s “thinking self” and Pascal’s “order of the heart” (“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know”) can be understood as corollaries of Montaigne’s “book of the self.” This class will be conducted in English with all readings in English. Students have the option to submit the written course work (including reader reactions) in French or in English.

 

#2
Graduate course number: FRW4761-FRW5765
Course Title: Caribbean Music, Literature, and Religion
Instructor: Vincent Joos
Time: Tu/TH 9:45-11
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:
Caribbean music is popular the world over. Pan-Caribbean festivals draw crowds in Paris, Tallahassee, Toronto, London every year. Puerto-Rican reggaeton artists sell millions of records globally. Cuban rumba music and dance have strongly influenced West African music since the 1960s, and Jamaican reggae songs have regularly topped the UK charts for the past 40 years. Barbadian singer Rihanna is the richest woman musician of the world. The list could go on. Caribbean music makes up a great part of our contemporary global entertainment soundscape, but very few listeners of these styles of music know the colonial, religious and cultural environments in which these sounds emerged. Caribbean music has often been divorced from its social and political origins to be transformed into a commodity for a world-music market that reduces its complex social fabric to cultural clichés. In this course, we will map, analyze and write about Caribbean music and its inherent criticism of colonialism by drawing from films, literature, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and social history. In so doing, we will: 1) develop general knowledge about the Caribbean with a focus on vernacular religions 2) understand how music and politics shape one another 3) reflect on the meaning and power of oral cultures and sound through the reading of poetry and literary texts.

 

German

#1
Graduate course number: GEW 5597
Course Title: Heroes and Tricksters
Instructor: Dana Weber
Time: MW 3:05 – 4:20 pm
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:
Heroes and tricksters are the best-know characters archetypes for actual and fictional figures. By analyzing iconic examples of such figures from German folklore, literature, and film with the help of interdisciplinary theories you will develop an understanding of these cultural models and their connections to your lives, cultural production, and outlook. Meeting heroes such as Hildebrand and Parzival, and tricksters like Eulenspiegel and Münchhausen will broaden your understanding of German culture as a whole; interpreting them analytically and critically will expand your theoretical range and critical skills.

 

#2
Graduate course number: GEW 5596
Course Title: German Humor
Instructor: Birgit Maier-Katkin
Time: Tuesdays 11:35 am – 2:35 pm
Language of Class Discussion: German and English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
Germans can be funny. This course explores various genres of humor. We will look at folk tales, comedy, satire, political humor, slapstick, jokes, Flüsterwitz, cartoons, and caricature. Our study of German humor covers a wide variety of German authors, artists, and philosophers who created and discussed humor. Among others, we will explore works by Kurt Tucholsky, Loriot, Gebrüder Grimm, Karl Valentin, Mark Twain, Erich Kästner, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Thaddäus Troll and consider how they construct and present humor. Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and others will assist us in examining what processes are involved when one investigates the concept of humor.

 

Italian

#1
Graduate course number: ITA 5505
Course Title: Italian Culture and Civilization
Instructor: Mark Pietralunga
Time: T TH 4:50 pm – 6:05 pm
Language of Class Discussion: Italian
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
This course will focus on salient topics of Italy’s culture and civilization. To immerse oneself in Italy’s history and culture is to go back to the roots of Western civilization. In the course we will attempt to answer the following questions: How did the qualities of ‘Italianità” that make Italy unique and a model of the Western civilization arise in history and how does one define the “problematic” characterization of “Italian identity?”

In order to address the phenomenon of Italy in all its grandeur and diversity and what it means to be “Italian,” this course will begin by looking at the country’s extraordinary geographical position as well as its Roman legacy and Catholic heritage. The course will then examine the contribution of Italian literature to the formation of a national identity and consciousness. In this context we will read representative writings by such prominent literary and cultural (and political) voices as San Francesco, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Alfieri, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Verga, Pascoli, and Tomasi de Lampedusa. We will also explore the effect that the unification, fascism, and postwar developments had on Italian identity and the Italian language. The diversity of Italy’s regions, the North/South Question, the economic boom and the immigration issue vis à vis the question of identity will also be highlighted in the course’s readings and discussions.

#2
Graduate course number: ITW 5485
Course Title: Culture fasciste
Instructor: Silvia Valisa
Time: Wednesdays 4:50 – 7:35 pm
Language of Class Discussion: Italian
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
Che cosa immaginavano, sognavano, odiavano gli italiani dal 1922 al 1945?

Questo seminario esplora il periodo fascista in Italia (1922-1945) dal punto di vista delle espressioni sociali, letterarie, e culturali che lo caratterizzano. Se, come dice Piero Melograni nella sua introduzione alla “Storia del fascismo”, “La modernità provoca disordine, e i totalitarismi sono stati un tentativo di tornare all’ordine”, che cosa sono, culturalmente, questo disordine e quest’ordine nel contesto italiano?

Discutendo fonti primarie e secondarie, film e documenti, disegneremo una mappa storica e concettuale della cultura italiana durante il ventennio fascista. Lo faremo considerando espressioni di fascismo in generi e media diversi, riflessioni coeve e testi creati dopo la caduta del regime.

Tra le opere che prenderemo in considerazione: F.T. Marinetti, Fondazione e manifesto del futurismo (1909); Benito Mussolini, Discorsi; Margherita Sarfatti, Dux (1926); Curzio Malaparte, poesie, “ArciMussolini”; Mario Camerini, Gli uomini, che mascalzoni! (1932); Telesio Interlandi (ed.), La difesa della razza (1938-43); Giorgio Bassani, Gli occhiali d'oro (1958); Rosetta Loy, La parola ebreo (2006).

 

Slavic

#1
Graduate course number: RUW5930-002
Course Title: Words and Things
Instructor: Dr. Lisa Wakamiya
Time: TR 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:
This course draws from anthropology, museum studies, literature, and material culture studies to explore how the objects that surround us shape the world of ideas. Themes and projects for the course include: 3-D printing, digital archives, public and domestic space, conservation and loss, museums, research and writing on the relationship between people and things.

 

#2
Graduate course number: RUW5930-001
Course Title: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
Instructor: Dr. Nina Efimov
Time: Thursday, 4:50-7:50 PM
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:
Read classic novels that explore the dimensions of human life in all their intricacy. “The goal of the artist,” Tolstoy wrote, “is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.”

 

#3
Graduate course number: RUS5415r
Course Title: Graduate Russian Conversation and Comprehension
Instructor: Dr. Nina Efimov
Time: TR 1:20-2:35 PM
Language of Class Discussion: Russian
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description: (S/U grade only). This course consists of extensive conversation and comprehension practice on contemporary themes. May be repeated once for credit to a maximum of six semester hours. Not open to native speakers of Russian.

 

Spanish

#1
Graduate course number: FOL 5025
Course Title: Introduction to Critical Theory (Genders: Now and Then)
Instructor: Alvarez
Time: T/R 3:05-4:20
Language of Class Discussion: English
Readings in English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
In this introductory graduate course to critical theory, we will study the development of theoretical paradigms and understandings of gender in different literary and cultural traditions. As a marker of identity, gender has become a controversial tool in cultural analysis, igniting debates about who has control over the body in social relations. Furthermore, the relationship of gender with other categories of identify such as race, class, and the nation, is a crucial instrument in studying cultural representations of human experience.

#2
Graduate course number: LIN 5744
Course Title: Introduction to Language, Language Learning, and Instruction
Instructor: Patience
Time: T/R 3:05-4:20
Language of Class Discussion:
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No / Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No / Yes
Course Description:
The overall goal of this course is to give all incoming language instructors in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics an overview of the basics of language, the major processes of language acquisition, and the principles underlying communicative approaches to second language instruction (as informed by research and theory in second language acquisition).

#3
Graduate course number: LIN 5723
Course Title: Second Language Acquisition
Instructor: Leeser
Time: T/R 1:20-2:35
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: NA
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description:
In this course, students will be introduced to a wide range of theories and key constructs within the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Students will also become familiarized with SLA research methods and data analysis procedures. (Minimum requirement for the MA exam in Second Language Acquisition)

#4
Graduate course number: SPN 5734
Course Title: Spanish Sociolinguistics
Instructor: Muntendam
Time: T/R 11:35-12:50
Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No
Course Description:
This course is an introduction to sociolinguistics, with a special emphasis on Spanish in Spain, Latin America and the United States. Topics include sociolinguistic theory and methodology, linguistic attitudes, phonological variation, syntactic and morphosyntactic variation, the relationship between language and social factors (e.g., social class, gender, and ethnic identity), language variation and change, and bilingualism and language contact. (Minimum requirement for the MA exam in Sociolinguistics)

#5
Graduate course number: SPN 5795
Course Title: Spanish Phonology
Instructor: González
Time: T/R 4:50-6:05
Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No
Course Description:
This course presents an overview of the articulation, acoustics, and transcription of Spanish sounds, compares sound patterns across Spanish dialects, and analyzes them using recent phonological theories, including Generative phonology, Autosegmental phonology, and Optimality Theory. (Minimum requirement for the MA exam in Phonology).

#6
Graduate course number: SPW 6934
Course Title: Environmental Imagination in 20th C Spanish American Culture
Instructor: Galeano
Time: Mondays 6:35-9:05
Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No
Course Description: TBA

#7
Graduate course number: SPW 5386
Course Title: Spanish-American Prose Fiction
Instructor: Poey
Time: Wednesdays 6:35-9:05
Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No
Course Description: TBA