MLL Graduate Course Offerings
SPRING 2022
FOREIGN LANGUAGES (ALL MLL PROGRAMS)
Graduate course number: FOL 5025
Course Title: Introduction to Critical & Literary Theory
Instructor: Christian Weber
Time: Tu & Th, 4:50-6:05
Taught in English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Course Description:
The “Critical & Literary Theory” course offers graduate students in the Department of Modern Languages the opportunity to think deeply about what literature and culture mean, and what we do as scholars of literature, language, and culture.
* We address and debate “big questions” concerning the arts and literature, their impact on identity formation and community building, how they represent otherness and imagine alternative realities: What is beauty? How is poetic meaning produced? How and why do we tell stories? What is an author? What is gender? What is race? What makes us human/posthuman?
* We survey such theories as narratology, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, but also investigate new trends such as posthumanism and ecocriticism.
* We explore the thinking and ideas of some of the greatest minds from antiquity to the present: Plato. Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Bakhtin, Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Latour, and many others.
* Informed and hopefully inspired by the theoretical discourses, we explore deeper layers of meaning in exemplary literary texts.
* Last but not least, we learn from the expertise of guest-speakers from various MLL programs.
Graduate course number: FOT 5805
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Translation Theory and Practice
Instructor(s): Wakamiya
Time: W 4:50-7:50PM
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y
Students will translate from the language they are studying. Readings and discussion in English.
Course Description: In this course, students analyze and engage with theories and practice of translation. Enrollment limited to graduate
EAST-ASIAN
CHINESE
Graduate course number: CHT5935
Cross-listed with (if applicable): ASN4930
Course Title: Chinese Literature and Daoism
Instructor(s): Dr. Yanning Wang
Time: TuTh 11:35am-12:50pm
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N
Course Description: Traditional Chinese literature and Daoism/Taoism, China’s indigenous religion, interact with each other in significant ways. In this course, we will explore Chinese literature with Daoist elements. We will also investigate major concepts of Daoism through visual culture and philosophy of religion. At the end of the course, students will be able to identify major Daoist concepts and images; analyze literary texts with Daoist elements; interpret Chinese culture from interdisciplinary perspectives; and become familiar with scholarly studies related to the course subject. This is a new graduate course in the MA Program in East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC).
Graduate course number: CHI5505
Cross-listed with (if applicable): CHI4410
Course Title: Readings in Chinese Literature
Instructor(s): Zhiying Qian
Time: MW 4:50-6:05pm
Taught in [name language]: Chinese
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y – three years of Chinese
Course Description:
This is an upper-level Chinese course designed to enhance the comprehensive language skills of students who have taken Chinese language courses for three years or have acquired equivalent language ability before this course. By reading a wide variety of Chinese publications (literatures), students will not only raise their language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing to an advanced level, but also obtain extensive knowledge of Chinese literature, culture, etc.
JAPANESE
Graduate course number: ASN5465
Cross-listed with (if applicable): ASN4463
Course Title: Conceptualizations of the Imagination in East Asia and Beyond
Instructor(s): Matt Mewhinney
Time: TR 3:05-4:20PM
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N
Course Description:
This is a comparative literature course that examines the content, function, and limits of the “imagination” in the Chinese, Japanese, and English literary traditions. What do we mean by the word “imagination”? What constitutes it? What are its parameters? How is it stirred by literary form? We will explore these questions by reading an eclectic selection of texts by Zhuangzi, Liu Xie, Li He, Matsuo Bashō, Edmund Burke, Ema Saikō, William Wordsworth, Izumi Kyōka, Natsume Sōseki, William James, Sigmund Freud, Gaston Bachelard, Virginia Woolf, Elaine Scarry, Ted Kooser, and more.
All readings are presented in English. No knowledge of East Asia is expected or assumed. The course is reading and writing intensive. Assignments include creative writing. Students will be asked to engage critically and imaginatively with all texts as works of literature.
Graduate course number: JPN5900
Cross-listed with (if applicable): JPW4551
Course Title: Translating Japanese
Instructor(s): Matt Mewhinney
Time: TR 1:20-2:35
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y. Students must have advanced reading knowledge of the Japanese language. Students who have excelled in any JPN4000-level course are eligible to enroll. Native or near-native fluency in English is also required.
Course Description:
This course examines theoretical and practical approaches to literary translation. The course comprises three parts: (1) a survey of literature on translation; (2) a critical examination of key aspects of translation, supplemented by close readings of literary works in translation and the original; (3) a collaborative workshop where students engage in their own translation projects and deliver presentations to the seminar about translation issues. The goal of the course is twofold: to familiarize students with the practical and theoretical issues that arise in the act of translation; to provide a collaborative space for students to complete a translation of their own.
Graduate course number: ASN5216
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Advanced Seminar in East Asian Languages and Cultures
Instructor(s): Laura Lee
Time: F 3:05-5:50
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N
Reading knowledge in target language required: N
Course Description:
This course, focused around a significant research project, prepares advanced MA students regarding professional research expectations and critical methods and issues in East Asian languages and cultures.
Graduate course number: JPT5935
Cross-listed with (if applicable): JPT4934
Course Title: Japanese Animation (Special Topics in Japanese Culture)
Instructor(s): Laura Lee
Time: F 10:40-2:10
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N
Course Description:
This course follows the history of Japanese animation from the early 20th century to the present time, with special focus on the contemporary period. We will investigate not only the richness of what is commonly referred to as anime, but also anime’s various origins in Japan and abroad. Looking closely at texts like Tezuka Osamu’s Astroboy, Anno Hideaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Miyazaki Hayao’s Princess Mononoke, in addition to early chiyogami paper cutout and silhouette films, and World War II propaganda films, we will consider animation’s artistic, cultural, and political relevance in different periods of Japanese history, as well as its connection to other popular forms at home and abroad, including television, live-action film, and manga comics.
No previous knowledge of Japanese culture or language is required to enroll in this course.
FRENCH
Graduate course number: FRE 5567
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Introduction to Global French Studies
Instructor(s): Dr. Michelle Bumatay
Time: Tues/Thurs 3:05-4:20
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N / Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N / Y
Course Description:
This course introduces first-year graduate students in the French MA and PhD programs to the methodologies, skills, and strategies that will prepare them to succeed academically in their field of scholarly expertise. It will orient graduate students’ interests to the program faculty’s research by crossing spatial and temporal boundaries between areas of expertise in order to explore the “interconnect[ions] of cultural difference within and beyond the nation,” as Suleiman and Macdonald write in their introduction to “French Global: A New Approach to Literary History.” Rather than organize itself around the traditional spatial and temporal boundaries that have divided Francophone from French Studies and historical periodizations from each other, the course will consider every area and era of the literary and cultural production of the French-speaking world in relation. Additionally, students will learn about the traditional organization of fields by examining conference call for papers and job ads that are organized around historical eras and spatial areas of the world, as well as concepts and genres. This course critically explores how a Global French approach capacitates us to move nimbly among these field-based specificities and prepares us for the currently ongoing shifts within French Studies.
Graduate course number: FRW 5575
Cross-listed with (if applicable): FRW 4770
Course Title: Tokyo Stories: Writing the World with Michaël Ferrier
Instructor(s): Dr. Martin Munro
Time: Tues/Thurs 11:30-12:50
Taught in [name language]: French
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N / Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: YES
Course Description:
A skilled and perceptive chronicler of our times, Michaël Ferrier is a rising star of world literature who has remained to date largely unknown outside of the Francophone world. Ferrier was born in Strasbourg, France in 1967. He comes from a French family and also from Mauritian and Réunionese Creole people, with Indian, French, Malagasy and British origins. After something of a nomadic childhood (he spent periods in Africa and the Indian Ocean), he gained entrance to the École Normale Supérieure, at the age of 18, where he passed the agrégation in literature and graduated from the University of Paris. He is currently Professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, and director of the Research Group Figures de l'Etranger. We will read his novels and scholarly works, watch films, and hold workshops on translation. We will also participate in the March 2022 conference, at which Michaël Ferrier will be present. Discussions will take place in French.
Graduate course number: FRW5765
Cross-listed with (if applicable): FRW 4761
Course Title: Penser le Maghreb: Mental Functions and Aesthetic Forms
Instructor(s): Dr. Michaela Hulstyn
Time: Mon/Wed 3:05-4:20
Taught in [name language]: French
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N / Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: YES
Course Description:
While the relatively new field of cognitive literary studies has focused on modernist texts from the Western tradition, the interpretation of Francophone literature from North Africa has been dominated by anthropological and historical approaches. This interdisciplinary course brings together research in cognitive science and Francophone North African literature in order to examine the relationship between mental functions and aesthetic forms. How do cognitive approaches to memory, theory of mind, language, and metaphor allow us to engage twentieth-century texts in new theoretical ways? We will examine the ways in which attending to linguistic features (writing direction and time-space metaphors in bilingual texts), mental features (memory, theory of mind, empathy, emotion), and cultural features (e.g. language as a tool for integration, differentiation, assimilation, or resistance) help us think the Maghreb in new ways. Authors include Djebar, Khatibi, Fellous, Fanon, and Ben Jelloun. Theoretical readings include Zunshine, Damasio, Scarry, and Boroditsky. Discussions in French.
GERMAN
Graduate course number: GEW 5595
Cross-listed with (if applicable): GEW 4930
Course Title: Concepts of Masculinity in German Literature and Film
Instructor(s): A. Dana Weber
Time: Mo/Wed, 4:50 – 6:05pm
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N
Course Description:
Fathers and sons (and sometimes mothers and sisters); bromances and Bluebeards; cross-dressing women and angry white men; foxes and robots: this course introduces to masculinity and men studies by examples from mostly German literature, theatre, film, and media and theories from German and Anglo-American scholarship. How do they define masculine gender and social performances across time? What do they tell us about varying sexuality conceptions? What are their continuities and what aspects of gender trouble do they address? In this course, students will become familiar with masculinity and men studies as currently developing fields of gender studies.
Graduate course number: FOW 5025
Course Title: Introduction to Critical & Literary Theory
Instructor: Christian Weber
Time: Tu & Th, 4:50-6:05
Taught in English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Course Description:
The “Critical & Literary Theory” course offers graduate students in the Department of Modern Languages the opportunity to think deeply about what literature and culture mean, and what we do as scholars of literature, language, and culture.
* We address and debate “big questions” concerning the arts and literature, their impact on identity formation and community building, how they represent otherness and imagine alternative realities: What is beauty? How is poetic meaning produced? How and why do we tell stories? What is an author? What is gender? What is race? What makes us human/posthuman?
* We survey such theories as narratology, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, but also investigate new trends such as posthumanism and ecocriticism.
* We explore the thinking and ideas of some of the greatest minds from antiquity to the present: Plato. Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Bakhtin, Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, Latour, and many others.
* Informed and hopefully inspired by the theoretical discourses, we explore deeper layers of meaning in exemplary literary texts.
* Last but not least, we learn from the expertise of guest-speakers from various MLL programs.
ITALIAN
Graduate course number: ITW 5485
Cross-listed with (if applicable): ITW 4480
Course Title: 20th Century Italian Literature – Culture fasciste
Instructor(s): Silvia Valisa
Time: W 4:50-7:35
Taught in [name language]: Italian
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y
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 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, attraverso 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).
Graduate course number: ITW 5486
Cross-listed with (if applicable): 4481
Course Title: Readings in Contemporary Italian Prose. Between La dolce vita and La grande bellezza: The (In)Consistency of Italian Identity
Instructor(s): Irene Zanini-Cordi
Time: Tu 15:05 - 17:45pm
Taught in [name language]: Italian
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y
Course Description:
In her prize-winning book After La Dolce Vita. A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi’s Italy, Alessia Ricciardi borrows the category of “lightness” from Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millenium (Lezioni americane) and argues that together with “sweetness”, “weakness” and “softness” it functions “in the Italian context as (a) key trope of belonging and self-identification”.
Playing with the title of Calvino’s sixth memo (Consistency), which he never had the time to write, this course will explore various manifestations of Italian identity as represented in film and literature from around the time of Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960) until the present with Paolo Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza (2013). By investigating how literature and film have addressed themes like history, politics, religion, gender, crime and immigration we will attempt to define the consistency and inconsistencies of Italian identity(ies).
We will consider the works of internationally renowned authors (Calvino, Moravia, Fallaci, Maraini, Baricco), of established ones (Morazzoni, Tabucchi, Lucarelli, Camilleri), but also of new, emergent voices (Marazzi). While poets like Bianca Tarozzi rely on the power of suggestion of the sheer written word and movie directors unleash the power of images, graphic artists like Zerocalcare mix words and comics in the graphic novel form to appeal to the new generation. An analysis of Elena Ferrante’s work will reveal what can make storytelling universally appealing, while the emergent writer Andrea Bajani will tell us in a live meeting what it entails to be a writer in Italy today.
SLAVIC
Graduate course number: RUS 5415
Cross-listed with (if applicable): RUS 4410
Course Title: Graduate Russian Conversation and Comprehension
Instructor(s): Efimov
Time: TR 1:20-2:35PM
Taught in [name language]: Russian
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y
Course Description: 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.
Graduate course number: FOT 5805
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Translation Theory and Practice
Instructor(s): Wakamiya
Time:W 4:50-7:50PM
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Y
Students will translate from the language they are studying. Readings and discussion in English.
Course Description: In this course, students analyze and engage with theories and practice of translation. Enrollment limited to graduate students.
Graduate course number: RUW 5930
Cross-listed with (if applicable): RUS 4930
Course Title: Epic Song in Southern and Eastern Europe
Instructor(s): Romanchuk
Time:TR 9:45-11:00AM
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N - Comment (if appl.):
Students are encouraged to have working knowledge of a Slavic language or Greek. Most readings and all discussion in English.
Course Description: Oral-traditional epic (narrative) songs about the deeds and deaths of heroes—their comings of age and weddings, returns or rescues, and sieges of cities—are among the oldest works of verbal art. From time out of mind they have enthralled and troubled their audiences. This seminar surveys epic song of southern and eastern Europe in its historical contexts and more recent appropriations; and offers an introduction to Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord’s theory of oral-formulaic composition and the discipline of oral tradition.
SPANISH
Graduate course number: LIN 5932
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Quantitative Research Methods in Language
Instructor(s): Leeser
Time: MW 3:05 4:20
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Reading knowledge in target language required: No
Course Description:
The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students to specific research methodologies and statistical procedures used in quantitative experimental second language acquisition (SLA) research. Although we will be dealing with research and data specific to SLA, this course will provide all students with the means to critically evaluate quantitative research in any area language studies and will provide advanced M.A. and Ph.D. students with the basic tools to carry out their own data-based research.
Graduate course number: LIN 5932
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Child language acquisition
Instructor(s): Sunderman
Time: TR 9:45 11:00
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: yes
Reading knowledge in target language required: No
Course Description:
This course offers an introduction to the study of child language acquisition and development in both the monolingual and bilingual setting. The goal of the course is to better understand the linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and neuro-linguistic dimensions of language acquisition. This course is cross-listed with LIN 4716.
Graduate course number: LIN 5522.
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Advanced Spanish Syntax.
Instructor(s): Reglero
Time: TR 11:35-12:50
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N / Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: Yes
Course Description:
This course provides an overview of Spanish syntax from a Minimalist perspective (Chomsky 1995, and subsequent work). In class, we will focus on the left periphery of the Spanish clause, with in-depth discussion of syntactic issues such as the subject position, topic, focus, wh-movement and inversion.
Graduate course number: LIN 5045
Cross-listed with (if applicable): LIN 4040
Course Title: Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics.
Instructor(s): Muntendam
Time: 1:20-2:35
Taught in [name language]: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Reading knowledge in target language required: No
Course Description: This course provides an understanding of the organization of language, provides tools and techniques for describing language data, and examines various models of linguistic description.
Graduate course number: SPW 5315
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Spanish Golden Age Theater
Instructor(s): Howard
Time: TR, 11:35-12:50
Taught in [name language]: Spanish
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Reading knowledge in target language required: Yes
Course Description:
Love, hate, honor, lust, ambition, avarice, betrayal, murder, justice. . . heroes, villains, damsels, cuckolds, clowns. . . Is this a course on telenovelas? Well, in a way, yes, but hundreds of years before the invention of television. Just add poetry, poetics, political philosophy, metaphysics, dialectics, epistemology, ontology. . . and we have the ingredients of Spanish Theater of the Golden Age. In this survey we will read closely some of the most interesting and beautifully written plays of Spain in the early modern period. Our approach will be to discuss the plays in detail from a variety of critical perspectives, taking into account their historical, social, and cultural contexts. Students will become familiar with the major characteristics of Golden Age Theater and develop their Spanish critical reading and writing skills, as well as their ability to express their ideas orally in front of peers.
Graduate course number: SPW 5195-01
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Studies in Hispanic Lit. and Culture. Topic: Fake News and Colonial Studies in the Americas
Instructor(s): Goldmark
Time: TR 1:20-2:35
Taught in [name language]: Spanish
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Reading knowledge in target language required: Yes
Course Description:
In a time of “fake news,” an analysis of how information becomes certified as truth has become urgent. However, while the visibility of this debate in contemporary media may suggest that we are confronting a new phenomenon, colonial studies shows that these debates emerge from a tradition of “truth telling” built out of colonial ways of knowing. In this class, students will consider how different genres and colonial relations are mutually constitutive in the production of “truth.” We will focus on genres that certify knowledge by having been labeled “non-fiction” such as history writing, ethnography, museum exhibitions, and others. Via a historical approach that takes case studies from the sixteenth- through twenty-first century Americas, we will see that this creation of “non-fiction” is not a new phenomenon, but rather one has defined colonialism in the Americas over more than five centuries.
Graduate course number: SPW 5195-02
Cross-listed with (if applicable):
Course Title: Studies in Hispanic Lit. and Culture. Topic: Illness as metaphor in Modern Spanish-American literature
Instructor(s): Gomariz
Time: TR 3:05-4:20
Taught in [name language]: Spanish
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: N / Y
Reading knowledge in target language required: N / Y
Course Description:
The course analyzes the cultural discourse that developed around illness and disease since the inception of America into the Western mind. The course begins with a brief introduction to the colonial period. In the dawn of colonial times, the encounter became a facilitator of global transmission of diseases, including syphilis. The course examines the still current debates on where the disease originated: America or Europe.
Colonialism, as the execution of imperial doctrine, is another disease of the period with ramifications that reach to our times. Our inquiry looks into the cultural location of historical subjects such as Cristopher Columbus and fray Junipero Serra, whose memorialization has been questioned of late. After the Colonial period and the survival of colonialism, the course centers on Romanticism and Modernismo. Tuberculosis was the most prevalent disease among the Romantics both, in their lives and literary works. As Susan Sontag suggests, tuberculosis became a major illness turned into a metaphor. As for the Modernistas, the writers experienced early on El malestar de la cultura [Das Unbehagen in der Kultur], borrowing the title of Sigmund Freud’s incisive inquiry into the modern mind. Our analysis of the discourse on illness in Romanticism focuses on the intersections between body, soul, and culture in Sab and María, two iconic novels from Cuba and Colombia. Shortly after the Romantics, the Modernistas, in addition to their inquiry into the pathology of the body, began inquiring also into the pathology of the mind. In relation to the latter, the course places emphasis on the economic, social, and cultural transformations that took place in the last three decades of the 19th century. Our analysis of the discourse of illness in Modernismo, centers on three novelistic milestones about the modern mind: Lucía Jerez, De sobremesa, Sin rumbo; from Cuba, Colombia, and Argentina respectively. Our primary readings encompass novels, short-stories, poetry, and essays. As for the theoretical framework of the course, readings include Freud’s El malestar de la cultura [Civilization and Its Discontents], Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, as well as selections from works by Michel Foucault (History of Madness), Max Nordau (Degeneración [Entartung], and Pompeu Fabra (Literaturas malsanas).