Graduate Courses Fall 2022

MLL Graduate Course Offerings – FALL 2022

EALC - Chinese

#1
Graduate course number: ASN 5825-01
Course Title: Studies in East Asian Humanities
Instructor: Aaron Feng Lan
Time: 3:05-4:20 PM, Mon, Wed
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. These texts, although formed and transmitted in the particular historical, geographical, and cultural contexts of East Asia starting about three millennia ago, nonetheless invite us to join in and carry on their discussions concerning general and common human conditions and issues that we still inevitably encounter in our present world.

#2
Graduate course number: CHI5505-0001
Course Title: Classics of Chinese Literature: Advanced Readings in Chinese Tales Instructor: Yanning Wang
Time: TuTh 1:20PM - 2:35PM
Language of Class Discussion: Chinese and English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes

Course Description: This is an advanced Chinese language course designed to enhance the comprehensive language skills of students. By reading classic Chinese tales, students will not only raise their skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing to an advanced level, but also obtain extensive knowledge of Chinese culture. In addition to various regular assignments, graduate students are required to complete a research project related to the course content.

 

MLL Graduate Course Offerings – FALL 2022

EALC - Japanese

#1

Graduate course number: JPN5900
Course Title: Advanced Japanese C
Instructor: Junko Brudenell
Time:          MWF 1:20-2:10
Language of Class Discussion: Japanese
Reading knowledge in required in target language:
Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes

Course Description: This course targets intermediate and advanced students of Japanese. Students improve reading skills by practicing various reading techniques. Focus is placed on written Japanese and the acquisition of natural reading ability.

#2

Graduate course number: JPT5935 Course Title: Japanese Manga Instructor: Laura Lee
Time: TR 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 traces the history of manga from its hybrid prehistory to its developments as a postwar industry and cultural form, investigating manga’s connections to adjacent media practices and its social and cultural importance both domestically and abroad

MLL Graduate Course Offerings – FALL 2022

French

Graduate course number:
Course Title: FRW 4761/5765
Instructor: Michelle Bumatay
Time: T/Th 11:35 am – 12:50 pm
Language of Class Discussion: French
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes

Course Description: In November of 2018, Senegalese author and academic Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy published the Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle (The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics) at the behest of French President Macron in response to a speech he made in the Burkinabé capital of Ouagadougou a year prior. The report, colloquially known as the Sarr-Savoy Report, though focused specifically on the restitution of African cultural objects from French institutions, operates as an indictment of the many forms of European colonial violence beyond looting including, in particular, damaging curatorial and exhibition practices. That same year saw boththe publication of David Diop’s historical novel Frère d’âme (translated into English as At Night All Blood is Black) about a tirailleur sénégalais in World War I and, in December just two weeks after the publication of the report, the opening of the national Musée des civilisations noires (Museum of BlackCivilizations) in Dakar.

Reflecting on such current debates around memory, commemoration, and restitution, this graduate seminar explores the longer history of the complex relationship between the past and the present in and around Senegal from the beginning of the twentieth century to the contemporary moment through literature, film, art, and comics. Authors/directors include Senghor, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, David Diop, Ousmane Sembène, and Mati Diop. Taught in French.

#2

Graduate course number: FRW6938/ FRE4930-02/ SPW4770/ SPW5195-03/ FOL5934

Course Title: Comparative Caribbean Literature and Methodologies: Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and their Diasporas.

Instructor: Jeannine Murray-Román
Time: Wed 4:50-8pm
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: Throughout the twenty-first century, discussions of Dominican-Haitian relations have been dominated by the border between them and the violence that reinforces border logics. This course examines the points of entanglement between Haiti and the Dominican Republic that both explain and complicate this focus on the border. These topics include: the United States imperial occupation of both nations in cultural studies and historiographical scholarship; the literary and artistic representation of Duvaliérisme and el Trujillato that followed the occupations; literature of exile, migration, and diaspora throughout the Americas.

Comparative methods enable us not only to place two contexts into conversations but to elicit what could not be articulated without taking both into account. To that end, each week,we will read excerpts of one scholarly monograph that takes a comparative approach in orderto orient us within the historical, sociological, and geopolitical landscapes and to study its theoretical armature, methodology, and comparative structure. We will also engage a literarytext, visual work, or performance piece each week. Readings will include among others, Jacques Stephen Alexis’ Les arbres musiciens, and Jacques Viau Renaud’s poetry contesting the emerging dictatorships; living within the dictatorships in the work of Viriato Sención and Marie Vieux Chauvet; and the poetry and theater of Chiqui Vicioso, Josefina Baéz, as well as the work of contemporary Haitian and Dominican writers, artists, and activists. Assignments for undergraduates will focus on literary and visual analysis as well as rhetorical analysis of contemporary framings of Haitian-Dominican history. Assignments for graduate students will include a book review of a scholarly monograph, an annotated bibliography, and a research- driven conference paper. All texts will be available in translation. Students will read in the original language of the course for which they have registered. Class discussion is conducted in English.

#3

Graduate course number:               FRW4433/FRW5587:

Instructor: Reinier Leushuis
Course Title: Studies in 17th-Century Literature: Le Grand Siècle.

Time: T/Th 1:20pm- 2:35pm

Language of Class Discussion: French
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes

Course Description: In this course we will study the literature of seventeenth-century France in its social-historical context (Le Grand Siècle). We will analyze significant examples of the major literary genres thriving in this time period (such as tragedy [Corneille, Racine], comedy [Molière], the early modern novel [Mme de La Fayette], and maxims [Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère]) and study how they stage and question the social, political, and religious universes of their authors and readers (the court, the salon, etc.). In doing so, students will familiarize themselves with many of the major components of seventeenth- century French culture and society, such as the notions of tragedy and comedy, glory and the heroic, the valorization of the absolute monarchy, as well as French classicism’s exploration of the opposition between reality and play, and between truth and imagination. This class will be conducted in French and course work will be written in French.

MLL Graduate Course Offerings – FALL 2022

German

#1
Graduate course number: GEW 5595

Course Title: Discourse and Language

Instructor: Soldat-Jaffe Time: T/Th 11;35-12:50

Course Description: Conversation analysis is concerned with the contexts in and the processes through which we use oral and written language for specific audiences, for specific purposes, in specific settings. The nature of conversations (how we express ourselves and how we are understood) change across cultures. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to theories and methods of conversation analysis. We will investigate how culture manifests itself in speech events of everyday conversation in German speaking communities. This course will explore patterns of conversations comparatively (English and German): For example, why do greetings differ across nations?, and how is answering the phone culture-specific, how do we save face and when do we lose face, how do we take turns?

#2
Graduate course number:     GEW5596

Course Title: German Humor

Instructor: Maier-Katkin

Time: Th 4:50-7:50 pm
Language of Class Discussion: German
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes
Course Description: Yes, Germans can be funny. This course covers a wide variety of German

authors, among them philosophers and artists who created and discussed humor. We will read texts by Kurt Tucholsky, Karl Valentin, Erich Kästner, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Thaddäus Troll, etc., view films and look at different genres in order to explore how humor is presented. With the help of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, we will contemplate what processes are involved when one is confronted with humor.

This course is taught in German.

#3
Graduate course number:     GER 5060/5940
Course Title: Graduate Reading Knowledge in German/ Reading Knowledge Examination

Instructor: Ray Hattaway

Time: M & W 4:50-6:05 pm

Reading knowledge in required in target language: No
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: Yes

Course Description: The focus of this course and/or exam is to enable students to develop techniques essential in attaining a proficiency in the reading and translation of German language. With the assistance of a good dictionary and traditional resources, students will be able to read and understand scholarly material in their respective fields. This course offers students a way to adequately prepare for the GER 5069 Graduate Reading Knowledge Exam (German).

Texts: Richard Alan Korb, Jannach's German for Reading Knowledge, (6th edition - previouseditions will not work) // Good German/English dictionary (required) .

MLL Graduate Course Offerings – FALL 2022

Italian

#1
Graduate course number: ITA5445
Course Title: 18th and 19th Cent. Literature and Culture. Fashioning Italian Women, Fashioning a Nation

Instructor: Irene Zanini-Cordi
Time: W 3:05-5:50
Language of Class Discussion: Italian
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No/ Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No/ Yes

Course Description: The eighteenth-century novelist and playwright Pietro Chiari defined this period "The century of Women" to indicate the relevance of women in the public sphere, be it in physical presence or as topic of discussion. Enlightenment culture debates the advantages and disadvantages of women's education and tries to define their role while the booming of print culture creates a space for female readership and grants them a voice.

Female identity develops parallel and connected to the ideas and efforts that will materialize in the 19th century in the Italian Risorgimento. In the semi-public space of the salotto Italian women find fertile ground to foster their education, shape their identity and contribute in unique ways to the nation-building effort. From a literary perspective, this course aims at introducing students to both major and lesser-known texts that portray the historical, cultural and social atmosphere of the period. From the point of view of material culture, it considers the contribution of painting, architecture and fashion to issues of "woman" and "nation." Finally, through the careful analysis of the salotto institution and its practices, and the application of social network theory, students will draw the connections between the "construction" of female identity and of national identity.

#2
Graduate course number: ITA 5505
Time: T-Th 4:50-6:0Spm.
Language of Class Discussion: Italian
Instructor: Pietralunga
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No/ Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No/ 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 'ltalianita" 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, and Pascoli. 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 a vis the question of identity will also be highlighted in the course's readings and discussions.

MLL Graduate Course Offerings - Fall 2022

Russian

#1

Graduate course number: RUS 5415
Course Title: Graduate Russian Conversation and Comprehension
Instructor: Nina Efimov
Time: TuTh 1:20PM - 2:35PM
Language of Class Discussion: Russian
Reading knowledge in required in target language:
No / Yes
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments
: No / Yes

Course Description:

#2

Graduate course number: RUS 5845
Course Title: History of the Russian Language and Reading of Old Russian Texts

Instructor: Robert Romanchuk
Time: TuTh 9:45AM - 11:00AM
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No (for non-majors) /
Yes Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No / Yes

Course Description:

#3

Graduate course number: RUW 5559
Course Title: Seminar in 19th-Century Russian Literature: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Instructor: Nina Efimov
Time: Th 4:50PM - 7:50PM
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No (for non-majors) /
Yes

Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No / Yes

Course Description:

#4

Graduate course number: RUW 5930
Course Title: Special Topics: Russian Culture after 1985
Instructor: Olga Seliazniova
Time: MoWe 4:50PM - 6:05PM
Language of Class Discussion: English
Reading knowledge in required in target language: No (for non-majors) /
Yes

Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments: No / Yes

Course Description:

MLL Graduate Course Offerings FALL 2022

SPANISH COURSES IN LINGUISTICS

#1

Graduate course number: LIN 5510
Course Title: Transformational Grammar
Instructor: Reglero
Time: TR 11:35-12:50
Language of Class Discussion: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments:
Yes
Course Description: This course is an introduction to syntax, that is, the study of the structure of sentences. In this course, we will approach syntax from the perspective of generative/transformational grammar, and we will focus on the concepts and principles which have been of central significance in the recent development of syntactic theory, such as PhraseStructure, 0-Theory, Case Theory, Movement, Locality, Binding Theory and Control Theory.

#2

Graduate course number: LIN 5744
Course Title: Language Learning and Instruction
Instructor: Leeser
Time: (TR 3:05-4:20)
Language of Class Discussion: English
Open to graduate students from other MLL programs/departments:
Yes
Course Description: The overall goal of this course is to give all incoming language instructorsin the Department of Modem Languages and Linguistics an overview of basic principles that guide communicative approaches to second language instruction regardless of language and context. These principles are informed by current thinking on the nature of language and communication, major research findings from second language acquisition, and instructed second language acquisition.

#3

Graduate course number: SPN 5734

Course Title: Spanish Sociolinguistics

Instructor: Muntendam
Time: W 4:50-7:20

Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
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)

#4

Graduate course number:   SPN 5795

Course Title: Phonology of Spanish

Instructor: Gonzalez
Time: (TR 1:20-2:35)

Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Course Description:
This course presents an overview of the articulation, acoustics, and transcription of Spanish sounds, compares sound patterns across Spanish dialects, and analyzesthem using recent phonological theories, including Generative phonology, Autosegmental phonology, and Optimality Theory. (Minimum requirement for the MA exam in Phonology

 

MLL Graduate Course Offerings - FALL 2022

SPANISH COURSES IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Graduate course number: SPW 6934

Course Title: The Environmental Imagination of 20th Century Spanish American Culture

Instructor: Galeano
Time: (M 6:35-9:05)
Language of Class Discussion: Spanish

Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Course Description:
What do oral narratives and literature have to do with the degradation of the Earth and life on Earth? Do cultural expressions of conservationism and affectionate discourses toward non-human nature found in literary works and films have agency on human behavior and attitudes towards the environment? If so, which canonical and non-canonical worksof Latin American authors and Indigenous voices convey ideas about nature and portray politicalecologies? How do authors use language and media imagery and what are the textual conventions and rhetorical strategies that provide support for environmental thought implicit andexplicitly exhibited in fictional and poetic works? Questions such as these will be addressed in this course which will employ ecocritical and interdisciplinary approaches to study the works of influential twentieth century Spanish American Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors from Modernism to the present. The course and class activities will be conducted in Spanish.

Graduate course number: SPW 6934

Course Title: 20th and 21st Century Spanish Peninsular Literature. CulturalContexts/Aesthetic Developments
Instructor: Álvarez
Time: (R 6:35-9:05)

Language of Class Discussion: Spanish
Reading knowledge in required in target language: Yes
Course Description:
This course focuses on aesthetic developments in contemporary Spanish literature in relationship with some determinate historical contexts, such as the so-called "Disaster of 1898" and the crisis of individual and collective representation in the first quarter ofthe 20th Century; the trauma experienced by Spanish society at the immediate outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939); the Transition to democracy in the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence of new subject positioning; and, finally, the location of the Spanish State in a transnational European setting. The course will be taught in Spanish. Similarly, all assigned, primary readings will be in Spanish although some other required materials (secondary critical literature) might be in English.