Fall 2021

CL 9501A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature Part 1: Modes of Comparison
James Miller
Mondays 1:30-4:30pm

In this half-course, we shall explore the logic (and sometimes the illogic) behind seven major
modes of literary comparison: (1) typological comparison between parallel narratives; (2) interarts
comparison between literature and painting/sculpture; (3) philological comparison between national
literatures; (4) anthropological comparison between various geographically or sociologically binarized
literatures; (5) rhetorical comparison between rival representations of reality; (6) taxonomic
comparison between hierarchized genres; and (7) dialectical comparison between politically defined
literary movements. In the process we shall study the origins and development of the field of
Comparative Literature from the early 1800s to the late 1960s. Special attention will be paid to one
influential classic in the field (Auerbach’s Mimesis, 1946) and to one influential theorization of
comparison (Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, 1968).

CL 9200A Dante Comparatista: Inferno
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30-12:30pm

This year (2021) marks the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death (1321). In tandem with the international celebrations of the Poet's life and works, this course will focus on the critical reception of the   Commedia   through the centuries as a culturally vital and ever-expanding context for contemplating the Poet’s unique impact on the conceptualization and disciplinary development of Comparative Literature. A close examination of the thirty-four cantos of the   Inferno   will reveal how Dante constructed his magnum opus to be read comparatively along many axes of mirroring analogy and inversion. His four-fold method of interpretation compels a reader to distinguish levels of understanding while inviting meditation on their interconnections. His pairing of Virgil (as guide) with Dante (as pilgrim) prompts intertextual analysis of the subversion of the   Aeneid   in the formation of the   Inferno:   a paradoxical process of creative destruction and destructive creation which, in turn, demands a cross-cultural engagement in the Here and Now with the values of the pagan past and the promises of the Christian future. His pairing of numerically identical cantos across the great divide between the Damned and the Saved, as mapped onto the cantica divide between   Inferno   and   Purgatorio,   challenges his   lettor—the reader conceived as a follower in the Poet’s footsteps--to chart a route of comparative understanding through the World as well as through the Poem. Just as there are guides and spirits all along the way in the wayward pilgrim’s gradual transformation into the world-reforming Poet, so there will be in the hermeneutical projection of the course onto the history of Comparative Literature. A series of influential comparatists (Mazzoni, Eliot, Auerbach, Bloom, Barolini, Hollander, Iannucci) will guide the class in exploring the interpretive complexities of the   Commedia  with fresh understandings of the relevance of the Poem to contemporary debates over the role of Literature and Literary Criticism in addressing the seismic schisms of Self/Other, West/East, Christian/Muslim, Male/Female, Text/Image, Sacred/Profane.  

CL 9622A Intermediality: Book to Film
Vlad Tumanov
Wednesdays 1:30-4:30pm

What happens to a story as it moves from the medium of narrative to that of film? What are the differences, commonalities and problems associated with the (mis)matching of two ways of representing reality? We will explore ways of “seeing" with words and “telling" with images... or vice versa. We will consider what is lost and/or gained through this intermedial process and to what extent filmmakers "respect" their literary sources or displace them. Discussion will be contextualized in the exploration of human psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, philosophy and the history of ideas

Winter 2022

CL 9503B Propaedeutics for Comparatists
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30-12:30pm

The course is divided into four units. The first unit covers Research
Methods appropriate for the discipline of Comparative Literature. You will learn how Comparatists
have historically distinguished their discipline from other kinds of literary studies; why Comparatists
are careful to formulate specific research questions within a broad topic and a broader field of inquiry;
and what dialectical strategies contribute to the strength of a Comparative Literary argument. The
second unit will consider the complex overlapping histories of the three main cultural institutions – the
Library, the Archive, and the Internet – to which Comparatists routinely turn for sources in the search
for answers to their research questions. The third unit focuses on the various academic genres which
serve to shape the critical expectations of the educated readers for which Comparatists commonly write
their works. And the fourth unit concentrates on the prospective form and organization of the first
important work – the MA thesis – that a student of Comparative Literature is expected to produce after
an intensive period of language training, background research, and methodological inquiry.
ii.

CL 9011B What Poetry Knows
Cristina Caracchini
Tuesdays 9:30-12:30pm

The course will focus on the works of six poets: Dante, Baudelaire, Pessoa, Caproni, J. Guillén and Ashbery. These works have in common an enquiry of philosophical nature concerning the criteria that define knowledge and the very possibility of its acquisition, possession and transmission. The corollary of this enquiry is a common tension to define the space occupied by poetry amongst other cultural instruments that also contribute to the creation and the communication of such a knowledge. The poets conduct their exploration from a specific angle, that is: by reflecting on the possibilities of understanding and expressing man’s relationship with his own world.
The course will aim at illustrating how the specificity of the poetic discourse brings its own contribution to the development of this philosophical enquiry and increases the intelligibility of the object to which it is applied. Two main lines will guide our monographic lecture of the work of each author. The first line of analysis, “how to know poetry”, examines the way in which an increment of knowledge is produced by the interaction between the work and the cognitive universe of its reader. To do that, we examine the expressive strategies used in the poetic text, as well as the resulting behavior of a ‘model reader’. The second line of research, “how and what poetry knows”, analyses rhetorical and stylistic procedures peculiar to poetry and focuses on the thematisation of knowledge in a variety of compositions.

CL 9617B The Bible and Literature
Vlad Tumanov
Wednesdays 1:30-4:30pm

This course is intended to introduce the student to the way certain parts of the Old and New Testament have been retold and re-interpreted through literary fiction. We will analyze texts where authors have sought to preserve the sacred dimension of their biblical sources, undermine it or both. We will consider what is lost and gained during this transfer as antiquity meets modernity. We will attempt to determine if the two ages speak to each other or past each other. Questions of politics, pertaining to both the biblical texts and their modern counterparts, will be of paramount importance. We will see to what extent the cultural environment and background of each modern author in question influenced the transformation of the biblical material. The background theoretical basis for this course will be G. Genette's Palimpsests where the modalities of textual retellings are explored in a taxonomic framework. Additionally, the psychology of religious belief as outlined in P. Boyer’s Religion Explained is helpful in connection to the literary corpus of the course and other findings from sociobiology.

CL 9625B The American Dream/El Sueno Americano
Felipe Quintanilla
Wednesdays 5:30-8:30pm

From Saussure to Derrida, from Foucault to Butler, Marx to Žižek, Freud to Kristeva, Fanon to Hall and Muñoz, this course aims to introduce graduate students to the rich field of interdisciplinary cultural studies. Students will not only become familiar with relevant schools of thought, but also practice and develop interdisciplinary strategies to analyze social/literary issues. Facilitating our ambitious project will be a number of cultural artifacts informing a conversation around the possible meanings around the concept of the “American dream,” its vices, virtues, its concomitant politics of inclusion/exclusion. Along the way, we will also be mindful of how this “dream,” or "dreams," play a role in the framing discourses of empire, intervention, migration, gender, sex, class and ethnicity/race. We will be in great company, fighting wars overseas with Chicanos; road tripping with Thelma and Louise, Tenoch and Julio Zapata. From a postwar touch of evil to the easy riding of the late 1960s, from stories of migration to the dream-dealers of the dystopian future, this course will wrestle with that ever-elusive concept of the American dream, the nightmare, the sham, the saving graces.

Fall 2020

CL 9502A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature Part ll:Modes of Engagement
James Miller
Mondays 1:30pm-4:30pm

CL 9502B may be considered the sequel to CL 9501A in two senses--chronologically and dialectically.
The set of assigned readings for Fundamentals II begins in the intellectual turbulence of the 1960s, the
period in which the set of assigned readings for Fundamentals I left off. Critical questions raised by the
key notion of “comparison”-- What literatures are worth comparing? Who determines the grounds of
comparison? Why should national literatures be compared? How interdisciplinary should comparative
literature be? Where does the unifying ideal of “World Literature” (as originally generated by the
comparative project) lead in an increasingly fragmented world?-- will be dialectically addressed in
relation to the key notion of “engagement” by critics and theorists who have directed the attention of
Comparatists towards the great divides in postwar culture.

CL 9511A Erotomachia: The Battle of the Sexes from Aristophanes to Spike Lee
James Miller
Wedensdays 9:30am-12:30pm

In Botticelli’s famous painting of Venus and Mars, the Goddess of Love casts a serenely
victorious glance at the disarmed and dismounted God of War while mischievous satyrs mock
his amorous might by donning his mighty armour, capturing his phallic lance, and blowing a
conch in his ear. Will he heed their alarming wake-up call? Despite his commanding physique
Mars seems blissfully unaware of his defeat on the battlefield of love. Venus has clearly won this
round in the Battle of the Sexes.
Behind Botticelli’s ironically peaceful scene of sexual triumph lies a provocative tradition of
imagining the erotic life as a conflict, a problematic “conceit” originating in the ancient allegory
of the Erotomachia (“Sex War”). In this graduate course for the Comparative Literature program,
we shall trace this Western cultural tradition back to its narrative origins in classical literature
and then follow its cultural elaborations through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment and the Modern period.

CL9651/SP 9025A The Nineteenth Century Novel: From Literature to Adaptation
Victoria Wolff
Thursdays 9:00am-12:00pm

This seminar will focus on selected novels from Spain and Spanish America and their adaptations into other genres, such as musical theater adn film.  Our primary sources will be Pepita Jiménez (1874) and  Cecilia Valdés (1882). These works selected from the nineteenth century are an important part of what has been traditionally considered the literary canon. This course provides the occasion to develop foundational understandings of these works, as well as the opportunity to move beyond the literary canon into new directions. 

Winter 2021

CL 9503B Propaedeutics
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30am-12:30pm

Having passed through the Gate of Hell, Dante abruptly recoils at the confused sound of “diverse
tongues, horrible speeches, painful words, cries of rage, voices loud and faint” [diverse lingue, orribili
favelle, / parole di dolore, accenti d’ira, / voci alte e fioche: Inf. 3.25-27]. Replace Dante with yourself
at the start of your Comparative Literature MA program, and you’ll soon find serious grounds for
empathizing with his state of polyglot panic. Having crossed over the threshold of graduate studies, you
are bound to face an intimidating confusion of course requirements, research instructions, multilingual
bibliographies, thesis statements, scholarship applications, theoretical jargons, clashing arguments,
illogical conclusions, and voices loud and faint telling you what you need to accomplish en route to
your degree. Where is Virgil when you need him? Fortunately a trustworthy guide is at hand,
marching beside you in the form of this required course on research methodology, thesis writing, and
academic professionalization. The course is divided into four units. The first unit covers Research
Methods appropriate for the discipline of Comparative Literature. You will learn how Comparatists
have historically distinguished their discipline from other kinds of literary studies; why Comparatists
are careful to formulate specific research questions within a broad topic and a broader field of inquiry;
and what dialectical strategies contribute to the strength of a Comparative Literary argument. The
second unit will consider the complex overlapping histories of the three main cultural institutions – the
Library, the Archive, and the Internet – to which Comparatists routinely turn for sources in the search
for answers to their research questions. The third unit focuses on the various academic genres which
serve to shape the critical expectations of the educated readers for which Comparatists commonly write
their works. And the fourth unit concentrates on the prospective form and organization of the first
important work – the Major Research Paper – that an MA student of Comparative Literature is
expected to produce in the third term of study.

CL 9601B From Language to Writing to Writing Systems
Laurence de Looze
Wednesdays 1:00pm-4:00pm

Philosophers and others have consistently asserted that the development of language and the invention of writing signaled huge cognitive shifts in the evolution of (or towards) humanity. Was the advent of speech the stage at which humanity began? Did true civilization arise only with the invention of writing? Are there different cognitive implications as a result of different descendant writing systems?
This seminar will move through these three stages, investigating the theories and the debates that have arisen (usually with no firm conclusion). Did a nascent ability to conceptualize lead to speech (Logan, Hockett, etc.) or did speech cause conceptualization (Pinker, Donald, Deacon, etc.)? What caused writing to come about, why was it needed, what did it entail, and what were its implications both for the first people to have it and for subsequent ages? Finally, what has led to the creation of very different writing systems – pictogrammic, ideogrammic, alphabetic, iconic – and how have they been viewed by scholars? Regarding this last stage we will engage specifically with contacts between alphabetic and non-alphabetic writing systems and with Eurocentric assumptions about the superiority of alphabetic writing as well as recent criticisms of such a view.

CL 9616B The Uncanny and the Fantastic
Vlad Tumanov
Tuesdays 9:30am-12:30pm

Fantastic fictional worlds are often based on the violation of physical laws while the uncanny involves the combination of the familiar with the deeply disturbing. When the uncanny and the fantastic are combined, story-telling becomes a tool for exploring the hidden recesses of the human mind and for facing our greatest fears. From antiquity to the modern age, authors have delved into such realms in order to work out and model challenges of life in the ordinary world by pushing the human imagination and emotions to the limit.   This course will consider a number of works in different languages representing various approaches to the fantastic and the uncanny.

CL 9690B Writing the Medieval Body
Melitta Adamson
Tuesdays 2:30pm-5:30pm

The course will focus on sexuality and illness in the medical, religious, and literary discourses from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Of particular interest will be the development of medieval technical literature (Fachliteratur) as it moved from the monastery to the university and with its preference for prose distanced itself from the "less truthful" texts (romances, poetry, fabliaux, etc.) which were written in verse. Works studied in the course will be examples in which two or more of the discourses converge or collide, starting with Hildegard von Bingen's medical text Cause et Cure from the twelfth century. Literary works from the classical Middle High German period will be studied in combination with their foreign, in particular French, forerunners or parodies (Cligès). They will include Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, in which women healers, a love potion, and trial by ordeal figure prominently, Hartmann von Aue's Iwein whose protagonist suffers from madness, Der Arme Heinrich with a protagonist afflicted by leprosy, and Gregorius which features double incest. In the medical works of medieval and Renaissance school medicine the emphasis will be on sexuality and procreation, two areas from which the religious discourse is never completely absent as Maino de Maineri's Regimen sanitatis, and Jakob Rueff's gynecological work Hebammenbuch illustrate. The course will conclude with a look at the representations of the body in the fabliaux and Shrovetide plays of Hans Sachs.

CL 9722B/SP 9648B Testimony, Memory, Fiction
Felipe Quintanilla
Mondays 5:00pm-8:00pm

This course will be devoted to the study of memory and its connections to writing modalities such as the testimonial, the  memoire, auto-fiction and fiction, in Latin American and in US/Canadian Latinx contexts. The texts, films and artistic installations we will be exploring will range from those centered on the bitter fruits of the Cold War in Latin America, but also on more recent phenomena such as the various indigenous/ student/ feminist movements of self-determination, as well as on the complex migration flows across  las Am éricas from the early 1970s to the present day. Along the way, we will be thinking about the nature of testimonial literature and its emergence in Latin America, its understanding as a literary genre and its positionality vis à vis the literary cannon and vis à vis political action. The concepts that will inform our discussions will be subalternity, voice, social justice, human rights, transnational solidarity, reparations, and memory. We will be listening to the voices from various struggles, from women, youth, combatants, and the indigenous. We will end, finally, on a consideration of fiction as a potential tool for remembering and imaginative healing.

Fall
CL 9501A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature Part 1
James Miller
Mondays: 1:30-4:30pm, WL 107

CL 9729A Life-Support: Literature and Environmentalism
James Miller
Wednesdays: 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

CL 9622A Intermediality: Book to Film
Vlad Tumanov
Tuesdays: 9:30-12:30pm, UC 3320

Winter
CL 9503B Propaedeutics for Comparatists
James Miller
Wednesdays: 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

CL 9609B Why (and how) are things similar?: Analogy, Example, Metaphor, Taxonomy
Laurence de Looze
Tuesdays: 2:30-5:30pm, STVH 3165

CL 9100B Nineteenth-Century Cities: Berlin, London, Paris
David Darby
Mondays: 1:30-4:30pm, UC 3320

CL 9617B The Bible and Literature
Vlad Tumanov
Mondays: 9:30-12:30pm, UC 3325

CL 9650 Narratives of Imperialism, 1492-Today
Lauren Beck (Visiting Scholar, Mount Allison University)
Blended: half reading course and half in class
On-campus meetings: July 15-26, 2:00-5:00pm, UC 3325

Fall
CL 9501A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature 1
James Miller
Monday 1:30-4:30pm, UC 3320

CL 9612A Metamorphoses of the Letter
Laurence de Looze
Thursday 1:30-4:30pm, LwH 2205

CL 9733A/SP 9021A Literature, Music, and Migration: Jose Maria Arguedas
Victoria Wolff
Thursday 10:30-1:30pm, UC 3325

Winter

CL 9502B Fundamentals of Comparative Literature 2
James Miller
Monday 1:30-4:30pm, UC 3320

CL 9503B Propaedeutics for Comparatists
James Miller
Wednesday 9:30-12:30pm, UC 3320

CL 9623B/SP 9631B National (and others) Identities in Film
Constanza Burucua
Monday 9:30-12:30pm,

CL 9723 The Future
Felipe Quintanilla
Tuesday 7:00-10:00pm, UC 3305

Fall Term
CL 9501A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature 1
James Miller
Mondays 1:30-4:30pm, Pride Library

CL 9622A Intermediality: Book to Film
Vlad Tumanov
Wednesdays 1:30-4:30pm, WL 259

CL 9709A Narrative and The Self
Luca Pocci
Thursdays 9:30am-12:30pm, LWH 2205

Winter Term

CL 9502B Fundamentals of Comparative Literature 2
James Miller
Mondays 1:30-4:30pm

CL 9503B Thesis Project and Writing
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30-12:30pm

CL 9690B Writing the Medieval Body
Melitta Adamson
Tuesdays 1:30-4:30pm

CL 9691B Sinography, Corpography, and Beyond
Kevin Liu
Thursdays 9:30-12:30pm

Fall 2016
CL 9501A  Fundamentals of Comparative Literature
Luca Pocci
Mondays 5:30-8:30pm, STVH 1119

CL 9617A  The Bible and Literature
Vlad Tumanov
Wednesdays 1;#0-4:30pm, VAC 100

CL 9699A  Reading between the Lines: Hermeneutics and Historicism
James Miller
Tuesdays 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

Winter 2017

CL 9503B Thesis Project and Writing
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

CL 9686B Avant-Garde and the Museum
Cristina Caracchini
Thursdays 9:30-12:30pm, STVH 2166

CL 9696B Literature and Architecture
James Miller
Tuesdays 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

Please note that Fundamentals of Comparative Literature 2 will be offered in 2017-18.

Full Year (alternate weeks)

CL 9503Y/FR 9018Y Thesis Project and Writing
Marilyn Randall
Tuesdays 4:30-7:30pm (alternating Tuesdays), LWH 2205

Fall Term

CL 9501A Fundamentals of Comparative Literature I
Luca Pocci
Mondays 5:30-8:30pm, LWH 2210

CL 9011A What Poetry Knows
Cristina Caracchini
Tuesdays 10:30-1:30pm, WL 259 *please note that this is a new day for this course*

CL 9614A   An Erosophy of Culture
Călin Mihăilescu
Wednesdays 2:30-5:30pm, LWH 2205

Winter Term

CL 9502B Fundamentals of Comparative Literature II
Călin Mihăilescu
Mondays 5:30-8:30pm, LWH 2205

CL 9729B  Circles of Sustainability: Literature and Environmentalism
James Miller
Wednesdays 9:30-12:30pm, WL 107

CL 9730B/FR 9111B  Violence et transgression dans la littérature de l’Ancien Régime
Daniel Vaillancourt
Tuesdays 9:00-12:00pm, AHB 2R09

CL 9731B Météorologiques
Tony Purdy
Mondays 12:30-3:30pm, AHB 2R09

Theocrit    "A Useless Exile":  The Promise of Aesthetics
Allan Pero
*four spaces available to Complit students.
Wednesdays, time tba

Full Year (alternate weeks)

CL 9503Y/SP9505Y  Thesis Project and Writing
Victoria Wolff
Mondays:  1:30-4:30 pm, SH 3350                                                     

Fall Term

CL 9501A  Fundamentals of Comp Lit I
Luca Pocci
Mondays:  6:30-9:30 pm, UC 205

CL 9613A/CTSC 9648A  Langue Out on Parole
Călin Mihăilescu
Tuesdays:  1:30-4:30 pm, UC 287

CL 9617A  The Bible and Literature
Vlad Tumanov
Thursdays: 10:30-1:30pm, SH 3305

CL 9620A/Film 9213A    Heteroglossia in Cinema
Janina Falkowska
Mondays: 10:30-12:30pm (lecture), UC 12
Thursdays: 11:30-2:30pm (screening), UC 12

Winter Term

CL 9502B  Fundamentals of Comp Lit II
Călin Mihăilescu                                
Mondays:  5:30-8:30 pm, UC 205

CL 9612B/CSTC 9658  Metamorphoses of the Letter
Laurence de Looze
Thursdays:  2:30-5:30 pm, SH 2348

CL 9690B   Writing the Medieval Body
Melitta Adamson
Tuesdays: 1:30-4:30pm,LwH 2210

CL 9727B/ENG 9119B  Futures—of Romanticism
Jan Plug                                                                      
Mondays:  9:30-12:30 pm, UC 377                                                                              

 

Full Year (meets every other week 0.5 credit; Pass/Fail)

CL 9503y/FR 9018y Thesis Project and Writing
Instructor: Professor Marilyn Randall
Tuesdays: 4:30-7:30 pm, UC 138A

FALL TERM 2013

CL 9501a Fundamentals of Comparative Literature I
Instructor: Luca Pocci
Mondays: 5:30-8:30 pm, UC 205

CL 9686A The Avant-Garde and the Museum
Instructor: Cristina Caracchini
Thursdays 9:30-12:30 pm, UC 205

CL 9726a/ENG 9094a Reading India
Instructor: Nandi Bhatia
Wednesdays: 9:30-12:30 pm, UC 377

WINTER TERM 2014

CL 9502b Fundamentals of Comparative Literature II
Instructor: Calin Mihailescu
Mondays: 5:30-8:30 pm, UC 205

CL 9696b Literature and Architecture
Instructor: James Miller
Mondays: 12:30-3:30 pm, UC 288