General, Methods, and Theory Courses

• CMLT-C 100 Freshman Seminar (3 cr.) Analysis and discussion of selected major works of literature and art illustrating historical and stylistic problems related to specific themes, artists, or genres.

• CMLT-C 110 Writing the World (3 cr.) Introduces composition skills applicable to all majors: topic and thesis development, finding and integrating evidence, drafting and revising, organization from introduction to conclusion. Uses short literary texts from diverse genres, periods, and national traditions for discussion and essay topics.

• CMLT-C 111 Reading the World (3 cr.) Diverse literary genres and cultures from around the world explored through a comparative analysis of characters and themes in canonical and non-canonical texts, both ancient and modern.

• CMLT-C 155 Culture and the Modern Experience: An Interdisciplinary and International Approach (3 cr.) This course, which is interdisciplinary in method and international in scope, introduces students to an inclusive study of major cultural parallels, contrasts, and developments across the arts and beyond national and continental divides. Syllabi and selections of course materials will reflect the specialties of individual instructors.

• CMLT-C 160 What's Good About Good Books? (3 cr.) Examines the moral dimensions of literature and film; explores the morally troubling content of much that is considered great literature and cinema, which is so often filled with suffering, cruelty, and misfortune; and asks what in that case it means to say a book or film is "good."

• CMLT-C 200 Honors Seminar (3 cr.) Selected authors and topics, ranging from traditional to modern (for example, Athens and Jerusalem: The Origins of Western Literature). Traditional or current debates and issues of a critical, theoretical, or historical nature. Comparative methodology, interdisciplinary approach. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.

• CMLT-C 205 Comparative Literary Analysis (3 cr.) Introduction to basic concepts of literary criticism through comparative close readings of texts from a variety of literary genres—fiction, poetry, drama, essay—from diverse traditions. I Sem., II Sem. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.

• CMLT-C 301 Special Topics in Comparative Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Special topics concerning two or more literary traditions or literature and other areas in the humanities. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 305 Comparative Approaches to Literature: Theory and Method (3 cr.) P: C205. Introduction to modern critical theory based on the study of literary texts and of critical and theoretical works.

• CMLT-C 400 Studies in Comparative Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Specific problems concerning the relationship of two or more literatures or of literature and another area in the humanities. May be repeated twice.

• CMLT-C 405 Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Selected topics treated in seminar fashion. Recommended for majors. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

Genre Courses

• CMLT-C 216 Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the Western Tradition (3 cr.) Historical and comparative survey of science fiction and fantasy narrative from antiquity to the present. The origin of scientific narrative in ancient Greek literature, its relation to ancient myths, and its history and development. Emphasis on philosophical, cognitive, and scientific aspects of the genre.

• CMLT-C 217 Detective, Mystery, and Horror Literature (3 cr.) Origins, evolution, conventions, criticism, and theory of the detective and mystery story; history of the Gothic novel; later development of the tale of terror; major works of this type in fiction, drama, and film.

• CMLT-C 219 Romance and the Western Tradition (3 cr.) Origins, evolution, conventions, criticism, and theory of the romance, from antiquity to the present; representative texts from Apuleius to modern pulp fiction.

• CMLT-C 311 Drama (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Analytical and historical study of various forms of dramatic literature emphasizing differences between drama and other literary genres. Survey of periods and dramatic conventions, close reading of selected plays, some concern with theoretical problems.

• CMLT-C 313 Narrative (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Historical and analytical study of various forms of narrative literature. Examination of narrative as a primary literary genre and analysis of such diverse forms as myth, folktale, epic, romance, gospel, saint’s life, saga, allegory, confession, and novel.

• CMLT-C 315 Lyric Poetry (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Close reading of exemplary poems with an emphasis on interpretation and on the interplay between literal and figurative language. Topics will include the way poems are shaped, their ambiguous status as private and public statements, and their relation to tradition, to their readers, and to one another.

• CMLT-C 317 Epic: Heroes, Gods, and Rebels (3 cr.) Historical and comparative survey of one or more traditions of epic poetry. Origins, evolution, conventions, criticism, and theory of the chosen tradition(s) to be studied through readings of selected epics. Some consideration of the social and political roles of individual epics and the genre.

• CMLT-C 318 Satire (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Historical and analytical study of forms, techniques, and scope of satire from antiquity to the Internet. Consideration of the role of ridicule in defending or attacking institutions, values, and beliefs. Credit given for only one of C218 or C318.

• CMLT-C 415 Medieval Lyric (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Comparative study of religious and secular lyric poetry in medieval Europe. Exploration of cultural contexts and formal concerns, such as the development of medieval rhetorical theory. The continuation and transformation of classical poetic conventions, and the interplay of musical and verbal texts.

• CMLT-C 417 Medieval Narrative (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Comparative analysis of traditions of narrative in medieval Europe. Works studied within their cultural contexts and in reference to narrative theory. Topics and works vary, but may include the allegorical narrative, romance, fabliaux, saint’s life, and dream vision.

Period Courses

• CMLT-C 320 World Literature before 1500 (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Survey of selected genres of literature from earliest written texts through the end of the Middle Ages, covering the major centers of world civilization—the Mediterranean, India, and East and West Asia.

• CMLT-C 321 Medieval Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Study of works from the major genres of medieval European literature: epic, romance, allegorical narrative, lyric poetry, and drama. Topics may include the relationship of secular and religious traditions, the role of multilingual communities in shaping medieval literature, and the influence of social context on literary production.

• CMLT-C 325 The Renaissance (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Prose fiction, long narrative poems, lyric poems, essays, tracts, and plays written between 1350 and 1650 in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England. Authors such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Machiavelli, More, Castiglione, Rabelais, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Hobbes.

• CMLT-C 329 The Eighteenth Century (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. The dominant literary and intellectual trends of the eighteenth century, such as neoclassicism, rococo, Enlightenment, and preromanticism. Authors such as Pope, Swift, Montesquieu, Richardson, Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, Rousseau, Lessing, and Sterne.

• CMLT-C 333 Romanticism (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. The rise of romantic tendencies in eighteenth-century Europe; the romantic revolution in early nineteenth-century Western literature. Authors such as Goethe, Chateaubriand, Wordsworth, Byron, Novalis, Hoffmann, Hugo, Pushkin, and Poe.

• CMLT-C 335 Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. The rise of realism in nineteenth-century fiction and its development into naturalism and impressionism; the symbolist reaction in poetry; the reemergence of the drama as a major genre. Authors such as Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Mallarme, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Strindberg, Chekhov.

• CMLT-C 337 The Twentieth Century: Tradition and Change (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. The search for forms and language to express new understandings of art and reality in the era of modernism.

• CMLT-C 338 Literature Today: 1950 to the Present (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. An exploration of major literary movements, styles, or currents shaping literature after World War II, such as the theatre of the absurd, postmodernism, magical realism, cyberpunk, postcolonialism, and transnationalism.

Comparative Arts

• CMLT-C 151 Introduction to Popular Culture (3 cr.) The serious study of entertainment for mass consumption, including popular theatre and vaudeville, bestsellers, mass circulation magazines, popular music, phonograph records, and popular aspects of radio, film, and television. Provides the basic background to other popular culture courses in comparative literature.

• CMLT-C 251 Lyrics and Popular Song (3 cr.) Survey of popular songs of Europe and the Americas, including modern ballads, cabaret songs, Spanish flamencos, Mexican rancheras, Argentine tangos, country western, and rock lyrics. Discussion of literary qualities of lyrics in context of musical setting and performance and independently as literature.

• CMLT-C 252 Literary and Television Genres (3 cr.) Comparative study of popular literary and television genres, such as farce, domestic comedy, melodrama, biography, mystery, adventure, western, the picaresque. Theoretical, technical, and ideological contrasts between the literary and television media.

• CMLT-C 255 Modern Literature and Other Arts: An Introduction (3 cr.) The study of literature, painting, and music and the ways in which meaning is expressed in such forms. Investigates similarities and differences among the arts. Examples selected from the past 200 years. No previous knowledge of any art required. I Sem., II Sem.

• CMLT-C 256 Literature and Other Arts: 1870–1950 (3 cr.) P: C255 or consent of instructor. Interaction of the arts in the development of Western literature, painting, and music in movements such as impressionism, symbolism, constructivism, expressionism, dada, and surrealism.

• CMLT-C 257 Asian Literature and Other Arts (3 cr.) Selected literary texts of China, India, or Japan studied in the context of the art forms and cultures of these countries. Concentration on one culture each time course is offered. May be repeated once with different topic.

• CMLT-C 261 Introduction to African Literature (3 cr.) Oral and written poetry, epic, fiction, drama, and film from around the continent with reference to historical and cultural contexts, and debates on language choice, “authenticity,” gender, and European representations of Africa.

• CMLT-C 322 Writing and Photography (3 cr.) Examines the multiple connections between the literary and photographic arts. Considers thematic, aesthetic, and theoretical parallels and differences between the two worlds, including literary works in which photographs play a crucial role, and ways in which photography has been interpreted through the written word.

• CMLT-C 351 Adaptations: Literature, Stage, and Screen (3 cr.) R: 3 credit hours of literature. Adaptations of literary texts into new literary works or art forms such as theatre, film, opera, music, and digital media. Examination of the historical, cultural, and aesthetic issues involved in revising and reimagining source texts.

• CMLT-C 355 Literature, the Arts, and Their Interrelationship (3 cr.) R: C255. Discussion of theoretical foundations for study of the relationship of the arts; detailed analysis of specific works illustrating interaction of literature with other arts.

• CMLT-C 357 The Arts Today: From 1950 to the Present (3 cr.) R: C255 and C256. Shared trends in literature, the visual arts, music, dance, and theatre. The heritage of dada and surrealism, the absurd, and constructivism; the new realism. Happenings, minimal art, conceptual art, antiart, participatory and environmental art. New materials, mixed media, multimedia and intermediality.

• CMLT-C 358 Literature and Music: Opera (3 cr.) P: Two courses in literature, theatre, or music history. Selected opera libretti from various periods. Comparison of libretti with their literary sources; emphasis on specific problems connected with the adaptation of a literary work to the operatic medium. Evaluation of representative libretti as independent literary works.

• CMLT-C 361 African Literature and Other Arts (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. A focus on critical issues in the field of African letters, such as transnationalism, the question of orality, choice of language, the economics and politics of publishing—both within and outside the continent, and their impacts on cultural forms including new, non-literary media. Authors such as Achebe, Aidoo, Armah, Diop, Farah, Head, Kunene, Ngugi, p'Bitek, Sembene, and Soyinka.

Cross-Cultural Studies

• CMLT-C 262 Cross-Cultural Encounters (3 cr.) Encounters between different cultures explored in the literature, art, film, and music resulting from various forms of cultural contact (travel, colonization, religious diffusion, print and electronic technologies). Topics include transformation of cultural institutions, processes of cross-cultural representation, globalization of the arts and culture, development of intercultural forms. Historical and regional focus may vary. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 265 Introduction to East Asian Poetry (3 cr.) Major forms of East Asian poetry in a comparative context, with attention to issues such as poetics, gender, Zen, historical development, and interactions with other literary genres. Authors such as Bei Dao, Li Bo, and Basho.

• CMLT-C 266 Introduction to East Asian Fiction (3 cr.) Readings from the major novels of East Asia, such as Monkey, Story of the Stone, The Tale of Genji, and The Cloud Dream of the Nine, along with shorter fictional forms (both vernacular and classical). Exploration of issues such as self and society, desire and enlightenment, the relationship between fictional and other genres, historical development of fiction, and comparison with Western conceptions of narrative.

• CMLT-C 340 Women in World Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Study of literature by women from different ages and societies. Consideration of issues such as the relationship to literary tradition and cultural context, the creation of an authoritative voice, or the representation of women in literature. Course may focus on one genre or mode (such as drama, lyric, autobiography, or satire).

• CMLT-C 360 Diasporic Literatures (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Study of literature by writers of different regional and religious diasporas, with particular attention to issues relating to cultural identity and location. Consideration of closely related categories and concepts such as immigrant, ethnic minority, hybridity, and deterritorialized cultures.

• CMLT-C 363 Black Paris (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. The common and divergent experiences of African American, Afro-Caribbean, and African travelers to the “City of Light,” from 18th-century New Orleans Creoles to 21st-century youth of African descent, as seen through literature, performance, film, and other arts. Issues of colonization, expatriation, immigration, exile, the Harlem Renaissance and “negritude,” race and diaspora, transnationalism. Credit given for only one of CMLT C363 or AAAD A304.

• CMLT-C 364 The Caribbean: Literature and Theory (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Poetry, fiction, drama, musical lyrics, travel literature, and prose from the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Discussion of major currents affecting literary production and interpretation. Topics such as immigration, diaspora, Rastafarianism, Voudoun, tourism. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 365 Japanese-Western Literary Relations (3 cr.) Japanese influences on Western poets and dramatists: color prints, haiku, and Noh plays. The Western impact on Japanese literature: the Japanese adaptation of movements such as romanticism, realism, naturalism, and symbolism, with special emphasis on the Japanese traits that these movements acquired.

• CMLT-C 370 Comparative Studies in Western and Middle Eastern Literatures (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Literary exchanges and influences between Western and Middle Eastern traditions in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish. Period and topic vary. May be repeated once with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 375 Imagining China, Translating China (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Topics may include comparison of Chinese and European philosophical traditions, Western representations of China, East-West contact in the larger historical context, and the translation of literary works across cultures. Readings by authors such as Marco Polo, Voltaire, Pound, and Sigrid Nunez.

• CMLT-C 377 Topics in Yiddish Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Selected topics focusing on Yiddish fiction and drama (1810–1914) or twentieth-century Yiddish fiction, drama, and poetry. Taught in English. No prior knowledge of Yiddish required. Topics vary. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours for any combination of C377 and GER-E 351.

• CMLT-C 378 Topics in Yiddish Culture (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Selected topics on history of Ashkenazic Jews; Old Yiddish and premodern Yiddish folklore and popular culture; history and sociology of Yiddish; modern Yiddish culture; and centers of modern Yiddish culture. Taught in English. No prior knowledge of Yiddish required. Topics vary. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours for any combination of C378 and GER-E 352.

• CMLT-C 457 Capitals, Crosscurrents and Borders (3 cr.) The role of capitals in the development of literary and artistic culture. Capitals as sites of cultural encounter, where immigrants and minorities interact with local populations and where such interaction shows the permeable nature of borders. Comparisons between cultural and political capitals. Examines three capitals per semester (e.g., Paris, New York, Rome).

• CMLT-C 464 French Language Literature of Africa and the Americas (3 cr.) Literary texts and films, their poetics and historical contexts. Particular consideration of the tension surrounding the use of French language in Africa and the Caribbean and the creation of French language literatures, their relationship to local oral traditions and metropolitan French literature. Course will be conducted in French.

Themes in Literature; Literature and Ideas

• CMLT-C 147 Images of the Self: East and West (3 cr.) Topics such as the individual in society, the outcast as hero, and artistic sensibility, examined in selected works of Western and Eastern literature from ancient to modern times.

• CMLT-C 240 Linguistics and Literature: Sound, Meaning, Style (3 cr.) Introduces linguistics in the context of literature. Examines the structures and functions of language: how writers use sound, meaning, associations of language, and language variation to create characters, settings, and situations in literary texts; and what happens when texts cross linguistic boundaries through translation.

• CMLT-C 343 Literature and Politics (3 cr.) R: 3 credit hours of literature. The intersection of literature and political issues, the representation of political ideas in literary works, literature's impact on politics and its role in public debate. Time periods, literatures, and civilizations studied will vary. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 345 Literature and Religion (3 cr.) R: 3 credit hours of literature. Literature from or about one or more religious traditions. Religious literature as influenced by—but distinct from—theology, religious doctrine, or philosophy. The impact of imaginative literature on the growth of religious ideas. Includes the study of historical contexts. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 347 Literature and Ideas (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Historical interrelations between literature and philosophy. Recent topics have included free will and the problem of evil; mysticism, criminality, and suffering; existentialism and the literature of the absurd. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 349 Literature and Science (3 cr.) R: 3 credit hours of literature. The intersection of literature and the arts with science and technology, including the representation of scientific discovery and perspective, the dramatization of science's impact on society, the image of the scientist as artist. May include literature by scientists, and the use of scientific methods of analysis for interpreting literature. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 445 Early Traditions of Christian Literature (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Imaginative religious literature by Christian authors to the twelfth century; relationship to Jewish, classical, and Muslim cultural traditions; emergence of new genres; development and transformation of early themes and forms.

• CMLT-C 446 Traditions of Christian Literature II (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Religious literature of the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the baroque, and the transformation of its themes and forms in more recent writings. Close reading of individual texts as well as consideration of their cultural and theological contexts.

Literature and Film

• CMLT-C 291 Studies in Non-Western Film (3 cr.) Emphasis on non-Western film in relation to literary and cultural texts. Films may be studied as adaptations of literary works, as reworkings of generic or ideological traditions, and in their engagement with the aesthetics of non-Western theater and Hollywood. Focus on one regional tradition (African, Asian, Middle Eastern) each time the course is offered. May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.

• CMLT-C 310 Literature and Film (3 cr.) R: C205 or 3 credit hours of literature. Analysis of the processes and problems involved in turning a literary work (novel, play, or poem) into a screenplay and then into a film. Close study of literary and film techniques and short exercises in adaptation.

• CMLT-X 491 Individual Studies in Film and Literature (1-3 cr.) P: Consent of chairperson of film committee. I Sem., II Sem., SS. May be repeated once with different topics for a maximum of 6 credit hours in X491 and C490.

• CMLT-C 492 Comedy in Film and Literature (3 cr.) Evolution, styles, and techniques of film comedy in America and Europe from the beginnings of cinema to the present. Theories of comedy and humor; relationship of film comedy to comedy in fiction, drama, pantomime, circus, and vaudeville. Work of leading film comedians.

Individual Studies

• CMLT-X 490 Individual Readings in Comparative Literature (1-6 cr.) P: Consent of chairperson. I Sem., II Sem., SS. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credit hours in X490 and C495.

• CMLT-C 496 Foreign Study in Comparative Literature (3-8 cr.) P: Consent of chairperson. May not be repeated for credit.

• CMLT-C 499 Studies for Honors (2-6 cr.) P: Consent of the director of undergraduate studies. Independent reading and research in conjunction with an advanced course in comparative literature or an honors paper or project. I Sem., II Sem., SS. May be repeated for a maximum of 12 credit hours.