Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 1

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE Our graduates have embarked upon a variety of career paths, in fields
including law, journalism, publishing, theater, television, film, teaching,

AND TRANSLATION STUDIES education consulting, medicine, gastronomy, public policy, international
relations and foreign policy, technology design, and international
business. They have received prestigious fellowships, such as the
320 Milbank Hall Fulbright and the Mellon-Mays, to teach and conduct research in Europe,
212-854-8312 Africa, South America, and Asia, and they have gone on to graduate
Department Assistant: Sondra Phifer study in political science, comparative literature, East Asian Studies, law,
history, film-making, creative writing, and translation and interpretation,
Mission among other subjects, in leading programs all over the world. Our
graduates work as translators, editors, journalists, writers, middle school
The Program in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at
and high school teachers, college professors, filmmakers, lawyers,
Barnard enables students to study literature across languages, historical
consultants, technology designers, and public policy advocates in the
periods, national boundaries, and cultural traditions, as well as in relation
U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia.
to other arts (such as painting, photography, theater, and film) and
other disciplines (such as philosophy, history, and anthropology). We Students who wish to learn more about the major and meet faculty
promote the intensive study of languages and require majors to work at members should attend our program planning meetings, which take place
the advanced level in two literary and cultural traditions in their original every fall and spring during the program planning meeting periods at
languages. Our teaching emphasizes close attention to language: how the College. Students can also contact the chair of the program to meet
language changes over time and space; how rhetorical devices enhance during office hours or to set up an appointment.
and inflect the meaning of what is said; how narratives tell stories and
help us make sense of the world. Resisting a homogenizing globalism,
students learn about how literary genres, ideas, and aesthetic forms
Student Learning Outcomes
travel across borders and change in doing so, and they study also diverse • The ability to discern and analyze how formal and rhetorical features
cultural practices and aesthetic forms that defy easy translatability. of language (diction, metaphor, imagery, hyperbole, litotes, rhyme,
We regard the study of poetics, the art or technique of writing, as parallelism, structures of repetition, etc.) enhance, inflect, and
fundamental for and inseparable from the study of theory, or critical and complicate seemingly straightforward processes of communication
philosophical approaches to language and discourse. We teach students in literary texts but also in non-literary discourse, e.g., psychoanalytic
the critical skills and research methods needed to perform conceptually case studies, historical narratives, philosophical writing.
precise, aesthetically sensitive, historically-informed, and culturally- • The ability to analyze literary texts and uses of language in historical
attuned analyses and interpretations of texts. periods, cultural contexts, and social systems that are different from
one’s own and that can thus help one see and re-evaluate one’s own
In this way, our program provides students with a humanistic education customary and contemporary context in productive ways.
like none other. It prepares them for the challenges, responsibilities,
• Knowledge about the dynamics of the global circulation of literary
and pleasures of understanding and acting in a complex, richly textured,
genres, aesthetic practices, and ideas through processes of
and multi-lingual world. It helps them become world citizens whose
translation and adaptation and by means of various media and
cosmopolitan outlook is not only world-wide but also world-deep.
technologies.
Core faculty members teach the required courses in Comparative • Knowledge about histories of writing practices, genres, relations
Literature and Translation Studies and provide close mentoring. Students between script and orality, logics of periodization, and ethical
have access also to a wealth of faculty expertise in Classics, French, systems in traditions and lifeworlds beyond the West.
German, English, Spanish, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Italian, • The ability to craft well-reasoned and cogent arguments
Russian, Africana Studies, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies, substantiated by careful attention to textual evidence and knowledge
among other departments and programs at Barnard. Faculty who of historical contexts.
teach and advise senior theses offer courses on topics that range from • The ability to use literary and critical theoretical approaches to
sexuality and the body in Greek tragedy to the novella from medieval analyze and interpret texts with deftness and agility, with attention to
to modern times, from studies of the novel to comparative lyric poetry what remains inevitably literary within theoretical discourse itself.
and poetics, from the writing of utopia to literature and philosophy, from
• The ability to do the above–and playfully–in relation to more
translation and theories of translation to adaptation and transmediality,
languages than one.
from global long-form photography to ecological criticism, performance
studies, and animal studies. Students who major in Comparative Program Director: Emily Sun (Tow Associate Professor of Comparative
Literature and Translation Studies are matched with an advisor or co- Literature)
advisors for specialized guidance in selecting courses and designing
a curriculum of breadth and depth. Students who minor in Translation Professors:
Studies are also matched with an advisor who guides them in choosing Peter Connor (Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French), Nancy Worman
courses most suitable for the language(s) they work on and in relation to (Classics)
particular interests (such as theater or the history of science). Students Associate Professors:
benefit also from the array of resources in language and literature Erk Grimm (German), Emily Sun (Tow Associate Professor of
departments at Columbia. We strongly encourage majors to take Comparative Literature), Hana Worthen (Comparative Literature &
advantage of study abroad opportunities to immerse themselves in the Theatre)
study of languages and cultures. Senior Lecturer:
Brian O’Keeffe (French)
Term Lecturer:
2 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

Monica Cohen (Comparative Literature, English, First-Year Seminar) translation in today’s world, and to complete a substantial translation or
translation-related project.
Requirements for the Major in The Minor in Translation Studies will not qualify students to work
Comparative Literature professionally as translators or interpreters upon graduation. The
For students who declared in Spring 2017 (and after) courses on a transcript that count toward the Minor will demonstrate
To enter the program, a student must normally have completed the that the student has acquired basic familiarity with the history and
required sequence necessary for entry into the advance literature courses principle theories of translation and interpreting, together with sufficient
of her major program. This varies from language to language; students linguistic preparedness to conduct basic practical work in translation
should consult the director. Each student, after consultation with the or interpreting. It will serve as a useful qualification for those wishing
director, chooses an adviser from one of her two fields of concentration in to enter one of the growing number of post-graduate programs that
a language. This adviser guides her in developing a sequence of courses provide further training in translation and interpreting, both areas of
appropriate for her goals in the major. significant employment growth. It will serve equally those wishing to
pursue research in the area of translation and interpreting, a burgeoning
All students are required to take the following Twelve (12) area of academic specialization. For students generally, whatever their
courses (minimum 37 credits): career goals, the Minor can be profitably combined with their major
(Anthropology, French, Political Science, German, History, etc.), enhancing
• CPLT BC3001 INTRO TO COMPARATIVE LITERATUR (3.00 s.h.) the value of their degree and making them more competitive in today’s
global job market.
• One (1) course in CPLT BC3143 TOPICS COMPARATIVE LIT (3.00 s.h.)
The Minor in Translation Studies is supervised by the Director of the
• Six (6) Courses = Three (3) courses in each of TWO distinct literary
Center for Translation Studies along with the Chair of the Program in
traditions studied in the original language
Comparative Literature. Students wishing to minor in Translation Studies
• Three (3) elective courses in literature, of which: should meet with Professor Peter Connor to discuss the choice of their
elective courses.
• One (1) pre-modern
Six (6) courses are required for the minor (minimum 18 credits):
• One (1) literary theory
1. CPLT BC3110 INTRO TO TRANSLATION STUDIES (3.00 s.h.)
• One (1) open choice
2. Two or three elective courses dealing with the history and/or theory
• CPLT BC3997 SENIOR SEMINAR IN COMP LI (4.00 s.h.) of translation, or with language from an anthropological, philosophical,
psychological, social or cultural perspective. Example courses:
Students who wish to major in Comparative Literature, but who for valid • AFRS BC3563 Translating Hispaniola (4 s.h.)
reasons wish to pursue a program at variance with the above model, should
• ANTH UN1009 INTRO TO LANGUAGE # CULTURE (3.00 s.h.)
consult the director.
• CPLT BC3200 THE VISUAL AND VERBAL ARTS (3.00 s.h.)
Important note about studying abroad • FREN BC3079 HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE (4.00 s.h.)
• FREN BC3063 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (3 s.h.)
If you plan on spending part or all of junior year abroad, plan to take
the CPLT BC3001 INTRO TO COMPARATIVE LITERATUR (3.00 s.h.) during • PHIL UN3685 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE (3.00 s.h.)
the second semester of your sophomore year. This means contacting • PSYC BC3164 PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE (4.00 s.h.)
the director of Comparative Literature program during the first semester • THTR UN3154 THEATRE TRAD GLOBAL CONTEXT (4.00 s.h.)
of your sophomore year. Indicate that you plan to be abroad one or both • THTR UN3167 DRAMATURGY (4.00 s.h.)
semesters during junior year and discuss when to take core courses.
3. One or two language-based courses at the advanced level offering
If you plan to be away for the entire junior year, discuss with the program practice in written or oral translation.
director which other courses can count toward the major when studying
abroad. You should also plan to identify advisors before your departure • For example, a student working with French:
so that you can contact them via e-mail and meet with them at the • FREN BC3014 Advanced Translation (3.00 s.h.)
beginning of your senior year. • FREN BC3054 Translation Through FIlm (3 s.h.)

If you have further questions regarding the thesis process and its parts, • For example, a student working with Spanish:
please contact the Program Director (esun@barnard.edu). • SPAN BC3376 RETHINKING SPANISH TRANSLATION (3.00 s.h.)
• SPAN UN3265 LATIN AMER LIT (IN TRANSLATN) (3.00 s.h.)

4. CPLT BC3510 ADVANCED WORKSHOP TRANSLA (4.00 s.h.)

Requirements for the Minor in Translation Note: the particular courses qualifying for the minor will vary according to
Studies the language chosen by the candidate.

The Minor in Translation Studies allows students to explore the history With permission of the director of the minor, a student may request credit
and theory of translation practices, to consider the importance of for an Independent Study involving substantial translation or interpreting
work.
 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 3

CPLT BC3108 Nazism in Performance. 4.00 points.

Explores the cultivation of national and transnational performances as a
CPLT BC3001 INTRO TO COMPARATIVE LITERATUR. 3.00 points. significant force of National Socialism, at the same time as challenging
Introduction to the study of literature from a comparative and cross- the notion of "Nazi Theatre" as monolithic formation. The core of the
disciplinary perspective. Readings will be selected to promote reflection course inquires into the dialectical analysis of artistic creations in
on such topics as the relation of literature to the other arts; nationalism diverse art genres, while working towards an understanding of the social
and literature; international literary movements; post-colonial literature; dramaturgy of such events as staging the Führer and the racialized
gender and literature; and issues of authorship, influence, originality, and body of the priveleged people. Nazism did not harbor ideologies without
intertextuality benefits for the allied nations. Thus, the dynamic performance of
Fall 2024: CPLT BC3001 transnationalism among the "brothers in arms" will be included as well,
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment in order to elucidate how works of art crossing into the Third Reich were
Number Number
reimagined, sometimes in ways challenging to the presumed values of
CPLT 3001 001/00190 T Th 1:10pm - 2:25pm Emily Sun 3.00 15/30
the state stage. Permission of instructor given at first class meeting
324 Milbank Hall
Spring 2025: CPLT BC3108
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLT BC3110 INTRO TO TRANSLATION STUDIES. 3.00 points.
Number Number
Prerequisites: Completion of the Language Requirement or equivalent.
CPLT 3108 001/00141 T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Hana Worthen 4.00 6/16
Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the 227 Milbank Hall
Western tradition, along with practical work in translating. Topics
include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and CPLT BC3120 Poetics of the Mouth. 3 points.
immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender Explores the imagery of eating, drinking, spitting, choking, sucking (and
and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers. other unmentionables) in relation to insults and excessive behaviors.
Completion of Intermediate II or equivalent in any foreign language Readings from Greek poetry (e.g., Homer, Aristophanes) to modern theory
Fall 2024: CPLT BC3110 (e.g., Kristeva, Powers of Horror, Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World), including
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment modern novels and films.
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CPLT 3110 001/00227 T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Brian O'Keeffe 3.00 20/30 CPLT BC3123 Getting Personal: Strange Companions in Cosmo Prose.
202 Milbank Hall
3.00 points.
With an emphasis on equality and social justice, this course examines
CPLT BC3000 GLOBAL LONG-FORM PHOTOGRAPHY. 4.00 points.
and compares significant 19th c./20th c. literary approaches to friendship
How have artists been informed and influenced by the natural world? This
as intermediary between individualism and communal life. Discussion
course will examine how photography and literature have responded to
of culturally formed concepts and attitudes in modern or postcolonial
nature, ecology, and the environment. We will explore how close-looking
settings. Reading of Dickens, Hesse, Woolf, Ocampo, Puig, Fugard,
might inform an artist’s practice regarding the living environment - its
Emerson, Derrida, Rawls
bounty - and its degradation. Students will study works whose makers
have seen art as a form of praise of the natural world, as well as those CPLT BC3124 UTOPIAN LITERATURE. 3.00 points.
who investigate the relationship between art and environmental activism. Oscar Wilde wrote that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia
Readings will include those by John Muir, Rachel Carson, Robin Wall is not even worth glancing at." Ernst Bloch argued that in order to see
Kimmerer, Carl Jung, Robert Macfarlane, Mary Oliver, Kerri ni Dochartaigh our own world clearly "we need the most powerful telescope, that of
and others. Particular emphasis will be placed on how photography over polished utopian consciousness." For Wislawa Szymborska, Utopia was
the past hundred years has responded to shrinking natural landscapes, an island whose highlights included "The Tree of Understanding" and
environmental destruction, and global warming. We will study in-depth "the spring called Now I Get It." Latin American thinkers grappled with
photographic essays by some of the following artists: Robert Adams; the concept, too, and Venezuelan novelist Arturo Uslar Pietri suggested
Rene Effendi; Kikuji Kawada; Dornith Doherty; Kirk Crippens and Gretchen that it was Columbus's voyages to the Americas that produced plausible
Le Maistre; Brad Tempkin; Pablo Lopez Luz; Mandy Barker; Robert space on the map for Utopia's appearance. At once political, aesthetic,
Zhoa Renhui, Masahisa Fukashe, and Meghann Riepenhoff. Students and educational, Utopia began its lexical and political life in literature
will be required to write response papers weekly, participate in weekly and has remained a feature in Transatlantic Western discourse from the
discussions, and produce a term-long photographic essay age of colonial empires to our present-day debates on human rights and
economic inequality. In this course we will read and analyze the concept
CPLT BC3107 Translating the Animal. 4.00 points.
of Utopia from Columbus and Thomas More to the advent of modem
Through readings in language philosophy, translation studies,
socialism with special attention to the themes of economic inequality,
and critical animal studies, Translating the Animal explores how
gender emancipation, and the limits of cosmopolitan sensibility. We
translation, language, and reason have historically worked together to
will also take care to look at essays and manifestoes as well as utopian
maintain speciesism, preventing human animals from perceiving their
novels, and to include Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. Readings by
commonalities with, and attunement to, sentient nonhuman beings
Spring 2025: CPLT BC3107
Tommaso Campanella, Margaret Cavendish, Madame de Stael, Friedrich
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Engels, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Number Number and Magda Portal
CPLT 3107 001/00140 W 9:00am - 10:50am Hana Worthen 4.00 9/16 Fall 2024: CPLT BC3124
227 Milbank Hall Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number
CPLT 3124 001/00226 T Th 11:40am - 12:55pm Ronald Briggs 3.00 12/16
307 Milbank Hall
4 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

CPLT BC3140 Europe Imagined: Images of the New Europe in 20th- CPLT BC3145 DERRIDA & LITERATURE. 3 points.
Century Literature. 3 points. Jacques Derrida was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th
Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, century and his impact on literary studies was enormously significant.
with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape The objective of this course is to take stock of Derrida’s contribution to
cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/ literature, and to do so by assessing the intricate relations he establishes
cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; between literature, philosophy, economic and political theory, gender
borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings studies, translation studies, postcolonial theory, and theology. The
include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, H. Boell, C. Toibin and others. course is divided into six parts. Part 1 introduces Derrida’s approach
to ‘deconstruction,’ particularly as regards his engagement with the
CPLT BC3143 TOPICS COMPARATIVE LIT. 3.00 points. fundamental concepts of Western thought and the importance he
The objective of this class is to examine a given topic and relate it to confers upon the notion of ‘writing’ itself. Part 2 examines Derrida’s
a number of literary texts. Students will examine a variety of literary autobiographical texts wherein he positions himself as a subject for
genres and to an equally wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical deconstruction, interrogating his own gender, his sense of being an
contexts organic, creaturely life-form, the relationship he has to his own language,
Spring 2025: CPLT BC3143
and the matter of his identity as French, but also as Algerian, and Jewish.
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
While the majority of the Derrida texts we will be reading are excerpts
Number Number
CPLT 3143 001/00142 T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm Monica Cohen 3.00 28/30
from larger works or short essays and interviews, in this section we will
202 Milbank Hall read a full-length text – Monolingualism of the Other – so that we can
trace Derrida’s train of thought from beginning to end. In Part 3 we will
CPLT BC3144 Stories and Storytelling: Introduction to Narrative. 3 points. use an interview conducted by Derek Attridge, “This Strange Institution
An introduction to narrative through texts that themselves foreground Called Literature,” as a template for thinking about Derrida’s relation to
acts of storytelling and thus teach us how to read them. Readings range literature, and in Part 4 we will read our second full-length text by Derrida,
across periods and cultures - from fifth-century BCE Athens to late namely Given Time 1: Counterfeit Money, an in-depth analysis of a prose
twentieth-century Brazil - and include short stories, novellas, novels, a poem by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Part 5 considers an aspect
ballad, film and a psychoanalytic case history. Texts by Conan Doyle, of Derrida’s work that reveals the extent of his embrace of provisional,
Sophocles, Melville, Hitchcock, Augustine, Coleridge, Freud, McEwan, in-between positions for thought in general, and for literary texts in
the tellers and compilers of the The Arabian Nights, Diderot, Flaubert, particular, namely translation. For deconstruction is keenly invested in
and Lispector. Emphasis on close reading and hands-on experience in words beginning with ‘trans’: transposition, transplant, trans-valuation,
analyzing texts. and indeed trans-gender. Translation provides Derrida with a scenario
whereby crossings and transits can be imagined – for literary texts,
and for identities that wish to remain un-determined by fixed poles or
normative values. The course finishes with an assessment of Derrida’s
reflections on death, mourning, and the matter of leaving a legacy. In Part
6, we therefore read more of the essay “Living On,” and also Derrida’s final
interview, “Learning to Live, Finally.” Not even Derrida could deconstruct
away the finality of death, but he did hope to live on. My corresponding
hope is that you will feel sufficiently attuned to Derrida’s thought that you
consider it important to continue his legacy – to be one of the agents of
his living on, survival or survie, a translator and transporter of his thought
towards contexts that he could not have foreseen, but which he would
doubtless have welcomed as a precious chance for his own work to be
considered differently. Taking intellectual risks, thinking otherwise, and
inventing new ways of knowing are, after all, the hallmarks of Derridean
deconstruction.

Spring 2025: CPLT BC3145

Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number
CPLT 3145 001/00143 T Th 4:10pm - 5:25pm Brian O'Keeffe 3 16/25
409 Barnard Hall

CPLT BC3158 Languages of Loss: The Poetry of Mourning. 3 points.

A study of the genre of elegy across time and cultures. Emphasis on
how poets express grief and relate to literary traditions. Comparisons of
European, Chinese, and American elegies (by Theocritus, Milton, Qu Yuan,
Holderlin, Wordsworth, Whitman, Bishop, and others) and discussions of
the relationship between singular and collective life.
 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 5

CPLT BC3160 TRAGIC BODIES. 3.00 points. CPLT BC3190 Aesthetics of the Grotesque. 3 points.
This course will focus on embodiment in ancient and modern drama This course examines the aesthetic phenomenon of the grotesque
as well as in film, television, and performance art, including plays by in its development from the late Renaissance to Postmodernism by
Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Beckett; films such as “Rosemary’s comparing major texts in a systematic fashion. The emphasis of our
Baby” and “The Limits of Control”; and performances by artists such as discussions is on the awkwardness and strangeness of a certain
Karen Finley and Marina Abromovic. We will explore the provocations, kind of prose or drama; we will therefore examine the typical modes
theatricality, and shock aesthetics of such concepts as Artaud’s “Theater of transgression and the forms of excess in literary representations
th
of Cruelty” and Kristevas powers of horror, as well as Adornos ideas about of the body in various between the 15 century and the present.
terror and the sublime The transgression may involve the human body, but writers are also
interested in the beauty or ugliness of “the beast.” While we will discuss
CPLT BC3162 NOVELLA CERVANTES TO KAFK. 3.00 points.
questions of style and linguistic performance, our main concern is the
The novella, older than the novel, painstakingly crafted, links the worlds
human imagination: how do characters, narrators and writers relate
of ideas and fiction. The readings present the novella as a genre, tracing
to the strangeness of the body and the world? How is the literary text
its progress from the 17th century to the 20th. Each text read in the
shaped by distinct aesthetic patterns? What kind of taboo subjects
comparative milieu, grants the reader access to the intellectual concerns
or problematic and ambiguous aspects of power dynamics in modern
of an era.
societies can be addressed by presenting humans and animals as
CPLT BC3164 Trees of Knowledge: Ecocriticism and World Literature. grotesque figures? Our critical discussions of outstanding examples of
3.00 points. are based on readings of major scholarly contributions to the field, in
This survey of modern and contemporary world literature deals explicitly particular the studies of internationally recognized intellectuals such as
with environmental issues as a main theme. The course is supposed M.Bakhtin, T.Todorov, J.Kristeva, and W.Kayser. You will be introduced
to serve as an introduction to the new field of “ecocriticism” in the to various historical types of the grotesque, ranging from the ornate and
Humanities and to a wide range of literary responses to current bombastic representations in Renaissance literature to the fantastic
ecological concerns and transformations of natural habitat. All texts are deformations and hybrid creatures in contemporary literature. The
available in English, though students will have the opportunity to read reading material is representative of different cultures, languages and
them in the original if they desire to do so literatures so that we can conceptualize the grotesque from a critical
Fall 2024: CPLT BC3164 and comparative perspective. Ultimately, the grotesque is seen as a
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment complicated product of social, political, and cultural conditions rather
Number Number
than merely a formal element of a literary discourse. The representation
CPLT 3164 001/00189 T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Erk Grimm 3.00 6/24
of “grotesque” settings as well as the formation of “grotesque” identities
327 Milbank Hall
will be examined by considering aspects such as gender, class, race and
CPLT BC3165 City # Country in the Comparative 19th-century Novel. 4.00 ethnicity.
points.
CPLT BC3200 THE VISUAL AND VERBAL ARTS. 3.00 points.
This seminar explores the relationship of the nineteenth-century realist
Analysis and discussion of the relation of literature to painting,
novel to urban experience and rural identity. If most novels are, in
photography, and film. Emphasis on artistic and literary concepts
Raymond Williams’s phrase, “knowable communities,” how do fictions of
concerning the visual dimension of narrative and poetic texts from Homer
the city and imaginings of the country represent individual identity as it
to Burroughs. Explores the role of description, illustration, and montage in
is shaped by physical, built environments? In this light, we will consider
realist and modern literature
questions of youth and experience, time and space, work and leisure,
men and women, landscape and portraiture, privacy and public life, CPLT BC3203 Fictions of Judgment: Austen and Kleist. 3.00 points.
national culture and cosmopolitanism, local custom and globalism. In This course investigates how works of fiction reflect on what it means
class, we will juxtapose close readings of novels with analyses of other to make moral, aesthetic, and political judgments. It focuses on works
cultural forms (translations, paintings, operas, popular entertainment, by two Romantic-era authors, Jane Austen (1775-1817) and Heinrich
maps) so that we come away with a broader sense of nineteenth- von Kleist (1777-1811), who were contemporaries of one another but
century pan-media culture and its international afterlives as well as have rarely been read together as they inhabited and wrote about vastly
a working knowledge of one of its most meaningful manifestations: different milieux. Strikingly, both have been hailed for their precise
the novel. French novelists Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert, mastery of language and form, their keen sense of irony, and their
English novelists Charles Dickens and George Eliot, the Russian novelist singularly philosophical dispositions. They wrote at a crucial time
Leo Tolstoy and the Chinese novelist Lao She (Shu Qingchun, ###) in both Western and global modernity when European philosophers
will provide case studies. Such long novels benefit from nuanced and were re-defining the very activity of judgment itself in relation to new
intensive seminar discussion in which all voices are critical understandings of reason, truth, and the conditions of knowledge. We
Fall 2024: CPLT BC3165 will read three of Austen’s six completed novels and a play, short stories,
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment a novella, and prose writings by Kleist, paying attention to philosophical
Number Number problems of self-knowledge, judgment, freedom, and autonomy in relation
CPLT 3165 001/00188 W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Monica Cohen 4.00 10/15
to historical instantiations of gender, class, and race. Besides studying
405 Barnard Hall
how these early nineteenth-century works staged processes and crises
of judgment, we will ask ourselves what lessons in judgment these works
may continue to offer us today
6 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

CPLT BC3204 Literary Worldmaking: Two Case Studies. 4.00 points. CPLT BC3510 ADVANCED WORKSHOP TRANSLA. 4.00 points.
This seminar engages students in the immersive and intensive reading Maurice Blanchot once described translators as the “hidden masters
of two masterworks of modern prose fiction: Middlemarch, published by of culture.” Indeed, though our labor and craft often go unrecognized
George Eliot (the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) in 1871-2 in England, in the age of Google Translate, translators play an essential role as
and The Story of the Stone, or the Dream of the Red Chamber, composed tastemakers, bridge-builders, advocates, and diplomats, not to mention
by Cao Xueqin (and continued by Gao E) in the late 18th-century moment the most intimate readers and re-writers of literature. In this workshop,
of Qing-dynasty China. While using devices and conventions from we will explore translation as a praxis of writing, reading, and revision.
different narrative traditions, these novels operate in the mode of realism Together, we will also interrogate translation's complex and often fraught
and do so at a monumental and panoramic scale, creating literary role in cultural production. What ethical questions does translation
worlds that reflect the realia of historical lifeworlds. Beyond representing raise? Who gets to translate, and what gets translated? What is the
aspects of empirically recognizable worlds, these novels also incorporate place of the translator in the text? What can translation teach us about
philosophical reflection on their own means of representation, on language, literature, and ourselves? Readings will include selections
their very status as fiction, on the power and limits of imaginative from translation theory, method texts, and literary translations across
worldmaking. By studying these novels as cases of literary worldmaking, genres, from poetry and prose to essay and memoir. Students will
we will take the opportunity also to reflect critically in this class on workshop original translations into English and complete brief writing
the world that emerges–and the process of worldmaking that gets and translation exercises throughout
activated–in our very experience of studying these texts together. We will Fall 2024: CPLT BC3510

consider how cosmopolitanism, as a guiding ideal of the Enlightenment Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number
and post-Enlightenment university, may be renewed by literary study
CPLT 3510 001/00187 W 11:00am - 12:50pm Jhumpa Lahiri 4.00 6/12
to help us inhabit a world of common humanity that is richer and more
306 Milbank Hall
complex than is evident in particularist localisms or a satellite-view, Spring 2025: CPLT BC3510
techno-economic globalism. Middlemarch we will read in its entirety. For Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
the sake of time, we will read, in David Hawkes’ translation, the 80-chapter Number Number
version of The Story of the Stone, or the Dream of the Red Chamber, CPLT 3510 001/00145 W 4:10pm - 6:00pm Emily Sun 4.00 4/12
attributed to Cao Xueqin, instead of the 120-chapter version, with the last 207 Milbank Hall

40 chapters attributed to Gao E. If you can and wish to read the text in
CPLT BC3551 The Arabian Nights and Its Influences. 4 points.
Chinese, please speak to Professor Sun about the option of scheduling
This course examines the enduring power of The Arabian Nights and
extra discussion sessions
some of the wide range of literary authors, genres and variations that
CPLT BC3350 IN OTHER WORDS: WORLD POETRY & it has influenced. The focus is, therefore, on this marvelous work—one
COSMOPOLITANISM. 3 points. of the earliest examples of the short story and the novel—but also on a
What is “world poetry”? This course will try to give an answer to this selection of classical and contemporary works of fiction from around
vexing question. You are being introduced to a number of influential the world that have been informed by it. In this regard, this is a class
poets who have entered a dialogue about what it means to write, read, interested in literary influence, reciprocity and exchange across time and
translate and appreciate poetry in a global context. The impact of languages.
globalization is most visible in a number of anthologies which made
considerable efforts to move beyond the existing range of national
representatives and to make an English-speaking audience familiar
with the names and works of poets who are bilingual or who write in
their native language. Throughout the semester, we will read English
translations of these poems (but feel free to read the original if you know
the language). Secondly, the global context is of great importance for
understanding each poet’s vision of the world since poets are involved in
processes of “world-making” as well as reacting to the world’s past and
present. s the semester progresses you will see that the poets are part
of a larger conversation; some themes, forms and issues we discovered
at the beginning will return in the middle or toward the end of the term.
The selection of poets is based on considerations of gender, race, age
and religious affiliation; many of the poets whose works we are going to
discuss are iconic figures; in studying other cases, you will be exposed to
new voices (for example, young South African poets) whose significance
will emerge in a critical discussion of the anthologists’ rationale and
criteria for selecting poets and marginalizing others.
 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 7

CPLT BC3552 The Arabic Novel. 4.00 points. CPLT BC3997 SENIOR SEMINAR IN COMP LI. 4.00 points.
The novel in Arabic literature has often been the place where every Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced
attempt to look within ends up involving the need to contend with or research on two central literary fields in the students major. The course
measure the self against the European, the dominant culture. This of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in
took various forms. From early moments of easy-going and confident consultation with students(s)
cosmopolitan travellers, such as Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, to later author, Spring 2025: CPLT BC3997

such as Tayeb Salih, mapping the existential fault lines between west and Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number
east. For this reason, and as well as being a modern phenomenon, the
CPLT 3997 001/00149 T 9:00am - 10:50am Emily Sun 4.00 13/15
Arabic novel has also been a tool for translation, for bridging gaps and
111 Milstein Center
exposing what al-Shidyaq—the man credited with being the father of the
modern Arabic novel, and himself a great translator—called ‘disjunction’. CPLT BC3999 INDEPENDENT RESEARCH. 1.00-4.00 points.
We will begin with his satirical, deeply inventive and erudite novel, Independent research, primarily for the senior essay, directed by a chosen
published in 1855, Leg Over Leg. It is a book with an insatiable appetite faculty adviser and with the chair's permission. The senior seminar for
for definitions and comparisons, with Words that had been lost or fell out majors writing senior essays will be taught in the Spring term
of use (the author had an abiding interest in dictionaries that anticipates Fall 2024: CPLT BC3999
Jorge Louis Borges) and with locating and often subverting moments Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
of connection and disconnection. We will then follow along a trajectory Number Number
CPLT 3999 001/00957 Linn Mehta 1.00-4.00 1/5
to the present, where we will read, in English translation, novels written
in Arabic, from Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Palestine. We will read
CPLS BC4161 TRAGIC BODIES II: SURFACES, MATERIALITIE. 4.00 points.
them chronologically, starting with Leg Over Leg (1855) and finishing with
Minor Detail, a novel that was only published last year. Obviously, this Cross-Listed Courses
does not claim to be a comprehensive survey; for that we would need
several years and even then, we would fall short. Instead, the hope is that ASCM BC3000 Outlaws # Tricksters of Arabic Literature (in Translation).
it will be a thrilling journey through some of the most facinating fiction 4.00 points.
ever written. Obviously, this does not claim to be a comprehensive survey; What is so fascinating about outlaws and tricksters? They can be alluring
for that we would need several years and even then, we would fall short. and terrifying, creative and destructive. They wear disguises, upend the
Instead, the hope is that it will be a thrilling journey through some of the plans of their fellow humans, and bend societies to their will. They are
most fascinating fiction ever written unsettled and unsettling. But this course suggests that there is no single
Spring 2025: CPLT BC3552 figure of the trickster. Rather, the significance of writing about tricksters
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment and outlaws varies from text to text and from place to place. In this
Number Number
course, we will explore texts, mostly from the pre-modern period, written
CPLT 3552 001/00147 M 2:10pm - 4:00pm Hisham Matar 4.00 14/15
in Arabic (and sometimes Persian and Sanskrit) that depict outlaws
225 Milbank Hall
and tricksters. We will ask after what texts are doing in the world when
CPLT BC3630 Theatre and Democracy. 4 points. they tell stories that seem to celebrate and delight in the subversive,
How does theatre promote democracy, and vice versa: how do concepts the strange, and the sinister. To help us think through these questions,
and modes of theatre prevent the spectators from assuming civic we will also read divergent theories about outlaws, tricksters, and other
positions both within and outside a theatrical performance? This class subversives. At the end of the course, we will read the award-winning Iraqi
explores both the promotion and the denial of democratic discourse in novel Frankenstein in Baghdad
the practices of dramatic writing and theatrical performance. CLIA GU3660 MAFIA MOVIES. 3.00 points.
Examines representations of the mafia in American and Italian film
Fall 2024: CPLT BC3630
and literature. Special attention to questions of ethnic identity and
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number immigration. Comparison of the different histories and myths of the mafia
CPLT 3630 001/00186 T 8:10am - 10:00am Hana Worthen 4 5/16 in the U.S. and Italy. Readings includes novels, historical studies, and film
501 Diana Center criticism. Limit 35

CPLT BC3675 MAD LOVE. 3.00 points. CPLS GU4152 POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE. 4.00 points.
The history of irrational love as embodied in literary and non-literary texts How is performance conceived and instrumentalized to fulfill an
throughout the Western tradition. Readings include the Bible, Greek, ideological design? How is ideology transmitted as performance?
Roman, Medieval, and modern texts Centering on National Socialism and Communism, this course explores
Spring 2025: CPLT BC3675 that and similar questions by examining the political, social, and cultural
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment performances (of Hitler and Stalin, of race and progress, of postwar
Number Number trials) in the Third Reich and the Soviet Union by engaging a broad range
CPLT 3675 001/00148 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm Alfred Mac 3.00 25/30 of primary materials (films, documentaries, plays, newsreels, mass
324 Milbank Hall Adam
spectacles, artifacts of fine art) and by reading widely in the literature of
political philosophy and performance studies
8 Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

ENGL BC3294 EXOPHONIC WOMEN. 3.00 points.

Language is the writer’s instrument; what happens when there is more
than one language to choose from, or when a dominant or initial language
is replaced by another? What inspires, or necessitates, a writer to practice
exophony: to migrate into “foreign” linguistic territory? And in the case of
bilingual or plurilingual writers, what factors determine the language(s)
chosen for creative expression, and what might cause that choice to
shift over time? To what degree do exophonic writers create a third,
hybrid language? And how might their works underscore the mutability
and instability of language itself? This seminar will focus on a series of
women who, either for political or personal reasons, have reshaped and
revised their linguistic points of reference, radically questioning—and
perhaps willfully subverting—notions of nationality, identity, linguistic
normativity, and a “mother tongue”. Special attention will be paid to the
reception of exophonic writers, to feminist narratives of separation and
self-fashioning, to mother-daughter dyads, to cases of self-translation, to
colonialist and post-colonialist frameworks, and to how the phenomenon
of exophony further complicates, but also enriches, the translator’s
task. Readings will combine literary texts with essays, interviews, and
theoretical writings by and about exophonic writers. In addition to
analytical papers, students will have the opportunity to experiment
writing in another language and translating themselves into English. All
readings will be in English; advanced reading knowledge of a foreign
language is recommended but not required
Fall 2024: ENGL BC3294
Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Number Number
ENGL 3294 001/00529 T Th 2:40pm - 3:55pm Jhumpa Lahiri 3.00 30/30
409 Barnard Hall

MDES GU4226 Arabic Literature # the Long 19th Century. 4.00 points.
What came before the Arabic novel? How did authors writing in Arabic
in the 19th century conceive of and debate the terms of modernity and
literature? The purpose of this graduate seminar is first to engage with
recent trends in scholarship on the Nahda ("Renaissance") and second
to read the entirety of three significant works of Arabic literature in
translation: al-Shidyaq's Leg Over Leg (1855), Khalil al-Khouri's Oh No! I
am Not European! (1859-61), and Jurji Zaydan's Tree of Pearls, Queen of
Egypt (1914). Knowledge of Arabic is not required, but an optional Arabic
reading group will run concurrently with the class