First-Year Courses in Comparative LiteratureConsult the new Course Guide at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/cg_subjectlist/0,2030,8,00.html?show=20&termArray=f_04_1510&cgtype=ug This page was created at 1:01 PM on Wed, May 5, 2004. Fall Academic Term, 2004 (September 7 - December 23)COMPLIT 122. Writing World Literatures.
Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. To translate means to carry across; it implies a bridging of domains (linguistic, ethnic, national, historical, cultural, personal, etc.) and a fluency in each. Beginning with a focus on language, we will address the question of what it means to be fluent in a culture or society. From there we will expand our conceptions of fluency and translation to incorporate questions of form, perspective, value, and meaning. We will take up some of the following questions: What kinds of translation do we do every day? What does it mean to translate a story or a message or information from one place or time to another? From one medium to another? From one person to another? Are there things that simply cannot be translated, that inevitably "get lost in translation"? If so, what are the implications of this for our understanding of our own culture or other cultures? As we consider these questions--and the many others that are sure to arise in our discussions--in the context of specific narratives, we will connect the problem of translation to the task of writing. Because there are no exact matches between words of different languages, a translator must constantly make choices. These choices add up to a kind of interpretation of the text. In producing a new text, the translator combines the critical and the creative and becomes in a sense the text's most intimate reader. Thus, in this course, we will be both critical and creative as we become intimate with texts and attempt to build bridges across languages and cultures. Through reflection upon these texts as models of thinking, speaking, and writing we will strive to improve our own analytic and communicative skills and become more self-conscious about how the ways in which we write (and think and speak) affect both ourselves and others.
COMPLIT 122. Writing World Literatures.
Section 001.Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. To translate means to carry across; it implies a bridging of domains (linguistic, ethnic, national, historical, cultural, personal, etc.) and a fluency in each. Beginning with a focus on language, we will address the question of what it means to be fluent in a culture or society. From there we will expand our conceptions of fluency and translation to incorporate questions of form, perspective, value, and meaning. We will take up some of the following questions: What kinds of translation do we do every day? What does it mean to translate a story or a message or information from one place or time to another? From one medium to another? From one person to another? Are there things that simply cannot be translated, that inevitably "get lost in translation"? If so, what are the implications of this for our understanding of our own culture or other cultures? As we consider these questions--and the many others that are sure to arise in our discussions--in the context of specific narratives, we will connect the problem of translation to the task of writing. Because there are no exact matches between words of different languages, a translator must constantly make choices. These choices add up to a kind of interpretation of the text. In producing a new text, the translator combines the critical and the creative and becomes in a sense the text's most intimate reader. Thus, in this course, we will be both critical and creative as we become intimate with texts and attempt to build bridges across languages and cultures. Through reflection upon these texts as models of thinking, speaking, and writing we will strive to improve our own analytic and communicative skills and become more self-conscious about how the ways in which we write (and think and speak) affect both ourselves and others.
COMPLIT 122. Writing World Literatures.
Section 002.Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. To translate means to carry across; it implies a bridging of domains (linguistic, ethnic, national, historical, cultural, personal, etc.) and a fluency in each. Beginning with a focus on language, we will address the question of what it means to be fluent in a culture or society. From there we will expand our conceptions of fluency and translation to incorporate questions of form, perspective, value, and meaning. We will take up some of the following questions: What kinds of translation do we do every day? What does it mean to translate a story or a message or information from one place or time to another? From one medium to another? From one person to another? Are there things that simply cannot be translated, that inevitably "get lost in translation"? If so, what are the implications of this for our understanding of our own culture or other cultures? As we consider these questions--and the many others that are sure to arise in our discussions--in the context of specific narratives, we will connect the problem of translation to the task of writing. Because there are no exact matches between words of different languages, a translator must constantly make choices. These choices add up to a kind of interpretation of the text. In producing a new text, the translator combines the critical and the creative and becomes in a sense the text's most intimate reader. Thus, in this course, we will be both critical and creative as we become intimate with texts and attempt to build bridges across languages and cultures. Through reflection upon these texts as models of thinking, speaking, and writing we will strive to improve our own analytic and communicative skills and become more self-conscious about how the ways in which we write (and think and speak) affect both ourselves and others.
COMPLIT 122. Writing World Literatures.Section 003.Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. To translate means to carry across; it implies a bridging of domains (linguistic, ethnic, national, historical, cultural, personal, etc.) and a fluency in each. Beginning with a focus on language, we will address the question of what it means to be fluent in a culture or society. From there we will expand our conceptions of fluency and translation to incorporate questions of form, perspective, value, and meaning. We will take up some of the following questions: What kinds of translation do we do every day? What does it mean to translate a story or a message or information from one place or time to another? From one medium to another? From one person to another? Are there things that simply cannot be translated, that inevitably "get lost in translation"? If so, what are the implications of this for our understanding of our own culture or other cultures? As we consider these questions--and the many others that are sure to arise in our discussions--in the context of specific narratives, we will connect the problem of translation to the task of writing. Because there are no exact matches between words of different languages, a translator must constantly make choices. These choices add up to a kind of interpretation of the text. In producing a new text, the translator combines the critical and the creative and becomes in a sense the text's most intimate reader. Thus, in this course, we will be both critical and creative as we become intimate with texts and attempt to build bridges across languages and cultures. Through reflection upon these texts as models of thinking, speaking, and writing we will strive to improve our own analytic and communicative skills and become more self-conscious about how the ways in which we write (and think and speak) affect both ourselves and others.
COMPLIT 140. First-Year Literary Seminar.Section 001 — Living Past.Instructor(s): Catherine Brown (mcbrown@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit for a maximum of 6 credits. First-Year Seminar Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. It's an insult in this country these days to tell someone she or he is "living in the past." We of course want to live in the present, to be here, now. But isn't the past here, now, too? Doesn't the past live in the present? In this course, we will think about the ways in which the past lives in the present, and the ways in which present-living people from various periods and cultures have tried to live with the past. We'll think about politics, trauma, memory, and time travel. Readings may include a poem about a mysteriously incorrupt dead body (St. Erkenwald), a double memoir about an Indian anthropologist doing fieldwork in Egypt and searching for a 12th-century slave, a case study of an odd man haunted by a bad dream (Freud's "Wolfman"), a novel about time travel (The Doomsday Book). We'll also see a film or two, and do some fieldwork. Who cares about the past? We do.
COMPLIT 140. First-Year Literary Seminar.Section 002 — Making and Breaking Rules.Instructor(s): Katherine Kong (kkong@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3). (HU). May be repeated for credit for a maximum of 6 credits. First-Year Seminar Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. What is a rule? What does it mean to follow a rule? Is following a rule an act of obedience, an act of submission to authority, a way of participating in a particular community or group and therefore constitutive of identity? Can it be a strategy, a necessary means of survival? In this course, we will read texts and watch films that provide rules and represent cultures governed by rules. Our goal will be to interrogate the forms taken by regulation in various periods, and try to understand the appeal and seduction of rules — for readers, for writers, for societies. We will consider why and how rules are written and read: to be followed and broken; to organize social and moral life; to enable positions to be taken in relation to a larger group or identity. We will also consider topical shifts in regulating texts through the centuries, culminating in a modern culture that boasts a thriving industry in self-help and how-to books. Through a close study of biblical passages, monastic rules, courtly texts, and modern literary and cinematic works, we will examine how rules, in addition to organizing social life, create conditions for obedience and transgression, and are employed as a trope in a variety of texts to explore and satirize, even as they communicate and legislate, cultural mores. Texts will include: selections from Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Romans; The Benedictine Rule; Ovid, The Art of Love; Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love; Tristan and Isolde; Eco, The Name of the Rose, and Haft, The Key to The Name of the Rose; Cortázar, Hopscotch; Foucault, selected writings. Films will include Braveheart and The Name of the Rose.
COMPLIT 240. Introduction to Comparative Literature.
Section 001 — GREEK MYTH IN MODERN LITERATURE AND CINEMA.Instructor(s): Vassilios Lambropoulos (vlambrop@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Description: This course surveys the uses of Greek myth in modern plays, novels, and movies that remove the stories from their original setting and take them to different lands and periods. The goal is to examine the overlap among myth, literature, and cinema. The books and the movies have neither columns nor monsters but they show how fate can still turn us all into passionate, skeptical Greeks. By following the travels and transformations of mythical figures (such as Orpheus, Oedipus, Antigone, Medea, Agamemnon, and Electra) through the centuries the course introduces students to the comparative study of literature across different cultures, languages, and genres. Format: One lecture and two discussions each week. There are no prerequisites. Assignments: Students will be required to participate regularly and actively in class discussions (25%), take a midterm (25%) and a comprehensive final (25%), and write a 7-page paper analyzing a novel/film/play/opera of their choice that is not included in the syllabus. Textbook: P. Mayerson: Classical Mythology in Literature, Art, and Music Literary texts listed in the syllabus are available in several translations, editions, and compilations. Students are free to access them from any source that is affordable and convenient to them.
COMPLIT 260. Europe and Its Others.
Section 001 — Women Writing Africa: Interculturality and the Fragmentation of Identity West African Literature. Meets with HONORS 251.002.Instructor(s): Frieda Ekotto (ekotto@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (3). (HU). May not be repeated for credit.
Credits: (3). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Taught in English. Mariama Ba's text So Long A Letter has been read again and again as a text that marks the first generation of West African women writers. This course studies new female voices from West Africa. We will examine aesthetic shifts in women's literature as pursuits of political engagement. In particular, we will study the emergence of new female subjects in the selected texts. We will read narratives that dramatize and interrogate intercultural identity through the action of characters who must constantly negotiate their identity. At the core of this course are the effects of interculturality — that state of altered identity which finds its roots in the historical, geographic, and cultural ruptures of colonialism.
Consult the new Course Guide at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/cg_subjectlist/0,2030,8,00.html?show=20&termArray=f_04_1510&cgtype=ug This page was created at 1:01 PM on Wed, May 5, 2004.
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