Arts, Sciences, and Engineering Modern Languages & Cultures - Comparative Literature
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-144817 CLTR 200-1 Topics in Critical Thinking: What a Way to Make a Living: Literary Representations of Labor and the Laborer Spring 2023 4.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
MW 1150 1305 Lechase Room 181 01/11/2023 05/06/2023
Enrollment: Enrolled     
9 		Capacity     
15
Instructors: Elizabeth Weber
Description: This course draws its content from literary and theoretical works about labor and laborers (by various definitions!) spanning a number of different countries and traditions from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Our readings are roughly organized by theme, with each theme introduced in theoretical readings to provide basic concepts and vocabulary for analysis, followed by literary examples. Our major themes are: carceral labor; proletarian labor under capitalism; othering, intersections, and migrant labor; and “women’s work.” Minor themes include dehumanization or identity in relation to labor, as well as the role (real or symbolic) of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in conversations about labor. Many of our readings will speak to more than one of these themes. Assignments will focus on close analysis of texts and on the craft of writing argumentative essays. CLT 200 fulfills the departmental upper-level writing requirement and is required for the major.
Offered: Fall Spring
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-123540 CLTR 200-1 Topics in Critical Thinking: The Antihero Spring 2022 4.0 Closed
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
TR 1815 1930 Lattimore Room 401 01/12/2022 05/07/2022
Enrollment: Enrolled     
16 		Capacity     
15
Instructors: Robert Doran
Restrictions: Instructor Permission
Description: This course examines the figure of the antihero in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, in particular how it represents a paradoxical type of individualism: at once an exalted form of social exclusion and a debased form of life, bereft of agency and power. We will study how writers use the antihero to subvert and reevaluate traditional moral categories and social conventions. Readings include the following novellas and short stories: Gogol’s "The Overcoat" (1842), Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864) Flaubert’s "A Simple Heart" (1877), Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886), Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915), Sartre’s Nausea (1938), Camus’s The Stranger (1942), Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (1947). Critical works will be studied alongside literary texts. Non-majors should request permission before registering.
Offered: Fall Spring
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-154052 CLTR 200-1 Topics in Critical Thinking: Fairy Tales Fall 2023 4.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
TR 940 1055 Lattimore Room 401 08/30/2023 12/22/2023
Enrollment: Enrolled     
0 		Capacity     
15
Instructors: Lisa Cerami
Description: This course will investigate the transmission and transmutation of a selection of classic fairy tales across history, media, and the globe. We will also explore some theoretical approaches to fairy tales from different traditions, to think about the relationships between peoples, nations, languages and folktales. We will also explore adaptions and translations of tales, from oral to written traditions and to studio animation and graphic adaptation. Collections / works by the Grimms, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Sellers, Charles Perrualt, Antoine Galland, Lotte Reiniger, Studio Ghibli, Disney, and others. Assignments will focus on close analysis of texts and on the craft of writing argumentative essays. CLTR 200 fulfills the departmental upper-level writing. requirement and is required for the major.
Offered: Fall Spring
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-134876 CLTR 200-1 Topics in Critical Thinking: Counterculture Fall 2022 4.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
MW 1400 1515 Meliora Room 209 08/31/2022 12/22/2022
Enrollment: Enrolled     
12 		Capacity     
15
Instructors: Margarita Safariants
Restrictions: Instructor Permission
Description: What is counterculture? What is its relationship to the established norms and mores of society? Do alternative and underground cultural movements always exist in opposition to mainstream society, or are they able to complement, collaborate with, and illuminate established cultural traditions while forging new directions in artistic expression and human experience? What, if anything, can be made of the many instances in which alternative and mainstream cultures symbiotically overlap and ideologically resonate? This course will examine a series of literary and cinematic texts alongside selections from popular music and visual art that frame countercultural movements from a variety of sociopolitical and ideological perspectives. Course texts include Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Summer, and Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” among others. Assignments will focus on close analysis of texts and on the craft of writing argumentative essays. CLT 200 fulfills the departmental upper-level writing requirement and is required for the major.
Offered: Fall Spring
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-116501 CLTR 200-1 Topics in Critical Thinking: The Monster Next Door Fall 2021 4.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
MW 1025 1140 Frederick Douglass Room 420 08/25/2021 12/17/2021
Enrollment: Enrolled     
12 		Capacity     
14
Instructors: John Givens
Restrictions: Instructor Permission
Description: Students will engage the topic of horror as it is expressed across cultures and historical contexts, reading theories and typologies of horror before delving into the rich genealogy of frightening tales from such locales as the United States, Japan, Russia, the Caribbean, Korea, and Spain. The course offers students the opportunity to analyze horror fiction in addition to films, comics, the theater, and other media. Along the way we will meet ghouls, goblins, ghosts, devils, demons, and other unsavory types. Students will gain a sophisticated understanding of the horror genre itself as well as its dynamic relationship to the milieu from which its themes emerge. We will utilize horror tropes to index issues of social concern including war and warfare, ethnic and racial strife, and gender and socioeconomic inequalities. We will also workshop the close analysis of texts and objects via short, carefully-crafted argumentative essays. CLTR 200 fulfills departmental upper level writing and is required for the major.
Offered: Fall Spring