LIT 295 - Special Topics in Literature in Translation


FDR: HL
Credits: 3-4


Prerequisites: Completion of FW requirement. A selected topic focusing on a particular author, genre, motif or period in translation. The specific topic is determined by the interests of the individual instructor. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Spring 2018, LIT 295-01: Switzerland's Postwar Literary Masters: Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. Novels, short stories, dramas and essays from Switzerland's two greatest postwar authors—works that were both a source of national pride and also often embarrassment for the Swiss Confederation.  Frisch and Dürrenmatt were their nation's staunch supporters and tireless critics, a paradox formed from the attitudes toward the elusive concept of patriotism that these friends and literary rivals held.  Distrust of ideology, loss of identity, the nature of justice and honor, culpability for the Holocaust and communal responsibility for society's ills are shared concerns and are topics for reflection and analysis in the course. (HL) Crockett.

Spring 2018, LIT 295-02: Nomads: Migration and Displacement in Middle Eastern Cultures (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. Starting from the mythical figures of the Arab Bedouin and the Wandering Jew, the readings explore their modern renditions in Middle Eastern texts and films. We discuss themes such as migration, exile and cosmopolitanism, gendered nomadism, ecology and settlement, colonial anxieties and aftermaths, Orientalism, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and nomadic forms of reading and writing. (HL) Alon.

Spring 2018, LIT 295-03: Vampires, Spirits and Other Friendly Creatures. An incursion into East European Prose, Theater and Film (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. An exploration of the fantastic and the supernatural in several works of literature, theater, and film by East European writers and film makers. The course deconstructs Western projections of vampiric presences and other such supernatural creatures onto East European cultures and focuses on several works of literature and film from Eastern Europe and about Eastern Europe. Weekly film screenings. Assignments vary from reaction essays to research papers to creative writing and performances. (HL) Radulescu.

Winter 2018, LIT 295-01: Hidden Figures: Arab Women Writers, Genres and Forms (3). Prerequisite: Completion of the FDR writing requirement (FW). This course examines literary works of women writers in the Arabic literary tradition. In the Western world, Arab women's fiction is often read in order to gain insight into the social and political questions facing women in various Arab societies - the metaphorical drawing of the veil from the face of the Arab woman. We follow this mode of inquiry to some extent, and we also consider our eagerness to draw back this veil in the first place. While paying attention to literary themes, poetics, rhetoric, and literary forms, we examine the roles women came to fulfill in Arabic literary culture, the narrative and poetic forms they have adopted in their writing in different periods, and the way these reflect on gender dynamics in the Middle East. (HL). Alon.




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