LIT 295 - Special Topics in Literature in Translation

FDR: HL
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.
Credits: 3 credits in Fall or Winter; 4 credits in Spring

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.

Winter 2017, LIT 295B-01: Displacement, Home, and the Immigrant Experience in Francophone, Hispanic, and Romanian Novel and Film. (3). Taught in English. Prerequisite: Completion of FW requirement. An incursion into the aesthetic of exile, displacement, and loss in narrative works by Francophone writers such as Assia Djebar, Maryse Conde, Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Marjorie Agosin, and Matei Visniec, and in the cinematographic works of some of the most acclaimed post-communist film directors from the Romanian Nouvelle Vague such as Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, and Corneliu Porumboiu. At the core of the course are questions regarding the ways in which contemporary art deals artistically with the experience of immigration, political violence, the loss of country and home, and the need to belong. (HL) Radulescu.

Fall 2016, LIT 295A-01: Germanic Heroes and Arthurian Legends (3). Prerequisite: Completion of the FDR FW requirement. The German Middle ages gave us beautiful courtly love poetry, a blossoming of Arthurian legends, and the larger than life Nibelungen heroes. Readings include the amorous, playful and sometimes naughty Minnesang, Wolfram’s epic of the Grail Parzival, Gottfried’s tragic love story Tristan and Isolde and the German national epic Song of the Nibelungen. We also trace the late Medieval origins of the Faust legend and view the early years of the Reformation through the lens of Martin Luther and of the shoemaker-poet Hans Sachs. (HL) Crockett.