printer friendly pageCOMPLIT 40Q: Aesthetics of Dissent: the Case of Islamic Iran (INTNLREL 71Q)
Censorship, Borges tells us, is the mother of metaphors. The Islamic regime in Iran censors all aethetic production in the country. But Iranian dissident artists, from film-makers and fiction writers to composers in a thriving under-ground musical scene, have cleverly found ways to fight these draconian measures. They have developed an impressive body of work that is as sophisticated in style as it is rich in its discourse of democracy and dissent. The purpose of the seminar is to understand the aesthetic tropes of dissent in Iran, and the social and theological roots of rules of censorship. Masterpieces of post-revolutionary film, fiction, and music will be discussed in the context of tumultuous history of dissent in Islamic Iran.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 2
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Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
Instructors:
Milani, A. (PI)
COMPLIT 101: What is Comparative Literature?
How critics and authors from different eras and different parts of the globe have considered how literature, as a traditional cultural form, can or cannot, help to sustain societies faced with concrete historical crises such as war, revolution, and colonization. How the aesthetic work of verbal art has been seen to offer the possibility of continuity in the face of change. What, if anything, can be continued? How does art perhaps aid in accommodating change?
Terms: Aut
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Units: 5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
Instructors:
Saldivar, J. (PI)
COMPLIT 112: Oscar Wilde and the French Decadents (COMPLIT 312, FRENCH 112, FRENCH 312)
Close reading of Oscar Wilde's work together with major texts and authors of 19th-century French Decadence, including Symbolism, l'art pour l'art, and early Modernism. Points of contact between Wilde and avant-garde Paris salons; provocative, creative intersections between (homo)erotic and aesthetic styles, transgression; literary and cultural developments from Baudelaire to Mallarmé, Huysmans, Flaubert, Rachilde, Lorrain, and Proust compared with Wilde¿s Salomé, Picture of Dorian Gray, and critical writings; relevant historical and philosophical contexts. All readings in English; all student levels welcome.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Instructors:
Dierkes-Thrun, P. (PI)
COMPLIT 121: Poems, Poetry, Worlds: The Origins, Evolution, and Migration of the Ghazal
An exploration of the origins, evolution, and migration of one of the world's great poetic genres, the ghazal (short lyric poem, usually on love). Starting with a discussion of the origins of the genre in the late pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods in Arabic and Persian, then moving to an examination of the evolution of the genre in the early medieval Islamic period in those languages, and the subsequent emergence of the ghazal in the related literatures of Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu. Consideration of European translations of ghazals in the 18th and 19th centuries, the effect of these translations on contemporary European poetry, and the migration of the genre into English in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
Instructors:
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
COMPLIT 125: Past Desire Made Present: The Traditions of Erotic Poetry in Medieval Iran and Europe
Aims to make present and accessible, to our early 21st-century experience, convergences and differences between medieval Persian and medieval European love poetry. Poetry will be dealt with as a discursive and institutional means through which it is possible to make present and tangible that which is absent -- both in space and time. If we accept that medieval Persian and European love poetry conjured up moods of homo- and heteroerotic desire for contemporary audiences, then this desire can also become present for us today through a close reading of those same texts.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
Instructors:
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
;
Gumbrecht, J. (PI)
COMPLIT 126B: Mind Games: Reading and Seeing the World
The world's increased fusion of images, visual arts and personal narratives challenges our minds and can make us feel utterly confused, excited, or even manipulated. Exploring these "mind games" can help us understand human needs, political acts, social realities as well as the workings of our own brain. Can images act as words? Can words act as images? Can photography tell stories? What is a modern tale? And why does it matter? This course studies visual and textual examples of how a particular fusion of elements can provoke particular emotions and actions. We will study examples of texts that cross language, logic and time and tell stories ranging from ecological tragedies to travels across continents, cities or extraordinary experiences. For example, this class will see how form intersects with autobiography, memory and reality. By studying these ways of "reading" and "seeing" the world in the texts for the class we will be asking ourselves if we can recognize the social question they pose and why we feel as we feel when we see them or read them. The texts for the course include novels, films, poems and visual texts by Angel Jovè, Anne Carson, Julio Llamazares, Yoko Tawada, Horacio Castellanos Moya, W.G. Sebald and Abdelkebir Khatibi, among others. We will access several historical contexts and cultures, primarily in 20th and 21st century with a focus on post-WWII and post-1980s globalization.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Instructors:
Ramos, V. (PI)
COMPLIT 141A: The Meaning of Arabic Literature: a seminar investigation into the nebulous concept of adab
An investigation into the concept of literature in mediaeval Arabic. Was there a mediaeval Arabic way of thinking? We look to develop a translation for the word "adab," a concept that dominated mediaeval Arabic intellectual culture, and is related in some ways to what we mean today when we use the word literature. Our core text is a literary anthology from the 900s in Iraq and we try, together, to work out what literature meant for the author and his contemporaries. Readings, assignments and, class discussion all in English.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter (ABCD/NP)
Instructors:
Key, A. (PI)
COMPLIT 194: Independent Research
(Staff)
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
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Units: 1-5
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Repeatable for credit
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Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Instructors:
Bender, J. (PI)
;
Berman, R. (PI)
;
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
;
Cohen, M. (PI)
...
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Berman, R. (PI)
;
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
;
Cohen, M. (PI)
...
more instructors for COMPLIT 194 »
Instructors:
Bender, J. (PI)
;
Berman, R. (PI)
;
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
;
Cohen, M. (PI)
;
Dierkes-Thrun, P. (PI)
;
Eshel, A. (PI)
;
Greene, R. (PI)
;
Greenleaf, M. (PI)
;
Gumbrecht, J. (PI)
;
Key, A. (PI)
;
Lee, H. (PI)
;
Moretti, F. (PI)
;
Mudimbe-Boyi, E. (PI)
;
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)
;
Parker, P. (PI)
;
Richardson, B. (PI)
;
Saldivar, J. (PI)
;
Saldivar, R. (PI)
;
Wang, B. (PI)
Berman, R. (PI)
;
Brookshaw, D. (PI)
;
Cohen, M. (PI)
;
Dierkes-Thrun, P. (PI)
;
Eshel, A. (PI)
;
Greene, R. (PI)
;
Greenleaf, M. (PI)
;
Gumbrecht, J. (PI)
;
Key, A. (PI)
;
Lee, H. (PI)
;
Moretti, F. (PI)
;
Mudimbe-Boyi, E. (PI)
;
Palumbo-Liu, D. (PI)
;
Parker, P. (PI)
;
Richardson, B. (PI)
;
Saldivar, J. (PI)
;
Saldivar, R. (PI)
;
Wang, B. (PI)
COMPLIT 213A: Martin Heidegger (COMPLIT 313A, GERMAN 282, GERMAN 382)
Working through the most systematically important texts by Martin Heidegger and their historical moments and challenges, starting with
Being and Time (1927), but emphasizing his philosophical production after World War II. The philological and historical understanding of the texts function as a condition for the laying open of their systematic provocations within our own (early 21st-century) situations. Satisfies the capstone seminar requirement for the major tracks in Philosophy and Literature. Taught in English.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 3-5
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UG Reqs: GER:DBHum
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Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Instructors:
Gumbrecht, J. (PI)
COMPLIT 245: Introductory Ottoman Turkish
Course is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Aims to familiarize students with Ottoman Turkish script and develop competence in reading Ottoman Turkish texts in print. Selected readings will range from poetry to prose, from newspaper and journal articles to reference works.
Terms: Aut
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Units: 1-3
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Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit
Instructors:
Richardson, B. (PI)
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