Foreign Literature in English Translation (FLET)

This course explores literature across national, cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries. It aims to introduce students to literary and cinematic works from a global perspective through works like fiction, plays, poems, and films from both the Western and non-Western parts of the world. Students will study how texts and their translations produce meaning and convey a variety of worldviews and values. The class will examine questions of translation, culture, class, postcolonialism, trauma, gender, ecocriticism, and others to gain an understanding of global cultural expression and how literary and cinematographic works from different cultures impact people's perspectives around the world. The class will also focus on sharpening critical thinking, literature and film analysis, and writing. All materials will be provided in English translation. C21:CC,NW.

Curriculum: CC,NW

Readings in English translation of the epics of Homer, Vergil, and other selected ancient authors. Special attention will be given to oral formulaic composition, the literary epic, the didactic epic, literary conventions and traditions, and the influence of the genre on Western literature.

Readings in English translation of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. Special attention will be given to origins and development, literary and scenic conventions, and the influence of the genre on Western literature. Offered alternate years. C21:AE,HU.

Curriculum: AE,HU

Readings in English translation of the comedies of Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, and Terence. Special attention will be given to origins and development, literary and scenic conventions, and the influence of the genre on Western literature. Offered alternate years.

Although almost all of Greek and Roman literature was written by men, many works of literature written by women have come down to us in both complete and fragmented form. These works treat or concern women in a variety of ways, sometimes as realistic figures but more often as symbols. In either case, these works offer a unique viewpoint into the ancient world through the eyes of women. This course will examine these female-authored works in classical literature from Archaic Greece to Imperial Rome and in other ancient Mediterranean, Southwest Asian and African cultures. For purposes of comparison and discussion, the social and historical realities will be considered as well. C21:AE,HU.

In the ancient world, people traveled for a variety of reasons: war and exploration, business and trade, visiting friends and family, or engaging in tourism to famous and revered sites. But how did people get from place to place and what of the accommodations along the way? What sorts of sites were important and worthy of dedicating weeks and months of travel to visit? In this course, students will answer these questions and many others through an exploration of travel in the ancient world, from technical feats of engineering, to fantastical accounts of strange peoples, to itineraries outlining the most popular tourist destinations. We will examine textual evidence in translation, such as military descriptions of Alexander the Great's army, diary entries of a Roman traveler in Greece, and accounts of early Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem. We will survey artistic and archaeological evidence for travel: the physical remains of Roman roads, ancient Greek shipwrecks, and other monuments that allow us to reconstruct ancient travel networks. We will discuss not just the methods of ancient travel, but also motivations for it, with a focus on the goods and peoples who traveled around the ancient Mediterranean.

A study of selected modern German, Austrian, and Swiss dramatic works that represent the Germanic world view. Major themes of contemporary life to be explored include war and peace, an expanding universe and human consciousness, personal and linguistic isolation, the natural environment, supply and demand, and values and meaning as exemplified in drama. Offered alternate years.

A close reading and critical study of novels and other major examples of narrative fiction with special emphasis on the works of a particular writer (for example, the novels of Thomas Mann), or place, or period (for example, Exile Literature or East German narrative fiction). Offered every three years.

This course introduces students to the history of the Holocaust and Jewish Culture in Germany and Austria. Students will examine major sites of the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, and also examine Jewish Culture prior to and after the Holocaust. Historical and literary readings will be complemented by on-site visits of monuments and museums commemorating this history. Students will also examine the general historical developments in Germany's and Austria's capital cities in the 20th century. Recommended: GERM 111.

During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), a time in which Germany faced innumerable obstacles from without and within the arts flourished to a surprising degree. This course will introduce students to the literature, film, and art of this brief, fruitful era. Students will examine works such as F.W. Murman's Nasferatu and Carl Zuckmayer's The Captain of Köpenick which reveal both the scars of World War I and the socio-political circumstances which prefigure the Nazi regime.

This course is designed for both German majors and general FLET students. We will study the content and form/techniques of ca. 13 films of the period between 1927 and the present, with a focus on the New German Cinema movement; the major directors, who are known for their exploration of and experimentation with the film medium, include Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlondorff, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Fatih Akin, Michael Haneke, and other contemporary film directors. The study and discussions of these films will introduce students to the basics of film analysis and give them an overview of an important phase in the history of modern German film, exposing them to cultural and political issues that faced Germany since the Cold War era. Offered every three years. C21:AE,HU.

Curriculum: AE,HU

This course offers a comprehensive analysis of historical and visual representations of the artificial body in German literature and film. This interdisciplinary study of western culture aims to foster a discussion of the fear and fascination inspired by technological and scientific advancements and focuses on the homunculus, android, cyborg, and other (non-)humans as they relate to concepts of technology, sexuality, and identity from the Enlightenment to the modern era. Themes and concepts to be analyzed include: definitions of the body, gender roles and creating humanoids, and contemporary discourses of technology and identity. From the literature of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, to Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927), this course will explore the role of technology and what it means to be human. Additionally, students will develop critical skills in reading, analyzing, and writing about literature and film. The brief lectures and course discussion will be supplemented by visual material (movie clips, slides) drawn from art history and documentary sources. Taught in English. Cross-taught with GERM 328. May not receive credit for both FLET 228 and GERM 328.

Germany has faced many challenges in the quarter century since the Berlin Wall fell. After the initial euphoria, Germans began to deal with the political distrust and logistical nightmare that Reunification was. This course will examine the literature, art and history of the Berlin Republic. Students will focus on the major shifts in "German" identity, this new Germany's place in Europe, and the ways Germany has confronted its recent and distant past.

This course will explore the literature of modern Japan. In particular, this course will examine the manner in which Japanese authors have responded to the challenges of the 20th century such as the construction of self, the quest for love, the role of the family, Japan's relations with the rest of the world, the wartime state, the atomic bomb and the reconstruction of postwar Japan, and colonial and postcolonial literature. The course will focus on techniques of reading and interpretation of texts. All texts are in English. C21:AE,HU,NW.

Curriculum: AE,HU,NW

This course critically explores premodern Chinese literature from ancient times to the seventeenth century. Through a close reading of the text in English translation, we will come to understand significant histories, styles, and perspectives in Chinese literature and how these aspects shape Chinese cultural traditions. Topics will include but not limited to ancient tales, poetry, drama, and schools of thoughts such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese Buddhism. No Chinese language skills are required. All lectures, discussions and assignments will be in English.

This course critically explores Chinese literature from the eighteenth century to the contemporary period. Through a close reading of the text in English translation, we will come to understand significant literary styles, themes, and histories of modern Chinese fiction, prose, and poetry. No Chinese language skills are required. All lectures, discussions, and assignments will be in English. C21:AE,HU,NW,WA.

Curriculum: AE,HU,NW,WA

This course explores the literature and cultural production of premodern Japan, covering from approximately the 8th century to the mid-19th century. In particular, this course will examine the relationship between literary writings and the religious, spiritual, and political life of premodern Japan. C21:AE,NW.

Curriculum: AE,NW

The focus of the course is on Parisian monuments, sites, and spaces that are significant in the texts we’ll read. These allude to changes to the city that occurred during the 19th century (the time covered by our novels). They include the Paris of Napoleon, 1800-1815 (monuments that honor him), but also works of urbanization (demolition of old buildings, openings of new streets, new bridges, construction of plazas and fountains, arches, catacombs, and so on). They include the return of royal symbols during the Restoration, 1815-1830 (statues, churches). But it was under the Second Empire (1851-1870) that Paris, moving toward modernity, began to take on the look with which we are familiar today. Sewers, sidewalks, markets, high schools, hospitals, and elegant residences that were meant for the bourgeois class, expressly excluded the lower classes. Finally, we will look at the 19th-century technical feats that contributed to Paris’ reputation as the capital of the world—the famous train stations and the Eiffel Tower among others. Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 344. May not receive credit for both FLET 244 and FREN 344. C21:EL.

Curriculum: EL

This FLET course will explore the ways in which novelists and film directors have imagined and represented the idea of the "other." Typically, an outsider is someone who is different (other) from the group that "we" belong to. Of course, there are various degrees of "foreignness" or "otherness, from the individual whose ethnicity, race, religion, or sexuality differs from "ours," to the foreigner whose language and customs are literally incomprehensible to us. Through the close reading of texts, we'll study the literary and filmic techniques creative artists have devised to represent the ways in which historical, cultural, and psychological circumstances have molded people's understanding of themselves in relation to others, people's paradoxical tendency to express a deep psychological need for the "other" even as they reject the "other," as well as the various ways groups have devised to recognize and respect different identities. Texts and films include such works as Aimé Césaire's A Tempest (1969, French, Martinique), François Boulay's "C.R.A.Z.Y." (2003, Film, French, Quebec), Victor Frankel's Man Search for Meaning (1959, German) Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart (2001, Japanese), Mourad Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah (2003, Arabic), John Sayles' Lone Star (1996, English), and the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan.

In this course, taught in English, we will study the development of a Caribbean identity as it is represented in literary works from Martinique. After becoming aware of the cultural and psychological damages inflicted upon native populations by colonization, several writers (such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon) rejected the assimilation demanded by the French and, instead, undertook a revalorization of Black culture in a movement called Négritude. Later generations (Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau) who at first adhered to the principles of Négritude, eventually pointed out its limitations (a risk of sclerosis) and abandoned it in favor of the concept of Carabbeanness (Antillanité). The concept is based on the notion of an identity that is open to the world and experienced in relation to other cultures. The result, Créolization, brings together diverse cultures into a new sense of self that is enriched, rather than “diluted”, by diversity. C21:EL.

Curriculum: EL

North America has a French past, the vestiges of which can be seen far and wide. The French and Francophones have marked America in place names near and far – from Montréal, QC to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from DeJarnette Park to Boise, ID. In addition, French heritage pervades Cajun cuisine, jazz music, American political structures, etc. But the question remains: how did the American experience impact France? Moreover, whatever happened to the French speaking populations of America? Where are they today? What can we learn from them? These questions, along with those related to gender, race, identity, colonization, post-colonization, and linguistic politics will be the focus of this course. The core of the curriculum will be works of literature from, and about, "French" America from the 18th century until today. We will also explore visual and material productions from New World French speakers.

This course is a study of postcolonial literature and film from Africa and the Middle East. The focus will be on recent novels and short stories from countries formerly colonized by France (such as Senegal, Guinea, Cameroon, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia,) but the course will also include material from Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestinian areas in Israel. Additionally, attention will be given to transnational contemporary literature and issues raised by migration and cultural change. Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 448. May not receive credit for both FLET 248 and FREN 448. Offered every three years.

This course will provide an introduction to the contemporary Francophone world through the literature, cinema, and culture of France and of countries formerly colonized by France. It will present the cinematographic and literary works of France and countries such as Algeria, Cameroon, Quebec, and the French Caribbean. It will highlight the diversity of what is too often vaguely named "the francophone world" but also reveals the French characteristics that can be found in each country.

This course will study how Latin American authors of the last 35 years have used the historical novel not only to demystify the "great deeds of great men" that have been central to Latin American history but also to give voice to late 20th century beliefs about history, historiography, and the pursuit of historical truth. We will take a new historicist approach to the study of the novels, considering them artifacts produced at a specific historical moment in a specific cultural context; thus, we will read the novels as representations and critiques of moments in the past and as well as commentaries on the time and place of their own production. Authors may include Posse, del Paso, Ponce de León, García Márquez, and Carpentier.

In this course we will analyze some of the best regarded Spanish books, works of literature whose influence in European letters has been crucial for their development. We will focus on the cultural context of Spain from the 16th to the 21st century. We will also pay attention to the most relevant topics and features of these works, such as the concept of "honra" ("honor"), power, family, race, gender role, representations of the body and desire; we will learn why these works are fresh, object of fascinating interpretation and, above all, fun! We will read poetry, novels, short stories, plays, and essays by essential writers from the Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, and Contemporary periods. We will learn different theories and approaches to literature, tools that will help for the analysis of literary texts in any language.

This course traces the genre of fairytales as a transcultural phenomenon, from oral tradition to film adaptation. Through the study of a large variety of French fairy tales by both female and male writers, as well as rewritings and adaptations, students will explore what makes fairytales as relevant today as they were when they were first put to paper in Early Modern France. In the process, they will also gain a greater understanding of the politics of production, gender and class at work in the making of fairy tales and analyze how these constructs are blindly accepted or questioned in modern adaptations.? Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 354. May not receive credit for both FLET 254 and FREN 354. C21:AE,HU.

This course will evaluate various elements of 20th Century Latin America Society through a regional approach to analyzing various topics such as dictatorships, drug wars, diversity, immigration, music, revolution, and more through literature, film and other media. Emphasis on comparative analysis, use of critical terms, and developing and understanding of the historical context of each work studied. Students may not receive credit for both FLET 257 and SPAN 357.

An examination of the various ways in which women (both writers and literary characters) have seen themselves and have been seen in a male-dominated society. The readings will include the works of such women as Madame de Sevigne, Madame de LaFayette, Madame de Stael, George Sand, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marguerite Duras, as well as works whose central characters are women, including Laclos' Liasons Dangereuses, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Mauriac's Therese Desqueyroux. Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 471. May not receive credit for both FLET 271 and FREN 471. Offered alternate years.

This course, open to students from all academic backgrounds, will provide an introduction to film analysis and will focus on the representation of women (as heroes, rebels, mothers, friends, lovers, madwomen, etc.) in French films of the last 40 years. The course will also examine the work of several important French women film directors. Over the course of the term, students will become familiar with distinctive aspects of French film styles, with French vs. American representations of women, and with the cultural context of the selected films. This course counts towards the gender, sexuality, and women's studies minor or major, and the film minor. Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 472. May not receive credit for both FLET 272 and FREN 472. Offered alternate years.

This course will investigate the representation of French colonization of Martinique and the Caribbean islands from the 17th to the 19th century. Through the study of memoirs dealing with buccaneers, philosophical essays on colonization, as well as a novel that tackles issues of slavery and abolitionism, students will come to understand the violence of colonization, the myths created to justify it, and the resistance and opposition to slavery and colonization that existed as early as the 18th century. During the first stage of the course, students will gain an understanding of early French colonization, where the economic, political, and religious ambitions that underlie the colonizing process are supported by the depiction of exotic islands as paradises and the notion of a European civilizing imperative. In the second stage of the course, students will learn about the dynamics of power at work in island colonies, and grasp the role played by colonial ideas of gender, race, and social class in the construction of modern-day Martinique by supplementing the course readings with excursions on the island of Martinique. Taught in English. Cross-taught with FREN 479. Students may not receive credit for both FLET 279 and FREN 479. C21:EL, AE, HU.

Curriculum: EL

These courses focus on areas of foreign literature english translation not specifically covered in the general curriculum and are designed to meet the needs of advanced students.