Fall 2021 Undergraduate Courses

*Fall 2021 course list subject to change*

Please check Albert for accurate course locations, course modes and meeting patterns.

Intructor: Prof. Seoane

This course seeks to study literary and artistic responses to the pervasive presence of drugs and drug related violence in contemporary Latin America. It is no secret that in the last 40 years the working of the narco-machine has boosted the imagination of many artists, writers and film-makers, leading to the current boom of narco-genres in a variety of mediums (narco-novelas, narco-corridos, narco-installations, and so on and so forth). Our aim will be to situate these interventions in their historical context to gain a better understanding of their cultural significance and possible political effect. In other words, we will discuss if narco-narratives and other drug-related cultural artifacts have the potential of enhancing our ability to critically assess the complex phenomenon they are reacting to. 

Note: these courses do count as core courses toward the Major or Minor

Performance of Everyday Life

Professor Fred Moten

COLIT-UA.302 / PERF-UT 206 

This course focuses in depth on “everyday” versions of performance (as opposed to theatrical or formal performances).  Drawing from anthropology, affect studies, social psychology, sociology, architecture studies, etc. the course invites students to view seemingly non-theatrical social interaction as performance, and to consider the significance of the seeming “normal” and inconsequential nature of such performances.  What happens when what is “second nature” becomes the focus of our attention?  The course will also place particular emphasis on writing as a mode of illuminating and interrogating the “everyday,” as well as considering it as performance practice in and of itself.

Sponsored by Performance Studies

Modern Chinese Fiction 

Professor Todd Foley

COLIT-UA.723.001 / EAST-UA 732 

This course will survey literature produced at various points in the tumult of modern Chinese history, from the late Qing through to the present day. While the time period will be broad, we will hope to engage in close, critical readings of significant works of fiction from a selection major authors primarily from Mainland China. How do certain concerns of modernity arise in different texts, at different times, and for different writers? What different relationships do we see being shaped between literature, life, and politics, and how does fiction negotiate certain tensions and anxieties about modern and contemporary life? By exploring a variety of engaging novels and short stories, we will hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of modern China and the role that fiction has played as both an agent of modernity and a reflection of modern Chinese life.

Sponsored by East Asian Studies

Note: these courses do NOT count as core courses toward the Major or Minor

German Intellectual Tradition: Nietzche and his Legacy

Professor Friedrich Ulfers  

COLIT-UA.244 / GERM-UA 244

The objective of the seminar is to show how Nietzsche revolutionized Western philosophy and how this transformation influenced significantly what is known as “Continental Philosophy,” which includes such figures as Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze. Particular attention will be paid to the meaning of Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead”; his declaration that the world is “Will to Power” and an “aesthetic phenomenon”; and his idea of “Eternal Recurrence.” Also discussed will be the role language plays in Nietzsche’s view on epistemology and ontology, his revaluation of morality, and his influence on the arts.

Sponsored by German

Introduction to German Theory: Introduction to Semiotics 

Professor Leif Weatherby  

COLIT-UA 249 / GERM-UA 249

It can feel today as if we are drowning in a world of signs, with digital technologies conveying unprecedented amounts of text and image all over the globe. Problems like misinformation, the politics and economy of social media, and conspiracy theories are all issues of how we make sense of the messages conveyed to us. Semiotics is the study of signs, the concrete forms these messages take. The course will visit major stations in the history of semiotics, from Augustine of Hippo to German Idealism, Karl Marx, and beyond. In modern semiotics, we will focus on the twin legacies of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce, with readings from figures like Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Rosalind Krauss, Julia Kristeva, Max Bense, Stuart Hall, Harun Farocki, and Hito Steyerl. The block seminar will be split each week between this theoretical tradition and objects to be interpreted. In addition to literary and visual art (texts by Franz Kafka, W.E.B. Du Bois and Edgar Allan Poe, Otto Neurath's Isotype language, Farockis and Steyers film and digital works) we will analyze memes, data visualization techniques, political and targeted ads, and other forms of contemporary semiotics. Students will be asked to find semiotic objects for collective analysis. The goal of the course is to gain not only an overview of the semiotic tradition, but a critical orientation in today's world of signs. 

Sponsored by German

Contemporary Lusophone Cinemas: Brazil, Portugal, Luso-Africa

Professor Jens Andermann 

COLIT-UA.300 / PORT-UA 461 

Spanning five continents and three oceans, filmmaking in Portuguese is among the most wide-spread in the world – but also the most difficult to watch, given the mutual remoteness of shooting locations and audiences, making for only a relatively small market share. Between East Timor, Mozambique, Brazil, Macau, and Portugal, no single, unified film culture exists but rather an archipelago of cinemas shot through with multiple Asian, African and Amerindian languages and cultures. And yet, film offers us an insight into this worldwide web of histories of colonization, revolution, migration and diaspora – themes that the Brazilian Cinema Novo of the 60s and 70s had already explored and that new African and Portuguese cinemas have revisited in recent years: racial and sexual difference, transnational migration, or the legacies of Empire and slavery, among others. Films studied include: Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Brazil 1971), Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, Angola 1973), Nhá Fala (My Voice, Flora Gomes, Guinea-Bissau/Cabo Verde 2002), O Herói (The Hero, Zézé Gamboa, Angola 2004), Virgem Margarida (Virgin Margarita, Licínio Azevedo, Mozambique 2012), Cavalo Dinheiro (Horse Money, Pedro Costa, Portugal 2014) and Bacurau (Kléber Mendonça Filho, Brazil 2019). The course will be taught in English but students and speakers of Portuguese will be offered additional critical readings in Portuguese.

Sponsored by Spanish & Portuguese

Asian American Literature

Professor Sukhdev Sandhu

COLIT-UA 301/SCA-UA 306.001

This overview begins with the recovery of early writings during the 1960s-1970s and proceeds to the subsequent production of Asian American writing and literary/cultural criticism up to the present. The course focuses on significant factors affecting the formation of Asian American literature and criticism, such as changing demographics of Asian American communities and the influence of ethnic, women, and gay/lesbian/bisexual studies. Included in the course is a variety of genres (poetry, plays, fiction and nonfiction, literary/cultural criticism) by writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The course explores the ways in which the writers treat issues such as racial/ethnic identity; immigration and assimilation; gender; class; sexuality; nationalism; culture and community; history and memory; and art and political engagement.

Sponsored by Social & Cultural Analysis

Traditional Drama of China and Japan 

Professor Moss Roberts

COLIT-UA.729 / EAST-UA 729 

This course compares a selection of Chinese and Japanese pre-modern dramas and explores contrasts and parallels of incident, character, plot design, and theme in the two theatrical traditions. Attention to the historical background of each work and the social conditions and customs that each reflects. The cultural salience of each work is also considered.

Sponsored by East Asian Studies

Landmarks of Modern & Contemporary Arabic Literature

Professor Nader Uthman

COLIT-UA.798-001 / MEIS-UA 708-001

Significant prose works (in translation) of the Arabic literary tradition from approximately the last hundred years are considered through the prisms of their multiple contexts— including, but not limited to the historical, social, cultural, gender, and class—and also examined as works of art.

Sponsored by Middle East & Islamic Studies

Monsters and Jewish Modernity 

Roni Henig

COLIT-UA.951 / HBRJD-UA 90 

What is a monster? How does it come into being? Why do monsters capture modern imagination and at what historical junctions do they tend to reappear? From the Golem of Prague to Frankenstein, monsters have figured the anxieties, fantasies, and distress of the societies from which they hail. Jewish modernity in particular saw the rapid reproduction of monstrous figures as allegories and metaphors for the ambivalent state of Jews vis-à-vis their surrounding societies. This course explores monstrosity as a critical framework through which we may reflect on such issues as belonging, gender, and race. By examining films, short stories, plays, essays, and pop culture, we shall consider the monstrous as it relates to “Jewish questions”, but also as a cultural figure with a life of its own that recurs across times, languages, and cultures, embodying different states of outsiderness and exception.

Sponsored by Hebrew & Judaic Studies