Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

As a discipline, World Literature dates back to the early 19 th century and Goethe’s concept of weltliteratur. Yet, despite the fact that Goethe was well-versed in the literature of the “Orient” and emphasized their centrality in weltliteratur, the languages that he spoke of and underlined within the formation of this literature were mostly German and Romance languages. Institutionally speaking, not much has changed over the past couple of centuries. More often than not, studying the literature of locations such as the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia takes place in Area Studies departments, and offerings of these areas’ literatures even in Comparative Literature departments are few and far in between.

This course looks at a sample of texts that might be studied within the rubric of World Literature in an English department. We will examine foundational genres in English literary studies, such as epic and lyric poetry and free verse, dramatic literature, and the novel, and study variations of these genres in other literary traditions. Given that we’re reading many of the texts in translation, the issue of translating literary texts into English is a central component of our discussion. Specifically, we will think about the role that translation plays in the production and politics of World Literature and how the issue of translation differentiates between the disciplines of Comparative Literature and World Literature. We will also study adaptations of and artistic responses to canonical works. Some questions we will tackle include: What/where/whom constitutes the world in World Literature? Traditionally, why have some types of writing and inscription been privileged over others when determining the category of literature? How do we read similarities and differences in the texts while placing them in their particular contexts and histories?

TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
Instructor: Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
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3 points

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ENGL BC3204

WHAT'S YOUR STORY ANYWAY? - TRAUMA RESIS

CREATIVE WRITING ON TRAUM

R 10:10 a.m.-noon
Instructor: Maria D Hinojosa
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3 points

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ENGL BC3208

LATINX AND THE ICE/PRISON INDUSTRIAL COM

JOURNALISM: LATINX&ICE/PR

R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Maria D Hinojosa
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4 points

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ENGL BC3214

VICTORIAN SCIENCE&SCIFI

Although Victorian fiction is best known today for its realist commitment to representing the world “as it really is,” especially in genres such as the courtship novel and the Bildungsroman, Victorian novelists also wrote during an age of enthusiastic scientific inquiry that questioned and revised the very fabric of the reality that realist genres purported to represent. This course will accordingly explore the more adventurous and speculative fiction of the Victorian period that was most closely attuned to these new ways of representing and thinking about reality. How did new scientific developments such as evolutionary theory in biology, and the atomic theory in physics, reshape how writers viewed the relationships between human and animal, self and other, space and time, body and mind? How did departing from traditional realist modes enable Victorian science fiction writers to explore the ethical, social, and political implications of scientific theories in ways that scientific prose may not have envisioned? In this course we will read major works of Victorian fiction, by such authors as Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others, alongside selections of scientific prose in such fields of Victorian science as biology, physics, mathematics, anthropology, and psychology. Throughout the course, we will understand “science” to include both major developments in the history of science, such as the emergence of evolutionary thought, as well as more eccentric Victorian areas of inquiry, such as phrenology, mesmerism, telepathy, and degeneration. The first three units into which the course is divided each explore a major field of Victorian science alongside a major conceptual category that it challenged and altered: biology and the nature of the human; psychology and the constitution of the self; the physical sciences and the nature of space and time. In each unit, we will investigate how writers’ engagements with these conceptual questions led them to experiment with literary categories such as character, narration, and plot. The course will close with a unit on texts that more broadly address Victorian conceptions of progress, technology, and development. In addition to these specific thematic and formal questions, we will think broadly about how the Victorians understood the value of science and technology in relation to the arts and to literature, and ask what their answers to these questions can offer us as we navigate similar questions today. Wh