Spring 2006 Curriculum:

TRANSLATION WORKSHOPS

Specialized workshops training students to translate usually from foreign languages to English. Scheduled instruction in French, Spanish and German. Rosemary Arrojo, Marilyn Gaddis Rose and Neil Christian Pages. (Students interested in other languages should speak with the director Rosemary Arrojo.) See descriptions below:

TRIP 572/COLI 472/572/FREN 572/GERM 472/LA&C 480A /PIC 612B/ SPAN 582 LITERARY WORKSHOP

This is a creative writing workshop in which students meet weekly with their instructor and work on texts of their choice. Texts should be of moderate length, e.g. a novelette, a long one-act play, a poem cycle. Students are strongly encouraged to look for materials that have not yet been translated and to seek formal permission from publishers. Arrojo, TR 11:40-1:05

TRIP 573/COLI 473/573/FREN 573/GERM 473/LA&C 480B/PIC 612C/

SPAN 583 NON-LITERARY WORKSHOP

This workshop develops a routine of translation practice organized by language pairs. Students are expected to work at a professional pace, with an average of 1,000 words per week. Arrojo, TR 11:40-1:05

Other required activities: Both literary and non-literary translators are required to participate in three 1 hour seminars conducted by R. Arrojo (times and dates TBA), in which they will be expected to discuss reading assignments in connection with their practical experience. Both literary and non-literary translators will be required to briefly discuss a chosen topic in our final meeting (May 4).

TRIP 580B/COLI 580B/LING 439T/PIC 612H TRANSLATION AND IDEOLOGY

An examination of the main consequences of postmodern textual theories for a reflection on translation. On the basis of a deconstruction of traditional notions associated with the so-called "original" and the translator's invisibility, the seminar will address interfaces such as the following: translation and postcolonial studies, translation and gender, and translation and psychoanalysis. (Undergraduates interested in enrolling should meet with the instructor first.) Arrojo, TR 11:40-1:05

TRIP 580C/COLI 580C INTRO. TO COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANSLATION TOOLS

Practical introduction to computer-assisted translation and terminology management tools. This course will present a variety of computer tools for translators, including both Web-based applications and software specially designed for translation and terminology management. There will be an initial presentation of basic concepts in terminology management and documentation, as well as an introduction to translation project management. The course is not language-specific; the skills will be useful for various disciplines. Arrojo, M 2:00-5:00

TRIP 707 FOREIGN READING PROFICIENCY

Course designed to enable graduate students to acquire a foreign language as a research tool. Targets acquisitions of reading knowledge by going directly to actual texts. Grammar and pronunciation essentials built into reading materials. (Available to undergraduates through Comparative Literature). Scheduled instruction in French and Spanish. Arrojo, Gaddis Rose; days and times TBA

COORDINATED CURRICULUM

COLI 535V LATIN AMERICAN FICTION AND TRANSLATION

Will study and translate parts of three much-heralded Latin American, still untranslated novels written in the last five years: Roberto Bolano (Chile), 2666; Laura Restrepo (Columbia), Delerio; and Jorge Volpi (Mexico), El Fin de la Locura. In addition to the theme of translation, the course will investigate the political, social and aesthetic aspirations of Latin America's most recent fictions.

Prerequisites: Strong knowledge of Spanish necessary. Levinson, W 4:40-7:40

MASS 581V TRANSLATION IN COMMUNITY SETTINGS

This class is geared to the study of translation in real life settings, such as health clinics, the law courts, people interpreting for family members, community and political organizations, and the documents they use or generate for the community. We will discuss what it means to live in a multilingual nation, where language and linguistic ability are politically charged issues, having economic and social consequences and sometimes involving questions of survival. The class will combine theory and practice. We will take stock of current literature on ethics of interpreting, the politics of translation, and relevant theoretical work on language. We will also think through practical questions of translation in a workshop setting. Students will be invited to pursue a project, either translating or (for those who do not translate) how translation is accomplished in community settings. The class is open to all, including monolingual and multilingual students, students who translate informally or professionally, students of linguistics, and students of the philosophy of language. Price, M 4:00-8:50

COLI 512I IN TRANSIT: 21st CENTURY REMAPPINGS AND EXCHANGES

At the beginning of the 21st century we find cinematic representations of Africa in Iceland. New Vietnamese cinema crosses Senegal and the Milky Way. Shanghai, Beirut and Lagos are encountered as linked cities in proximity to exotic triangulations that confabulate the marrying of Buddha. Beauty may reign supreme, but can it be recognized? Recent African and Asian visual productions, literatures and theorizings that drift away from continental thinking to peripheries and centers that remap exchanges of capital, culture, power and identities are the focus of the class. Our points of departure include Abderrahmane Sissako's Life on Earth, Trinh Min-Ha's Night Passage, Isaac Julien's True North, Yong Soon Min and Allan de Souza's Xen: Migration, Labor, and Identity. Allen, M 3:30-6:30

COLI 512L LAUGHING AT LOVE, SEX AND MARRIAGE

This course will focus on how a variety of Renaissance writers transformed the topics of love, sex and marriage into sources of laughter. After an overview of the moralistic views on these topics, we will examine Renaissance theories of the comic. We will then read novellas, plays and poems that play with and poke fun at what were deadly serious subjects of discussion and writing. Among the authors to be read are Rabelais, Marot, Brantme, Marguerite de Navarre and Jodelle. We will conclude by discussing the relevance of Renaissance comic visions of these institutions to contemporary comic texts' views on these topics. Readings and discussions in French; two papers, two in-class exams, oral presentation and active class participation. Non-majors and graduate students may write their papers in English, if their programs permit this option.

Prerequisites: FREN 361 and/or 362 plus one advanced level language course, or permission of the instructor. Polachek, MW 4:40-6:05

COLI 517S THE AFRICAN NOVEL

Explores the development of the novel in Africa, both historically and thematically. On one hand, traces formal growth of genre, beginning with its emergence from oral narrative traditions of the continent, through its attachment to certain European trends and techniques, to its present achievement in blending various traditions (African and non-African) in articulation of key problems in contemporary African socio-political life. On the other hand, examines some of the key concerns that have engaged one generation of writers after another: e.g., confrontation with European presence, critique of post-colonial leadership, apartheid and the place of women in African society. Okpewho, TR 11:40-1:05

COLI 531E TRANSNATIONAL MODERNISM II

The second seminar in a sequence of two on transnational modernism will explore concepts of avant-gardism and the way in which these concepts have been deployed to historicize and interpret 20th century art and literature. We will begin with an overview of key theorists before considering in more detail the different movements, constructivism, futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Bauhaus and the political contexts in which the artistic vanguard developed: the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the subsequent consolidation of the European dictatorships. Furthermore, we will ask, is there a usefulness of the term of the avant-garde today, given the involvement of the avant-garde with totalitarian systems, the disappointment of modern political utopias, and the development of mass culture and its global market? What could be defining features of a new avant-garde as collective practice in the 21st century, e.g., disruptive technology, switching off the publicity machine, diasporic performance? Writers, artist and critics will include Marinetti, Kokoschka, Ivan Goll, R. Hlsenbeck, Breton, Duchamp, Djuna Barnes, Hannah Hch, Beuys, Brger, Greenberg, Adorno.

Required work for undergraduates: response papers and final take-home examination; for graduates: oral presentation and one substantial final paper. Brinker Gabler, T 1:15-4:15

COLI 531P AFRICAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE/POETRY AND JAZZ

Traces the parallel development of two art forms that enable us to explore African-American history by way of its cultural achievements. Students read poems, hear songs and music (in CDs and tapes) and watch videos that trace the growth of black poetry and jazz through key moments of black history. Aims to understand the intersection of artistic forms as they reflect the social and political climates around them. Special attention given to the contributions of African-American women to these art forms, as well as the growing phenomenon of "jazz poetry." Students are encouraged to shape and articulate their individual as well as group responses to the poetry and the music. Okpewho, TR 4:25-5:50

COLI 535L LATIN AMERICAN COLONIAL LIT

Begins with a brief survey of pre-Hispanic literatures and then examines some of the major chronicles of discovery and colonization. Also considers the epic account of the confrontation between Spanish culture and conquest and the heroic defense of Native American independence and traditions. Concludes with an in-depth examination of Sor Juana's lyric poetry, theater and spirited defense of women's intellectual rights.

Lecture and discussion; student participation essential. Midterm and a final examination, a final research paper and in-class presentations.

Prerequisites: SPAN 344 and SPAN 360 or 370. Major authors to be read in depth include de las Casas, de Ercilla, de la Vega and de la Cruz. OConnor, TR 2:50-4:15

COLI 535N RADICAL POLITICS

This seminar focuses on a politics of resistance with a strong anarchist bent. We will explore collectivism in the face of fragmentation, criminalization, racist heterosexualism and racist sexism within the colonial legacy of modernity. It is the resistant understandings and the praxical theoretical disposition that will characterize the work as radical. The guiding question: Can we shift from a praxical radical politics that emphasizes mass movement against domination to more dispersed, fragile, heterogeneous, multi-voiced, multi-gendered, poli-logical, sexually and communicatively complex transformations of collective engagements? Lugones, W 6:00-9:00

COLI 541Y YEATS AND VALERY

Reading W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) and Paul Valery (1871-1945) as the apotheosis of High Modernism, while linking them to the poets they inherited (e.g., Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud), paralleled (e.g., Rilke, Eliot, Stevens), and transmitted (e.g., Beckett, Saint-Jean Perse, Heaney). Projects welcomed on contemporaries from other languages, e.g., Lorca, Pessoa, Tsvetaeva. Gaddis Rose, M 1:10-4:10

EDUC 501 CRUCIAL ISSUES IN EDUCATION

Interdisciplinary framework for the study of contemporary educational problems. Analysis and criticism of current issues, uncovering historical, sociological, philosophical and economic foundations. Special attention to cultural diversity, educational equity and institutionalized forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. Stedman, T 4:25-7:00; Paley, M 4:40-7:10

EDUC 529 RHETORICAL GRAMMAR

Rethinking of English grammar from primarily a structural perspective. How words, phrases, clauses, sentences are formed; rhetorical implications of grammatical choices; wide range of grammatical forms and structures; work with figures in a study of style. Common sense, lively approach to grammar designed to solidify students' experiences with grammar and renew confidence in writing and speaking. Especially useful for students in a writing-intensive discipline or in English education. Burch, T 4:25-7:00

EDUC 603 THEORIES OF LEARNING/INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

Exploration of the psychological and epistemological foundations of curriculum and instruction, the relationship between learning and cognitive development, and the role of historical and conceptual analysis in the design of school subjects. Students are expected to apply learning theory to instructional design and pedagogical practice. Schmittau, M 4:40-7:10

EDUC 680R CULTURAL POLITICS OF POSTCOLONIAL EDUCATION

Working with the idea of culture as a contested terrain, the intent in this course is to cultivate a U.S.-based and global perspective on education as a site of struggle, whereby cultural meanings, forms and practices are constituted, transmitted, resisted and transformed in institutional, community and other contexts. Major 20th century options for analyzing cultural politics will be applied to a study of the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, gender and geographical location with historical and contemporary power structures, as they impact and are impacted by formal and informal educational processes. Chaudhry, T 4:25-7:00

ENG 511B MEDIEVAL COLONIALISMS

Postcolonial theory, which is based almost entirely on modern cultures and modern global politics, seldom addresses the culture and activities of Europe before 1492. This course will investigate the formation of colonizing discourses and desires in late medieval European culture. We will consider the orientalizing constructions of the crusades and crusade literature, as well as the development of extensive trade routes and the circulation of travel literature. We will read extensively in modern theory and in a variety of medieval texts (historical narratives, historiography, romances, etc.). Desmond, T 6:00-9:00

ENG 560A EARLY MODERN DRAMA

The great plays of Shakespeares contemporaries. The course highlights social and ethical issues, particularly family formation, womens place and the legitimacy of the social order and of various kinds of knowledge. The roots of Renaissance drama are examined in several Miracle (or Bible) plays and the great medieval morality play, Everyman. These form a basis for reading Marlowes Dr. Faustus, which explores traditional Christian morality against an intoxicating sense of the worlds virtually limitless possibilities. Issues of sexual license and libertinism are explored in Marstons The Dutch Courtesan and Chapmans Bussy DAmbois. Class divisions are hilariously burlesqued in Beaumonts Knight of the Burning Pestle. The Witch of Edmonton and The Changeling are powerful tragedies that both interrogate and challenge womens place in an ordered society.

I am a proponent of student-based learning as a social as well as an intellectual process. To that end, I attempt to foster a supportive classroom environment that facilitates the development of critical thinking skills among a community of learners. For this reason, this course in early-modern drama features team-led events (TLE) and a team project. Each student joins a self-chosen team on a play or plays. The team is responsible for creatively constructing the TLE to facilitate the active learning and participation of the entire class (25%). This joint effort leads to a scholarly team project essay of 21 pages total (seven pages per person, assuming teams of three) (25%). There will be one take-home comparative essay exam of nine pages worth (35%). The final 15% of the course grade will be at my discretion and includes my evaluation of the helpfulness of each students contributions to peer evaluations and the learning of others. Tricomi, TR 10:05-11:30

ENG 561G CONTEMPORARY FICTION

This course looks at imaginations of nations in contemporary novels written in and about several different countries, including the United States. The novels in the course represent and critique national identities and the effects of nationalism more generally, often through narratives focused on the creation or destruction of families and homes. The traditional (heterosexual) romance plot reflects on idealized national qualities, and its collapse or corruption opens out on a critique of the nation. Revisions suggest that home could be redefined in transnational, global, cosmopolitan forms.

Students will write a short paper and a longer research paper and participate in a group presentation. Texts will include Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49; Morrison, Paradise; Barrett, Voyage of the Narwhal; Erdrich, Master Butchers Singing Club; Selvadurai, Funny Boy; Adichie, Purple Hibiscus, and several essays on e-reserve. Strehle, MW 2:20-3:45

ENG 566T IMPERIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL FICTION

In this course the students will read a number of British novels that deal centrally or marginally with issues of imperialism and colonialism and a number of 20th-century postcolonial novels. Possible novels of the first group: DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe; Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; Rudyard Kipling's Kim; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Rider Haggard King Solomon's Mines; Joyce Cary's Mr. Johnson; George Orwell's Burmese Days; Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Possible novels of the second group: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Ngugi wa Tiongo, Devil on the Cross; Ama Ata Aidoo, Sister Killjoy; Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children; Zadie Smith, White Teeth. The critical orientation towards these novels will rely on postcolonial theory in general with a particular emphasis on Edward Said work, particularly 1) his ideas, articulated in Culture and Imperialism, about the voyage in; and 2) about "contrapuntal reading."

The student will be required to write a short (4-5 pp.) midterm paper and a long (15-20 pp.) on a topic that emerges from classroom discussion. Spanos, TR 2:50-4:15

ENG 593S MINORITY LITERATURE AND THEORY

Narrating the social world from the perspective of the oppressed, practicing cross-cultural communication, experimenting with narrative form and praxis, contesting ideologies of domination, theorizing the relationship between narrativity, experience and knowledge just a few of the defining issues still pertinent to the study of U.S. minority literature in the theoretical humanities today. In recent years, the longstanding attention in minority literary studies to questions of social resistance and justice has found re-articulation in its encounter with the much-celebrated postmodern critiques of identity politics, narrativity and knowledge. This rearticulation has had many manifestations, generating new possibilities as well as limitations for the understanding of the production and reception of American minority literature. Drawing on a diverse body of critical social, literary and political theory, this course will foreground approaches to ethnic American and queer literature. Literary texts discussed may include the following: James Baldwin's Just Above My Head, Gwendolyn Brooks's In the Mecca, Denise Chavez's Face of an Angel, Hart Crane's The Bridge, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, Assata Shakur's Assata, R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the Rs. Martinez, F 8:30-11:30

ENG 593T WRITING RESISTANCE

This course focuses on contemporary American approaches to resisting status-quo assumptions about race (including critiques of whiteness), class, gender, sexual preference and education. We will read works by Bell Hooks, Jerry Farber, Audre Lorde, Paolo Freire, Gloria Steinem, J.W. Loewen and others to explore a wide range of forms for using writing for resisting purposes. Students will both analyze the approaches we study and generate their own pieces of resistance-writing. Each student will engage in significant revision processes and generate at least 20 pages of finished prose.

Dejoy, MW 4:40-6:05

ENG 640 POETRY WORKSHOP

A workshop for writing poetry and discussing fellow students' work. Staff, M 5:50-8:50

ENG 641 FICTION WORKSHOP

A workshop for writing fiction and discussing fellow students' work. Wolven, W 5:50-8:50; Glave, R 6:00-9:00

LA&C 580G READING PORTUGUESE FOR SPANISH SPEAKERS

The purpose of this intensive introductory course in Brazilian Portuguese is to achieve literacy in the language. The course provides accelerated exposure to elementary and early intermediate language concepts. Grammar basics, extensive vocabulary and strategies for reading Portuguese are facilitated by the students' literacy in Spanish. Readings from Brazilian authors such as Clarice Lispector, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Nelson Rodrigues are the basis for brief oral written presentations. Graduate students from other disciplines will have an opportunity to present on short readings from their respective fields pertaining to Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking world.

Prerequisites: SPAN 344 or LA&C 344 or Spanish fluency and literacy. Sullivan, TR 4:25-5:50

LA&C 580T LATIN AMERICAN THEATER

Genesis of contemporary Latin American theater as it alternately reflected and individuated from European movements. The shift in technique from absurdist to Brechtian tendencies is viewed as a necessary expression of political realities inherent in the Latin American experience. A close textual analysis of scripts from the following playwrights: Cubans, Virgilio Piera and Jos Triana; Puerto Ricans, Ren Marqus and Luis Rafael Snchez; Argentinian, Griselda Gambaro; Colombian, Enrique Buenaventura; and Mexicans, Emilio Carballido. Sullivan, TR 1:15-2:40

PIC 550Q TOPICS IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

In this semester's version of this course, we will concentrate on Hegel and Marx as theorists of history. We will explore the meaning of the "dialectical" approach common to both; compare Hegel's "idealist" historical dialectic with Marx's "materialist" view, and contrast their differing treatment of the question whether world history is destined to reach a kind of pinnacle or final realization. We will closely consider to what extent violence has played an essential role in history, as both thinkers believe, and whether human progress is conceivable without such bloodshed. Grading will largely be based on papers, totally about 20 pages for the semester.

Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy. Weiss, TR 10:05-11:30

PIC 607C EPISTEMOLOGY

This is a course about knowledge and skepticism: what, if anything, do we know? It is well known that we can't know certain things. This ignorance ranges from the mundane to the profound. We will be concerned with whether this ignorance metastasizes, and if so, how do we live with it, beyond pretending that everything is fine. Some research questions are: Do we have to know that we know, in order to know? How do we know that we don't know, when we don't? The current mood in western philosophy has metaphysics ascendant; but isn't it epistemology that holds the key to all future philosophy? Dietrich, TR 6:00-7:30

PIC 608S MEDIA, HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE

The graduate seminar will provide a critical survey of the methods and themes of media history. The topics will include the history of mass media communication, especially the rise of visual culture, the study of film, photography, television and the Internet as historical sources, and the methodological challenge of reception analysis, including questions of visual literacy.

The course is open to specialists in any field of history and adjacent disciplines and offers many interdisciplinary excursions, especially into media and communication studies. Students are required to write a research paper involving media-based source material. Special efforts will be made to identify readings and essay topics that are relevant to the participants individual research interests. Kansteiner, R 2:50-5:50

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