Undergraduate courses in Comparative Literature

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. The problem of performance including the performance of gender through the plays of Shakespeare. In-class performances by students of scenes from plays. The history of theatrical performance. Sources include filmed versions of plays, and readings on the history of gender, gender performance, and transvestite theater. GER:DB-Hum, EC-Gender

3 units, Spr (Parker, P)

COMPLIT 11Q. Shakespeare, Playing, Gender

(S,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender. Topics: transvestism inside and outside the theater, medical and other discussions of sex changes from female to male, hermaphrodites, and fascination with the monstrous. GER:DB-Hum, EC-Gender

3 units, Win (Parker, P)

COMPLIT 21N. First Person Singular

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. How first person narrative has been used across Western literature from antiquity to the present, in works including nonfictional autobiography, records of travel and testimonial, novels, and lyric poetry. Nonfictional readings may include Augustine, Rousseau, Cook, Equiano, and Freud; novels by Montesquieu, Mary Shelley, Conrad, and Levi; and poems by Rimbaud and Rilke. The use of the first-person in online media. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Spr (Cohen, M)

COMPLIT 41Q. Ethnicity and Literature

(S,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. What is meant by ethnic literature? How is ethnic writing different from non-ethnic writing, or is there such a thing as either? How does ethnicity as an analytic perspective affect the way literature is read by ethnic peoples? Articles and works of fiction; films on ethnic literature and cultural politics. How ethnic literature represents the nexus of social, historical, political, and personal issues. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

3-5 units, Aut (Palumbo-Liu, D)

COMPLIT 54N. Reading in Common

(F,Sem) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. The personal and social functions of literary narrative. How do works of literature serve as ways for people to communicate with each other? Are fiction readers part of a broad, transhistorical community of readers? How does that membership shape the way authors write their own life stories? Writers include: Ruth Ozeki, Ondaatje, Calvino, and Gordimer.

5 units, Spr (Palumbo-Liu, D)

COMPLIT 61Q. Culture and Conflict in Contemporary Europe

(S,Sem) (Same as GERGEN 61Q.) Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to sophomores. Transformation of European culture and identity in the wake of the Cold War, European unification, and the post 9/11 environment. Pressures on transatlantic relationships; anti-Americanism; tensions around national cultural identity due to regional integration and globalization; immigration and the European experience of multiculturalism; and flashpoints of conflict concerning religion, secularization, and antisemitism.

3-5 units, Spr (Berman, R)

COMPLIT 101. What is Literature?

How do scholars distinguish literary texts from other written genres such as history, philosophy, journalism, memoirs, biographies, lyrics, graffiti, or billboards? Who decides what is literature? What are the boundaries between literary and nonliterary texts. To what extent do literary texts offer a moral or political message? What are the aesthetic effects of literary as opposed to nonliterary texts? Sources include various genres, texts, and interpretive theories and methodologies. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Aut (Palumbo-Liu, D)

COMPLIT 115. Nabokov in the Transnational Context

(Same as COMPLIT 215, SLAVGEN 156, SLAVGEN 256.) Nabakov's techniques of migration and camouflage as he inhabits the literary and historical contexts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, America, and Switzerland. His early and late stories, last Russian novel The Gift, Lolita (the novel and screenplay), and Pale Fire. Readings in English.GER:DB-Hum

3-4 units, Spr (Greenleaf, M)

COMPLIT 119. Dostoevsky and His Times

(Same as COMPLIT 219, SLAVGEN 151, SLAVGEN 251.) Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Major works in English translation with reference to related developments in Russian and European culture, literary criticism, and intellectual history. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Frank, J)

COMPLIT 121. Poems, Poetry, Worlds: An Introductory Course

What is poetry? How does it speak in many voices to questions of history, society, and personal experience? Why does it matter? The reading and interpretation of poetry in crosscultural comparison as experience, invention, form, sound, knowledge, and part of the world. Readings include: medieval to modern poetry of western Europe and the Americas; contemporary poetry of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the U.S.; and present-day experimental digital, sound, and visual poetry. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Aut (Greene, R)

COMPLIT 122. Literature as Performance

(Same as FRENGEN 122.) Theater as performance and as literature. The historical tension between performance and sexuality in the Western tradition since Greek antiquity. Non-European forms and conventions of performance and theatricality. The modern competition between theater and other forms of performance and media such as sports, film, and television. Sources include: classical Japanese theater; ancient Greek tragedy and comedy; medieval theater in interaction with Christian rituals and its countercultural horizons; the classical age of European theater including Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Molière. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Win (Gumbrecht, H)

COMPLIT 123. The Novel, The World

(Same as ENGLISH 184.) Combining perspectives of the novels of the world as anthropological force with the sense of reality, and as protean form that has reshaped the literary universe. Readings from: ancient Greece; medieval Japan and Britain; and early modern Spain, China, and Britain; romantic theories of the novel; 19th-century realism and popular fiction; modernist experiments; and postmodern pastiches.

5 units, Spr (Moretti, F)

COMPLIT 125A. The Gothic Novel

(Same as ENGLISH 125A.) The Gothic novel and its relatives from its invention by Walpole in The Castle of Otranto of 1764. Readings include: Northanger Abbey, The Italian, The Monk, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and Dracula. What defines the Gothic as it evolves from one specific novel to a mode that makes its way into a range of fictional types? GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Win (Bender, J)

COMPLIT 127A. Short Stories from the Arab World

Comparative analysis of short stories from the Arab world, especially N. Africa. The depiction of the fantastic, political satire, language hybridism, and genre fusion; Arab prose between European translation and anticolonial nationalism. Critical accounts of the Arab nahda (renaissance) and its importance for literary renovation, the impact of pan-Arab sentiment on literary production, and the status of the French language in N. Africa. Readings in French and Arabic original or in English translation. GER:DB-Hum

4-5 units, Aut (Ellis, M)

COMPLIT 141. Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean

(Same as FRENLIT 133.) Major African and Caribbean writers. Issues raised in literary works which reflect changing aspects of the societies and cultures of Francophone Africa and the French Caribbean. Topics include colonization and change, quest for identity, tradition and modernity, and new roles and status for women. Readings in fiction and poetry. Authors include Laye Camara, Mariama Ba, and Joseph Zobel. In French. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 126 or consent of instructor. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

4 units, Spr (Boyi, E)

COMPLIT 142. The Literature of the Americas

(Same as ENGLISH 172E.) The intellectual and aesthetic problems of inter-American literature conceived as an entirety. Emphasis is on continuities and crises relevant to N., Central, and S. American literatures. Issues such as the encounters between world views, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, 20th-century avant gardes, and distinctive modern episodes such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, magical realism, and Noigandres in comparative perspective. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

5 units, Win (Greene, R)

COMPLIT 146. The Literature of Worldliness

Literary texts concerned with the mastery of social forms and codes of conduct. The cultural institution of le monde as it develops in modern France and England. Focus is on novels whose predominant subject matter is the initiation of individuals into the techniques and practices necessary to enhance their social position. The literature of worldliness is the literature of being together, a tradition which explores the constitutive role of others in the formation of the self. Authors include Saint-Simon, Jane Austen, Frances Burney, Stendhal, and Proust. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Aut (Moore, C)

COMPLIT 148. Introduction to Asian American Cultures

Preference to Asian American Studies and CSRE majors. Asian American cultural production (film, drama, poetry, fiction, music) in sociohistorical context. Topics include ethnicity, race, class, and gender, and the political economy of ethnic culture in the U.S. GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul

3-5 units, Win (Staff)

COMPLIT 149. What is Nobel Literature? Reading, Assessing, and Interpreting the Nobel Novels on the World Stage

Recent Nobel laureates in literature: Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Kenzaburo Oe, and V.S. Naipaul. These writers come from different locations, yet each participates in a global conversation about the human condition. The impact of their identities upon their thought and writing. How the Nobel prize is awarded. The role of literature in the world, and analytical skills for reading literary texts. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom

5 units, Sum (Palumbo-Liu, D)

COMPLIT 151. Theories of Poetic Life

The Western tradition of the poetic life and the notion that it is a realm of its own beyond the oppositions of the individual and the political, the exemplar and the species, the sensual and the spiritual. Intermittently described as vitality, eros, inspiration, or power, it cannot be reduced to any of those, but is articulated at their intersections. Authors such as Plato, Ovid, Petrarch, Kleist, Nietzsche, and Benjamin. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Klinger, F)

COMPLIT 181. Philosophy and Literature

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Anderson, L; Vermeule, B)

COMPLIT 189A. Honors Research

Senior honors students enroll for 5 units in Winter while writing the honors thesis, and may enroll in 189B for 2 units in Spring while revising the thesis. Prerequisite: DLCL 189.

5 units, Win (Staff)

COMPLIT 189B. Honors Research

Open to juniors with consent of adviser while drafting honors proposal. Open to senior honors students while revising honors thesis. Prerequisites for seniors: 189A, DLCL 189.

2 units, Spr (Staff)

COMPLIT 194. Independent Research

1-5 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)

COMPLIT 198. Digital Humanities Workshop

(Same as HUMNTIES 198W.) Post-print models of research and scholarship in humanities fields. Toolkits being employed in such work from wikis to interactive media to virtual worlds; and theories and practices in the digital humanities field. Focus is on student projects.

4 units, Spr (Schnapp, J)

COMPLIT 199. Senior Seminar: Pleasures of Reading

Required of Comparative Literature seniors; others by consent of instructor. Different paradigms for the kind of enjoyment readers get from literature: entertainment, instruction; ideological comfort, critical distance; inspiration and incitation to their own creativity. Works read may include Aristotle, Hegel, and Brecht on tragedy; Longinus and Burke on the sublime; Roland Barthes S/Z; sonnets by Mallarmé and Eliot's Wasteland; Cixous on écriture féminine; Bakthin's book on Rabelais and carnival, and Rabelais and the French fabliaux; Adorno on kitsch and literature of entertainment; Benjamin's essay on The Storyteller; Janice Radway's Reading the Romance. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Win (Cohen, M)

COMPLIT 211. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre: French Existentialism in the Post-World War II Period

(Same as FRENGEN 211.) Philosophical and literary works of two of the most widely read and canonized authors of the mid-20th century. The texts and times of French existentialism, and changing relationships to this tradition. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of French. GER:DB-Hum

3-5 units, Win (Gumbrecht, H)

COMPLIT 223. Courtly Love in Classical Persian Poetry

Classical Persian poems addressing secular and religious journeys in search of truth, happiness, and the heroic life. Texts include Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, Rumi's Masnavi, Attar's Conference of the Birds, and Gorgani's Vis and Ramin. All texts in English translation. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Aut (Davis, R)

COMPLIT 233. Baroque and Neobaroque

(Same as ENGLISH 233, SPANLIT 293E.) The literary, cultural, and political implications of the 17th-century phenomenon formed in response to the conditions of the 16th century including humanism, absolutism, and early capitalism, and dispersed through Europe, the Americas, and Asia. If the Baroque is a universal code of this period, how do its vehicles, such as tragic drama, Ciceronian prose, and metaphysical poetry, converse with one another? The neobaroque as a complex reaction to the remains of the baroque in Latin American cultures, with attention to the mode in recent Brazilian literary theory and Mexican poetry.

5 units, Win (Greene, R)

COMPLIT 246A. Literature and Film of Modern Iran

Iran's social structures, political system, cultural tendencies, and modern artistic culture.

3-5 units, Spr (Shamel, M)

COMPLIT 247A. Borderland Identities and Cultural Hybridity between Europe and America

A comparison of texts by Afro-German, Turkish-German, and Austrian women of color with texts by U.S. Latina and African American writers in light of critical paradigms from Chicana theory. Themes include home, identity, community, and nation. The international dialogue of women of color and the cultural specificities of Europeans of color. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Win (Fellner, A)

COMPLIT 248. Afghanistan: Literature and History

Sources include poetry, short stories, novels, film, and secondary sources.

3-5 units, Aut (Shamel, M)

COMPLIT 248A. CSI Vienna: American Culture in Austria since 1980

The cultural transfer of American popular culture including recent work on globalization, cultural history, cultural studies, visual culture theory, and the performative turn in cultural theory. Focus is on American cultural impact on Austria, including the transfer of musical idioms such as the blues and Bob Dylan, television shows such as CSI, road movies, and consumer goods as symbols of American everyday life. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Spr (Fellner, A)

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Alphabetical Index

Bulletin Archive

Undergraduate courses in Comparative Literature