undergraduate courses
CANNIBALS! ENCOUNTERS IN WORLD LITERATURE
(CMLIT 010: INTRODUCTION TO WORLD Literature) (survey course)
This course explores World Literature as a body of texts (category) and as a way of reading (method). It maps the global "flows" of literature by following one specific figure: the cannibal, both real and imagined (or, feared). Students will learn how fears of cannibals and cannibalism become a way of talking about the encounter with the unknown as well as to critically reflect on one’s own culture. Moving into the twentieth century, they will also learn how the figure of the cannibal serves as a means for writers to think about cultural exchange, respond to European representations of non-Europeans, and describe their own processes of artistic production.
Image: Theodor de Bry from Great Voyages (1594)
CRIME AND DETECTION IN WORLD LITERATURE
(CMLIT 131) (survey course)
This course studies the origins and development of crime and detective literature from an international and comparative perspective. Its focus is on the history of the idea of crime and its relationship to literary form. The semester begins with an overview of the origins of the detective genre in the 19th century and its development through the twentieth century. The second unit explores the ways in which crime narratives serve as a mode of social critique. The final unit of the course covers more recent detective and crime fiction, analyzing the genre as it moves into the twenty-first century. Questions addressed include reigning myths about law and order; the rise of urban societies and mass culture; the construction of the detective as a literary figure; the witness, the criminal, and the victim as models of subjectivity; issues of gender and sexual violence; and the nature of justice in the modern world.
Image: The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un crimen), dir. Luis Buñuel (1955)
HUMAN RIGHTS AND WORLD LITERATURE
(CMLIT 143) (Survey course)
This course examines the relationship between global cultural production and human rights. It asks not just “what are human rights?” but also: “how does literature—particularly as it responds to human rights violations—shape, deepen, and complicate our understanding of human rights?” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written shortly after the founding of the United Nations and in the wake of World War II, is the starting point from which we will explore responses to the legacies of the Holocaust, military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, genocide in Rwanda, and the detention and torture of prisoners in the Global War on Terror. Materials are drawn from a range of story-telling forms, including: the graphic novel, the memoir, the novel, long-form journalism, photography, and film.
Image: Marcelo Brodsky, “Class Photo, 1967” from Buena Memoria (1996)
Ethics, Justice, and Rights in World Literature
(CMLIT 455) (Advanced Seminar)
This course explores the intersections of literature and what Martha Nussbaum called the “public imagination.” Literature asks us to (imaginatively) concern ourselves with the lives of others and thereby inflects our ideas about policy, law, and justice. It is therefore central to how we comprehend, articulate, and disseminate ideas of rights, justice, and ethics in the world. The semester begins with a unit on crime narratives, where stories about law-breaking raise the question of what (or, who) determines what constitutes a crime and, from there, what will rate as justice. The second unit turns attention to the “human” in human rights: who and what counts as human? What happens when that which is designated as “non-human” claims the rights preserved for the human? The final weeks focus on the limits of our empathetic imagination, foregrounding narratives that explore our ability (or, inability) to comprehend and relay stories that are not our own.
Image: Ex Machina, dir. Alex Garland (2015)
Writing the Twenty-First Century: Past, Present, and (Speculative) Futures
(CMLIT 489: Contemporary World Fiction) (Advanced Seminar)
This course is a survey of contemporary world fiction; that is, of works published since the turn of this century which aim to describe or convey something about the present moment. The semester unfolds in three overlapping parts: first, we will look at the shifting relationship between novel and place, as writers explore different ways to convey the lived experience of the current global disposition. Second, we will look at recent experiments with historical fiction as a means to reevaluate social and political dynamics in the present. And, finally, we will look at the uses contemporary writers are making of established genres such as self-help, the fantastic, and science fiction. Readings include works by Ha Seong-nan, Valeria Luiselli, Ahmed Saadawi, Teju Cole, Yaa Gyasi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Laila Lalami, Mohsin Hamid, Karen Russell, and Mariana Enríquez, amongst others.
Image: Kiluanji Kia Henda, “A City Called Mirage” (2013)
THE CITY: FORM AND FUNCTION
(GLIS 400: SEMINAR IN GLOBAL AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES) (Capstone)
This interdisciplinary course offers a wide-ranging exploration of the city as a key site in global and international studies. Topics include: theories that influenced the discourses of urban planning in the twentieth century; the power dynamics that shaped cities in colonial and postcolonial Africa; current issues in city planning in the Global South, including new cities and informal settlements (so-called “slums”); as well as migration and the making of multicultural and “global” cities. Course materials are drawn from urban studies, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political theory, literature, and cultural studies.
Image: “Dome over Manhattan,” rendering by F. Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao (1960)