Course Catalog

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MIGRATION: LOCAL AND GLOBAL (CL2071)

This course considers how we as humans navigate through different spaces and languages. In the case of human migration, languages often come into contact, spurring linguistic diversity and changes to speech communities. While multilingual communities develop, multiple identities are constructed. Some societies resist this diversity; others embrace it. Decisions about policies, social justice and education come into play, affecting the migrants themselves and the societies into and through which they move. This course will address questions about language issues faced by first-generation migrants and their children, including how linguistic diversity affects access to employment, education and health care. A practical component of the course involves engaging directly with migrant communities. Two programs will be available to students enrolled in the course. One is working with students and teachers in a middle school located in an area of Grand Paris with a high proportion of immigrants. The other is a community engagement program with the Quartiers Solidaires, a group that organizes breakfast for migrants every morning from 8:30-9:30, along with other activities. By combining theoretical reflection, migrants’ narratives and practical experience, the course introduces students to key issues in migration, provides a framework for understanding and analysing these issues, and presents an opportunity to collaborate with others in identifying challenges related to migration and proposing solutions.

THEATER IN PARIS (CL2075)

This course essentially happens in the theatres of Paris, exploring the city’s fabulous resources, exchanging with practitioners and scholars from other institutions. We see ways of integrating music, dance and “physical theatre,” innovative explorations of classics from European and non-European traditions, avant-garde masters and the brightest young experimental troupes. We have theatre that directly questions political dilemmas, collective theatre and director-driven theatre, machine theatre and theatre based around great individual actors. Papers done in French or English.
Course fee atttached.

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES AND THEORY (CL2081)

Any text that speaks truth to power and gives voice to the voiceless has affinities with postcolonial studies, if not a claim to being postcolonial. This course will address key concepts in postcolonial studies to interrogate representations of race, gender, colonial capitalism and the environment. Straddling languages, genres, cultures and continents, our texts create a space for hybrid identities. No prerequisites.

DIGITAL POETICS (CL2083)

How do words change when we use them on and offline? What happens to writing and reading when we move between physical books and digital environments? What are the relationships between Literature and the Internet?  How do ‘traditional’ or ‘canonical’ literary works dialogue with social media, computer games and Google-generated poetry? What does it ‘mean’ to ‘read’ ‘books’ in the third decade of the twenty-first century? 

THEORY AND WRITING (CL2085)

Examines the major tenets, philosophical perspectives, and critical orientations of literary theory from Plato and Aristotle to the present. Students study critical texts from literary and non-literary disciplines, schools, and voices that have come to impact the Western theoretical canon, including psychoanalysis, Marxism, Russian formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, new historicism, and post-colonialism.

TOPICS IN CL & FRENCH (CL2090)

Topics vary every semester.
Pre-requisite: FR 1200

FRENCH FICTION NOW: TRADUIRE LE ROMAN FRANCAIS CONTEMP. (CL2094)

Ce cours introduira les étudiants aux techniques et aux problématiques de la traduction littéraire par le cas particulier des traductions en anglais de romans contemporains écrits en français. La traduction sera discutée comme un transfert culturel : en observant comment des écrivains représentatifs (Houellebecq, Djebar, Gavalda…) ont été reçus aux USA, et en GB, et en faisant le commentaire de trois traductions récentes. L’essentiel du cours sera consacré à l’expérience collective et individuelle de la traduction d’un livre non encore traduit.

INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING: A CROSS-GENRE WORKSHOP (CL2100)

In this course, students practice writing fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry while exploring the boundaries between genres. The workshop format includes guided peer critique of sketches, poems, and full-length works presented in class and discussion and analysis of literary models. In Fall, students concentrate on writing techniques. In Spring, the workshop is theme-driven. May be taken twice for credit.