Literature

Course System Home All Areas of Study Literature

Select Filters and then click Apply to load new results

Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

How to Read a Translation — LIT2187.02

Spring 2021
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 2
What, exactly, is a literary translation? A faithful rendering of an original text? But then, what do we mean by “faithful”? What do we mean by “original”? Form, syntax, grammar, not to mention puns, wordplay, and allusion are all part of the action in reading, writing, and the interpretative art we call translation. Time, too, plays a role: languages are dynamic, even
Literature

How to Read a Translation — LIT2187.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 2
What, exactly, is a literary translation? A faithful rendering of an original text? But then, what do we mean by "faithful"? What do we mean by "original"? Form, syntax, grammar, not to mention puns, wordplay, and allusion are all part of the action in reading, writing, and the interpretative art we call translation. Time, too, plays a role: languages are dynamic, even
Literature

If I Loved you Less, I Might be able to Talk about it More: Jane Austen's Heroines — LIT2510.02

Fall 2020
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
In this seminar, we will train our eyes on four of Jane Austen’s novels — Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion — with an aim to discover what connects and binds Jane Austen’s heroines together, what separates these women from each other, and to explore Austen’s evolution as a writer through the evolving nature of her protagonists. We will
Literature

Imaginary Worlds — DRA2313.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Michael Giannitti
Credits: 4
In this course we will consider playwrights who have created imaginary worlds as a means of escaping from, critiquing, or simply distorting the real world. In doing so, we will consider how imaginary worlds might open up new spaces and possibilities for our own world, as well as how they reflect a playwright’s unique vision and philosophy. We will consider the inherent
Drama Literature

Immortality — LIT2300.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
Immortality. Everyone seems to want it. Or, well, practically everyone. Well, not me. I don't want it. But, look, even the world's oldest recorded epic hero, Gilgamesh, struggled against the notion of mortality and his own impending, inevitable death, and ever since (and probably long-before) members of our species have sought ways to subvert it. This course aims to explore
Literature

In Search of Elena Ferrante — LIT2351.01

Spring 2016
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 2
No one knows who the author “Elena Ferrante” really is: not her publishers (allegedly), her reading public, the critics who greet each new novel with rapture, the acclaimed Italian film directors who’ve adapted two of her novels for the screen. In an international literary scene fueled by personality, publicity, and the celebrity machine, how has Ferrante managed to stay
Languages Literature

In the Eastern, Green Mountains: Poetry through an Experimental Buddhist Lens — LIT2568.01

Spring 2025
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
While we conventionally read poetry through a western critical academic lens, in this course, we will approach western poetry from an experimental eastern lens, in an effort to experience the mutually illuminating relationship between poetry and contemplative study and deepen our relationship to the mystical nature of American poetry. In the first part of the semester,
Literature

In Translation: Lives, Texts, Cities — LIT2370.01

Fall 2017
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 2
In this course, we will study writers who live and write in more than one language (Beckett, de la Torre, Stavans, Djebar, Huston, etc.); multiple translations (linguistic, temporal, geographic) of particular texts; and several cities, which in their multi-lingual, multi-cultural essences are dramatic cases in point of a rapidly changing world. Questions of legibility,
Literature

International Modernist Poetics — LIT2522.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
Much of modernist writing was a rebellion against the aesthetic values of late-19th century poetry. This course will explore art, poetry, and other media to provide a comprehensive understanding of Modernism from a global perspective. In studying modernist manifestos, we will investigate the reasons that these writers and artists attempted to create radical, new ways of
Literature

InTranslation: Lives, Texts, Testimony — LIT2279.01

Fall 2019
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 2
What does it mean to be "rooted," "uprooted," "living in translation"? Can a language, literary tradition, or far-flung literary republic be one's homeland? Does "cultural authority" derive from being considered "native"? How is it that immigrant literary translators have been met with apprehension on the part of publishers? Might this stem from definitions of "fluency" and
CAPA Literature

Intro to Afropessimism — LIT2547.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: An Duplan
Credits: 4
Afropessimists believe our world is basically hopeless. White supremacy is written into every layer of life, an escapable aspect of the modern condition. This hopelessness, though, is just the beginning for the Afropessimist, who nonetheless plots out a radical course forward–– Could pessimism be the real path to freedom? Through a deep reading of Frank B. Wilderson III,
Black Studies Literature

Introduction to Contemporary African American Poetry — LIT2505.02

Spring 2017
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 2
African American poetry has a rich tradition that begins in the 1700s with Jupiter Hammon, moves through the early 1900s with the Harlem Renaissance, and finds itself in the radical politics of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) during the 1960s. We will explore this lyrical moment post the BAM Era in order to excavate current prosodic expressions of the human condition from
Literature

Introduction to Dramaturgy — DRA4281.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Maya Cantu
Credits: 4
The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. They bridge the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. In this course, we will learn about the history and practice of dramaturgy, while learning how the critical and research skills of the dramaturg can apply to a wide array of
Drama Literature

Introduction to Dramaturgy — DRA4281.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Maya Cantu
Credits: 4
The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. They bridge the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. In this course, we will learn about the history and practice of dramaturgy, while learning how the critical and research skills of the dramaturg can apply to a wide array of
Drama Literature

Introduction to Dramaturgy — DRA4281.01

Fall 2020
Instructor: Maya Cantu
Credits: 4
The dramaturg serves as a powerful medium in the theatre. She bridges the past and the present, the creative team and the audience, while providing critical generosity and historical and literary insight. In this course, we will learn about the history and practice of dramaturgy, while learning how the critical and research skills of the dramaturg can apply to a wide array of
Drama Literature

Introduction to The Art of Literary Translation — LIT2259.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 4
It may be that the closest, most interpretative and creative reading of a text involves translating from one language to another. Questions of place, culture, epoch, voice, gender, and rhythm take on new urgency, helping us deepen our skills and sensibilities in new ways. This course has a triple focus: you will compare and contrast multiple translations of a single work; read
CAPA Languages Literature

It's Alive!: 19th Century Genre Fiction — LIT2338.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
Although frequently ignored or ridiculed by critics and academics, contemporary genre fiction can trace its roots back to some of the most well-known and studied writers from the 19th century. This course will focus its attention on these heady genre roots, working through the rom-coms of Jane Austen, the post-apocalyptic thrillers of Mary Shelley, tackling the rise of the
Literature

It's Gonna Be Epic — LIT4588.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
Let's dive head-first into the Aegean Sea, swim around in the waters once swum by Achilles and Odysseus, root around in sacrifices and altars, the occasional slaughter of beloved Patroclus, the blood-thirsty murder of Hector and also a host of would-be-suitors of Penelope (I won't lie, that becomes a bloody bloody mess, that one) before swimming over to the Ionic and Tyrrhenian
Literature

It's Gonna Be Epic! — LIT2419.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 2
Starting with The Epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest surviving great work of literature, and then moving through both The Iliad and The Odyssey, hanging a left to catch up with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, before finally returning once again to modern times with Anne Carson's The Autobiography of Red, we will explore the tradition of epic poetry in order to discover what makes
Literature

Italian Genius Through the Centuries — ITA2110.01

Spring 2014
Instructor: Barbara Alfano
Credits: 4
This course will be taught in English. The course focuses on a few accomplishments of the Italian genius that have had a strong impact on the development of world civilization. Italy as a nation did not exist either when the city of Cremona produced the first violins, or when Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. There was no Italy as such when Dante was imagining his
Languages Literature

Jane Austen — LIT4266.01

Fall 2016
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote a five novels (not counting her unpublished fiction) that rate among the most powerful produced in Great Britain during the nineteenth century. These works still astonish readers with their sensitivity to hidden or nameless emotions, to the subtleties of conversation, and to the complexities of domestic life. The unfolding of many of these stories
Literature

Kafka — LIT2572.02

Spring 2025
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 2
When he died at age 40 in a sanitarium outside Vienna, Franz Kafka left the bulk of his literary effort in a drawer in the desk of his parent’s home in Prague. What he wanted was for his friend Max Brod to burn everything. In this class, we will read what was not burned, including the two major novels—The Trial, and The Castle, as well as his shorter masterpieces, The
Literature

Kafka and Beckett — LIT2273.01

Fall 2017
Instructor: Annie Dewitt
Credits: 4
Often lauded as literary iconoclasts and Modernist visionaries, Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett are known for "making things strange." This course will examine these writers' signal works alongside their shorter works and diaries. In approaching Kafka, we will explore several of his essays, including: "Letters to My Father," "The Blue Octavio Notebook," and
Literature

Kalón and Chaos: The Secret History and its References — LIT2423.01

Fall 2021
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 2
"Live forever!" is the chosen mantra of the louche, monied and relentlessly insular group of Classics students at the center of Donna Tartt's now classic literary suspense novel The Secret History. Under the influence of their classics professor Julian Morrow--a "divine" with special status on the campus of Hampden College, a dark mirror-image of our own campus--they undertake
Literature

Keats and Stevens — LIT2299.02

Spring 2025
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 2
This introductory seminar will consider and juxtapose the 19th century British Romantic poet John Keats and the 20th century American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, both of whom were rigorous craftsmen, provocative thinkers, and aesthetic theorists who argued fervently for the supremacy of the imagination, the interconnectedness of truth and beauty, and the importance of
Literature