Director of Undergraduate Studies: David Wray, Cl 28, 702-8563, dlwray@uchicago.edu

Departmental Office and Secretary: JoAnn Baum, Cl 116A, 702-8486

http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/complit/undergrad_program.html

The major in Comparative Literature leads to a B.A. degree. This program is designed to attract students who wish to pursue an interdisciplinary plan of course work focused on the study of literature as written in various languages and in various parts of the world.

Such a student might come to the University with a strong background in languages other than English and want to work in two or more literatures (one of which can be English). Another student might have a strong interest in literary study and wish to address general, generic, and/or transnational questions that go beyond the boundaries of national literature offered by English and other literature departments. Or, a student might wish to pursue an in-depth study of the interrelationship of literature and culture, as well as issues that transcend the traditional demarcations of national literary history and area studies.

These descriptions of academic interest are not mutually exclusive. Each student will design a plan of course work that will suit his or her individual goals and that will take advantage of the rich offerings of this university.

Program Requirements

The aim of the following guidelines is to help students develop a balanced and coherent plan of study. The Director of Undergraduate Studies in Comparative Literature is available to discuss these guidelines with students who are interested in comparative literature.

(1) In addition to the thirteen courses counted toward the major, students must complete a second-year sequence in a language other than English or demonstrate language ability of an equivalent skill through accreditation. Students should have completed this requirement, or be well on their way to its completion, by the time they apply to the program, typically the end of their second year. See "Participation in the Program" below for further details.

(2) Six courses in a primary field, or in closely integrated subject areas in more than one field, are required.

(3) Four courses in a secondary field, or in closely integrated subject areas in more than one field, are required.

(4) Two courses that emphasize critical and intellectual methods in comparative literature are required, one of which must be an introduction to the study of comparative literature. See, for example, CMLT 20200 and 23400 under "Courses."

(5) One directed study course must be devoted to the preparation of the B.A. project (CMLT 29900). The project will be supervised by a faculty member of the student's choice, with that faculty member's consent and the approval of the Director of Undergraduate Studies; that faculty member may be, but need not be, on the faculty of Comparative Literature. A graduate student in Comparative Literature will serve as a tutor or preceptor for all B.A. projects, working with students on the mechanics of writing and providing tutorial assistance. For details, see the section on the B.A. project.

(6) Although students do not register for the B.A. workshop, it is required for all majors. The workshop begins fifth week of Winter Quarter and continues until fifth or sixth week of Spring Quarter. All participants are required to present two drafts of their paper, one in the winter and the second in the spring. Participants other than the presenter make written comments on photocopies of the drafts, which are distributed at least twenty-four hours before the workshop meets each week. During the informal workshops, the drafts are discussed and constructive suggestions are offered to the presenters.

Summary of Requirements

6 primary field courses

4 secondary field courses

2 critical/intellectual methods courses

1 B.A. project (CMLT 29900)

The department encourages students to pursue further language study by taking courses in a second or third language. NOTE: Those language courses will be approved for use in the major only if they are at an intermediate or advanced level; elementary-level courses cannot be counted toward the total number of courses needed to complete the major.

Additional courses in critical/intellectual methods may be counted toward the six courses in the primary field or toward four courses in the secondary field if their materials are appropriate for those purposes, but the total number of courses presented for the major must total thirteen.

A typical student wishing to work in two literatures (one of which can be English) might choose two literatures as the primary and secondary fields. A student interested in literary study across national boundaries with a focus on generic and transnational questions might create a primary field along generic lines (e.g., film, the epic, the novel, poetry, drama, opera); the secondary field might be a particular national literature or a portion of such a literature. A student interested in literary and cultural theory might choose theory as either a primary or secondary field, paired with another field designed along generic lines or those of one or more national literatures.

Courses in the various literature departments and in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities are obviously germane to the building of any individual program. A student is likely to find courses in the Humanities Collegiate Division and in the Department of History that extend beyond the usual definitions of literature (e.g., film, art, music, history) to be appropriate to her or his individual program of study. Study abroad offers an attractive means of fulfilling various aims of this program as well.

Participation in the Program. Students should express their interest in the major as soon as possible, typically before the end of their second year. The first step is to meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to consult about a program of study. Thereafter, students are required to submit a written proposal of about one thousand words in length that consists of two parts: (1) a statement explaining how the proposed plan of study will take advantage of existing College offerings and meet departmental requirements; and (2) a list of proposed courses (as well as alternates) and indications of how they will fulfill the department's requirements. Applicants must also submit a list of completed courses and a list of courses in which they are currently registered. Special mention should be made of language courses or other language training that affirms a student's level of language proficiency. Each proposal will be evaluated on the basis of the interest of the student and his or her achievement in the languages needed to meet the goals of the intended course of study.

Comparative Literature majors should demonstrate proficiency in a literary language (other than English) that is relevant to their proposed course of study (as indicated in requirement number one above). This requirement must be met at the time of application or shortly thereafter. Such proficiency is measured by the completion of a second-year sequence in the language, or by demonstration of an equivalent skill. By the time of graduation, students should also achieve the level of language study needed to obtain an Advanced Language Proficiency Certificate from the College. This requirement is intended to underscore the program's commitment to the study of languages, and to encourage and facilitate study abroad as a part of the course of study. Language ability is essential to work in comparative literature of whatever sort. The Department of Comparative Literature takes language preparation into consideration when evaluating applications, but it will also help students achieve their individual goals by suggesting programs of study that will add to their language expertise as appropriate.

B.A. Project. One obvious choice for a B.A. project is a substantial essay in comparative literary study. This option should not, however, rule out other possibilities. Two examples might be a translation from a foreign literature with accompanying commentary, or a written project based on research done abroad in another language and culture relating to comparative interests. Students are urged to base their project on comparative concepts, and to make use of the language proficiency that they will develop as they meet the program's requirements. For details on the B.A. project, see the Web site at http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/complit/undergrad_program.html.

This program may accept a B.A. paper or project used to satisfy the same requirement in another major if certain conditions are met and with the consent of the other program chair. Approval from both program chairs is required. Students should consult with the chairs by the earliest B.A. proposal deadline (or by the end of third year, when neither program publishes a deadline). A consent form, to be signed by both chairs, is available from the College adviser. It must be completed and returned to the College adviser by the end of Autumn Quarter of the student's year of graduation.

Grading. All courses to be used in the major must be taken for a quality grade, which must be a B- or higher.

Honors. To be eligible for honors in Comparative Literature, students must earn an overall cumulative GPA of 3.25 or higher, and a GPA of 3.5 or higher in the major. They must also complete a B.A. essay or project that is judged exceptional in intellectual and/or creative merit by the first and second readers.

Advising. In addition to their College adviser, students should consult on an ongoing basis with the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature. Further advice and counseling will be available from the preceptor for the program and from the faculty member who supervises the student's B.A. project.

Faculty

D. Bevington (Emeritus), A. Davidson, F. de Armas, L. Kruger, F. Meltzer, M. Murrin,
T. J. Pavel, L. Rothfield, J. Scodel, N. Stahl (Visiting Professor) , Y. Tsivian, R. von Hallberg,
D. Wellbery, D. Wray, A. Yu (Emeritus)

Courses: Comparative Literature (cmlt)

20200. Criticism and Ideology. (=ENGL 11300) PQ: Prior reading of Anna Karenina. Course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students majoring in Comparative Literature. This course examines the contributions of Marxism to the theory and practice of literary and cultural criticism. Starting with different Marxist approaches to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, we use the concept of ideology as formulated by Marx, Lenin, Williams, Eagleton, Macherey, and others as the point of departure for an investigation of the relationships among literary texts, social life, and power. The extensive reading list includes drama and prose fiction, as well as novels by Marxist theorists (i.e., Lukacs, Jameson) and drama (i.e., Brecht, Benjamin). Our goal is to prepare students for graduate study in the humanities. L. Kruger. Winter.

20500/30500. History and Theory of Drama I. (=ANST 21200, CLAS 31200, CLCV 21200, ENGL 13800/31000, ISHU 24200/34200) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20600/30600 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, and Dryden. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. D. Bevington, D. N. Rudall. Autumn.

20600/30600. History and Theory of Drama II. (=ENGL 13900/31100, ISHU 24300/34300) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20500/30500 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth: Molière, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. D. Bevington, D. N. Rudall. Winter.

22100. Narratives of Suspense in European and Russian Literature and Cinema. (=CMST 25102/351012, HUMA 26901/36901, ISHU 26901/36901, SLAV 26900/36900) The phenomenon of suspense is central to narrative and has broad implications for narrative theory. We examine its workings in readings by authors including A. Conan Doyle, R. L. Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Graham Greene, and Samuel Beckett. Special attention is given to suspense as a philosophical issue in the works of Fedor Dostoevsky. Consideration is also given to suspense in the cinema (i.e., Hitchcock, Godard, Bresson). Theoretical readings (i.e., Todorov, Barthes, Ricoeur) comprise a veritable introduction to narrative theory. Class discussion encouraged. R. Bird. Winter.

22400/32400. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era. (=ARTH 28500/38500, CMST 28500/48500, COVA 26500, ENGL 29300/47800, MAPH 33600) This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We also discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. Y. Tsivian. Autumn.

22500/32500. History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960. (=ARTH 28600/38600, CMST 28600/48600, COVA 26600, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700) PQ: Prior or current registration in CMST 10100 required; CMLT 22400/32400 strongly recommended. The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History, An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir. Y. Tsivian. Winter.

22600/32600. Napoleon's Russian Campaign through the Eyes of Russian and French Writers and Historians. (=HIST 23902/33902, RUSS 25901/35901) Knowledge of Russian and/or French helpful but not required. This course examines various representations of Napoleon's personality, career, and, particularly, his Russian campaign in the works of Russian and French writers and historians. Writers include Pushkin, Lermontov, Herzen, Tolstoy, Balzac, Stendhal, Thiers, and Michelet. L. Steiner. Autumn.

23400. War Creations: Ideology, World War II, and the Novel. (=ENGL 23001) Course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students majoring in Comparative Literature. With its unprecedented atrocities, ideological disputes, and engaged intellectuals, World War II threw into question the role of the novel, influencing both the literature and the literary theory that followed. What are the approaches of novelists to the war and its ideologies, and how do they differ between countries? How far might the "novel" venture into allegory, memoir, and political propaganda? How does fiction address fanatical politics differently from journalism and historical writing? The course examines theoretical texts alongside works by Albert Camus, Italo Calvino, Heinrich Böll, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Kurt Vonnegut, Elio Vittorini, and Joseph Heller. Readings in English, but reading the original is encouraged. K. Lewis. Spring.

23500. Gender and Literature in South Asia. (=GNDR 23001/33001, SALC 23002/33002) Prior knowledge of South Asia not required. This course investigates representations of gender and sexuality, especially of females and "the feminine" in South Asian literature (i.e., from areas now included in the nations of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka). Topics include classical Indian literature and sexual motifs, the female voice as a devotional/literary stance, gendered nationalism, the feminist movements, class and gender, and women's songs. Texts in English. V. Ritter. Spring.

23600. Longus and Rousseau. (=CLAS 34700, FNDL 24201) The focus of this class is on Longus's Daphnis and Chloe and Rousseau's Emile. Daphnis and Chloe is an ancient Greek novel that was immensely popular in early modern Europe. It shows how two young innocents, growing up in the country, attained sexual maturity, love, and marriage. Rousseau inserts himself as narrator and educator into a similar story line, developing the themes of natural goodness, natural religion, sexual desire, compassion, love, and marriage. Using Longus's novel as a backdrop, the class focuses on how Rousseau proposes to preserve a child from corruption by society and to fashion a being who is fully human. E. Asmis. Autumn.

23800. Fragments and Ruins: 1760 to 1820. (=ENGL 18104) In this course, we consider the congruence between ruins and fragments in the period 1760 to 1830 by reading texts that take ruins as their subject and texts that are themselves fragments (either poems left unfinished or prose episodes extracted from longer works). We begin with texts by German Romantics (Schlegel, Hölderlin), then examine poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Hugo. We also read the literary forgeries of Macpherson (Ossian) and Chatterton, as well as passages from sentimental novels that were excerpted and anthologized (Sterne, Mackenzie, and Chateaubriand). Readings in English, but reading the original is encouraged. J. Britton. Winter.

25500. Books of Disquiet: Fictional Autobiography in Portuguese and Brazilian Literatures. (=LACS 23800, PORT 23800/33800) This seminar focuses on the experience of the modern subject as it is narrated in the fiction of some notable Portuguese and Brazilian writers, including Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. We also read texts by Machado de Assis, Raul Brandão, João Guimarães Rosa, Clarice Lispector, and others, in conjunction with some of the most relevant theoretical and critical texts on the question of the intersection between autobiography and fiction. Readings in English and Portuguese. P. Pereira. Winter.

25600. Gentle Peoples, Cordial Nations: The Ethics and Politics of Friendship in the Portuguese-Speaking World. (=LACS 23900, PORT 23900/33900) This course addresses the pervasiveness within the cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world of an ideology of friendship and cordiality. We then examine the ways in which such claims are fed, challenged, and displaced by literature. We read a wide range of theoretical texts, from Plato to Derrida, and from canonical and marginal Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone-African authors (e.g., Padre António Vieira, Cavaleiro de Oliveira, Eça de Queirós, Machado de Assis, Gilberto Freyre, Clarice Lispector, José Eduardo Agualusa). Readings in English and Portuguese. P. Pereira. Spring.

25700/35700. Topics in Contemporary European Thought. (=DVPR 32600, PHIL 25901/39501) This course is a study of selected authors and texts that have played a significant role in contemporary European thought. We pay special attention to questions of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. A. Davidson. Winter.

25800. The Representation of Jesus in Modern Jewish Literature. (=JWSC 24800, NEHC 20457, RLST 26601) This course examines the Jewish literary world's relation to the figure of Jesus from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. We study the transformations of Jesus through close readings of major works, both prose fiction and poetry, by Yiddish and Hebrew writers (e.g., Uri Zvi Greenberg, H. Leivick, Jacob Glatstein, S. Y Agnon, Avraham Shlonsky, Natan Bistritzki, A. A. Kabak, Haim Hazaz, Zalman Shneior, Yigal Mosenzon, Avot Yeshurun, Nathan Zach, Yona Wallach, Yoel Hoffmann). We focus on the historical changes in Jewish thought with regard to Jesus and their influence on the way modern Jewish writers depict Christians and Christianity. Classes conducted in English, but students with knowledge of Hebrew are encouraged to read texts in the original. N. Stahl. Spring.

26300. Essaying the Essay. (=ISHU 26302) This course explores the complex relationship between the personal essay and other forms of self-revelation, notably autobiography. Examining self-reflective essays from a variety of cultures and time periods, we shall trace the theme of friends as dialectical others against whom individuals define themselves. Our investigations will lead us to a provisional definition of the essay genre and its unique placement between fiction and non-fiction. Authors to be read include: Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, Rousseau, Emerson, Barthes, Kenko, Han Yu, Ouyang Xiu. R. Handler-Spitz. Spring.

27200. Transformations of Biblical Narratives in Contemporary Hebrew Literature. (=NEHC 20455) PQ: Knowledge of Hebrew. This course traces the presence of the Bible in Modern Hebrew and Israeli literature. Through close reading of major works of prosefiction, poetry, and drama, by writers such as Yehuda Amichai, Nathan Zach, Amos Oz, Hanoch Levin, and Meir Shalev, we study the transformations of biblical narratives in Modern Hebrew Literature. We focus on the historical and idealogical background of the dominant presence of the Bible in Modern Hebrew literature, in the context of a wider concept of the use of intertextuality in a national literature. Texts in original language. N. Stahl. Autumn.

27300. Women in Modern Hebrew Literature. (=NEHC 20456) This course is and exploration of twentieth-century Hebrew poetry and prose that was written by women. We look at changes in themes and style and study the development of a "woman's voice" in Modern Hebrew literature. N. Stahl. Autumn.

27500. Legend and Folktale in Islamic Literature. (=NEHC 20632) The Islamic ecumene extended from Spain to India and flourished for a millennium. Its scripture and literary classics abound in motifs borrowed from ancient India, Iran, Mesopotamia, and Greece. Together with its own hero tales, romantic comedies, and subversive social parables, it has influenced Western literature, ethics, and humor from Chaucer to Monty Python. The course examines the sources and analogs, sociopsychological underpinnings, and historical trajectories of Islamic folk literature through readings such as the Qur'an, Rumi's Mathnavi, the Arabian Nights, and modern folktales. Texts in English. J. Perry. Autumn.

29700. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. This course cannot normally satisfy distribution requirements for CMLT majors; if a special case can be made, see the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

29900. B.A. Project: Comparative Literature. PQ: Consent of instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. In consultation with a faculty member, students devote the equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of a B.A. project. Autumn, Winter, Spring.