CARTOGRAPHIC FICTIONS

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Bruno Bosteels
  Wikipedia h-index: 21 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO ICLS

Introduction to concepts and methods of comparative literature in cross-disciplinary and global context. Topics may include: oral, print, and visual culture; epic, novel, and nation; literature of travel, exile, and diaspora; sex and gender transformation; the human/inhuman; writing trauma; urban imaginaries; world literature; medical humanities. Open only to students intending to declare a major in Comparative Literature and Society or Medicine, Literature, and Society in Spring 2017.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Madeleine Dobie
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 3 points

THE GLOBAL AND THE UNIVERSAL

THE GLOBAL & THE UNIVERSAL

In the contemporary world, it has become very important for us to be able to distinguish between "global" and "universal." This course will try to confront this problem through cartography, fiction, film, and political writing. One of my interests for the last decade or so has been to look at the word “Development.” This has led me to the word “Research,” in what is universally referred to as “R&D,” that is to say “Research and Development” – to people as unlike us as possible and connect to the fact that democracy as bodycount majority requires the presence of a democratic society. I prefer "general to "universal." All human social groups, including children as a separate social group, think that something resembling the sphere of life they consider "experience" applies to the generality of humankind: however vaguely defined or not defined at all. We have to work with this if we want to consider what to do with universals, rather than simply with the imposition of Eurocentric universals globally. If tracking the universalizable without universalizing is an approach, who can collectively teach or learn this approach? We require uniformity for the functioning of democratic structures and ethical obligations. Statistics are not unnecessary for the operation of social justice. 3 In this context, we have to think how the everyday “supplements" these requirements. This will oblige us to ask the question: who is the generalized subject or “I” of our classroom? I will consider the subaltern, those who are being globally denied the right to intellectual labor, today and for millennia, and what our obligation is when we generalize from our own limited context. Disability as part of the definition of the democratic subject, and the fact that the presence continually vanishes will be issues in our class.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Gayatri C Spivak
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT & SOCIETY

Required of all comparative literature and society majors. Intensive research in selected areas of comparative literature and society. There will be two sections of this course for Fall 2016. Topic for 2016: TBA

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Rishi K Goyal
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC

Students who decide to write a senior thesis should enroll in this tutorial. They should also identify, during the fall semester, a member of the faculty in a relevant department who will be willing to supervise their work and who is responsible for assigning the final grade. The thesis is a rigorous research work of approximately 40 pages (including a bibliography formatted in MLA style). It may be written in English or in another language relevant to the student's scholarly interests. The thesis should be turned in on the announced due date as hard copy to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

• Instructor: Madeleine Dobie
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 3 points

WORLD PHILOLOGY

Philology, broadly defined as the practice of making sense of texts, is a fundamental human activity that has been repeatedly institutionalized in widely separated places and times. In the wake of the formation of the modern academic disciplines in the nineteenth century and their global spread, it became difficult to understand the power and glory of older western philology, and its striking parallels with other pre- and early modern forms of scholarship around the globe. This class seeks to create a new comparative framework for understanding how earlier generations made sense of the texts that they valued, and how their practices provide still-vital models for us at a time of upheaval in the format and media of texts and in our scholarly approaches to them. Students will encounter key fields of philology—textual criticism, lexicography, grammar, and, above all, commentary—not in the abstract but as instantiated in relation to four foundational works—the Confucian Analects, the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the Aeneid, and the Tale of Genji—and the scholarly traditions that grew up around them. We are never alone when we grapple with the basic question of how to read texts whose meaning is unclear to us. Over the course of the semester, this class will foster a global understanding of the deep roots and strange parallels linking contemporary reading and interpretation to the practices of the past.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: David B Lurie
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

BASIC CONCEPTS-POST-FREUD THGT

This course examines psychoanalytic movements that are viewed either as post-Freudian in theory or as emerging after Freud's time. The course begins by considering the ways Freud's cultural and historical surround, as well as the wartime diaspora of the European psychoanalytic community, shaped Freudian and post-Freudian thought. It then focuses on significant schools and theories of psychoanalysis that were developed from the mid 20th century to the present. Through readings of key texts and selected case studies, it explores theorists' challenges to classical thought and technique, and their reconfigurations, modernizations, and total rejections of central Freudian ideas. The course concludes by looking at contemporary theorists' moves to integrate notions of culture, concepts of trauma, and findings from neuroscience and attachment research into the psychoanalytic frame.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Karen Seeley
  CULPA: 9 Info
• 4 points

LAPLANCHE

LAPLANCHE:FREUD THRS SEXUALITY

An introduction to the work of Laplanche. The emphasis will be on his recent work which is the culmination of this theorizing and is accessible even to those unfamiliar with French psychoanalysis. By the end of the course students will be thoroughly familiar with Laplanche's central concepts, their origins in Freud and in Laplanche's own development, and their relation to other psychoanalytic theorizing on the same topics. The central themes include "the Generalized Theory of Seduction", "the Fundamental Anthropological Situation", and "the Translational Model of Repression". Some familiarity with Freud work, not merely secondary sources, is expected and re-reading certain of his texts will be helpful or even necessary during the course. Some familiarity with Freud is expected and reading or re-reading the works of Freud which Laplanche addresses will be helpful although perhaps not essential.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan House
  Info
• 4 points

DEATH PENALTY IN PHIL, LIT & FILM

DEATH PENALTY-PHIL,LIT & FILM

In an interview with Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Derrida details the lack of a philosophical justification for abolitionism. Rather, its proponents have made the case largely through extra-philosophical- i.e., largely literary or politico-activist modes. Our seminar will examine the death penalty as it is presented in three distinct genres: philosophy, literature and film. After a brief consideration of each genre, we turn to the justification for the death penalty in a tradition of western political thought linking it to sovereignty as well as to the construction of a "public enemy." We shift our focus to the distinctive visuality of the death penalty-how scenes of execution are staged and witnessed. But we also investigate how these genres are mutually implicated in certain figures such as Albert Camus. We conclude with transnational comparisons of the death penalty's (and abolitionism"s) representation in seemingly disparate works of localized fiction (the "killing states" of the American south and international cinema). Throughout the course we investigate the performance of the death penalty in relation to questions of race, gender, class and national imaginaries.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Diane Rubenstein
  Info
• 4 points

CONFLICT URBANISM

This is the second in a series of multidisciplinary Mellon seminars on the topic of Conflict Urbanism, as part of a multi-university initiative in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities. This year, we will focus on how language is a major force in shaping cities, both through a theoretical lens and through fieldwork in linguistically diverse neighborhoods throughout New York City. Conflict Urbanism: Language Justice in New York City ​ This spring, the seminar will focus on the role of language as a structuring principle of cities, highlighting the ways that urban spaces and the world are physically shaped by linguistic diversity, and examining the results of languages coming into contact and conflict. For this work we will use New York City as our laboratory. The New York City metropolitan area is the most linguistically dense city in the world, hosting an estimated 700 different languages. To better understand this diversity, we will look closely at micro-neighborhoods such as Little Senegal (Manhattan), Little Korea (Queens), and Little Ramallah (Paterson, New Jersey). In thinking about the transnational and translingual nature of the city, we will consider structures from digital technology to remittances (small amounts of money sent “home”) and their role in language preservation and language extinction. Finally, through visualizing and mapping how language is situated in these micro-neighborhoods, we will begin to explore the cultures, languages, informal structures and architectures that migrants bring to the city.

• F 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• 3 points

INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY

INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOC-GRAD

Please note: This course is required for ICLS graduate students, and priority will be given to these students. Generally the course fills with ICLS students each semester. Students MAY NOT register themselves for this course. Contact the ICLS office for more information at icls.columbia@gmail.com. This course was formerly numbered as G4900. This course introduces beginning graduate students to the changing conceptions in the comparative study of literatures and societies, paying special attention to the range of interdisciplinary methods in comparative scholarship. Students are expected to have preliminary familiarity with the discipline in which they wish to do their doctoral work. Our objective is to broaden the theoretical foundation of comparative studies to negotiate a conversation between literary studies and social sciences. Weekly readings are devoted to intellectual inquiries that demonstrate strategies of research, analysis, and argumentation from a multiplicity of disciplines and fields, such as anthropology, history, literary criticism, architecture, political theory, philosophy, art history, and media studies. Whenever possible, we will invite faculty from the above disciplines and fields to visit our class and share their perspectives on assigned readings. Students are encouraged to take advantage of these opportunities and explore fields and disciplines outside their primary focus of study and specific discipline.

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Brent H Edwards
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

RUSS REVOLUTION TO LEGACIES OF BANDUNG

RUSS REVOLUTION-LEGACY BANDUNG

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Stathis Gourgouris
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

MICROLITERATURES

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jesus Rodriguez-Velasco
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

DARK CORE EUROPEAN CIVILIATION

• MWMWMW 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Michele Battini
  Info
• 1.5 points

S CONTEMP CRITICAL THOUGHT

• R 6:15 p.m.-8:45 p.m.
• 3 points