16 courses with the subject WLT, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
WLT 100CWTopics: Introduction to World Literatures-Cannibals, Witches, Virgins4
An examination of the rewritings and adaptations of the three iconic figures of Shakespeare’s The Tempest—Caliban the demi-devil savage other, Sycorax the devil-whore, and Miranda the virgin-goddess—by writers from different geographies, time periods and ideological persuasions. Using texts such as Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban, Lemuel Johnson’s Highlife for Caliban, Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, the class seeks to understand how postcolonial, feminist and postmodern rewritings of The Tempest transpose its language and characters into critiques of colonialism, nationhood, race, gender and difference. Restrictions: WLT 100 may be repeated once with a different topic. {L}
WLT 100WLTopics: Introduction to World Literatures-What is World Literature?4
This course focuses on the global circulation of texts and ideas. It looks at cross-cultural influences and evolving ideas of “world” and “nation” during the historical transition from colonialism to postcolonialism. The course explores how writers from Africa, Asia, and the Americas have experimented with various literary forms — novels, short stories, poetry, plays, films, periodicals, and digital forms — in order to express marginalized cultures and critique dominant regimes. The class discusses how questions of literary form, central to conceptions of world literature, are also questions of belonging, community, and power. Restrictions: WLT 100 may be repeated once with a different topic. (E) {L}
WLT 150The Art of Translation: Poetics, Politics, Practice2
Translations are everywhere: on television news, in radio interviews, in movie subtitles, in international bestsellers. But translations don’t shift texts transparently from one language to another. Rather, they revise, censor and rewrite original works, to challenge the past and to speak to new readers. The course explores translation in a range of contexts by hearing lectures by experts in the history, theory and practice of translation. Knowledge of a foreign language is useful but not required. S/U only. Can be taken concurrently with FRN 295. {L}
WLT 177DPColloquium: Topics in World Literatures-Dwelling Poetically4
To introduce the pleasures of poetry, this course travels through poems on themes of journeying and dwelling, voyage and return, travel and home, wandering, war and immigration. Reading ancient Chinese songs and Greek epic to contemporary docupoetry and rap, the course explores key elements of poetic art (voice, metre, tropes, image and suggestion). Students encounter less concrete effects as they confront ambiguity, develop interpretive imagination, and surmise poetry’s powers and stakes. What is a poem? How and when does poetry affect the world? The class also considers the art, ethics and politics of translation, and students compose and translate short poems. Restrictions: WLT 177 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {L}
WLT 177EWColloquium: Topics in World Literatures-Epic Worlds4
A comparison of the first literary works to emerge from oral story-telling traditions among several ancient, medieval, and modern peoples to express their highest ideals and sense of collective identity: the Mesopotamian "Gilgamesh," the Indian "Mahabharata," the Old Irish "Táin Bó Cúailnge," the Medieval Welsh "Four Branches of the Mabinogi," the Finnish "Kalevala" and the Nyanja (Congolese) "Mwindo." The course explores these epics as sites of cultural formation and moral contest, and especially seeks to understand their world-views, value systems, and trajectory of human history through time as these are revealed in the life-struggles of vividly imagined heroes and heroines. Restrictions: WLT 177 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. WI {L}
A study of the major writers and diverse literary traditions of Africa, with emphasis on the historical, political, social and cultural contexts of the emergence of writing, reception and consumption. The course pays particular attention to several questions: in what contexts did modern African literature emerge? Is the term "African literature" a useful category? How do African writers challenge Western representations of Africa? How do they articulate the crisis of postcoloniality? How do women writers reshape our understanding of gender and the politics of resistance? {L}
WLT 207Colloquium: Another World (Literature) is Possible: Internationalism, Postcolonialism, Translation4
Discussions of world literature often highlight canonical books valued in the capitals of the world literary system: Paris, London, and New York. This course charts a different trajectory, travelling through non- Western texts and cities that both engage the traditional locations of world literature as well as attempt to create new literary networks and forms on an international scale. It reads literature alongside primary historical documents from various events and movements that are foundational to the political and cultural projects of anticolonialism. It pays attention to the issue of translation, or in other words, the ways texts and ideas travel across wide geographies and histories, particularly in the postcolonial world. Enrollment limited to 20. {L}
What is a Holocaust story? How does literature written in extremis in ghettos, death camps or in hiding differ from the vast post-war literature about the Holocaust? How to balance competing claims of individual and collective experience, the rights of the imagination and the pressures for historical accuracy? Selections from a variety of genres (diary, reportage, poetry, novel, graphic novel, memoir, film, monuments, museums) and critical theories of representation. All readings in translation. No prerequisites. {H}{L}
WLT 240Imagining Black Freedom: African, Caribbean and African American Literature4
An examination of race, identity, and resistance in African, Caribbean, and African American literatures through the lens of coming-of-age novels. This course will enable students to critically engage the political and aesthetic imperatives of black writing by interrogating the thematics and legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racism. How do writers of Africa and the African diaspora appropriate the Bildungsroman as a literary form in their constructions of identity, freedom, and citizenship? What makes this genre particularly useful for the liberatory project of black imagination? Writers include Ngugi, Dangarembga, Wicomb, Cliff, Kincaid, Morrison and Wright. {L}
WLT 266MDColloquium: Topics in South African Literature and Film-Modern4
A study of South African literature and cinema from apartheid era to the present. The course focuses on the ways in which the political, economic and cultural forces of colonialism and apartheid have shaped culture and politics in contemporary South Africa. The course also pays attention to the ways in which literature and film helps us visualize the relationship between power and violence in apartheid and post-struggle South Africa. Enrollment limited to 18. {L}
WLT 270Colloquium: Health and Illness: Literary Explorations4
From medieval Chinese tales to memoirs about SARS and COVID-19, this cross-cultural literary inquiry explores how conceptions of selfhood and belonging inform ideas about well-being, disease, intervention and healing. How do languages, social norms and economic contexts shape experiences of health and illness? From depression and plague to aging, disability and death, how do sufferers and their caregivers adapt in the face of infirmity or trauma? Our study will also consider how stories and other genres can help develop resilience, compassion and hope. Enrollment limited to 20. {L}
WLT 275Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Sources, Tales, Transformations4
This course delves deep into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middleearth, focusing on The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and its prelude, The Hobbit (1937). The course looks back to Tolkien’s inspiration from medieval literature and traditional lore, and forward to the manifold adaptations of his works in diverse media. At the center of the course are Tolkien’s texts, which the course considers as a nexus of venerable and modern literary traditions, a repository for cultural criticism, a laboratory for linguistic experimentation, an environment for philosophical exploration, and a paradigm for multi-media worldbuilding. Cannot be taken S/U. Restrictions: Not open to students who have taken FYS 139. Enrollment limited to 40. (E) {L}
WLT 300Foundations in Contemporary Literature Theory4
This course serves as an introduction to a variety of practices and positions in critical theory. The first half of the course introduces major paradigms like psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. The second half traces the influence of these approaches on fields like gender and queer studies, media studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies. Using a combination of literary case studies and examples from contemporary culture, the course treats theory as a crucial tool for understanding the world around us. Recommended for students interested in thinking critically about art, culture, and politics, and for students interested in graduate school in the humanities. Enrollment limited to 25. {L}
WLT 340MDSeminar: Topics in World Literatures-Media of Dissent4
What is the art of dissent? How have dissident writers, musicians, artists and activists pursued justice and repair? How do social movements use artistic media to voice resistance and make demands? To confront violence, exploitation and existential risks, the class looks at art, fiction, poetry, film, music and social media. Students practice visual analysis, close reading, historicization, scholarly research and debate, public writing and making their own media of dissent. Works from China and France, Russia, the United States and beyond. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {L}
Readings in the original language (or in certain cases translations) of literary texts read in or closely related to a course taken with a faculty member appointed in comparative literature. Students are encouraged to contact the instructor during the prior semester. Instructor permission required.
Prerequisites: Requirements for the major. This course is a thesis to be written in both semesters of the senior year. A full draft of the thesis is due the first Friday of March. The final draft is due mid-April, to be followed by an oral presentation and discussion of the thesis. For more detailed requirements, see the WLT website, at the end of the list of courses. Department permission required.
