4 courses with the subject LIT, 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.
Instructor Ewington In his essay, “What is Enlightenment,” Foucault asks us to resist “the blackmail of the Enlightenment” - the widespread notion that we must take a side. Should we defend the Enlightenment as the birth of modern Western culture that bequeathed a legacy of liberty, human rights, democracy, and human progress, or condemn it as a pernicious era that gave rise to scientific racism and other dehumanizing ideas and structures? Rejecting this binary, Foucault invites us to approach the Enlightenment as its offspring, like it or not. Before embracing or rejecting, we must first study the Enlightenment to understand what it was and how it helped shape who we are and the world we inhabit, with all its promise and its horrors. This course offers an introduction to the Enlightenment through literary texts that popularized the movement across Europe in the eighteenth century. We will read canonical and peripheral primary and secondary texts that prompt questions related to justice, equality, and community. With Paris as our center and St. Petersburg as our periphery, we will also include non-geographic peripheries - authors marginalized by gender, creed, or race. Over the course of the semester, we will discover that many familiar aspects of our lives have a distinct and not-so-distant history in the Enlightenment, including habits of cultural consumption; entire academic disciplines; assumptions about creativity, individuality, and private vs. public; discourses on progress, civilization, race, gender, and inequality; and the very notion of “critical thinking.” Satisfies the Justice, Equality, & Community requirement (JEC). Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, & Rhetoric requirement (LTRQ) Counts toward the Global Literary Theory major as one of the six literature courses on a specific period. Counts toward the Russian Studies major. Counts toward the Russian Language & Literature major. Counts toward the French & Francophone Studies major as one of the approved courses outside the department. Fulfills an elective for the English major and minor. Counts toward the Russian minor. Counts toward the interdisciplinary minor in Global Literary Theory. Prerequisites & Notes No knowledge of French or Russian required or expected. All readings and discussion in English
Instructor Denham Study of authors and works of exile literature, including defining and challenging what exile literature is now, based on the definition grounded in the exile of writers from Nazi Germany. Major authors may include James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, Aimé Cesire, Eva Hoffman, Else Lasker-Schuler, Anna Seghers, Audre Lorde, Yoko Tawada, Friedrich Torberg, among others. Discussion, readings and weekly response papers to the group, collaborative projects, final research paper. Satisfies a major requirement in CIS - Global Literary Theory Satisfies a major requirement in German Studies Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Global Literary Theory Satisfies a minor requirement in German Studies Satisfies the Justice, Equality, and Community requirement Prerequisites & Notes Permission required.
Instructor Utkin Vladimir Nabokov–brilliant writer, outrageous literary gamesman, and cosmopolitan exile–is a towering figure of twentieth-century literature. His most famous novel, Lolita, propelled him to international stardom and changed the transnational literary landscape. Child of a turbulent century, Nabokov wrote exquisite and at times disturbing prose in Russian and English, balancing between imaginary worlds and harsh realities. This seminar offers a sustained exploration of Nabokov’s major Russian and American writings as well as film adaptations of his Despair (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) and Lolita (Stanley Kubrick). In the second half of the seminar we turn to novels Nabokov haunts: Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence, and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants. We will consider memory, exile, trauma, nostalgia, and identity as we read Nabokov, who saw existence as a “series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.” All readings and discussion in English. Satisfies the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement. Satisfies the Cultural Diversity requirement.
LIT 432Theory and Practice of Literary Translation (Seminar)
Instructors Denham, Ewington This seminar addresses theoretical and practical aspects of literary translation, underscoring translation as both a distinctive form of creative writing and a demonstration of cross-cultural and linguistic competencies. Coursework includes regular literary translation, theoretical and historical readings, peer review, and a substantial final project and writing portfolio. The course explores translation across languages and cultures, but also issues of genre, adaptation, register, period, colonial and post-colonial literary and cultural relations, canonicity and innovation, for example. Satisfies a requirement in the English major. Satisfies a requirement in the Chinese Language & Literature Major. Satisfies a requirement in the Russian Langauge and Literature Major. Counts as an elective in the German Studies major and minor. Satisfies Hispanic Studies major and minor requirement(Spring 2026 only) Prerequisites & Notes Intermediate competence (one course beyond 201) in at least one language besides English and prior satisfaction of the Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric requirement.
