9 courses with the subject CPLT, 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.
CPLT 014Intro to Comparative Literature1
How do we read comparatively across national literatures, languages, genres and media? This course will introduce major models of comparative analysis through a wide range of literary and cultural productions from diverse periods and regions of the world. This survey will enable us to highlight and assess various conceptions of the cultural functions of literature and of literary critical knowledge. This is an introductory level theory and analysis course, and all texts will be in English, though working with a few short originals in other languages will be possible and encouraged.
one course in literature (any language). Humanities 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Comparative Literature Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/comparative-literature Access the class schedule to search for sections.
CPLT 021Performance in Early Modern Europe1
(Cross-listed as DANC 021 and THEA 011B .) How do we define performance in early modern Europe? This course explores multi-genre traditions through forms including court ballet, comedy-ballet, opera, bourgeois drama, and ballet d’action in order to raise questions that are equally relevant for us today: How do we study something that is fleeting? What is the relationship between “text” and performance? This course explores the hybrid genres of dance, mime, music, and drama from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in order to analyze their present relevance as “art.” Artists and theorists studied will include Angiolini, Diderot, Noverre, Moliere, Garrick, Goldoni, Sulzer, Weaver and others, with a view on developing a transnational understanding of theater and dance in France, Germany, Italy, and England. Special attention will be paid to cross-casting (drag) and Orientalism. A version of this course has been offered in the past as a First-Year Seminar, Dance 002, but this new version is open to any student, without any prerequisite. If you have taken Dance 002, you are not able to enroll in CPLT 021. Humanities. Writing. 1 credit. Eligible for FRST, GLBL-paired
(Cross-listed as LING 029 ) We look at literature presented/performed in a sign language, comparing to spoken language literature with respect to: storytelling methods, definitions of rhyme, notions of closure, role of paralinguistic features, relationship of storyteller to audience, and role of stories in their communities. We examine linguistic creativity in storytelling, humor, poetry, and taboo language across modalities.
(Cross-listed as LITR 020 ) Literature and music have at some times been viewed as natural allies, and at others - in philosopher Peter Kivy’s phrase - as “antithetical arts.” This course approaches the rich relationship between music and literature from a variety of angles, including aesthetics, form, style and genre, reception, and adaptation. Case studies toward the end of the semester will explore the literary legacy of Richard Wagner’s provocative music drama Tristan and Isolde as well as two very different adaptations of Tolstoy’s War and Peace: an opera by Sergei Prokofiev and an electropop musical by Dave Molloy. No prior musical training is required, though students with score-reading ability may be given alternate assignments. Humanities. 1 credit.
CPLT 070Writing and Screening the Nation: A Comparative Perspective1
(Cross-listed as FREN 070 , GMST 070 ) This course explores the continued relevance and resonance of the First and Second World War across European cultural productions, be they literary, cinematic or graphics works. More specifically, through a comparative lens of mostly French and German works, we investigate how these works participate in the formation and re-shaping of national and transnational memories: the relationship between what disappears, what remains, and what re-emerges in that process. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN, GMST
CPLT 106Classical Studies Capstone: Dante: Christianity and the Classical Tradition2
(Cross-listed as CLST 106 ) In the Divina Commedia, Dante adapts the Classical theme of the heroic journey to the Underworld to his task as a visionary poet and Christian prophet. We will read the Inferno , Purgatorio , and Paradiso in English translation, exploring its different levels of meaning and Dante’s surprising reinterpretation of the ancient authors. We will reconstruct his world view in the broader context of Medieval culture: his thought on life, death, love, language, the visual arts, politics and history. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for MDST.
