CPLT 5004a, Proseminar in Translation Studies  Robyn Creswell and Alice Kaplan

This graduate proseminar combines a historically minded introduction to Translation Studies as a field with a survey of its interdisciplinary possibilities. The proseminar is composed of several units (Histories of Translation; Geographies of Translation; Scandals of Translation), each with a different approach or set of concerns, affording the students multiple points of entry to the field. The Translation Studies coordinator provides the intellectual through-line from week to week, while incorporating a number of guest lectures by Yale faculty and other invited speakers to expose students to current research and practice in different disciplines. The capstone project is a conference paper-length contribution of original academic research. Additional assignments throughout the term include active participation in and contributions to intellectual programming in the Translation Initiative.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 5020a / GMAN 5020a, Capitalism as a Form of Life  RAHEL JAEGGI

The critique of capitalism is thriving. But what, exactly, is the problem with capitalism? Is it flawed, unjust, irrational, or harmful? Is it evil or foolish—or does it simply fail to function? In other words, on what grounds can capitalism be criticized? Setting aside the simplistic accusation of individual greed, three distinct strategies of critique can be identified. First, there is the functional critique: capitalism, as a social and economic system, is inherently dysfunctional and prone to crises. The second is the moral critique, which argues that capitalism relies on exploitation and perpetuates injustice. The third is the ethical critique, which claims that life under capitalism is fundamentally alienating or impoverished, preventing individuals from achieving true human flourishing. These three accusations are as old as capitalism itself. They appear not only in “progressive” or emancipatory movements but also in nostalgic and conservative responses to the profound social changes capitalism has brought about. They are found in theoretical debates, political manifestos, literature, and film. This course explores these three lines of critique through a philosophical lens as well as through an examination of literature and films that engage with the issue. The central idea—that capitalism is not merely an economic system but a pervasive way of life that as such warrants critique—is made vivid and comprehensible through this exploration. Readings include Max Weber, Karl Marx, Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Upton Sinclair, Bertold Brecht, Thomas Piketty, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Quinn Slobodian.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

CPLT 5065a / GMAN 5060a, Bad Books  Kirk Wetters

Traditional humanities education always focused on “greatness”—but there is no denying the critical value and sometimes even the enjoyment of poor performances. In a world governed by norms and standards (against the appearance of laxness and relativism), “badness” and amateurism are inevitable. “Bad” works can be extremely popular and influential (e.g., in the cases of pseudoscience, misinformation, racism, antisemitism). The “bad” archive contributes to a reevaluation of critical standards, forms of official and unofficial censorship, freedom of speech and the function of taboos. The course explores famous works that have been considered aesthetically, morally, ideologically and politically pernicious (stopping short, however, of screeds and manifestos like Hitler’s Mein Kampf). Nevertheless, this course warrants a strong content warning. The range of our considerations is partly based on the students’ wishes and judgments.
HTBA

CPLT 5140a / ENGL 5040a / GMAN 5140a, What the University Was  Paul North

After this course, you might not know exactly where the university is going, but you should be able to say what it was once supposed to be, in its “modern” inception in Germany and in latter day materializations around the planet. The course is the interpretation of a particular dream. Who dreamed the dream of an institution that could be anywhere and contain everything important? How did its theorists think the unique nexus of power, economics, histories, and architecture that is, ideally at least, the university? How did they imagine it, given that it is a highly conflictual entity, riding the forefront of some transformations and at the same time codifying and regulating knowledges and social potentials? We read texts from the global archive called “critical university studies,” concentrating on articulations of the problems in theoretical texts. These include Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties, Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education, Nietzsche’s Anti-Education, Derrida’s Eyes of the University, Willy Thayer’s Non-Modern Crisis of the Modern University, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s Undercommons, and Roderick Ferguson’s The Reorder of Things.
M 3:30pm-6:30pm

CPLT 5240b / GMAN 6500b, Critique and Crisis  Kirk Wetters

In our time, when everyone is suspected of being hypercritical, it is not surprising that the limits of critique, its function, and institutional location are called to question. The idea of “post-critique” has been much discussed in recent years. This course develops critical models, primarily from the German tradition, in order to show the great variety of options available beyond the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Topics include post-critique, the history of critique/criticism, the Romantic concept of critique, traditional vs. critical theory, historicism, philology vs. hermeneutics, science (Wissenschaft) vs. the critique of positivism. Main protagonists include Kant, Schiller, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Max Weber, Lukács, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, Koselleck, Szondi, Gadamer, Gumbrecht, Latour, Felski.
HTBA

CPLT 5490a / RUSS 6609a, Memory and Memoir in Russian Culture  Jinyi Chu

How do we remember and forget? How does memory transform into narrative? Why do we read and write memoirs and autobiography? What can they tell us about the past? How do we analyze the roles of the narrator, the author, and the protagonist? How should we understand the ideological tensions between official historiography and personal reminiscences, especially in twentieth-century Russia? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of a few cultural celebrities’ memoirs and autobiographical writings that are also widely acknowledged as the best representatives of twentieth-century Russian prose. Along the way, we read literary texts in dialogue with theories of memory, historiography, and narratology. Students acquire the theoretical apparatus that will enable them to analyze the complex ideas, e.g., cultural memory and trauma, historicity and narrativity, and fiction and nonfiction. Students acquire an in-depth knowledge of the major themes of twentieth-century Russian history—e.g., empire, revolution, war, Stalinism, and exilic experience—as well as increased skills in the analysis of literary texts. Students with knowledge of Russian are encouraged to read in the original. All readings are available in English.
HTBA

CPLT 5550a / ENGL 6535a / MDVL 6035a, Postcolonial Middle Ages  Marcel Elias

This course explores the intersections and points of friction between postcolonial studies and medieval studies. We discuss key debates in postcolonialism and medievalists’ contributions to those debates. We also consider postcolonial scholarship that has remained outside the purview of medieval studies. The overall aim is for students, in their written and oral contributions, to expand the parameters of medieval postcolonialism. Works by critics including Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Leela Gandhi, Lisa Lowe, Robert Young, and Priyamvada Gopal are read alongside medieval romances, crusade and jihād poetry, travel literature, and chronicles.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 6010a / NELC 6350a, The Education of Princes: Medieval Advice Literature of Rulership and Counsel  Shawkat Toorawa

In this course we read “mirrors for princes,” a type of political writing by courtiers and advisors. The genre flourished in the courts of medieval Europe and the Islamic world. We learn about the ethical and moral considerations that guided (or were meant to guide) rulers in their conduct, in the formulation of their policies, and about theories of rule and rulership. The works we read are from several cultural, religious, and political traditions, and include: Christine de Pizan, A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor; Einhard, Life of Charlemagne; Erasmus, Education of a Christian Prince; Ibn al-Muqaffa’, Kalilah and Dimnah, John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Book of the Statesman; Machiavelli, The Prince; Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government. All texts are in English translation. Instructor permission required.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

CPLT 6121a, Translating Theory  Marta Figlerowicz

This is an advanced workshop for students with a special interest in translating theoretical and philosophical works. Over the course of the term, we collectively translate all the essays in the legendary 1966 issue of the French journal Communications, whose contributors include Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, and Tzvetan Todorov. The finished translation will be published in Narrative, the flagship journal of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, with the course members listed as collective co-translators.  Advanced knowledge of French or Italian. 
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 6180b / GMAN 7090b / JDST 7680b, Walter Benjamin’s Critical Theory  Paul North

Careful analysis of central texts in Benjamin’s oeuvre in the context of his philosophical, political, and literary reading.
HTBA

CPLT 6220a / AMST 6622a and AMST 6623b, Working Group on Globalization and Culture  Michael Denning

A continuing yearlong collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory.” The group, drawing on several disciplines, meets regularly to discuss common readings, develop collective and individual research projects, and present that research publicly. The general theme for the working group is globalization and culture, with three principal aspects: (1) the globalization of cultural industries and goods, and its consequences for patterns of everyday life as well as for forms of fiction, film, broadcasting, and music; (2) the trajectories of social movements and their relation to patterns of migration, the rise of global cities, the transformation of labor processes, and forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict; (3) the emergence of and debates within transnational social and cultural theory. The specific focus, projects, and directions of the working group are determined by the interests, expertise, and ambitions of the members of the group, and change as its members change. The working group is open to doctoral students in their second year and beyond. Graduate students interested in participating should contact michael.denning@yale.edu.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 6351a / AFST 6351a / FILM 6450, The Nigerian “Video Novel” and Nollywood  Staff

The course introduces students to an emerging genre of the Nigerian novel in which writers adopt narrative repurposing strategies that invite transcription and adaptation to films. This evolving “Nigerian visual novel” or “video novel,” is defined by its loosely structured, tabloid-themed and reader-friendly style, all reflecting the craft of Nollywood films, a thriving video film culture that emerged in the 1990s and has remained popular globally. Through the study of Nollywood films alongside new Nigerian fiction, the course examines the techniques adopted by writers to accommodate the aesthetics of popular culture, to revive a declining readership, and to make literature more sellable. As these novels win literature prizes and find their way onto syllabi, the implications they have for our understanding of the African literary canon is discussed. Students view selected Nollywood movies and read a number of novels in the new genre in order to appraise the extent to which the serious and the sensuous intersect in this remaking of literariness. Seminar discussions are accompanied by short lectures in which concepts such as “trans-mediality,” “reverse-adaptation,” “screen-to-page,” “appropriation,” and “quotation” are discussed to build an understanding of how the “new” approach reconfigures Nigerian novels.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 6570a / PORT 6520a, Clarice Lispector: The Short Stories  Kenneth David Jackson

This course is a seminar on the complete short stories of Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), a master of the genre and one of the major authors of twentieth-century Brazil known for existentialism, mysticism, and feminism.
M 3:30pm-5:20pm

CPLT 6640a / ITAL 6990a, Taking Leave: Meditations on Art, Death, and the Afterlife from the Bible to the Twentieth Century  Jane Tylus and Bruce Gordon

This seminar seeks to contextualize leave-taking within the explicitly religious and artistic contexts of Western culture. We open with readings from ancient texts from Mesopotamian, Greek, Latin, and Judaic cultures, and end with the U.S. Civil War. And in between we spend considerable time on the ways in which the advent of Christianity and, in turn, the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and modern worlds influenced the practices and understanding of leave-taking. En route we explore how, for example, Catholicism sought to extend life into the third realm of Purgatory, why the Reformation sought to undo those imaginative excursions, and the extent to which the different faiths of figures such as Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and John Donne produced radically different kinds of finished—and unfinished—works. As we explore the transformative potential of the goodbye in literary and religious works, we also engage with more recent discussions from theologians, theorists, and therapists about grieving, transitions, and letting go. Our objectives are: to strive to understand the important role that leave-takings play in the history of Christianity and artistic expression, especially between 1300–1850; to probe the difference between religious faiths of early modernity with respect to rituals of saying goodbye and the afterlife; to sharpen our skills as readers, spectators, and listeners of works that engage with complex questions regarding the meaning of one's life and one's lifework; and to contextualize our readings within contemporary conversations about dying, grief, and letting go. Area V and Area III.
W 9:25am-11:15am

CPLT 6891a, Introduction to Critical Sleep Studies: The Politics of Sleep and Sleeplessness  Moira Fradinger

Although we spend approximately one third of our lives asleep, since the industrial revolution and the emergence of uninterrupted city lighting, industrialized societies seem to have developed an ambivalent relation to sleep: both protected and devalued for the sake of higher standards of productive work. The devaluation of sleep, in particular, has produced, during the twentieth and the first two decades of the twenty-first centuries, an array of social, political, and medical discourses to study the impact of changing patterns of sleep and sleeplessness at the global level. This seminar studies topics in the politics and cultures of sleep and sleeplessness, which posit sleep as a human practice. As any human practice, it is framed by cultural and political settings, so that how, when, why, where, and who sleeps vary across sectors of society, across past and present and across world cultures. We study historical, literary, philosophical, sociological, political, and filmic texts. A cultural, social, and political understanding of sleep and sleeplessness can reveal how sleep has been transformed into a bodily site upon which social values are imposed, social surveillance is enacted, ideas about “normality” are instrumentalized, resulting in a demand that humans adapt to human-made changing conditions of production, rather than universally unchanging health needs.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

CPLT 7290b / AFST 9965b / FREN 9650b, On Violence: Politics and Aesthetics across the Maghreb  Jill Jarvis

This humanities laboratory investigates North African literary texts and other aesthetic works that document, theorize, and disrupt forms of state violence. How might these works—as well as our practices as humanities scholars, critics, curators, co-creators—run counter to state-sanctioned memory projects or compel rethinking practices of testimony, archiving, and justice in the face of enduring colonial occupation, institutionalized racism, and the state-sponsored violence that continues to take place on scales or in forms that are difficult to frame or fathom? Works by Fanon, Djebar, Kateb, Mechakra, Meddeb, Rahmani, Mouride, Hawad, Binebine, and many others. The seminar is an RITM Humanities Laboratory designed to cultivate new forms of collaborative and experimental humanities scholarship. See Canvas page for a more complete description. Conducted in English. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of French.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 7880b / GMAN 5710b, Robert Musil’s Man without Qualities: The End of the Novel  Rudiger Campe

Musil’s gigantic Man without Qualities (published 1930–33, 1943) is one of the quintessential modernist (interwar) European novels. After looking into Musil’s earlier narrative experiments, the course begins with the close reading of part I of the novel and then focuses on the main strands of its narrative network: modernization and mysticism; the end of old Europe and the rise of fascism; the Vienna Circle’s epistemology and the legal doctrine of accountability; love and violence. The intertwining of essay and narration in the novel, the theory of the novel in the novel, and the question of prose as form are at the core of the course. Readings in English or German. Discussions in English.
HTBA

CPLT 8220b / AMST 6623b, Working Group on Globalization and Culture  Staff

A continuing yearlong collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory.” The group, drawing on several disciplines, meets regularly to discuss common readings, develop collective and individual research projects, and present that research publicly. The general theme for the working group is globalization and culture, with three principal aspects: (1) the globalization of cultural industries and goods, and its consequences for patterns of everyday life as well as for forms of fiction, film, broadcasting, and music; (2) the trajectories of social movements and their relation to patterns of migration, the rise of global cities, the transformation of labor processes, and forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict; (3) the emergence of and debates within transnational social and cultural theory. The specific focus, projects, and directions of the working group are determined by the interests, expertise, and ambitions of the members of the group, and change as its members change. There are a small number of openings for second-year graduate students. Students interested in participating should contact michael.denning@yale.edu.
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 8355a / SPAN 8355a, Ciencia Ficción, Fantasía y Neogótico en la Narrativa Hispanoamericana Contemporánea  Anibal González-Pérez

Graduate-level study of the speculative incorporation of scientific ideas and themes in twentieth and twenty-first century from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. Reading and discussion of twentieth-century precursors and founders of Spanish American science fiction, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Hugo Correa, Angélica Gorodischer, Leopoldo Lugones, Pablo Palacio, and Clemente Palma. Followed by examples of “techno-writing,” utopias, dystopias, and possible futures proposed by late twentieth and early twenty-first-century authors such as José B. Adolph, César Aira, Luis Carlos Barragán, Alberto Chimal, Liliana Colanzi, Mariana Enríquez, Yuri Herrera, Samantha Schweblin, Jorge Volpi, and Yoss, among others. Topics to be examined include posthumanism, ecofiction, and sociopolitical satire. Taught in Spanish.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 8810a / ENGL 6860a / WGSS 9960a, Literary Theory  Caleb Smith

What is literary theory today, and what is its history? The aim of the course is to introduce students to central concepts in theory and explore their relation to method. We examine the variety of approaches available within the field of literary studies, including older ones such as Russian formalism, Critical Race Theory, New Criticism, deconstruction, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, as well as newer ones like actor-network theory and digital humanities research. We explore the basic tenets and histories of these theories in a way that is both critical and open-minded, and discuss their comparative advantages and pitfalls. The focus is on recurrent paradigms, arguments, and topics, and on transhistorical relations among our various schools of literary-theoretical thought. Readings might include work by René Wellek, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, Northrop Frye, Fred Moten, and many others.
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 8980a / FREN 8980a, Fin-de-siècle France  Maurice Samuels

The course examines major French literary and artistic movements of the last decades of the nineteenth century (Naturalism, Decadence, Symbolism) in their cultural context. Weekly reading assignments pair literary texts with contemporary theoretical/medical/political discourse on such topics as disease, crime, sex, poverty, colonialism, nationalism, and technology. Literary authors include Barbey, Mallarmé, Maupassant, Rachilde, Villiers, and Zola. Theorists include Bergson, Freud, Krafft-Ebing, Le Bon, Nordau, Renan, and Simmel. Some attention also paid to the visual arts. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of French.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 9013a / FILM 6900a / SPAN 6330a, Third Cinema: Arts and Politics in Latin America  Moira Fradinger

This seminar studies the articulation of art and politics proposed by the world renowned film movement usually identified as “Third Cinema” that took shape in Latin America roughly between 1955 and 1982. Continental in scope, the movement has also been called “New Latin American Cinema” joining the “new waves” of the global sixties and expanding its influence throughout the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement. The seminar examines the category of “Third cinema,” first formulated in Solanas's and Getino's 1969 “Manifesto Towards a Third Cinema” and opposed to “First Cinema” (Hollywood) and “Second Cinema” (“cinema d’auteur” or independent film art). The manifesto's political thinking will be framed in terms of contemporary political ideas about “the third way” or “the non-aligned third world” as well as put in dialogue with an array of film manifestos emerging at this time in the region. The seminar engages concepts such as “imperfect cinema,” “urgent cinema,” “cinema novo,” “aesthetics of hunger,” “liberation cinema”; the “camera as expropiator of image-weapons,” and so forth. The seminar casts a wide net in terms of the corpus, which includes a minimum of two films per week, from countries such as Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Mexico. Taught in English; knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese is not required but certainly useful.
M 6:30pm-11pm, W 6:30pm-9pm

CPLT 9053a / EALL 8230a / EAST 8220a, Topics in Sinophone and Chinese Studies  Jing Tsu

This recurring graduate research seminar and symposium examines different areas, periods, genres, and conceptual frameworks in Chinese and Sinophone studies. The topic this year is 1950s–2020. Prerequisite: reading fluency in modern and semi-classical Chinese. Enrollment is restricted; no auditors.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

CPLT 9170a / ENGL 920 / FILM 6010a, Foundations of Film and Media  John MacKay

The course sets in place some undergirding for students who want to anchor their film interest to the professional discourse of this field. A coordinated set of topics in film theory is interrupted first by the often discordant voice of history and second by the obtuseness of the films examined each week. Films themselves take the lead in our discussions.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm, T 7pm-10pm