Courses 2015-2016

Spring 2016

CPLT 7120 (sec 1) M 12-3 "Anglophone Versus Francophone: Postcolonial F(r)ictions in Africa Today." Pallavi Rastogi

This class will explore the preoccupations of Francophone and Anglophone African theory and fiction in order to assess whether these two language traditions can be usefully juxtaposed under the category of postcolonial African literature. What value we can derive from the tension between French and English in African postcolonial theory and fiction? Does the history of European colonialism, as well as the shared space of the African continent, generate a common “postcolonial” aesthetic that transcends the divisions of language, time, and culture? Or do the vastly different forms of French and English colonialism reveal the artifice behind an African literary postcoloniality? What happens to the language of African postcolonialism in the globalized 21st century as the experience of colonialism fades into the background and other concerns such as radical Islam, refugee crises, migration to Europe and North America, civil wars, and the collapse of nation-states take center-stage instead? Does postcolonialism retain its relevancy as a mega-heremeneutic in reading contemporary African fiction or is there some other mode of categorization that can do adequate justice to the diversity within, as well as the similarity between, Francophone and Anglophone African literature today?

CPLT 7120 (sec 2) W 1-4 Literary Anthropology/ Gundela Hachmann

At times when literature and literary criticism find themselves under intense scrutiny, the field of literary anthropology offers strong arguments. It proposes nothing less than that literature is essential to our humanity, that humans need to tell stories in order to be human. We humans, so goes the argument, need to play with words, in order to understand our world, to practice or expand models of communication, and to train our brains. Literature as the most sophisticated play with words thus is and always will be essential to humanity. A strong, but highly relevant claim in the age of an increasingly digital humanity.

CPLT 7130 (sec 1) Th 3-6 The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation/ Qiancheng Li

CPLT 7140/ENGL 7922 / Tu 12-3 Beckett and Hitchcock: “Pure” Literature and “Pure” Cinema/ Patrick McGee

CPLT 8900 / TBA Teaching World Literature Adelaide Russo

Students will audit the undergraduate section of World Literature and meet to discuss theoretical and practical issues related to Teaching World Literature to Undergraduates: Readings Teaching World Literature; World Literature: A Reader.

Fall 2015

CPLT 7020 M 3-6 Adelaide Russo

CPLT 7130/ THTR7920 Tu-Th 10:30-12:00 Femi Euba Theatre of the African Diaspora

CPLT 7120/PHIL Tu-Th 1:30-2:50 François Raffoul Philosophy of the Event

CPLT 8900 Adelaide Russo Teaching World Literature Practicum

Students will audit the undergraduate section of World Literature and meet to discuss theoretical and practical issues related to Teaching World Literature to Undergraduates: Readings Teaching World Literature; World Literature: A Reader.