Literature in Translation Courses Fall 2024

(3 credits)

MWF 9:55 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Maksim Hanukai

Course Description: Introduction to major and lesser known works of 19th century Russian fiction in translation, from Pushkin to Chekhov. The lectures are meant to guide students through difficult but richly rewarding texts while inspiring them to arrive at their own creative interpretations. Themes that we will touch on this semester will include: Russia’s imperial past (and present), class structures and divisions, urban legends and myths, female representation and authorship, religious faith and transgression, mortality and sexual desire. No prior knowledge of Russian literature is required. All readings will be in English.

(4 credits)

• Lecture: MWF 9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion Section 1: T 9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion Section 2: T 11:00 – 11:50 am
• Discussion Section 3: T 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion Section 4: T 1:20 – 2:10 pm 

Instructor: Maksim Hanukai

Course Description: Introduction to major and lesser known works of 19th century Russian fiction in translation, from Pushkin to Chekhov. The lectures are meant to guide students through difficult but richly rewarding texts while inspiring them to arrive at their own creative interpretations. Themes that we will touch on this semester will include: Russia’s imperial past (and present), class structures and divisions, urban legends and myths, female representation and authorship, religious faith and transgression, mortality and sexual desire. No prior knowledge of Russian literature is required. All readings will be in English.

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: David Danaher

Course Description: Václav Havel (1936-2011) was a renowned Czechoslovak writer, “dissident,” and human-rights activist who became president of his country in late 1989 with the fall of the totalitarian regime. He left behind a large body of written work that still speaks to us today. In this course, we will undertake an in-depth examination of his writings across a variety of genres, and these include typographic poetry, political/presidential speeches, “dissident” essays, and absurdist plays. The course is a literature-in-translation course in two senses of the term “translation.” In the most straightforward sense, we will be reading—and critically evaluating—Havel’s works in English translation. In a second sense, we will analyze the ideas in these texts by “translating” them into contemporary American terms. The course focuses on close analysis of the texts themselves (rhetorical style and technique, structure, imagery, comparison across genres) as well as on critical application of Havel’s ideas to our own personal life experiences. In this respect, we will remain faithful to Havel’s own pragmatic understanding of art and literature. In what ways do Havel’s works speak to us today? What is his intellectual legacy? Students will: (1) develop a familiarity with Havel’s sociopolitical and cultural context as well as details of his thought; (2) grapple with Havel’s ideas through close analysis of the texts we read; (3) hone their critical-reading and critical-thinking skills; (4) apply Havel’s thought to our contemporary context.

Prerequisites: None

(3 credits)

MWF 11:00 – 11:50 pm

Instructor: Sara Karpukhin

Course Description: In this course you will get to know the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). It spans both the Russian- and English-language parts of his career. You will discover the “Nabokov effect,” the writer’s love of pattern, and the system of cognitive challenges and rewards in his fiction. You will read Nabokov’s major works from the perspective of history and politics, ethics and art: learn about the “nightmare of history” in 20th-century Europe as well as the writer’s struggle as a refugee from war, ideology, and racial hatred.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.

(4 credits)

• Lecture 1: MWF 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Lecture 2 (3 credits): MWF 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Discussion Section: T 2:25 – 3:15 pm

Instructor: Jennifer Tishler

Course Description: Course description to come!

(3 credits)

MW 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: This course will give you an introduction to Medieval Nordic Mythology and put it in a European context. Scandinavian Mythology will introduce you to the belief systems of early and medieval Scandinavia in a European Context and take a look at the literary works written by Christian Scandinavians about their former Religion. We will look at the Kalevala, the mythological and heroic poetry of the Edda and the Icelandic legendary sagas, as well as a few early Christian texts.

Prerequisites: None

(First-year Interest Group)

(3 credits)

MWF 1:20 – 2:10 pm

Instructor: Maksim Hanukai

Course Description: This course, situated between literary, political, cultural, and art studies, will address Putin’s authoritarian Russia and the symbolic patterns that govern its erratic and seemingly irrational policies. We will draw on investigative journalism as well as contemporary Russian film, fiction, and art in order to explore the peculiar, yet not unprecedented cult of violence that underlies Putin’s authoritarian regime.  We will examine the origins of this cult in Russian imperial and Soviet culture and its implications for our understanding of current events.

(3 credits)

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff

Course Description: Exploration of European Yiddish fiction, poetry, folklore, and cinema, with a focus on works of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the American cultural imagination, European Jewish life and the history of Yiddish culture is often represented by the image of Jewish men. What happens to that image when women’s stories and women’s legacies are placed at the center? The following course introduces students to classic and lesser-known works of the Yiddish literature and culture that take as their central concern the gendered experience of modern Jewish life.

Covering material from the seventeenth century until today, we will explore a variety of texts, including memoirs, prayers, short stories, poetry, and visual art produced in Yiddish—a language that has been both praised and derided as mame-loshn, or “mother tongue.” The course texts will also familiarize students with major historical events of European Jewish history, including messianic movements; the Jewish Enlightenment; the rise of Jewish nationalism, socialism, and communism; and the Holocaust. The course also investigates the legacy of these works for contemporary theorists of Jewish culture and gender.

This course presumes no previous knowledge of Yiddish literature or language, or Jewish cultural literacy.

Prerequisites: None

(Fulfills the Literature requirement. Elementary level.)

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Sonja Klocke

Course Description: Do you like reading fiction? Are you particularly interested in reading novels, poetry, and short prose by women and by people who self-identify as nonbinary? Would you like to learn more about writing by female and nonbinary authors from German-speaking countries? This term, LitTrans 270/GWST 270 focuses on the topic of “Love and Violence.” We will read various contemporary novels, short prose texts, and poems on that subject, all written by women and nonbinary authors with diverse backgrounds. For example, you will become familiar with women writers from East Germany and from West Germany, which means that some of them were socialized in the socialist German Democratic Republic while others were raised in the more capitalist Federal Republic of Germany. Other writers we read, or their families migrated to Germany from Turkey, Russia, Syria, Japan or Great Britain and write in German. Many of the books we want to discuss have won prestigious prizes, and all of them will allow you to expand your horizon with regards to cultures of German-speaking countries and their relationship to the world as well as the question: What does it mean to write as a woman? What does it mean to write as a nonbinary author? How does one’s cultural background as author, reader, and translator influence the writing, the reading, and the translation process? In addition to the novels (all easily available in the USA), we will read short stories, excerpts from novels not entirely translated yet, poems, and short texts about women’s writing, gender theory, and narrative texts that will be provided on canvas.

Prerequisites: Open to freshmen. Not open to students who are taking or have taken German 302 or above.

(Fulfills the humanities breadth requirement and literature requirement)

(4 credits)

• Lecture 1 (3 credits): MWF 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Lecture 2: MWF 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion Section 1: R 1:20 – 2:10 pm 
• Discussion Section 2: T 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion Section 3: T 1:20 – 2:10 pm 
• Discussion Section 4: W 1:20 – 2:10 pm 
• Discussion Section 5: R 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion Section 6: W 9:55 – 10: 45 pm

Instructor: Claus Andersen

Course Description: Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales are known all over the world. He wrote The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling and many, many more. This course to going to familiarize you with the works of Hans Christian Andersen, with an emphasis on his fairy tales. During the course, we will read and analyze some of his best-known fairytales, but also look at a few texts from some of the other genres he mastered. Our readings will include the biographical traits of his stories, but will primarily focus on his mastery of the genre and his complex narrative method. We will also talk about the time and place in which Hans Christian Andersen wrote his fairytales – Denmark in the 19th century ­– and discuss how this influenced his stories. Though his stories/tales might seem simply, they are complex literary artifacts. This course will argue that Andersen should be considered one of the great authors of the 19th century, not just an author of simple fairy tales for children.

Prerequisites: None

(Disc 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306 have Comm-B designation.)

(3 credits)

TR 4:00 – 5:15 pm

Instructor: Katerina Somers

Course Description: This course is about Germanic barbarians as they have been imagined and reimagined in Europe and North America. Our origins story for the barbarian is Tacitus’s Germania, in which the Roman senator created the fierce and wild-eyed savages who destroyed three Roman legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. In the medieval Lay of the Nibelungs, these same barbarians acquire the civilized veneer of courtly manners and opulent wardrobes, but retain their propensity for brutal acts of violence. They are more thoroughly rehabilitated in the centuries to follow, when German-speaking intellectuals cultivate and promote a sense of nationalism in the absence of a German nation. During this time, the barbarian attains a new status, embodied in characters like Siegfried and Brünhilde in Wagner’s four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung and Hermann the German in Heinrich von Kleist’s play, The Battle of Hermann. Yet the myth of the German barbarians, their imagined indigeneity and racial purity, their supposedly ancient and uniquely German culture that reflects the true nature of the Volk, is treated as fact. Even worse, it becomes the template for what all Germans should strive to be. Finally, we investigate the migration of the Tacitean ideal to North America, where it appears in the form of the liberty-loving Anglo-Saxon. We end the course by tracing its influence in the formation of a US-American national identity.

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement.

(Breadth – Literature. Counts toward the Humanities requirement)

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Sabine Mödersheim

Course Description: “Climate Fiction “ is an emerging genre of literature, graphic novels, and film exploring the consequences of climate change in the age of the “Anthropocene”, the epoch in which human impacts on the planet’s ecological systems reach a dangerous tipping point. The aim of this course is to discuss the human experience of climate change on a global scale through analyses of works by German authors such as Christa Wolf, Yoko Tawada, Ilija Trojanow as well as writers from around the world, including Margaret Atwood, Octavia E. Butler, Amitav Ghosh, and others. We will explore dystopian, and apocalyptic stories but also works that imagine a more just future of resilience and social equality.

All materials will be in English translations or with English subtitles. Lectures and discussions will be in English. Prior knowledge of German welcome but not required.

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement.

(Level: Intermediate. Breadth: Literature. L&S credit type: Counts as LAS credit (L&S))

(3-4 credits)

TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm

Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff

Course Description: Pre-modern Jewish society’s breakdown, immigration, the challenges of integration and exclusion, and the establishment of new communities will serve as a backdrop for the analysis and comparison of Jewish literary texts written in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian, and English.

(3 credits)

TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Instructor: Ida Moen Johnson

Course Description: Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking is an icon of childhood in the Nordic countries and beyond. Pippi has come to symbolize the Nordic “autonomous” child par excellence. Takes up a diverse selection of books and films that represent both the common ideas of the Nordic Child, as well as various elaborations of and exceptions to the idealized norm. Examines a number of the prevalent forms and themes in Nordic children’s culture, such as nature, play, school, sexuality, death, loss, and storytelling.

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communication A requirement or graduate/professional standing

(“Meets with”  SCAND ST 320)

(3 credits)

T 2:30 – 3:45 

This class meets in person on Tuesdays and is synchronous, interactive, on Zoom, on Thursdays. Please plan your schedule such that you are in a quiet spot during the Thursday class and able to engage in (mostly small-group) discussions.

Instructor: Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor

Course Description: Anne Frank counts as one of the most widely read writers in recent world history, and yet some wonder whether she should be called a writer. Her work is widely loved. It has been the inspiration for many other cultural artifacts and institutions: editions; biographies; works of fiction and non-fiction; plays; autobiographies (e.g. by friends of Anne Frank); scholarly research: literary-, cultural-, historical-, as well as research in the various sciences of manuscript authentication; exhibitions; museums; foundations. In this course we will study the context in which the Diaries were written and consider the various ways in which they were received. We will look at what was done with the Diaries and with Anne Frank: how they have been read, interpreted, used, and argued about. We will engage in critical thinking, asking not just: what? but also: why? We will consider what her work and life have to say to us as we face the legacy and continued scourge of racism. We will certainly consider some of her laments as we consider out own, somewhat confined, existence. We will take Anne seriously as a writer by reading her works (the Diaries and other short texts) attentively. And then we will also think about the nature of literature: is what Ms. Frank wrote literature? Why, or why not?

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement.

(3-4 credits)

Online Only

Instructor: Susan Brantly

Course Description: The 19th-Century generated some of Scandinavia’s best-known writers. The course begins with Romanticism and looks at Norwegian folktales, Esaias Tegner’s popular Viking tale (Frithiof’s Saga), and Hans Christian Andersen’s world-famous stories, to name but a few highlights. From there, we move to the Modern Breakthrough, perhaps the most important period in Scandinavian literary history, during which writers were urged to take up current issues for public debate and let science be their inspiration. Internationally famous Nordic writers did just that in classics such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Strindberg’s The Father. We will trace how these influential social debates about class and gender took literary form. As the century comes to a close, some writers, such as Nobel laureates Knut Hamsun and Selma Lagerlôf, react against the rationality of the Modern Breakthrough by turning to literary Decadence and Neo-Romanticism. This course on 19th-Century Scandinavian Literature is being taught entirely online.

Prerequisites: Junior status or higher and 2 years of Scandinavian language.

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: This course will give you an introduction to Medieval Nordic Mythology and put it in a European context. Scandinavian Mythology will introduce you to the belief systems of early and medieval Scandinavia in a European Context and take a look at the literary works written by Christian Scandinavians about their former Religion. We will look at the Kalevala, the mythological and heroic poetry of the Edda and the Icelandic legendary sagas, as well as a few early Christian texts.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

(Honors option)

(3 credits)

TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Łukasz Wodzyński

Course Description: Course description to come!