Literature in Translation Courses – Fall 2026

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MWF 11:00 – 11:50 am

Instructor: Kirill Ospovat

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 001: MWF 11:00 – 11:50 am
• Discussion 301: T 9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion 302 T 11:00 – 11:50 am
• Discussion 303: T 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion 304: T 1:20 – 2:10 pm

Instructor: Kirill Ospovat

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)

• Lecture 001: TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MWF 1:20 – 2:10 pm

Instructor: Andrew Reynolds

Course Description: This course introduces students to the life and works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Through close reading and discussion of his short stories, novellas, and plays, students will learn about Chekhov’s treatment of such topics as childhood, religion, love and infidelity, death, mental illness, colonial expansion and the manifold dramas of modern life, while paying close attention to his developing artistic views and literary technique. All readings will be in English.

Prerequisites: None

(Meets-with Slavic 420.)

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MWF 12:05 – 12:55 pm

Instructor: Andrew Reynolds

Course Description: Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is generally considered to be one of the greatest novelists in world literature. His insights into human psychology and his analysis of the political and spiritual climate of 19th-century Russia (and of European thought more broadly) have influenced many major writers and philosophers, from Freud and Nietzsche to Faulkner and Camus. We will survey Dostoevsky’s work as a whole, but our main focus will be on the seminal Notes from Underground, one of the most important proto-existentialist works, and above all on two of Dostoevsky’s greatest novels: Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. Crime and Punishment is perhaps the most accessible of all Dostoevsky’s works and develops the critique of rationalism and utilitarianism begun in Notes from Underground and continued in later novels. Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, foretells the rise of totalitarianism, provides particularly revealing insights into human psychology and sexuality, and is the culminating expression of his religious and political thought, an ambiguous legacy that makes Dostoevsky very much our contemporary.

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MWF 11:00 – 11:50 am

Instructor: Sarah 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.

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001/002: MWF 11:00 – 11:50 am

Instructor: Jennifer Tishler

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MWF 9:55 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Karen Evans-Romaine

Course Description: Who is a witch? Who decides? What do Slavic and East European witches do? Where and how do they live? How did they become witches? In this course we will explore images of Slavic and East European witches in fairytales, literature, the visual arts, music, and film in their cultural, historical, and political contexts.

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Oksana Stoychuk

Course Description: This course is designed to introduce students to the fascinating world of Ukrainian culture from pre-Christian times to the present day. We will examine a number of cultural facets that help create Ukraine: history, folklore, language, art, literature, music, as well as current situation in Ukraine. We will learn how to tell fortunes with hot wax and what visual poetry means; we will learn the most popular Ukrainian (and American) Christmas carol and we will explore linguistic and historical nuances, which will help us embrace Ukrainian culture and history. All required texts are in English. In addition to the readings, we will include a variety of sources such as films, art works, cartoons and music.

Prerequisites: None

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: 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)

• Lecture 001: MW 5:30 – 6:45 pm

Instructor: Sonja Klocke

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: MW 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion 301:  9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion 302: F 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion 303: M 1:20 – 2:10 pm
• Discussion 304: W 1:20 – 2:10 pm
• Discussion 305: T 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Discussion 306: R 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Discussion 307: M 8:50 – 9:40 am
• Discussion 308: M 11:00 – 11:50 am
• Discussion 309: W 3:30 – 4:20 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)

• Lecture 001: TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm

Instructor: B. Venkat Mani

Course Description: The main aim of this course is to discuss the human experience of migration, refuge, and forced displacements. Migration continues to be a highly contested topic in the world today. In 2016 the number of people living outside nations of their birth was highest in recorded human history. For 2025, the United Nations’ High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates 117.3 million forcibly displaced people around the world, highest since the recorded data available since the two World Wars. The proliferation of refugees and stateless people in the world has coincided with the resurgence of exclusive nationalism, and divisive rhetoric centered on securing and insulating borders. In Europe and North America, immigration has defined the demographic make-up of specific nations for centuries. Especially since the end of the Second World War, waves of mass-migration have had a major impact on politics, society, and culture, giving rise to forms of aesthetic expression in literature, film, and music.

In this course, we will focus on human stories and engage with “migration” as a social, cultural, political, and historical phenomenon. In addition to discussing migration as a journey from the nation of birth to the adopted nation of residence we will discuss migration as a multi-lingual movement of ideas. The focus of our course will be migration into Germany, but we will compare and contrast it with migration into the US, UK, and Canada.

What is so special about the German migration history in the 20th century? How does migration change the social fabric of Germany and other European nations? How has migration enriched literature, culture, music, food, and sports? How do racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of discrimination pose challenges to inclusion of German/ European migrant subjects? What is the difference between willful and forced migration? How do we understand refugee narratives? These and other questions will be central to this course.

We will discuss how the understanding of migration in the Euro-American world has changed in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. We will analyze how migration as an experience is manifested in literature, cinema, and music, and how issues of identities and difference, tolerance and acceptance, nationalism and cosmopolitanism form and inform societies today. Most importantly, we will explore how categories such as home and elsewhere, the self and the other, belonging and cultural citizenship find expression in contemporary nations.

Prerequisites: NONE/ Open to Freshmen

Taught in English

Level – Intermediate
Breadth – Literature. Counts toward the Humanities req
L&S Credit Type – Counts as Liberal Arts and Science Credit

Also Counts toward:

International Studies Major [Culture in the Age of Globalization Track]

German Major

European Studies Certificate

South Asia Studies Certificate

(3 credits)

• Lecture 002: 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)

• Lecture 003: MW 4:00 – 5:15 pm

Instructor: Nâlân Erbil

Course Description: Love Berlin and Istanbul but cannot travel? Here is a course for you! This course is about two great cities: one entirely in Europe and one half in Europe and half in Asia. Berlin and Istanbul are connected by histories of political power, cultural exchange, and in the twentieth century by Turkish migration into Germany. The course starts with post WWII guest worker movement into West Germany and spans what is now the fourth generation of Turkish-Germans making Berlin the third largest Turkish city in the world after Ankara and Istanbul.

We will focus on Turkish-German food such as Döner kebab, Turkish-German rap and hip-hop, films, literature, sports (soccer), and social media influencers from the Turkish-German community. The course will offer students the opportunity to understand how the Turkish presence has influenced and transformed the German-speaking world and more generally how migration from outside Europe shapes the cultures of European cities.

To this end, we will read works both by Turkish German writers such as Fatma Aydemir, Zafer Şenocak, Sevgi Özdamar, Aras Ören, and writers from Turkey including the Nobel Laurate Orhan Pamuk and Menekşe Toprak; we will watch and discuss films like Kebab Connection, artists such as Eko Fresh, film makers such as Fatih Akın, controversial soccer players such as Mesut Özil and many more. Berlin and Istanbul will form the backdrop of our course, and guest speakers will enrich our discussion.

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

This course may be counted as cognate toward the German major. It counts towards European Studies Certificate and Middle East Studies Certificate. Open to Freshmen; Fulfills Literature and Humanities Breadth Requirements. Meets-with LitTrans 276/German 276.

(3 credits)

• Lecture 004: TR 1:00-2:15 pm

Instructor: Matt Johnson

Course Description: Introduces students to the reading, analysis, and appreciation of great poems from the German tradition and beyond (all in English translation). Discussions and assignments will enable students to read poems with more depth and precision and to articulate their significance and stakes. We will consider how poems address deeply personal as well as large-scale social problems and how they may astonish, inspire, disturb, awaken, shatter, console, and – in both subtle and fundamental ways – change us. No knowledge of German is required; students who are learning German will have the option to read select poems in the original as well.

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement

May appear as GERMAN/​LITTRANS  276 — SPECIAL TOPICS IN GERMAN AND WORLD LITERATURE/S

(3 credits)

• Lecture 005: 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 Lutz Seiler, Yoko Tawada, Ilija Trojanow, Christa Wolf 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 is welcome but not required.

Prerequisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement

(Level: Intermediate. Breadth: Literature. L&S credit type: Counts as LAS credit (L&S). Cross listed: GERMAN 276, LITTRANS 276)

(3 credits)

• Lecture 006: TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Instructor: B. Venkat Mani

Course Description: What makes “Great Books” so great? Who decides which literary works are classics or masterpieces? Why do some literary works become international bestsellers or “most read” books, while others do not? How do we, as readers in the 21^st century read and give new meanings to the so-called great books? How have our reading habits changed as we move from physical books to e-reading devices using screens? How do we account for the massive difference in the number of translated works from languages such as English, German, and French into other world languages and vice-versa? How does AI impact our reading habits? How and why do societies ban books?

These and other questions will guide us through this course, as we learn how literary works enter a larger world literary space through translations. We will engage with a few classics from the ancient to the modern eras alongside the magnificent histories of their circulation through orality, and later in print in translation. We will read and discuss some contemporary works that became instant bestsellers, and try to understand what made them so popular and well-received globally. We will also learn about how the world of literature transformed materially: from stone tablets to leaves, papyrus, paper and now to e-tablets. We will explore how literary awards such as the Nobel Prize impact literary markets and contribute to readerships. Last but not least, we will follow the “afterlives” of classic works and authors, both dead and alive, on film, TV, and social media platforms such as Book-Tube, Book-Tok and Bookstagram to see how readers today engage with them and re-circulate them globally in the digital age.

Prerequisites: NONE/ Open to Freshman

Level – Intermediate
Breadth – Literature. Counts toward the Humanities req
L&S Credit Type – Counts as Liberal Arts and Science Credit

Open to Freshmen; Fulfills Literature and Humanities Breadth Requirements

(3 credits)

• Lecture 007: TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm

Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff

Course Description: This course engages in the close reading of major works of modern Jewish literature. The selected texts examine the relationship of writing and the body across the twentieth century.

Prerequisites: None.

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: TR 4:00 – 5:15 pm

Instructor: Melissa Sheedy

Course Description: From wolves to witches, Rumpelstiltskin to Rapunzel, the German fairy-tale tradition is filled with rich imagery, familiar themes, and political and social subversion. Of enduring popularity and as constant subjects of reimagination and revitalization, German tales and their retellings serve as a unique lens through which to view the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were produced. Through these texts, we will glimpse the underlying perceptions and values regarding family, gender, nation, nature, religion, and society, both in the first half of the 19th century and in the Germany of the last 25 years. With an eye to depictions of gender and gender roles as well as to conceptions of the environment and civilization, we will critically engage with these works and contextualize them within the social and political landscapes that shaped them. Our investigations will center on tales and their retellings in a variety of forms, with a special focus on fairytales by women writers. In recognizing and analyzing the Märchen’s influences in literature, art, music, poetry, and pop culture, we will begin to appreciate the fairy-tale’s enduring legacy and its place within German literary and cultural history. This course counts as a cognate course for the German major.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

Fulfills the humanities breadth requirement and literature requirement.

Honors optional

(3 credits)

• Lecture 001: T 2:30 – 3:45 pm
• Lecture 001 (Online): R 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor

Course Description: In this course we will consider emotionally and intellectually challenging material, and practice discussing difficult topics with others. 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 has been the inspiration for many other cultural products and institutions: editions; biographies; works of fiction and non-fiction; plays; 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 have been received. In other words, in addition to reading her work closely and considering it as literature as well as testimony to history, we will also consider what was, and is being, “done” with the Diaries and with Anne Frank: how the Diaries and her life have been read, interpreted, used, and argued about. We will engage in critical thinking, asking not just: what? but also: why?, or could it have been different? We will consider what her work and life have to say to us as we face the legacy and reality of racism and antisemitism. We will take Anne seriously as a writer by reading her works attentively, and noting the process by which they came to us. We will consider the nature of literature and the role of adaptation, repurposing, and how stories and narratives move through time and across cultures.

You will become familiar with Anne Frank’s writings and with a range of receptions of her work; you will think about what distinguishes literature from non-literary texts, and what makes literary and non-literary texts effective. You will also learn about the context in which she wrote: the history of Jewish communities in the Netherlands, and of her family in particular; this context includes the history of the Netherlands leading up to and during the Nazi Occupation, why German Jewish people moved to the Netherlands before WWII, how the Nazis took control of the country, how the Dutch government and Dutch citizens did or did not respond, and that the Dutch record is the worst in Europe with respect to the percentage of Jewish citizens and residents who were murdered in the Holocaust. In the process, you will have an opportunity to work on honing intellectual skills that prepare you for twenty-first century challenges. To that end, we will together practice reading thoughtfully, asking questions (and answering some of them; we will also practice “sitting with” uncomfortable questions to which there may not be an easy answer), thinking and evaluating, and writing (both individually and in online discussions).

(3 credits)

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)

• Seminar 001: TR 2:30 – 3:45 pm

Instructor: Dean Krouk

Course Description: Investigates the relations between theories of memory, both individual and collective, and modern literary representations of remembering. Survey seminal conceptions of memory in the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, investigating topics such as nostalgia, trauma, personal and cultural identity, war and Holocaust, sites of memory, and autobiographical narrative. Through the avenues opened up by these theoretical frameworks, consider the narrative forms as well as the ethical and political dimensions of remembering in works of fiction from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

Also listed as SCAND ST 428.