Comparative Literature and Society

Program Office: B-101 Heyman Center, East Campus; 212-854-4541; icls@columbia.edu
http://icls.columbia.edu

Director: Prof. Anupama Rao, 815 Milstein Center; 212-854-8547; arao@barnard.edu

Associate Director: Prof. Brent Hayes Edwards, 609 Philosophy; 212-854-2912; bhe2@columbia.edu

Director of Undergraduate Studies: Tadas Bugnevicius, B-106 Heyman Center, East Campus; tb3111@columbia.edu

Director of Medical Humanities Major: Associate Prof. of Emergency Medicine Rishi Goyal; B-106 Heyman Center, East Campus; rkg6@cumc.columbia.edu

Assistant Director: Sarah Monks, B-102 Heyman Center, East Campus; 212-854-8850; sm3373@columbia.edu

Established at Columbia in 1998, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) promotes a global perspective in the study of literature and its social context. Committed to cross-disciplinary study of literary works, the Institute brings together the rich resources of Columbia in the various literatures of the world; in the social sciences; in art history, architecture, and media; and in the medical humanities.

The major programs at ICLS allow qualified students to study literature, culture, and society with reference to material from several national traditions, or in combination of literary study with comparative study in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Under the guidance of the director of undergraduate studies, students select courses offered by participating departments.

The program is designed for students whose interest and expertise in languages other than English permit them to work comparatively in several national or regional cultures. The course of study differs from that of traditional comparative literature programs, both in its cross-disciplinary nature and in its expanded geographic range, including not just European, but also Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American cultures.

The program includes course work in the social sciences, and several core courses are jointly taught by faculty from different disciplines. Students thus explore a variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches to cultural and literary artifacts in the broadest sense. The cross-disciplinary range of the program includes visual and media studies; law and the humanities; medicine and the humanities; and studies of space, cities, and architecture. As a major or concentration, this program can be said to flow naturally from Columbia’s Core Curriculum, which combines literature, art, philosophy, and social thought, and consistently attracts some of Columbia’s most ambitious and cosmopolitan students.

Students can choose to complete the major in Comparative Literature and Society (CLS), the concentration in Comparative Literature and Society, or the major in Medical Humanities (MedHum). Currently, the MedHum major is not available as a concentration.

Given the wide variety of geographic and disciplinary specializations possible within the majors and concentration, students construct their course sequence in close collaboration with the director of undergraduate studies. All students, however, share the experience of taking the course CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY in their sophomore year, as well as the required CPLS UN3991 SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT & SOCIETY in the fall of their last year in the program. The ICLS majors and concentration are designed for students interested in the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural study of texts, traditions, media, and discourses in an increasingly transnational world.

Students planning to apply for admission to the CLS major, the MedHum major, or the CLS concentration should organize their course of study in order to complete the following prerequisites by the end of the sophomore year:

  1. Preparation to undertake advanced work in one foreign language, to be demonstrated by completion of two introduction to literature courses, typically numbered 3333-3350.
  2. Completion of at least four terms of study of a second foreign language or two terms in each of two foreign languages.
  3. Enrollment in CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY in the spring semester of the sophomore year.

Information about admission requirements and application to the majors or concentration can be found at https://icls.columbia.edu/undergraduate-program/admissions-to-the-majors-or-concentration/. Students are advised to meet with the director of undergraduate studies before submitting the statement of purpose for the required application. Applications are due in early January of the sophomore year. 

Departmental Honors

To be eligible for departmental honors, students must have a minimum grade point average of 3.6 for courses in the major. Departmental honors will be conferred only on students who have submitted a superior senior thesis that clearly demonstrates originality and excellent scholarship. Note that the senior thesis is not required for the major. For information on the honors program, see http://icls.columbia.edu/programs/departmental-honors/.

Executive Committee of ICLS
Nadia Abu El-Haj (Anthropology, Center for Palestine Studies)
Tadas Bugnevicius (French and ICLS)
Bruno Bosteels (Latin American and Iberian Cultures)
Claudia Breger (Germanic Languages)
Souleymane Bachir Diagne (French and Romance Philology)
Madeleine Dobie (French and Romance Philology)
Brent Hayes Edwards (English and Comparative Literature, Jazz)
Matthew Engelke (Religion)
Stathis Gourgouris (Classics, English and Comparative Literature)
Rishi Kumar Goyal (Emergency Medicine)
Gil Hochberg (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and IRWGS)
Seth Kimmel (Latin American and Iberian Cultures) 
Laura Kurgan (GSAPP and Data Science)
Adam Leeds (Slavic Languages)
Lydia H. Liu (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
David B. Lurie (East Asian Languages and Cultures)
Anupama P Rao (History, Barnard)
Pamela Smith (History and Center for Science and Society)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor of the Humanities)
Dennis Tenen (English and Comparative Literature)

Guidelines for all ICLS Majors and Concentrators

Please contact the director of undergraduate studies with any questions. An application worksheet can be found on our website. Applications are due in early January of a student's sophomore year. At the time of application, students interested in the major (including the major in Medical Humanities) or concentration must have met these requirements:

  1. Foreign language 1: four semesters of language training (or equivalent) and one introductory literature course, typically numbered 3330-3350;
  2. (CLS Majors and Concentrations only) Foreign language 2: four semesters of one language or two semesters of two languages;
  3. CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY, usually taken in the spring of the sophomore year;
  4. A focus statement, 1-2 pages in length. The focus is a period, theme, problem, movement, etc., that is explored from an interdisciplinary and/or a comparative perspective. Faculty understand that this statement is a work in progress, but that it serves as a useful guide to students' academic pursuits and course selection.

Major in Comparative Literature and Society

The major in Comparative Literature and Society consists of a minimum of 33 points or 11 courses, distributed as follows. Courses taken to fulfill the application requirements do not count toward the major. Courses fulfilling major requirements must be advanced, discussion-based seminars. Language courses in the Beginner I to Intermediate II stream cannot be counted to fulfill any major requirement. With the exception of courses taken to satisfy the global core requirement, double counting of courses to the CPLS major and another program or university requirement must be approved by the DUS.  Requirements for the major and concentration in Comparative Literature and Society were updated in February 2019; please contact the director of undergraduate studies with any questions.

  1. CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY, required for all majors and normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year (3 points)
  2. Advanced courses as follows:
    • Two courses with a CPLS designator. CLxx courses, i.e. courses cross-listed between ICLS and other departments, may also be counted toward this requirement (6-8 points)
    • Two seminars in a humanities or social science discipline other than literature (e.g. Architecture, Anthropology, Art History, Economics, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Law, Linguistics, Music, Political Science, Race & Ethnicity Studies, Sociology…). The two courses must be grounded in the same disciplinary approach but don’t have to be offered by the same department or program (6-8 points)
    • Two courses requiring readings in a language other than English. (The two courses cannot be taken in the same foreign language) (6-8 points)
    • Two courses focusing on a specific national or regional literature or culture, chosen from any discipline (The two courses can focus on the same nation/region) (6-8 points)
    • One elective course reflecting the student’s intellectual interests. The senior thesis may be counted toward this requirement. Additional foreign language study may also be counted with DUS approval (3-4 points)
  3. CPLS UN3991 SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT & SOCIETY
  4. CPLS UN3995 SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC(optional). (3 points) year-long course
  5. Students sign up for thesis credits as a year-long course (CPLS 3995) in the fall and spring semester of the senior year. Please see our detailed thesis guide on our website. They work with an adviser from the Columbia/Barnard faculty who oversees the project and assigns the final grade. The DUS of ICLS is the second reader for all projects. The thesis must be a minimum of 11,000 and 15,000 words in length, double-spaced and must include footnotes and a bibliography. Translations, creative work and multi-media projects can be submitted with the prior approval of the DUS. These must be accompanied by an introduction that situates the project intellectually. The thesis should be written in English unless a student receives permission from the DUS to write in another language. Note that the completed thesis is submitted before the end of the spring semester, usually by April 15. The thesis is considered as a 3-point course with 1 credit earned in the Fall and 2 credits earned in the Spring. 

    Students should consult frequently with the DUS to ensure that their program of study develops in consonance with the intellectual project described in the focus statement that was presented as part of the admissions process. The faculty understands that this statement is itself a work in progress, but also that it serves as a useful guide to the student's academic pursuits and course selection.


Major in Medical Humanities

The major in Medical Humanities requires 33 points (11 courses). Note that language courses taken to fulfill the application requirements 1 above do not count toward the required points for the major. Courses fulfilling major requirements must be advanced, discussion-based seminars. Language courses in the Beginner I to Intermediate II stream cannot be counted to fulfill any major requirement. Students interested in the major are strongly encouraged to fulfill their science requirement with classes in human biology (e.g., Human SpeciesGenes and Development) or human psychology (e.g., Mind, Brain, and Behavior).

  1. CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY, required for all ICLS majors and normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year.
  2. Advanced courses as follows (please note that one course may be used to fulfill two of the advanced course requirements):                                     
  • 1 course with a CPLS or CL- course identifier: 3-4 points

          Students choose from among the wide range of courses sponsored by the Institute for        Comparative Literature and Society or cross-listed between ICLS and other departments. These offerings change every semester and are listed on the ICLS website.

  •  1 course with readings in a language other than English: 3-4 points

         Students may either take a course that is taught wholly or partially in a foreign language or a course taught in English for which they have received approval to do most of the reading in a foreign language.

  • 3 courses that form the disciplinary/methodological nexus of the student’s interests: 9-12 points

        Students will develop an individualized course of study at the nexus of health, society and the humanities in discussion with the DUS (Some example of prior constellations include but are not limited to:  Literature and Medicine; Narrative Medicine; Medical Anthropology; History of Medicine; Comparative Public Health; Disability studies; Neuroscience; Biopolitics; Bioethics).

  • 2 required core courses in Medical Humanities: 6 points
  • 2 courses in the biological or biochemical sciences: 6-8 points

         Students in the MedHum major should be versed in contemporary and classical debates and knowledge in the biological sciences.  Students may take any two biology or biochemistry classes that relate to fundamental concepts in human biology.

3. Senior Seminar:

CPLS UN3991 SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT & SOCIETY 

     4. CPLS UN3995 SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC(optional). (3 points) year-long course

Students sign up for thesis credits as a year-long course (CPLS 3995) in the fall and spring semester of the senior year. Please see our detailed thesis guide on our website. They work with an adviser from the Columbia/Barnard faculty who oversees the project and assigns the final grade. The DUS of ICLS is the second reader for all projects. The thesis must be a minimum of 11,000 and 15,000 words in length, double-spaced and must include footnotes and a bibliography. Translations, creative work and multi-media projects can be submitted with the prior approval of the DUS. These must be accompanied by an introduction that situates the project intellectually. The thesis should be written in English unless a student receives permission from the DUS to write in another language. Note that the completed thesis is submitted before the end of the spring semester, usually by April 15. The thesis is considered as a 3-point course with 1 credit earned in the Fall and 2 credits earned in the Spring. 

Students should consult frequently with the DUS to ensure that their program of study develops in consonance with the intellectual project described in the focus statement that was presented as part of the admissions process. The faculty understands that this statement is itself a work in progress, but also that it serves as a useful guide to the student's academic pursuits and course selection.


Concentration in Comparative Literature and Society

The concentration in Comparative Literature and Society consists of a minimum of 27 points or 9 courses, distributed as follows. Please note that courses taken to fulfill the application requirements do not count toward the major. Courses fulfilling major requirements must be advanced, discussion-based seminars. Language courses in the Beginner I to Intermediate II stream cannot be counted to fulfill any major requirement. With the exception of courses taken to satisfy the global core requirement, any double counting of courses to the CPLS major and another program or university requirement must be approved by the DUS.  Requirements for the major and concentration in Comparative Literature and Society were updated in February 2019; please contact the director of undergraduate studies with any questions.

  1. CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY, normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year;
  2. Advanced courses as follows:
    • Two courses with a CPLS designator. CL-- courses, i.e. courses cross-listed between ICLS and other departments, may also be counted toward this requirement (6-8 points)
    • Two seminars in a humanities or social science discipline other than literature (e.g. Architecture, Anthropology, Art History, Economics, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Law, Linguistics, Music, Political Science, Race & Ethnicity Studies, Sociology…). The two courses must be grounded in the same disciplinary approach but don’t have to be offered by the same department or program (6-8 points)
    • Two courses requiring readings in a language other than English (the two courses cannot be taken in the same foreign language) (6-8 points)
    • One course focusing on a specific national or regional literature or culture, chosen from any discipline (3-8 points)
    • Senior Seminar in Comparative Literature and Society (CPLS V3991)

The senior seminar is taken in fall semester of the senior year. Students  explore three areas of contemporary reflection in the field of comparative literature and society. Topics change yearly and are aligned with current ICLS research projects. Recent examples include: Bandung Humanism; Global Language Justice; A Safer Online Public Square

  • (Optional) CPLS UN3995 SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC (3 points) year-long course

Students sign up for thesis credits as a year-long course (CPLS 3995) in the fall and spring semester of the senior year. Please see our detailed thesis guide on our website. They work with an adviser from the Columbia/Barnard faculty who oversees the project and assigns the final grade. The DUS of ICLS is the second reader for all projects. The thesis must be a minimum of 11,000 and 15,000 words in length, double-spaced and must include footnotes and a bibliography. Translations, creative work and multi-media projects can be submitted with the prior approval of the DUS. These must be accompanied by an introduction that situates the project intellectually. The thesis should be written in English unless a student receives permission from the DUS to write in another language. Note that the completed thesis is submitted before the end of the spring semester, usually by April 15. The thesis is considered as a 3-point course with 1 credit earned in the Fall and 2 credits earned in the Spring. 

Students should consult frequently with the DUS to ensure that their program of study develops in consonance with the intellectual project described in the focus statement that was presented as part of the admissions process. The faculty understands that this statement is itself a work in progress, but also that it serves as a useful guide to the student's academic pursuits and course selection.

Comparative Literature and Society concentration students should also consider the Barnard College course offerings in Comparative Literature. They are also strongly encouraged to avail themselves of the opportunity to study abroad.

FALL 2023 COURSES 

CPLS UN3991 SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT & SOCIETY. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: CPLS UN3900
Prerequisites: CPLS UN3900 The senior seminar is a capstone course required of all CLS/MedHum majors and CLS concentrations. Only ICLS students may register. The seminar provides students the opportunity to discuss selected topics in comparative literature and society and medical humanities in a cross-disciplinary, multilingual, and global perspective. Students undertake individual research projects while participating in directed readings and critical dialogues about theory and research methodologies, which may culminate in the senior thesis. Students review work in progress and share results through weekly oral reports and written reports

Fall 2023: CPLS UN3991
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3991 001/11564 W 2:10pm - 4:00pm
801 International Affairs Bldg
Bruno Bosteels 3.00 17/20
CPLS 3991 002/11572 T 12:10pm - 2:00pm
613 Hamilton Hall
Irina Kalinka 3.00 13/20

CPLS UN3995 SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC. 1.50 point.

This year-long, three-credit course is mandatory for students who will be writing their Senior Thesis in Comparative Literature and Society or in Medical Humanities. Students who wish to be considered for Departmental honors are required to submit a Senior Thesis. The thesis is a rigorous research work of approximately 40 pages, and it will include citations and a bibliographical apparatus. It may be written in English or, with the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, in another language relevant to the students scholarly interests. Although modeled after an independent study, in which core elements of the structure, direction, and pace of the work are decided together by the student and their faculty thesis supervisor, students are nonetheless expected to complete certain major steps in the research and writing process according to the timeline outlined by the ICLS DUS

Fall 2023: CPLS UN3995
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3995 001/10424  
Tadas Bugnevicius 1.50 20/20
Spring 2024: CPLS UN3995
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3995 001/13136  
Tadas Bugnevicius 1.50 19/20

CPLT BC3110 INTRO TO TRANSLATION STUDIES. 3.00 points.

Introduction to the major theories and methods of translation in the Western tradition, along with practical work in translating. Topics include translation in the context of postcolonialism, globalization and immigration, the role of translators in war and zones of conflict, gender and translation, the importance of translation to contemporary writers. Completion of Intermediate II or equivalent in any foreign language

Fall 2023: CPLT BC3110
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLT 3110 001/00197 M W 2:40pm - 3:55pm
323 Milbank Hall
Peter Connor 3.00 36/60

CPLT BC3204 Literary Worldmaking: Two Case Studies. 4.00 points.

This seminar engages students in the immersive and intensive reading of two masterworks of modern prose fiction: Middlemarch, published by George Eliot (the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) in 1871-2 in England, and The Story of the Stone, or the Dream of the Red Chamber, composed by Cao Xueqin (and continued by Gao E) in the late 18th-century moment of Qing-dynasty China. While using devices and conventions from different narrative traditions, these novels operate in the mode of realism and do so at a monumental and panoramic scale, creating literary worlds that reflect the realia of historical lifeworlds. Beyond representing aspects of empirically recognizable worlds, these novels also incorporate philosophical reflection on their own means of representation, on their very status as fiction, on the power and limits of imaginative worldmaking. By studying these novels as cases of literary worldmaking, we will take the opportunity also to reflect critically in this class on the world that emerges–and the process of worldmaking that gets activated–in our very experience of studying these texts together. We will consider how cosmopolitanism, as a guiding ideal of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment university, may be renewed by literary study to help us inhabit a world of common humanity that is richer and more complex than is evident in particularist localisms or a satellite-view, techno-economic globalism. Middlemarch we will read in its entirety. For the sake of time, we will read, in David Hawkes’ translation, the 80-chapter version of The Story of the Stone, or the Dream of the Red Chamber, attributed to Cao Xueqin, instead of the 120-chapter version, with the last 40 chapters attributed to Gao E. If you can and wish to read the text in Chinese, please speak to Professor Sun about the option of scheduling extra discussion sessions

Fall 2023: CPLT BC3204
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLT 3204 001/00149 W 4:10pm - 6:00pm
214 Milbank Hall
Rachel Eisendrath, Emily Sun 4.00 10/16

HIST BC3825 RACE, CASTE, AND THE UNIVERSITY: B. R. AMBEDKAR AT COLUMBIA. 4.00 points.

B. R. Ambedkar is arguably one of Columbia University’s most illustrious alumni, and a democratic thinker and constitutional lawyer who had enormous impact in shaping India, the world’s largest democracy. As is well known, Ambedkar came to Columbia University in July 1913 to start a doctoral program in Political Science. He graduated in 1915 with a Masters degree, and got his doctorate from Columbia in 1927 after having studied with some of the great figures of interwar American thought including Edwin Seligman, James Shotwell, Harvey Robinson, and John Dewey. This course follows the model of the Columbia University and Slavery course and draws extensively on the relevant holdings and resources of Columbia’s RBML, [Rare Books and Manuscript Library] Burke Library (Union Theological Seminar), and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture among others to explore a set of relatively understudied links between Ambedkar, Columbia University, and the intellectual history of the interwar period. Themes include: the development of the disciplines at Columbia University and their relationship to new paradigms of social scientific study; the role of historical comparison between caste and race in producing new models of scholarship and political solidarity; links between figures such as Ambedkar, Lala Lajpat Rai, W. E. B. Du Bois and others who were shaped by the distinctive public and political culture of New York City, and more. This is a hybrid course which aims to create a finding aid for B. R. Ambedkar that traverses RBML private papers. Students will engage in a number of activities towards that purpose. They will attend multiple instructional sessions at the RBML to train students in using archives; they will make public presentations on their topics, which will be archived in video form; and stuents will produce digital essays on a variety of themes and topics related to the course. Students will work collaboratively in small groups and undertake focused archival research. This seminar inaugurates an on-going, multiyear effort to grapple with globalizing the reach and relevance of B. R. Ambedkar and to share our findings with the Columbia community and beyond. Working independently, students will define and pursue individual research projects. Working together, the class will create digital visualizations of these projects

Fall 2023: HIST BC3825
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
HIST 3825 001/00191 M 6:10pm - 8:00pm
Ll016 Milstein Center
Anupama Rao 4.00 5/18

CPLS GU4111 World Philology. 4 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement

Philology, broadly defined as the practice of making sense of texts, is a fundamental human activity that has been repeatedly institutionalized in widely separated places and times. In the wake of the formation of the modern academic disciplines in the nineteenth century and their global spread, it became difficult to understand the power and glory of older western philology, and its striking parallels with other pre- and early modern forms of scholarship around the globe. This class seeks to create a new comparative framework for understanding how earlier generations made sense of the texts that they valued, and how their practices provide still-vital models for us at a time of upheaval in the format and media of texts and in our scholarly approaches to them. Students will encounter key fields of philology—textual criticism, lexicography, grammar, and, above all, commentary—not in the abstract but as instantiated in relation to four foundational works—the Confucian Analects, the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the Aeneid, and the Tale of Genji—and the scholarly traditions that grew up around them. We are never alone when we grapple with the basic question of how to read texts whose meaning is unclear to us. Over the course of the semester, this class will foster a global understanding of the deep roots and strange parallels linking contemporary reading and interpretation to the practices of the past.

Fall 2023: CPLS GU4111
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4111 001/12902 T 4:10pm - 6:00pm
424 Pupin Laboratories
David Lurie 4 15/20

CPLS GU4152 POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE. 4.00 points.

How is performance conceived and instrumentalized to fulfill an ideological design? How is ideology transmitted as performance? Centering on National Socialism and Communism, this course explores that and similar questions by examining the political, social, and cultural performances (of Hitler and Stalin, of race and progress, of postwar trials) in the Third Reich and the Soviet Union by engaging a broad range of primary materials (films, documentaries, plays, newsreels, mass spectacles, artifacts of fine art) and by reading widely in the literature of political philosophy and performance studies

Fall 2023: CPLS GU4152
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4152 001/10854 W 12:10pm - 2:00pm
406 Barnard Hall
Hana Worthen 4.00 7/12

CLPS GU4224 QUEER THEORY & PSYCHOANALYSIS. 3.00 points.

It is practically impossible to imagine queer theory without psychoanalysis. Not only does Queer Theory depend on psychoanalysis for conceptualizing sex and sexuality, but even related terms such as desire, relationality, and the body, require rich and substantial psychological elaboration. And yet, in spite of its centrality, there is an abiding resistance to psychoanalysis on the grounds that it focuses too much on the individual, and on the individual mind, and in so doing, fails to grasp the structural dimension of sex, sexuality and identity. If Freud epitomizes the psychological view, and Foucault represents the constructed view, then we could think of Queer Theory as perennially torn between these competing and irreconcilable positions. With all of the theoretical baggage the concept of the individual entails, would it be better for Queer Theory to leave psychoanalysis behind, or are there ways to rethink individuality along more radical lines? Is the individual subject really an obstacle to radical theory or its prerequisite? How do we think about the relationship between Queer Theory and psychoanalysis? While there are extreme positions on either side of this debate, how can we craft a third way that acknowledges the importance of subjectivity while also recognizing the limitations of traditional psychoanalysis? This course introduces the complicated relationship between Queer Theory and psychoanalysis by familiarizing students with the clinical concepts at the core of contemporary critical theory. We will focus specifically on the topics of: sexuality, perversion, trauma, identity, relationality, narcissism, gender and attachment in order to explore how these concepts work today. Delving into theoretical writing by Foucault, Bersani, Edelman, Berlant, Butler, Dean and Preciado, as well as clinical writing by contemporary psychoanalysts, Benvenuto, Gonzalez, Corbett, Laplanche and Gherovici, we will redefine queer formulations by transforming their clinical meaning. In addition to offering a comprehensive outline of how psychoanalysis and Queer Theory relate, this course will expose students to a wide range of contemporary clinical thinking in order to facilitate a deeper engagement with the practical, lived dimension of psychoanalysis

Fall 2023: CLPS GU4224
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CLPS 4224 001/12656 F 10:10am - 12:00pm
613 Hamilton Hall
Gila Ashtor 3.00 14/20

ARCH GU4250 COLONIAL PRACTICES. 4.00 points.

*This course requires an application (at this link), due September 1. The seminar “Colonial Practices” considers colonial practices through architectures, institutions, and ecologies around the world. Each week, we study aesthetic and spatial practices alongside Black and Brown consciousness, Feminist, Indigenous, and anticolonial and decolonial theory. The places around which maps have been constructed, across which migrants have moved, and within which insurgents have configured form the intellectual problems of this course and strategic positions from which to sense, write, and think with the constructed environment. Students lead discussions on shared readings, co-produce collaborative research with community partners for public dissemination, and write papers based on individual research. Our collective studies examine archives of colonial practices, museum-based institutional critique, insurgent art and design practices, and forms of geographical counter-cartography and architectural counter-occupation. Students are expected to conduct in-depth independent research, bringing their own interests and objects of historical inquiry into the course, and special sessions of the course will be targeted toward the development of students’ scholarly research and methods

Fall 2023: ARCH GU4250
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
ARCH 4250 001/00639 Th 10:10am - 12:00pm
502 Diana Center
Anooradha Siddiqi 4.00 9/12

CLPS GU4260 Digital Psychoanalysis. 3.00 points.

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown, psychoanalysts suddenly were displaced from the sanctuary of their clinical consulting rooms. Those who wished to continue seeing patients --including many who previously had condemned virtual analysis--were compelled to adopt remote modes of treatment. Some analysts opted to continue treating patients through phone sessions. Others shifted to tele-psychoanalysis, and without warning, precedent, or training, relocated their practices to cyberspace. This course examines the rapid proliferation of digitized therapeutics in the wake of the pandemic, and the challenges this radical shift poses to the hallowed tradition of in-person analytic practice. It explores the performativity, relationality, and pathologies of the ‘digital self’ that emerges through lived experience in social media environments. Since these forms of self, relationship, and pathology shape analysts as well as patients, this course looks at their impact on digital therapeutic interaction and intersubjectivity. This course also looks at transference, countertransference, resistance and the unconscious, and at cross-racial and cross-cultural dynamics, in online treatments. Finally, the course considers whether tele-psychoanalysis, with its disembodiment, physical absence, and sensory constriction, is a mere simulacrum of in-person clinical encounters, or whether it broadens and enriches the analytic field. This course draws on pre- and post-COVID literatures on digital psychoanalysis, and on my current research on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis during the pandemic

Fall 2023: CLPS GU4260
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CLPS 4260 001/10423 T 10:10am - 12:00pm
B-100 Heyman Center For Humanities
Karen Seeley 3.00 8/14

CLGM GU4600 Multilingual America: Translation, Migration, Gender. 4.00 points.

This course introduces students to the rich tradition of literature about and by Greeks in America over the past two centuries exploring questions of multilingualism, translation, migration and gender with particular attention to the look and sound of different alphabets and foreign accents – “It’s all Greek to me!” To what extent can migration be understood as translation and vice versa? How might debates in Diaspora and Translation Studies inform each other and how might both, in turn, elucidate the writing of and about Greeks and other ethnic minorities, especially women? Authors include Olga Broumas, Elia Kazan, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Irini Spanidou, Ellery Queen, Eleni Sikelianos and Thanasis Valtinos as well as performance artists such as Diamanda Galas. Theoretical and comparative texts include works by Walter Benjamin, Rey Chow, Jacques Derrida, Xiaolu Guo, Eva Hoffman, Franz Kafka, Toni Morrison, Vicente Rafael, and Lawrence Venuti, as well as films such as The Immigrant and The Wizard of Oz. No knowledge of Greek is necessary, although an extra-credit directed reading is open to those wishing to read texts in Greek

Fall 2023: CLGM GU4600
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CLGM 4600 001/10930 T 2:10pm - 4:00pm
613 Hamilton Hall
Karen Van Dyck 4.00 12/15

CPLS GU4700 Topics in Contemporary Critical Theory: Statelessness, Citizenship, Dissent. 4.00 points.

This seminar uses an open rubric of “topics in contemporary critical theory” to engage a wide range of current concepts, approaches, strands, and debates residing at the crux of social and cultural critique in the intersections of social and political theory, anthropology, literary and cultural studies. Located on these crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences, contemporary critical theory—in the broad sense used here—draws on several traditions of intellectual thought, including (post-)Marxism, ideology critique, critical ethnography, psychoanalytic theory, critical race theory, feminist and postcolonial/decolonial critique. The seminar traces such lines of inquiry in order to explore the links between knowledge, power, subjectivity, and the political. Special attention is given to the relationship between thought and praxis in various contemporary sociopolitical contexts. Specific focus this time is the broader problem of democracy in contemporary societies, both in their national and their global dimensions. This is especially trenchant with the migration/refugee crisis in Europe, the problem of open/closed borders worldwide, and the security crisis in the aftermath of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The volume and intensity of human mobility from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe remains dramatically steady, despite the overall restrictions in mobility following the pandemic conditions worldwide and the resurgence of extreme nationalism. During the last decade refugee statelessness has evolved into a quasi-permanent liminal condition of being within the political body of ‘Western’ societies, especially in so called border countries of the European periphery. The continuous expansion and multiplication of internment camps in countries such as Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. has created different states of existence within national territories, raising a wide range of issues that concern statehood, political rights, the right to equal treatment and access to public goods (i.e., health, education, safety, representation etc.). This cascade of interior frontiers has precipitated a huge debate on questions of citizenship and democratic institutions in the broadest sense. Moreover, dissent has grown across societies, regardless of identity parameters (class, race, gender, ethnicity, religion) and across the ideological spectrum. What now seems to be a permanent crisis of democracy is paradoxically what reveals democracy’s strength, in the midst of its vulnerability, and its necessity despite its many constitutive problems. The course will address these matters theoretically, but with extensive reference to real social and historical problems on the ground as they’re unfolding. This is indeed the key pedagogical purpose: to explore self-reflection and even conceptual abstraction, while never losing sight of the concrete and the mutable—the real life of humans in all its adversity

Fall 2023: CPLS GU4700
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4700 001/13462 M 1:10pm - 3:40pm
963 Ext Schermerhorn Hall
Stathis Gourgouris 4.00 16/20

SPRING 2024 COURSES

CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT & SOCIETY. 3.00 points.

Introduction to concepts and methods of comparative literature in cross-disciplinary and global context. Topics may include: oral, print, and visual culture; epic, novel, and nation; literature of travel, exile, and diaspora; sex and gender transformation; the human/inhuman; writing trauma; urban imaginaries; world literature; medical humanities. Open only to students who have applied for and declared a major in Comparative Literature and Society or Medical Humanities

Spring 2024: CPLS UN3900
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3900 001/13133 M 10:10am - 12:00pm
317 Hamilton Hall
Tadas Bugnevicius 3.00 17/20
CPLS 3900 002/13134 T 10:10am - 12:00pm
302 Alfred Lerner Hall
Rishi Goyal 3.00 16/20

CPLS UN3995 SENIOR THESIS IN COMP LIT/SOC. 1.50 point.

This year-long, three-credit course is mandatory for students who will be writing their Senior Thesis in Comparative Literature and Society or in Medical Humanities. Students who wish to be considered for Departmental honors are required to submit a Senior Thesis. The thesis is a rigorous research work of approximately 40 pages, and it will include citations and a bibliographical apparatus. It may be written in English or, with the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, in another language relevant to the students scholarly interests. Although modeled after an independent study, in which core elements of the structure, direction, and pace of the work are decided together by the student and their faculty thesis supervisor, students are nonetheless expected to complete certain major steps in the research and writing process according to the timeline outlined by the ICLS DUS

Fall 2023: CPLS UN3995
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3995 001/10424  
Tadas Bugnevicius 1.50 20/20
Spring 2024: CPLS UN3995
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 3995 001/13136  
Tadas Bugnevicius 1.50 19/20

CLPS GU4201 BASIC CONCEPTS-POST-FREUD THGT. 4.00 points.

This course examines psychoanalytic movements that are viewed either as post-Freudian in theory or as emerging after Freuds time. The course begins by considering the ways Freuds cultural and historical surround, as well as the wartime diaspora of the European psychoanalytic community, shaped Freudian and post-Freudian thought. It then focuses on significant schools and theories of psychoanalysis that were developed from the mid 20th century to the present. Through readings of key texts and selected case studies, it explores theorists challenges to classical thought and technique, and their reconfigurations, modernizations, and total rejections of central Freudian ideas. The course concludes by looking at contemporary theorists moves to integrate notions of culture, concepts of trauma, and findings from neuroscience and attachment research into the psychoanalytic frame

Spring 2024: CLPS GU4201
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CLPS 4201 001/10666 M 2:10pm - 4:00pm
401 Hamilton Hall
Karen Seeley 4.00 8/15

CLPS GU4225 Sex and Psychoanalysis. 3.00 points.

Sex has always been a powerful and enigmatic force. Freud made it the centerpiece of psychoanalysis. Though many are familiar with his work on sexuality, few are aware of the development, elaboration and repudiation (in some instances) of these early ideas over the last century. This course aims at presenting the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking on sex. We will examine a vast array of concepts in a modern context including desire, longing, genders, sexual fantasies, sexual orientations, BDSM, masturbation and polyamory among others. These presentations will also be enriched by an attention to the historical and cultural aspects of sexuality

Spring 2024: CLPS GU4225
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CLPS 4225 001/10591 W 12:10pm - 2:00pm
302 Fayerweather
Tiziano Colibazzi 3.00 16/20

CPLS GU4325 Abolition Medicine: Medical Racisms and Anti-Racisms. 3.00 points.

In 1935, WEB Dubois wrote about abolition democracy: an idea based not only on breaking down unjust systems, but on building up new, antiracist social structures. Scholar activists like Angela Davis, Ruth Gilmore and Mariame Kaba have long contended that the abolition of slavery was but one first step in ongoing abolitionist practices dismantling racialized systems of policing, surveillance and incarceration. The possibilities of prison and police abolition have recently come into the mainstream national consciousness during the 2020 resurgence of nationwide Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests. As we collectively imagine what nonpunitive and supportive community reinvestment in employment, education, childcare, mental health, and housing might look like, medicine must be a part of these conversations. Indeed, if racist violence is a public health emergency, and we are trying to bring forth a “public health approach to public safety” – what are medicine’s responsibilities to these social and institutional reinventions? Medicine has a long and fraught history of racial violence. It was, after all, medicine and pseudoscientific inquiry that helped establish what we know as the racial categorizations of today: ways of separating human beings based on things like skin color and hair texture that were used (and often continue to be used) to justify the enslavement, exclusion, or genocide of one group of people by another. Additionally, the history of the professionalization of U.S. medicine, through the formation of medical schools and professional organizations as well as and the certification of trained physicians, is a history of exclusion, with a solidification of the identity of “physician” around upper middle class white masculinity. Indeed, the 1910 Flexner Report, whose aim was to make consistent training across the country’s medical schools, was explicit in its racism. From practices of eugenic sterilization, to histories of experimentation upon bodies of color, medicine is unfortunately built upon racist, sexist and able-ist practices. This course is built on the premise that a socially just practice of medicine is a bioethical imperative. Such a practice cannot be achieved, however, without examining medicine’s histories of racism, as well as learning from and building upon histories of anti-racist health practice. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to learning about histories of medical racism: from eugenics and racist experimentation to public health xenophobic fear mongering. The second half of the semester will be dedicated to examining medical and grassroots anti-racist practices: from the free health clinics and hospital takeovers of the Black Panther and Young Lords Parties, to environmental activism in Flint and the Sioux Rock Reservation to antiracist AIDS and COVID activism

Spring 2024: CPLS GU4325
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4325 001/10663 Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm
317 Hamilton Hall
Sayantani DasGupta 3.00 20/20

CPLS GU4740 The Narratology of “Modernity”. 3.00 points.

We have a consciousness of ourselves as placed specially in history, in an epoch which is essentially different from all that has come before: the modern. In respect of having such a discourse about ourselves, minimally, it may be true. Since at least the seventeenth century, intellectuals have been elaborating histories of modernity’s origin and theories of its distinction. This course does not attempt to adjudicate what is the true or best theory of the modern, but rather inquires into the discursive and historical conditions for telling narratives about modernity’s advent and constructing theories of its nature, and their aporiai. Topics will vary but may include the advent of “history” as a genre and non-Western “historical” genres; providential time, the saeculum, and prophecy; the dialectic of break and period; the delimiting of non-modernities, such as the primitive/traditional, the feudal, and the postmodern; the search for narrative agents, such as the nation, the state, and the class; schemes of the ontological disunity of modernity; modernism, the avant-garde, and the aesthetic forms of historicity; capitalism, socialism, and revolution; philosophy’s claim to historical diagnosis and the therapeutic refusal thereof; the desire for and attempts to construct anti-historical forms of narration and their limits

Spring 2024: CPLS GU4740
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4740 001/16437 T 12:10pm - 2:00pm
317 Hamilton Hall
Adam Leeds 3.00 8/20

CPLS GU4802 Contradictions of Care: From Intimacy to Institution. 3.00 points.

Care is central to the interpersonal claim that is made by the other. It is a response that recognizes and satisfies a need. Care can be motivated by pain and sorrow, but also by desire and the desire for recognition. But while care is a fundamental aspect of healing, it can also be a demand that extracts obligations and liabilities. Care is an ambiguous concept that always already contains or is determined by its oppositions; we will begin by analyzing the concept of care itself, drawing on resources from the history and philosophy of medicine as well as literary sources. Ideals of care that many of us have for our loved ones are difficult to render at scale, and are often in tension with the for-profit motivations behind the development of medications, the administration of healthcare services, and the distribution of goods. We will consider the sorts of compromises that are made every day through readings in literature, history, political science and philosophy and also through first-person experience in the form of a practicum that that will run parallel to the course

Spring 2024: CPLS GU4802
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4802 001/10664 F 10:10am - 12:00pm
317 Hamilton Hall
Arden Hegele 3.00 19/18

CPLS GU4825 Technology and Justice. 3.00 points.

Technological inventions have consistently spawned corresponding utopian visions of total social improvement, followed closely by dystopian fears and moral panics. The current advances in digital technologies are no different. Producing the full range of reactions all at once – from celebrations of “networked protests” to wild accusations of “fake news” to dire warnings against the proliferation of “AI plagiarism” – responses to today’s media environments proclaim the end of politics as we know it ... for better or worse. Through close reading and discussion of key texts of political and media theory, this course will show that such media developments and corresponding discourses of political crises are never completely “new” but can be historically and intellectually situated in much longer struggles over the ideals that should structure our communities. The digital age certainly did not “invent” white supremacy, isolated individualism, segregated information landscapes, or deliberate and manipulative misreporting, for example. Together we will question both triumphant digital utopianism and fatalist assumptions of ubiquitous manipulation, and instead engage in more complex readings of the ways technology, oppression, and struggles for justice are related

Spring 2024: CPLS GU4825
Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
CPLS 4825 001/16456 W 2:10pm - 4:00pm
B-100 Heyman Center For Humanities
Irina Kalinka 3.00 7/18