Comparative Literature and Society

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

Fall 2024 Acting 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:

Preparation to undertake advanced work in one foreign language, to be demonstrated by completion of two introduction to literature courses, typically numbered 3333-3350.
Completion of at least four terms of study of a second foreign language or two terms in each of two foreign languages.
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)
Kevin A. Fellezs (Music)
Stathis Gourgouris (Classics, English and Comparative Literature)
Rishi Kumar Goyal (Emergency Medicine)
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)
Avinoam Shalem (Art History and Archeology)
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:

Foreign language 1: four semesters of language training (or equivalent) and one introductory literature course, typically numbered 3330-3350;
(CLS Majors and Concentrations only) Foreign language 2: four semesters of one language or two semesters of two languages;
CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT ＆ SOCIETY, usually taken in the spring of the sophomore year;
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.

CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT ＆ SOCIETY, required for all majors and normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year (3 points)
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)
CPLS UN3991 SENIOR SEM-COMP LIT ＆ SOCIETY
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.

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 Species, Genes and Development) or human psychology (e.g., Mind, Brain, and Behavior).

CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT ＆ SOCIETY, required for all ICLS majors and normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year.
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.

CPLS UN3900 INTRO TO COMP LIT ＆ SOCIETY, normally taken in the spring of the sophomore year;
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

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 2024 COURSES

CLPS GU4275 TRAUMA AND PLEASURE. 4.00 points.

Can the words “trauma” and “pleasure” be put in the same sentence? If trauma epitomizes suffering and pleasure represents enjoyment, is there any relation between these experiences? And yet, how else to explain that people seem endlessly addicted to negative experiences, or that traumatized people often try to recreate the damage they endured? We are living in an age of endless trauma, and everywhere we go, we hear that trauma is destructive, anathema to pleasure, that it destroys our sense of self, our security, our stability, and identity. We are taught to avoid trauma at all costs because it is harmful and inimical to flourishing. New statistics routinely confirm that we are living through a trauma epidemic in which ordinary people experience symptoms of extreme distress, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and difficulty sleeping. Every year, new memoirs are published in which protagonists detail their endless battles with traumatic adversity and most television shows, across a variety of genres, include trauma as a subplot to character development (Ted Lasso, Euphoria, True Detective, to name a few). Referring to its growing pervasiveness, the New Yorker critic Parul Sehgal wrote a controversial essay, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot” (2021) in which she criticizes our culture’s overreliance on trauma as a primary trope of character development, forcing us to ask: is trauma really as widespread as we think? how did trauma become such a popular ‘identity’? what work is trauma doing for us, as individuals and as a culture? Is it possible to recognize the ubiquity of trauma while also acknowledging that we often seek situations which are harmful, even traumatizing, that we might be attracted to suffering for reasons we don’t yet understand? This course examines the complex relationship between trauma and pleasure by familiarizing students with the clinical and theoretical concepts at the core of contemporary trauma and 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 major psychoanalysts, Freud, Laplanche, Loewald, Lacan, Laplanche and Winnicott, we will redefine contemporary debates by exploring their clinical meaning. In addition to offering a comprehensive outline of how psychoanalysis and critical 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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CLPS GU4275
CLPS 4275	001/14760	T 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA	Gila Ashtor	4.00	19/22

CPLS UN3454 STAGING THE EARLY MOD MEDITERR. 4.00 points.

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

This course examines, in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain and England (1580-1640), how the two countries staged the conflict between them, and with the Ottoman Empire; that is, how both countries represent national and imperial clashes, and the concepts of being “Spanish,” “English,” or “Turk,” as well as the dynamic and fluid identities of North Africa, often played out on the high seas of the Mediterranean with Islam and the Ottoman Empire. We will consider how the Ottoman Empire depicted itself artistically through miniatures and court poetry. The course will include travel and captivity narratives from Spain, England, and the Ottoman Empire

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CPLS UN3454
CPLS 3454	001/12117	Th 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA	Patricia Grieve	4.00	14/15

CPLS UN3965 Precision Medicine: Science, Ethics, and Culture. 3.00 points.

This seminar will cover the scientific foundations of precision medicine and its social and ethical dimensions, alongside fundamental humanistic questions and challenges raised by this discipline. It is designed as an introduction to precision medicine accessible to the non-scientist student, but will also explore issues relevant to students who are planning a career in science or medicine

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CPLS UN3965
CPLS 3965	001/12137	T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Room TBA	Rachel Adams, Maya Sabatello, Samuel Sternberg	3.00	22/22

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CPLS UN3991
CPLS 3991	001/11489	W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA	Irina Kalinka	3.00	10/15
CPLS 3991	002/11490	T 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA	Brent Edwards	3.00	11/15

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS UN3995
CPLS 3995	001/13136		Tadas Bugnevicius	1.50	20/20
Fall 2024: CPLS UN3995
Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
CPLS 3995	001/11491		Tadas Bugnevicius	1.50	13/15

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS GU4740
CPLS 4740	001/16437	T 12:10pm - 2:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall	Adam Leeds	3.00	8/20
Fall 2024: CPLS GU4740
Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
CPLS 4740	001/11722	T 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA	Adam Leeds	3.00	13/15

CLEN GU4575 Source Texts of Postcolonial Vision. 4.00 points.

We will read texts by Memmi, Du Bois, and Leila Ahmed to create a gendered sense of the origins of postcolonial thinking. We will draw a definition of postcolonial hope before the actual emergence of postcolonial nation-states. A 1-page response to the text to be read will be required the previous day. No midterm paper. The final paper will be an oral presentation in a colloquium. ICLS students will be expected to read Memmi in French. No incompletes. Admission by interview. 20％ participation, 20％ papers, 60％ presentation. Seminar Instructions: Interviews will be in August. Email Timothy Henderson (th3108@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Source Texts of Postcolonial Vision." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CLEN GU4575
CLEN 4575	001/14170	W 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA	Gayatri Spivak	4.00	0/18

CLGM GU4300 Retranslation: Worlding C. P. Cavafy. 4.00 points.

Focusing on a canonical author is an immensely productive way to explore translation research and practice. The works of Sappho, Dante, Rilke, Césaire or Cavafy raise the question of reception in relation to many different critical approaches and illustrate many different strategies of translation and adaptation. The very issue of intertextuality that challenged the validity of author-centered courses after Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author reinstates it if we are willing to engage the oeuvre as an on-going interpretive project. By examining the poetry of the Greek Diaspora poet C. P. Cavafy in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), the Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for thinking about how a canonical author can open up our theories and practices of translation. For the final project students will choose a work by an author with a considerable body of critical work and translations and, following the example of Cavafy and his translators, come up with their own retranslations. Among the materials considered are commentary by E. M. Forster, C. M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Daniel Mendelsohn, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney, and Duane Michals

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CLGM GU4300
CLGM 4300	001/10649	M 12:10pm - 2:00pm Room TBA	Karen Van Dyck	4.00	11/15

CLIA UN3024 Nationalism in Theory and History. 3.00 points.

Were nations always there? Are they real or imagined? Do they come before or after nationalism and the state? How did we pass from a world of empires, duchies, and city-states to a world of nation-states? Where does legitimacy reside if not in God and his endowed kings? Is the modern world really ‘disenchanted’? How did we come to understand time, space, language, religion, gender, race, and even our very selves in the era of nations? Are we done with this era, living already in postnational times? This course will combine older theories of nationalism (Gellner, Anderson, Hobsbawm, Smith) with recent approaches of the phenomenon after the ‘Imperial/Global/Transnational Turn’ and late studies in Gender, Race, Culture and Nationalism, in order to offer new answers to old questions. We will talk about many places around the world, but the main stage where we will try out our questions is Italy and the Mediterranean

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: CLIA UN3024
CLIA 3024	001/14529	M 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA	Konstantia Zanou	3.00	9/15

FREN GU4022 How to Love: Medieval French and Arabic. 3.00 points.

How did people conceive of and talk about love on either side of the Pyrenees? This course will explore the many faces of desire in medieval French, Occitan, Arabic, Hebrew and Romance (proto-Spanish) literature to ask a broader question: what would be our understanding of lyric poetry, often taken to originate with the troubadours, if we incorporated the poems and songs of Al-Andalus? After anchoring ourselves in history, we will survey the major events and trends that attended the emergence of new poetic and musical forms both in Andalusia and in France between the 8th and the 14th centuries. We will study how these works were composed, read, performed, and transmitted. Weekly readings will combine scholarship with primary texts exploring the many facets of erotic experience: from sexual contact to love from afar, love as madness, love mediated by birds, rejection of marriage, gender fluidity and queerness. We will also think about the literary forms in which these themes are expressed, including dawn songs, bilingual love poems, treatises on achieving female orgasm, conduct manuals, and hybrid texts combining prose and verse. Translations will be provided for most material, but reading knowledge of modern French is required

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: FREN GU4022
FREN 4022	001/10744	W 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA	Eliza Zingesser, Yasmine Seale	3.00	0/15

HIST GU4962 Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe: Hands-On History. 4.00 points.

This course introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the materials, techniques, contexts, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in early modern Europe (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of topics, including craft knowledge and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions of historical methodology in reconstructing the material world of the past. The course will be run as a “Laboratory Seminar,” with discussions of primary and secondary materials, as well as hands-on work in a laboratory. The first semester long course to use the published Edition of Fr. 640 as its focus, it will test the use of the Edition in a higher education classroom to inform the development of the Companion. This course is associated with the Making and Knowing Project of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University.The first semester-long course to use the published Edition of Fr. 640 as its focus, it will test the use of the Edition in a higher education classroom to inform the development of Phase II of the Making and Knowing Project - a Research and Teaching Companion. Students’ final projects (exploratory and experimental work in the form of digital/textual analysis of Ms. Fr. 640, reconstruction insight reports, videos for the Companion, or a combination) will be published as part of the Companion or the Sandbox depending on content and long-term maintenance considerations

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: HIST GU4962
HIST 4962	001/10344	W 10:10am - 12:00pm Room TBA	Pamela Smith	4.00	13/18

RELI UN2670 MAGIC AND MODERNITY. 3.00 points.

This course introduces students to the cultural history of magic: as an idea, as a practice, and as a tool with which wield power and induce wonder. Magic, as we will explore, is a modern concept, the contours of which have been shaped by its relations with religion and science, always against larger backdrops—of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, (post) colonialism, and (post) secularism. Readings are drawn from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, sociology, drama, literature, history, history of science, and political theory. Cases and readings focus on everything from medieval England to post-socialist Mozambique. Throughout the term, a recurring theme will be whether, and to what extent, magic is incompatible with modernity—or, actually, integral to its constitution. By the end of this course, students should be familiar with a variety of ways in which magic has been understood since the early modern era, in a wide range of settings and cultural contexts. By tracing understandings of magic, students should also come away with an appreciation of how the authority of being “modern” is constructed (and contested) in relation to contemporary valuations of reason, science, enchantment, and the imagination

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Fall 2024: RELI UN2670
RELI 2670	001/10194	T Th 10:10am - 11:25am Room TBA	Matthew Engelke	3.00	35/36

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS UN3900
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.

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS UN3995
CPLS 3995	001/13136		Tadas Bugnevicius	1.50	20/20
Fall 2024: CPLS UN3995
Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
CPLS 3995	001/11491		Tadas Bugnevicius	1.50	13/15

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CLPS GU4201
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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CLPS GU4225
CLPS 4225	001/10591	W 12:10pm - 2:00pm 302 Fayerweather	Tiziano Colibazzi	3.00	15/20

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS GU4325
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.

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS GU4740
CPLS 4740	001/16437	T 12:10pm - 2:00pm 317 Hamilton Hall	Adam Leeds	3.00	8/20
Fall 2024: CPLS GU4740
Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
CPLS 4740	001/11722	T 2:10pm - 4:00pm Room TBA	Adam Leeds	3.00	13/15

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

Course Number	Section/Call Number	Times/Location	Instructor	Points	Enrollment
Spring 2024: CPLS GU4802
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

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