Courses

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

551 Translation and Technology
Translation today requires advanced language and computer skills.  This course covers several technologies, including desktop and internet publishing, computer tools for translation, and programs editing audio and video files.  Prerequisites: Excellent knowledge of one language other than English.

552 Medical Interpreting Online
Students learn how to provide professional interpreting services in medical settings.  The course covers medical terminology, medical procedures, standards of practice, ethics, mediation, and multicultural problem-solving.  Prerequisites: Must have advanced knowledge of one language other than English

581 Introduction to Interpreting and Translation: Research and Practice I
Research and Practice I is the first part of a two-semester certificate course in interpreting across a range of different contexts. While no prior experience in interpreting is necessary, students must have a strong command of English and an emerging proficiency in at least one other language. The course will introduce students to current research in interpreting studies and to a number of basic practical skills required of professional interpreters. Interpreting will be viewed throughout the course as a socio-cultural activity as well as a linguistic one. The social, cultural and ethical complexities of the interpreter's role will therefore be an important focus of the course. In Part I of the course, students will work with written texts to develop an understanding of micro-textual elements and macro-textual structures and patterns. Students will practice how to understand, analyze, process and reformulate written texts through text analysis and note-taking strategies. They will also begin to develop their listening skills with memory and concentration improvement exercises applied to short spoken texts. The importance for interpreters to develop both general knowledge and specific knowledge about the field in which an interpreting activity takes place will be emphasized. The primary mode of practice in Part I will be consecutive interpreting in health care and legal contexts. Role plays in these two areas will be conducted to familiarize students with the triadic nature of interpreted communication.

582 Introduction to Interpreting and Translation: Research and Practice II
This course is structured around six social and professional domains in which interpreting and translation play a significant role (Healthcare, Business, Court/Police, Refugee/Asylum, Human Rights Commissions, and the Military). Students will work on understanding the institutional structures and discursive practices of these particular domains; gain relevant vocabulary; and continue to practice translating, sight translating and interpreting relevant texts. By midpoint in the semester, students will decide on a topic for a small research project (individual or if appropriate working in pairs or small groups) in a domain of their choosing. The project will involve gathering information about the role of interpreting and/or translation in a particular domain using a variety of research methods. These might include: exploring the extent of translated materials or interpreter services available at particular institutions; exploring the extent to which a business, public service institution or NGO recognize the role of translation or interpreting in enabling them to function through a careful examination of their websites and other sources of informational, public relations, etc. materials; or developing and administering questionnaires, conducting interviews, or doing site observations at local schools, hospitals, police stations, courtrooms, etc. All projects will involve some additional reading of relevant literature. Successful completion of this course is a requirement for the Certificate in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

592A Medieval Women Writers
Selected medieval and Renaissance women writers from the point of view of current feminist theory. Writers include Marie de France, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Margery Kempe, Angela of Foligno, Sor Juana de la Cruz, Christine de Pizan. Themes of love and desire in women's writing; the models provided by Sappho, Plato, and the Bible; critical approaches derived from French feminism, feminist theologians, Marxist critiques, and object-relations theory.

691A Literature and Music
Examination of three major aspects of the relation of literature to music:  Music as a phenomenon (social, political, psychological) to be made comprehensible through literary or cinematic discourse; music as a pattern of feeling or of understanding to be imitated in literary or cinematic discourse; music as a mode of interpretation of translation of poetry or drama.  Our inquiry will take into account questions of complementary patterns in music, drama and poetry, and of the political and social effects of music portrayed in the novel or in film.  Readings:  selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Diderot, Mann, Mallarmé, and Valery.  Various essays on prosody, expression and imitation, compositions of Josquin des Pres, Purcell, Wagner, Schubert, and Sting, among others.  Prerequisites:  some knowledge of one or more European romance languages will be extremely helpful.  Persons without any of the above should consult instructor before enrolling.

691D Discipline and Its Discontents
The professional seminar considers both practical matters and theoretical and historical concerns for new and current graduate students in Comparative Literature. Within the practical, we will consider the institutional roles and functions of Comparative Literature alongside World Literature, Translation Studies and Cultural Studies Programs worldwide within the dynamic setting of  the “humanities.” We will discuss practical matters such as the writing and presentation of conference papers, using databases and electronic resources, working with bibliographic software and visual presentations, the politics of the job market and publishing.  Within the historical sphere, we will examine the origins and evolution of Comparative Literature as a discipline, and within the theoretical, we will consider some of the leading debates within the field over the past twenty-five years, from Postmodernism, Deconstruction and Gender and Sexuality studies to Translation Studies and Globalization, Culture and Empire in the 21^st century. Guest faculty may speak on their teaching experience within the discipline, on their fields of research, and on their views of problematic aspects within the discipline itself. Several short position papers will be required throughout the semester, and a final presentation based on ongoing research in the student’s current area of study within the discipline.

691GS Reading the Global South
This course explores topics in Comparative Literature and the cultural politics of the Global South, taking as a point of departure the history of decolonization and theoretical writings on the postcolonial condition. We will begin by considering the relationship between anticolonial nationalisms and literary culture, the impact of print-colonialism on the grounds of comparison, and debates on the "third world" and the "postcolonial" as both political and literary designations. Interdisciplinary approaches to the question of uneven "development" and cultural "progress" will be further explored through readings on globalization and world systems analysis, theories of cosmopolitanism and literary transnationalism, and comparative writings on the terms of "modernity" and the stakes of lit erary "modernism." The final segment of the course emerges as an outgrowth of critiques of "modernity" and global theories of uneven development: the assertion of (temporal) alterity, literary incomparability, and cultural exceptionalism within the Global South will be explored through readings on linguistic difference, secularism, and the sacred - investigating the question of literary circulation through the prism of translation and the prospects of linguistic untranslatability.

691LL Language, Literature and Culture of Early Ireland
This course is a gateway to a fabulous literature: adventures in the Otherworld; humorous stories of the old gods; archaic hyperbolic hero tales comparable to the Greek epics and Sanskrit texts; a sardonic approach to the existential human condition; intricate formal poetry that evokes a full range of human emotion from tragedy and pathos to satire; and more. Early Irish culture opens up medieval history as well, from the early Middle Ages when the Irish were the writing masters of western Europe to the Viking Age to the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Old Irish is a declined language similar to Classical Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. It is often the third leg used to establish evidence about Proto-Indo-European. The course uses a literature-based approach to learning the language. Grades are based on grammar exercises, vocabulary lessons, and translation skills.

691NS Literature and the Formation of the Nation-State in the 19th Century
This course examines the formative role literature played in the process of nation-building in the Americas during the 19th century with particular emphasis on Argentina, Peru and the United States. Authors include-- but are not limited to-- James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ricardo Palma, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Esteban Echeverria. After a brief introduction to methodology and theory and a careful historical contextualization of each writer we will analyze the texts focusing on topics such as gender and romance, race and miscegenation, the past, and space/nature/frontier.

691NW  Writing the New World
This course offers a hemispheric and comparative approach to the study of Anglo- and Latin American literature and culture from the late fifteenth until the eighteenth century, from the age of exploration to the late colonial period. We will look at a wide variety of texts produced in the wake of European imperial expansion in the Americas (e.g. letters, journals, natural histories, ethnographies, captivity narratives and travel accounts) that chronicle the creation of the so-called New World. How has exploration and travel writing produced the Americas for a European readership and what were the epistemological challenges authors were facing when writing the “New World”?  How did non-Europeans (e.g. indigenous and Creole writers) react to these representational practices and what revisionist accounts did they provide?  How was culture contact portrayed and how were racial ideologies constructed? These are just a few of the questions this course will address.

691Q Translation Workshop
In this workshop, students focus on the practical challenges and creative activity of literary translation. During weekly meetings, students discuss each other's translations along with essays on the craft of translation by leading translators, and become familiar with the practicalities of the contemporary world of translation. As students become familiar with the varying views on and descriptions of translation, they develop the ability to talk and write about translators' strategies and choices. Brief oral presentations and regular active participation is a major component of the workshop.

691RT Immigrant Tales and the Trials of Migration
Students will reflect on migrants' experience of translating and being translated in a newly occupied space, the momentary or sustained shifts in identity, the glimpses of belonging or not belonging, and the sense of the contingency of place that can be triggered by these experiences. Though the main focus will be on migration to the United States, the readings and class discussions will also cover other areas of the globe. The main objective of the course is to examine the similarities and differences of migrants'  experiences across time and to capture these experiences through migrants' own accounts. The readings combine historical, autobiographical, fictional and ethnographic materials. We will also examine the migration of people within nations or regions, and consider the motives of and unique challenges for internal migrants.  Finally, we will consider the role of technology and the implications for the relative "ease" of mobility in the late 20th and early 21st centuries compared to earlier decades. The seminars will combine lectures, audio and visual materials and active student participation.

691SJ Translation and Social Justice
This course will explore the role of translation and interpreting in the distribution of social justice within communities, nations and at the global level. It will consider issues such as the position of refugees, asylum seekers and foreign contract and domestic workers, as well as the question of which minority languages are selected for translation in multicultural societies, a decision that can underscore the relative power and significance of one migrant or minority culture in relation to another. A central focus of the course will be on how translators and interpreters actively inhabit their position, which may involve omitting, declining or deciding to advocate for the rights of vulnerable individuals and groups. Students will engage with relevant scholarship, ethnographic materials and literary texts to examine ways in which translators and interpreters have sought to actively challenge their professional codes of ethics, which call for neutrality and impartiality in their role, in situations where a clear bias, injustice or imbalance of power is evident. It will also explore in depth the complex ethical issues and challenges that emerge in the process.

691TC Translation and the City
Explorations of lost, divided, secret, secondary, and sister cities using translation as a tool of literary analysis. We will read twentieth-century prose from the U.S., Latin America, and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as critical and theoretical texts. Students will also work individually on a text of their choice from any region and will share it with the group in theme-based discussions. Presentations, short papers, and a final project.

693A Word, Image, and Book
We will examine the contested and potentially sublime relationship between words and graphic images as they come together, or are evoked in or by the book in the West.  Although we will begin, of necessity, with an exploration of the political dimensions of image-making, we will not stop there.

693D Truth In Representation
This seminar will sample the recent critical debate on truth, representation and relativism; we will look at a selection of scientists, critics, writers, and artists as well, in order to describe a variety of dances on the head of this pin. Ours will be a cross-disciplinary investigation of the claims on truth--or the will to truth--across a variety of narrative representations, e.g. in scientific (Oliver Sacks) or psychoanalytic case studies (Freud), in war reporting (Mathew Brady, Paul Fussell, Semezdin Mehmedinovic), in stand-up comedy (Richard Pryor), in film (Haneke) and theater (Beckett), in the graphic novel (Joe Sacco), as well as in more traditional literary texts (Kafka, Woolf, Ondaatje, Saer, Danticat).

695A International Film Noir
Often referred to as the only indigenous American film style, "film noir" in its very appellation reveals that its major effects (for certain modern conceptions of cinema) lay elsewhere.  We will examine film noir in its American heyday (1945-1957) and how it came to be a major propelling force in the new European cinema of the 1960's (Godard, and the Cahiers du cinema).

695C Fassbinder/Godard/Melodrama
What were Godard's early films for Fassbinder? Instead of rejecting the most influential avant-garde film maker of the sixties, Fassbinder adopted Godard as father. Yet this fathering was a highly selective progeneration. What does the juxtaposition of these film makers reveal and conceal - and not only about Fassbinder's films, since we cannot now see those of Godard without having our past viewings of Fassbinder films in our heads.  Fassbinder sets us on track with two remarks: "Godard believes that film is the truth 24 frames per second, while I believe film is the lie 25 frames per second," and "Both Godard and I despise our characters." The course will raise theoretical issues of spectatorship, tone (irony, distanciation, citation) gender, genre, while being firmly grounded in the formal analysis of filmic text; the construction of the filmic text and its "meaning," and the destruction of subject by means of abyssal structures (mises-en-abyme, structural or metaphoric infinite regresses); Fassbinder's ideological fatigue and complex sexual politics, Godard's political innocence (which is not the same as naivete), his cinematic energy amidst his films' increasing cultural despair. Pre-requisites: familiarity with film theory and discourse, preferably by at least two courses in film analysis.  Course meets as intensive seminar, once a week for 4 hours.  Films selected from: Why Does Herr R. Run Amok and Breathless; American Soldier and Les Carabiniers; The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and Une Femme Mariée; Effie Briest and Vivre sa Vie; Beware of the Holy Whore and Contempt.

751 Theory and Practice of Translation
Theoretical issues and practical problems raised by translation, in light of recent research. The role of translation and translated literature in cultural systems and in the history of literary development. Genre and form (classics of linguistic and functionalist theories, systems approaches, and contemporary cultural studies and internationalist approaches), language register and tone, metaphor and imagery, word play. Readings in theory (Nida, Even-Zohar, Lefevere, Quine, Catford) combined with workshop practice.

752 Theory and Practice of Comparative Literature
Comparative Literature as literary theory and as academic practice. Nineteenth-century background and the rise of “literary studies”; traditional concepts of influence, periods, themes, genres, “extraliterary” relations, translation studies, and their development in modern theory. Questions of textuality, canonicity, cultural identity, the politics of cross-cultural literary images, metatheory, and institutional setting as they affect current practice.

753 Advanced Translation and Technology
Translation today involves complex language engineering, information technology, computer memory tools, and sophisticated graphics editing.  This course covers project management, Internet authoring and file-sharing, software localization, and computer-aided translation tools.  Prerequisites: Knowledge of one language other than English; successful completion of COMP-LIT 551 recommended.

791C International Shakespeare
The purpose of this course is to explore the translation and reception of various Shakespeare plays in different countries. The most widely translated texts in the world are books of the Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare. While much scholarship exists on Bible translations, surprisingly little exists on Shakespeare translations. Students will read several Shakespeare plays in English, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest and review the translation of the plays in different parts of the world, including Germany, France, Canada, the USA, and Latin America. In many instances, the translation of Shakespeare serves as a major event, legitimizing a national language and contributing to the formation of a national identity. Students learn how translators, directors, and critics  “use” translation to participate not just in the development in literary culture, but also in the construction of a nation.  Reading, critical engagement, and discussion of the texts will play an important part of the course. Each student will present a short assignment on one Shakespeare translation or production, a translation history paper, and a translation comparison, comparing a translation to the original, two translations, or a translation to a production. Finally, each student will also submit a research paper, either a comparative analysis of one translation/production or a series of translations/productions in one culture over a period of time. The class is intended to be interdisciplinary, open to students from Comparative Literature, English, and the various language and literature departments.

791K Translation, Ethics, and Ideology
Building upon basic questions related to translation theory and practice, this seminar will investigate in depth the ethics of translation as it has been explored in relation to language, culture, literary form, and ideology. How is the translator's position to be conceptualized in terms of ethics and ideology? What is meant by the metaphor "between" in translation studies? What is the intersection of translation and power? What are the ethical implications of translating difference? How can translation impact on and shift culture and values? How can translators be visible and resist oppressive dominant values? How does postcolonial translation illuminate these questions? These are all current topics in translation studies that are provoking some of the most contemporary writing on translation. Readings will consist primarily of articles selected from contemporary theorists. Requirements: seminar participation, seminar presentation, final 20-page paper. Prerequisite: Comparative Literature 751.

791W Research Seminar: Projects in Cross-Cultural, Cross-Linguistic, and Translation Studies
Students will gain a deeper understanding of research, translation theory, translation practices.

792M Engagement and Global Modernism
Working outward from the tools and techniques used by modernist novelists in Europe and the Americas, this course explores the intersection of engagement and global modernism.  The course focuses on the ways that novelists move beyond social realism, using formalist methods to create engaged narratives that serve the purposes of social critique and national building in the tradition of Joyce, Faulkner, Garc a Marquez, and Morrison. Questions to be explored include the implied readership, boundaries between modernism and postmodernism, and the porous genre boundaries of the novel internationally. Reading will include Soseki, I am a Cat; Le Sueur, The Girl; Rushdie, Midnight's Children; Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood; Sidwa, Cracking India; Roy, The God of Small Things; Pamuk, My Name is Red; Grenville, The Secret River; and Okri, The Famished Road. Requirements:  Reading, class participation, one oral report, and a final paper.

895A Dissertation Research Seminar
A writing seminar/workshop for advanced graduate students in Comparative Literature and a forum for individual and collaborative writing and research, including the drafting of the dissertation prospectus and chapters; preparation of abstracts and proposals for publication of journal articles and academic conference presentations; refinement of job letters and resumes; and submission of proposals for fellowships, grants, and doctoral research funding. Students share information on professional academic opportunities and funding sources, present their own work, and critique drafts and presentations in a mutually supportive environment.

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 1-9.