Courses by semester
Courses for
Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| COML1104 |
FWS: Reading Films
We live in an image-saturated world. How do we make sense of the moving image and its powerful roles in shaping culture and mediating our relationship with the world? This course will equip students with the tools to understand and decipher film language. It introduces and interrogates the basic notions, technologies, terminologies, and theories of film analysis. We will study visual and compositional elements, like mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. Films we discuss will include different geographies, genres, major directors, schools, and film movements. Through writing, students will learn to analyze films with accurate, medium-specific vocabulary, develop informed and nuanced arguments, and critically reflect on the position of the viewer.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| COML1106 |
FWS: Robots
In 2015, Japan's SoftBank Robotics Corporation announced the world's first robot with feelings. Many people were excited, many more disturbed. If robots are simply, as the dictionary suggests, machines "designed to function in the place of a living agent," then what is so disturbing about them? Since robots are designed to replace human labor (first economic, and now also emotional), do they represent a threat as much as they do an aid? What happens when robots exceed their purpose, and become more humanlike? How do robots read, write, and feel? How do the activities of coding and writing, or decoding and reading differ? Students will be equipped with the vocabulary and writing strategies to rigorously analyze, compare, and debate the meaning of robots in the human imagination from different epochs, countries, languages, and media. In doing so, they will write in a variety of registers about works such as the play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, who invented the term "robot". Other materials may include philosophical texts, fiction, videogames, films, graphic novels, and hip-hop concept albums.
|
Fall, Spring. |
| COML1119 |
FWS: A Taste of Russian Literature
Explore the culinary tradition and culture of Russia in broad historical, geopolitical and socioeconomic context through the lens of Russian folklore, short stories of Gogol, Chekhov, and Bulgakov, works of contemporary Russian-American writers, visual art, and international film. The literary journey will take you from the lavish tables of the XVIII century aristocracy, to the hardship and austerity of GULAG prison, to the colorful and savory regional fare of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, to the fridge and pantry staples in the everyday life of Russian family. Your writing assignments will help you develop critical thinking and argumentative skills, precision and clarity of expression, ability to write with discipline, creativity, and sense of style.
Full details for COML 1119 - FWS: A Taste of Russian Literature |
Fall, Spring. |
| COML2000 |
Introduction to Visual Studies
This course introduces the field of Visual Studies. Visual Studies seeks to define and improve our visual relationship to nature and culture after the modern surge in technology and knowledge. It contains objects, images, and problems that lie beyond the Art History and experimental science, yet is grown from both cultures. It teaches the physical and legal limits of human, animal, and machine vision, how knowledge and power get into images, how spectacle drives the economy, and techniques of analysis that can deliver fresh perspectives across disciplines.
|
Spring. |
| COML2036 |
Literature and the Elements of Nature
Literature has long been understood as a window into the human condition, with nature serving as its mere backdrop. How would our relationship with literature change if we reversed this hierarchy? In an age when human activity has irreversibly transformed all four elements of nature -- air, water, earth, and fire – how do we rediscover the active role that the elements have always played in the constitution of the literary imagination? Through a journey with texts from six continents, this course offers a new model of world literature, one predicated not on social actors and cultural forces alone but on the configurations, flows, and disruptions of the elements. In the process, it addresses the place and work of literature in an increasingly threatened planet.
Full details for COML 2036 - Literature and the Elements of Nature |
Spring. |
| COML2580 |
Imagining the Holocaust
How is the memory of the Holocaust kept alive by means of the literary and visual imagination? Within the historical context of the Holocaust and how and why it occurred, we shall examine major and widely read Holocaust narratives that have shaped the way we understand and respond to the Holocaust. We also study ethical and psychological issues about how and why people behave in dire circumstances. We shall begin with first-person reminiscences—Wiesel's Night, Levi's Survival at Auschwitz, and The Diary of Anne Frank—before turning to realistic fictions such as Kineally's Schindler's List (and Spielberg's film), Kertesz's Fateless, Kosinski's The Painted Bird, and Ozick's "The Shawl." We shall also read the mythopoeic vision of Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just, the illuminating distortions of Epstein's King of the Jews, the Kafkaesque parable of Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegelman's Maus books.
|
Spring. |
| COML2703 |
Thinking Media
From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, "Thinking Media" offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. Featuring an array of guests from across Cornell, including faculty from Communication, Comparative Literature, English, German Studies, Information Science, Music, and Performing & Media Arts, the course will present diverse perspectives on how to think with, against, and about media in relation to the public sphere and private life, archaeology and science fiction, ethics and aesthetics, identity and difference, labor and play, knowledge and power, expression and surveillance, and the generation and analysis of data.
|
Spring. |
| COML2728 |
Modern Middle Eastern Literature in Translation
In their acceptance speeches for the Nobel Prize in Literature, both the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (1988) and the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (2006) situate their work between Eastern and Western literary traditions. Pamuk elaborated: "To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world's otherness, the strange and the wondrous." In this class, we seek the strange and wondrous otherness, along with the familiar and wondrous sameness in modern literature from the Middle East. We proceed thematically across the literary traditions of the Middle East, with a focus on works written in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Hebrew. The thematic organization permits us to approach critical issues comparatively. In addition to exploring the tension between Eastern and Western influences in this literature, we will also investigate other issues writers confront: How do literary heritage and religious tradition inflect modern texts? What is the relationship between politics and aesthetics? How does literature represent traumatic memories and violence, past and present? All readings are in English.
Full details for COML 2728 - Modern Middle Eastern Literature in Translation |
Spring. |
| COML2760 |
Desire
"Language is a skin," the critic Roland Barthes once wrote: "I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire." Sexual desire has a history, even a literary history, which we will examine through an introductory survey of European dramatic literature from the Ancient Greeks to the present, as well as classic readings in sexual theory, including Plato, Freud, Foucault, and contemporary feminist and queer theory.
|
Spring. |
| COML3006 |
Race and Slavery, Old and Modern
What does it mean to live in the aftermath of slavery? How has the human history of slavery contributed to the production of "natural" values that we take for granted—such as community, property, citizenship, gender, individuality, and freedom? This course explores the history of enslavement throughout the human past, from the ancient world to the modern era. We will pay particular attention to the relationship between slavery and the construction of racial blackness. We will explore various institutionalized forms of servitude throughout time and space, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic worlds, from eunuchism to concubinage, from slavery in the Roman Empire to "modern slavery" and sex trafficking. Readings will be in English and will engage a variety of dynamic sources: theoretical, historiographical, anthropological, religious, legal, literary and multimedia.
Full details for COML 3006 - Race and Slavery, Old and Modern |
Spring. |
| COML3021 |
Literary Theory on the Edge
Without literary theory, there is no idea of literature, of criticism, of culture. While exciting theoretical paradigms emerged in the late 20th century, including structuralism and poststructuralism, this course extends theoretical inquiry into its most exciting current developments, including performance studies, media theory and cinema/media studies, the digital humanities, trauma theory, transgender studies, and studies of the Anthropocene. Taught by two Cornell professors active in the field, along with occasional invited guests, lectures and class discussions will provide students with a facility for close textual analysis, a knowledge of major currents of thought in the humanities, and an appreciation for the uniqueness and complexity of language and media. This course may involve presentation of performance art. Course open to all levels; no previous knowledge of literary or cultural theory required.
|
Spring. |
| COML3115 |
Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics
The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.
Full details for COML 3115 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics |
Spring. |
| COML3150 |
Literature and Media in Japan
Beginning with the mid-nineteenth century, the course traces dynamic relays and reciprocal influences among woodblock prints, maps, fiction, films, anime, comics, and digital arts in Japan. We will consider the extensive cultural commentary that has surrounded the emergence of new media in an attempt to assess their transformative aesthetic, social, and political implications. The course will use materials with translations or subtitles in English.
|
Spring. |
| COML3440 |
The Tragic Theatre
Tragedy and its audiences from ancient Greece to modern theater and film. Topics: origins of theatrical conventions; Shakespeare and Seneca; tragedy in modern theater and film. Works studied will include: Aeschylus' Agamemnon; Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes; Euripides' Alcestis, Helen, Iphigeneia in Aulis, Orestes; Seneca's Thyestes, Trojan Women; Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Othello; Strindberg's The Father; Durrenmatt's The Visit; Bergman's Seventh Seal; Cacoyannis' Iphigeneia.
|
Spring. |
| COML3512 |
No Rest: The Exhausted Self
The search for the active, good, or just life has increasingly come under pressure by the socio-political and economic conditions in late Capitalism or, in Deleuze's term, the "society of control." The individual and society seem to not flourish but disintegrate. In this class, we will examine interdisciplinary scholarly work and literary texts dealing with various concepts used to critically engage with the current state, among them: speed, rest and restlessness, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, weariness, intensity, and burnout. Authors include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Kathrin Röggla, Hartmut Rosa, Byung-Chul Han, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jonathan Crary, Kathi Weeks.
|
Spring. |
| COML3550 |
Decadence
"My existence is a scandal," Oscar Wilde once wrote, summing up in an epigram the effect of his carefully cultivated style of perversity and paradox. Through their celebration of "art for art's sake" and all that was considered artificial, unnatural, or obscene, the Decadent writers of the late-nineteenth century sought to free the pleasures of beauty, spirituality, and sexual desire from their more conventional ethical moorings. We will focus on the literature of the period, including works by Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, A. C. Swinburne, and especially Oscar Wilde, and we will also consider related developments in aesthetic philosophy, painting, music, theater, architecture, and design.
|
Spring. |
| COML3800 |
Poetry and Poetics of the Americas
As globalization draws the Americas ever closer together, reshaping our sense of a common and uncommon American culture, what claims might be made for a distinctive, diverse poetry and poetics of the America? How might we characterize its dominant forms and alternative practices? What shared influences, affiliations, concerns and approaches might we find and what differences emerge? Ranging across North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean, this course will place in conversation such figures as Poe, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Neruda, Vallejo, Borges, Parra, Césaire, Walcott, Bolaño, Espada, Waldrop, Vicuña, Hong, and Rankine.
Full details for COML 3800 - Poetry and Poetics of the Americas |
Spring. |
| COML4200 |
Independent Study
COML 4190 and COML 4200 may be taken independently of each other. Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.
|
Spring. |
| COML4251 |
Existentialism or Marxism
The most intense public encounter between Existentialism and Marxism occurred in immediate post-WWII Europe, its structure remaining alive internationally. Existentialist questions have been traced from pre-Socratic thinkers through Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes onward; just as roots of modern materialism extend to Epicurus and Lucretius, or Leopardi. This course will focus on differing theories and concomitant practices concerned with "alienation," "anxiety," "crisis," "death of God," "nihilism," "rebellion or revolution." Crucial are possible relations between fiction and non-fiction; also among philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and political theory. Other authors may include: Althusser, de Beauvoir, Beckett, Büchner, Camus, Che, Dostoevsky, Fanon, Genet, Gide, Gramsci, O. Gross, Hamsun, Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers, C.L.R. James, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Lagerkvist, Lacan, Lenin, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, Mishima, G. Novack, Nietzsche, Ortega, Pirandello, W. Reich, Sartre, Shestov, Tillich, Unamuno. There is also cinema.
|
Spring. |
| COML4290 |
Postcolonial Poetry and the Poetics of Relation
What kinds of poetry might be usefully characterized as "postcolonial" and what are the stakes of such a designation? How common, variable, translatable are values deemed "postcolonial" for particular poetics across cultures? Is there such a thing as a transnational, transcultural, "Postcolonial Poetics?" What relation(s) do specific textual/poetic features or strategies have to geopolitical, cultural, historical, economic circumstances, and to the condition(s) of what has come to be called the "postcolonial" in particular? With special reference to Edouard Glissant's influential concept of a "poetics of relation," attending as well to our own situatedness as readers - perhaps also, though not necessarily, as writers - of poetry within U.S. (and) academic context(s), this seminar will focus on Caribbean poetry as an especially fruitful site for exploring a diversity of approaches to these and related questions concerning postcoloniality, poetry, community, language, culture, and identity.
Full details for COML 4290 - Postcolonial Poetry and the Poetics of Relation |
Spring. |
| COML4353 |
Race and Critical Theory
As a philosophical approach to culture and society emerging out of European contexts, Critical Theory has traditionally excluded questions about the history of racial difference. Yet Critical Theory's insights into processes of subject formation, social relations, mass culture, and general emancipatory drive continue to inform and be of value to scholars of race concerned with the everyday production and transmission of ideas about normative humanity. This course explores contemporary critical scholarship on race, as defined by its relationship to anti-positivist epistemologies, theories of the subject, critiques of traditional ontology and of the aesthetic, and engagement with postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, indigenous studies, and the Black radical tradition. Some familiarity with key figures and ideas in postcolonial studies and Black studies is desirable, but not necessary. Readings will include Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, Kathryn Yusoff, Tiffany Lethabo King, Ronald Judy, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
|
Spring. |
| COML4429 |
Walter Benjamin
This extraordinary figure died in 1941, and his death is emblematic of the intellectual depredations of Nazism. Yet since World War II, his influence, his reputation, and his fascination for scholars in a wide range of cultural and political disciplines has steadily grown. He is seen as a bridging figure between German and Jewish studies, between materialist critique of culture and the submerged yet powerful voice of theology, between literary history and philosophy. We will review Benjamin's life and some of the key disputes over his heritage; read some of the best-known of his essays; and devote significant time to his enigmatic and enormously rich masterwork, the Arcades Project, concluding with consideration of the relevance of Benjamin's insights for cultural and political dilemmas today.
|
Spring. |
| COML4623 |
Animal Power
The modern world relies on a vast array of natural resources to drive its activities, but for most of human history, animals have provided energy to people. Animals were, and often still are, the energy fueling human transportation, agriculture, nutrition, and even entertainment. This course examines Classical and modern representations of animals as workpower, food and fuel, and raw materials for manufacture. We will read a wide array of sources that depict the work of animals in Classical antiquity and the modern world; we will also look at texts that attempt to describe how the animal body creates energy. For longer description and instructor bio, visit societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu/courses
|
Spring. |
| COML4624 |
Tradition and Modernity: The Jewish Case and Beyond
The concept of tradition often takes a back seat to modernity, but what does it mean to be part of a tradition? How does tradition revitalize and challenge received views and stimulate individual talent? This course explores three diverse bodies of material: twentieth-century Yiddish poetry and prose; ancient Jewish literature; and mid-twentieth-century German theology, philosophy, and criticism (by both Jews and Christians). As these thinkers reflect on their intellectual and poetic traditions, we will explore tradition as a source of collective energy in spite–and sometimes because!–of the constraints that it places upon self-expression. Tradition as a source of creativity is a strong theme in Jewish culture but has implications for other fields. For longer description and instructor bio, visit societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu/courses.
Full details for COML 4624 - Tradition and Modernity: The Jewish Case and Beyond |
Spring. |
| COML4930 |
Senior Essay
Times TBA individually in consultation with director of Senior Essay Colloquium. Approximately 50 pages to be written over the course of two semesters in the student's senior year under the direction of the student's advisor. An R grade is assigned on the basis of research and a preliminary draft completed in the first semester. A letter grade is awarded on completion of the second semester, COML 4940.
|
Multi-semester course (Fall, Spring). |
| COML4940 |
Senior Essay
Times TBA individually in consultation with director of Senior Essay Colloquium. Approximately 50 pages to be written over the course of two semesters in the student's senior year under the direction of the student's advisor. An R grade is assigned on the basis of research and a preliminary draft completed in the first semester.
|
Multi-semester course (Fall, Spring). |
| COML4945 |
Body Politics in African Literature and Cinema
The course examines how postcolonial African writers and filmmakers engage with and revise controversial images of bodies and sexuality--genital cursing, same-sex desire, HIV/AIDS, genital surgeries, etc. Our inquiry also surveys African theorists' troubling of problematic tropes and practices such as the conception in 19th-century racist writings of the colonized as embodiment, the pathologization and hypersexualization of colonized bodies, and the precarious and yet empowering nature of the body and sexuality in the postcolonial African experience. As we focus on African artists and theorists, we also read American and European theorists, including but not certainly limited to Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Joseph Slaughter, detecting the ways in which discourses around bodies in the African context may shape contemporary theories and vice versa.
Full details for COML 4945 - Body Politics in African Literature and Cinema |
Spring. |
| COML4996 |
Critical Theory and Climate Change
This seminar explores what German literature and thought, especially the tradition of Critical Theory, can teach us about living in the anthropocene. Taking off from Kant's four questions for framing enlightened man around 1800 -- What can I know? What do I have to do? What can I hope for? What is the human being? – this seminar re-explores these questions in light of climate change in the 21st century. Of particular interest is not only the rhetoric of climate change and a critique of its denial in word and deed, but also narration: how does one narrate the singularity of this catastrophe? Different narrative structures from trauma and tragedy to the 19th century novel and 20th century surrealism will be examined.
Full details for COML 4996 - Critical Theory and Climate Change |
Spring. |
| COML6137 |
Violence in Literature
What are the emotive forces that drive, inform, enable, disrupt, violate or energize narrative structures and the stories we tell? Critics from Sorel, Benjamin, Schmitt, Arendt to Derrida, Zizek and Balibar have elaborated the complex spectrum of violence in theory, literature, philosophy and politics. Topics of discussion include: is violence geared to specific literary genres? What are violent emotions? Can violence ever be positive? Can violence ever be legitimate? What is the relationship between violence, power and cruelty? How can we delineate the semiotics and contexts of violence: from war to medicine, from pain to pleasure? Theoretical texts will be accompanied by literature: Kafka, Kleist, Sebald et al; literatures of war, crisis and uproar.
|
Spring. |
| COML6159 |
Literary Theory on the Edge
Without literary theory, there is no idea of literature, of criticism, of culture. While exciting theoretical paradigms emerged in the late 20th century, including structuralism and poststructuralism, this course extends theoretical inquiry into its most exciting current developments, including performance studies, media theory and cinema/media studies, the digital humanities, trauma theory, trangender studies, and studies of the Anthropocene. Taught by two Cornell professors active in the field, along with occasional invited guests, lectures and class discussions will provide students with a facility for close textual analysis, a knowledge of major currents of thought in the humanities, and an appreciation for the uniqueness and complexity of language and media. This course may involve presentation of performance art. Course open to all levels; no previous knowledge of literary or cultural theory required.
|
Spring. |
| COML6160 |
Translation, in Theory
The course provides an introduction to various aspects of translation theory, and emphasizes relations between translation theory and trauma theory, post-structuralism, post-colonial theory, and debates on comparative literature, "world literature," and area studies.
|
Spring. |
| COML6200 |
Independent Study
This course gives students the opportunity to work with a selected instructor to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. After getting permission of the instructor, students should enroll online in the instructor's section. Enrolled students are required to provide the department with a course description and/or syllabus along with the instructor's approval by the end of the first week of classes.
|
Spring. |
| COML6221 |
Postcolonial Theory: Then and Now
"All decolonization," wrote Frantz Fanon, "is successful at the level of description." With a focus on the difference between description and critique and on the uneven relation between the academic project underlying the subfield of postcolonial studies and histories of colonialism and aspirations to decolonization across the twentieth century, this seminar will offer a retrospective survey on the assemblage of texts that has come under the name "Postcolonial Theory" and inquire into its purchase on this present with particular emphasis on questions of indigeneity and environmental crisis. Authors may include: Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, Achille Mbembe, Sylvia Wynter, David Scott, Leela Gandhi, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Jason Moore, Glenn Coulthard, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rob Nixon.
Full details for COML 6221 - Postcolonial Theory: Then and Now |
Spring. |
| COML6350 |
Postcolonial Poetry and the Poetics of Relation
What kinds of poetry might be usefully characterized as "postcolonial" and what are the stakes of such a designation? How common, variable, translatable are values deemed "postcolonial" for particular poetics across cultures? Is there such a thing as a transnational, transcultural, "Postcolonial Poetics?" What relation(s) do specific textual/poetic features or strategies have to geopolitical, cultural, historical, economic circumstances, and to the condition(s) of what has come to be called the "postcolonial" in particular? With special reference to Edouard Glissant's influential concept of a "poetics of relation," attending as well to our own situatedness as readers - perhaps also, though not necessarily, as writers - of poetry within U.S. (and) academic context(s), this seminar will focus on Caribbean poetry as an especially fruitful site for exploring a diversity of approaches to these and related questions concerning postcoloniality, poetry, community, language, culture, and identity.
Full details for COML 6350 - Postcolonial Poetry and the Poetics of Relation |
Spring. |
| COML6353 |
Race and Critical Theory
As a philosophical approach to culture and society emerging out of European contexts, Critical Theory has traditionally excluded questions about the history of racial difference. Yet Critical Theory's insights into processes of subject formation, social relations, mass culture, and general emancipatory drive continue to inform and be of value to scholars of race concerned with the everyday production and transmission of ideas about normative humanity. This course explores contemporary critical scholarship on race, as defined by its relationship to anti-positivist epistemologies, theories of the subject, critiques of traditional ontology and of the aesthetic, and engagement with postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, indigenous studies, and the Black radical tradition. Some familiarity with key figures and ideas in postcolonial studies and Black studies is desirable, but not necessary. Readings will include Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, Kathryn Yusoff, Tiffany Lethabo King, Ronald Judy, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
|
Spring. |
| COML6370 |
Contemporary Aesthetic Theory and its Discontents
After having been reduced to a mere ideological formation of bourgeois origin, aesthetics has recently made a strong comeback in the field of theory. This course probes the reasons for this historical change. From the arguments of the critics we will derive a catalogue of criteria for a viable aesthetics in order to examine how contemporary aesthetic theory relates to cognitive theories, the historicity of art and taste (including specific practices and institutions), and the emancipatory potentials of ethics and politics. Readings may include Adorno, Berger, de Bolla, Bourdieu, Noël Carroll, Cavell, Danto, Derrida, Dickie, Eagleton, Goodman, Guillory, Gumbrecht, Halsall, Luhmann, Lyotard, de Man, Walter Benn Michaels, Obrist, Ohmann, Scarry, Seel, Shustermann, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Williams and others.
Full details for COML 6370 - Contemporary Aesthetic Theory and its Discontents |
Spring. |
| COML6559 |
Theories of Address
This course takes as its starting point the thinking of address that emerges from the study of trauma, and explores how the notion of address (its failures, and its new possibilities) help us reconceptualize not only traumatic temporality and affect but the philosophical and theoretical frameworks bound up with them. We will open with a brief introduction on Sigmund Freud and move to three sections: on Jean-Francois Lyotard (selections from The Differend, "Emma," and "The Phrase Affect"), Emmanuel Levinas (selections from Otherwise than Being and "Philosophy and Awakening") and Paul de Man ("Autobiography as De-Facement," "Hypogram and Inscription," and "The Resistance to Theory"). Prominent Levinas, Lyotard, and trauma scholars will join the course for one class in each section.
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| COML6631 |
Marx and Marxisms
The terms "Marx" and "Marxisms" have meant different things to different people, beginning with Marx himself and continuing in his legacy today. As obviously, this legacy remains global (Europe, North and Latin America, India and Pakistan, Vietnam, Africa, Near East and Far East)—all still including imagined allies, neutrals, and foes. This seminar is an approach to this otherwise bewildering complexity: we focus on two things: (1) a possible Marxist (or Communist or Anarchist) theory of all language and any semiotics; alongside (2) its equally possible inter-action with manuals of guerrilla warfare.
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Spring. |
| COML6784 |
The Case of the Perversions
This seminar will offer a critical examination of the literature of perversion (sadism, masochism, fetishism), with readings drawn from major texts of the libertine or S/M traditions (Sade, Sacher-Masoch, Lautréamont, Réage, Flanagan), as well as recent works of philosophy that share with these writers an investment in what I will term "writing the real." We will consider works of perversion not merely as literary or clinical cases, therefore, but as illuminating how the discourse of perversion, broadly understood, posits or constructs the real-its cases or modes of postulation or figuration. We will focus our attention on three modes of construction that purport to straddle the alleged gap between language and its real-figure, fetish, and formalization-considering in each case their relation to the problematic of the drive. In addition to the authors mentioned above, readings will include selections from Badiou, Freud, Deleuze, Ferenczi, Foucault, Lacan, Lyotard, Meillassoux, Perniola, and Zizek.
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Spring. |
| COML6895 |
Critical Theory and Climate Change
This seminar explores what German literature and thought, especially the tradition of Critical Theory, can teach us about living in the anthropocene. Taking off from Kant's four questions for framing enlightened man around 1800 -- What can I know? What do I have to do? What can I hope for? What is the human being? – this seminar re-explores these questions in light of climate change in the 21st century. Of particular interest is not only the rhetoric of climate change and a critique of its denial in word and deed, but also narration: how does one narrate the singularity of this catastrophe? Different narrative structures from trauma and tragedy to the 19th century novel and 20th century surrealism will be examined.
Full details for COML 6895 - Critical Theory and Climate Change |
Spring. |
| RUSSL2150 |
Russian Culture, History, and Politics through Film
This survey course will introduce you to various aspects of Russian culture as a formative force of national identity in a broad historical, geopolitical and socioeconomic context of 20-21st century post-imperial, Soviet, and post-soviet Russia. A selection of iconic works of Russian filmmakers will offer you a unique perspective of people's lives, aspirations, hopes and struggles throughout the nation's turbulent history - revolutions and Civil war, Stalin's era and World War II, the political thaw and stagnation, perestroika, the breakdown of the USSR, and full of uncertainties post-soviet era. Reading assignments may include poetry, short stories, historical commentary, and film criticism. No knowledge of the Russian language is required: the course will be conducted entirely in English, and the films will be shown with English subtitles.
Full details for RUSSL 2150 - Russian Culture, History, and Politics through Film |
Spring. |
| RUSSL4492 |
Supervised Reading in Russian Literature
Independent reading course in topics not covered in regularly scheduled courses. Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course work.
Full details for RUSSL 4492 - Supervised Reading in Russian Literature |
Fall or Spring. |
| RUSSL6611 |
Supervised Reading and Research
Independent study.
Full details for RUSSL 6611 - Supervised Reading and Research |
Fall or Spring. |
| RUSSA1104 |
Conversation Practice
Reinforces the speaking skills learned in RUSSA 1122. Homework includes assignments that must be done in the language lab or on the students' own computer. Class meeting times will be chosen at the organizational meeting (usually the second or third day of the semester) so as to accommodate as many students as possible. The time and place of the organizational meeting will be announced at russian.cornell.edu
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Spring. |
| RUSSA1122 |
Elementary Russian through Film
Gives a thorough grounding in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Course materials include clips from original Russian films and television programs. Homework includes assignments that must be done in the language lab or on the students' own computers. Note the RUSSA 1104 option. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 1122 - Elementary Russian through Film |
Spring. |
| RUSSA1126 |
Reading Russian Press
The emphasis is on reading unabridged articles on a variety of topics from current Russian web pages and translating them into English; a certain amount of discussion (in Russian) may also be undertaken. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
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Spring. |
| RUSSA1132 |
Self-Paced Elementary Russian II
RUSSA 1131 and RUSSA 1132 cover the standard Cornell first-year Russian language curriculum at a slower (or faster) pace than RUSSA 1103 -RUSSA 1104 and RUSSA 1121 -RUSSA 1122, the pace to be chosen by each individual student in consultation with the instructor. Somewhat larger homework reading, writing, and online assignments with fewer and shorter meetings with the instructors, one-on-one or in very small groups.
Full details for RUSSA 1132 - Self-Paced Elementary Russian II |
Spring (when the department has available resources). |
| RUSSA2204 |
Intermediate Composition and Conversation
Guided conversation, translation, reading, pronunciation, and grammar review, emphasizing the development of accurate and idiomatic expression in the language. Course materials include video clips from an original Russian feature film and work with Russian web sites, in addition to the textbook. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 2204 - Intermediate Composition and Conversation |
Spring. |
| RUSSA3300 |
Directed Studies
Taught on a specialized basis for students with special projects (e.g., to supplement a non-language course or thesis work).
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Fall, Spring. |
| RUSSA3306 |
Creative Writing for Heritage Speakers
Creative writing for heritage speakers of Russian. Writing short (one page for each class) texts in Russian in a variety of genres: personal letters, blog entries, news articles, technical descriptions, official documents, short stories, and the like. Two meetings per week if taken for 2 credits hours. An optional third weekly meeting when taken for 3 credit hours has short reading assignments from contemporary literary and non-literary texts. The course is a continuation of RUSSA 3305 but may also be taken by qualified students who have not completed RUSSA 3305. Issues of style and grammar are discussed in every class. The course is primarily for students who learned to speak Russian at home, but students with other backgrounds may be eligible as well. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 3306 - Creative Writing for Heritage Speakers |
Spring. |
| RUSSA3310 |
Advanced Reading
Designed to teach advanced reading and discussion skills. In seminar 101, weekly reading assignments include 20-40 pages of unabridged Russian, fiction or non-fiction. In seminar 102, the weekly assignments are 80-100 pages. This course may be taken as a continuation of RUSSA 3309, but it may also be taken by itself. Discussion of the reading is conducted entirely in Russian and centered on the content and analysis of the assigned selection. Detailed description on the Russian Langage Program website.
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Spring. |
| RUSSA4414 |
Modern Russian: Past and Present II
Involves discussion, in Russian, of authentic Russian texts and films (feature or documentary) in a variety of non-literary styles and genres. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 4414 - Modern Russian: Past and Present II |
Spring. |
| RUSSA4491 |
Reading Course: Russian Literature in the Original Language
To be taken in conjunction with any Russian literature course at the advanced level. Students receive 1 credit for reading and discussing works in Russian in addition to their normal course work. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 4491 - Reading Course: Russian Literature in the Original Language |
Fall, Spring. |
| RUSSA6634 |
Russian for Russian Specialists
Designed for students whose areas of study require advanced active control of the language. Fine points of translation, usage, and style are discussed and practiced. Syllabus varies from year to year. Maybe taken more than once. Detailed description at russian.cornell.edu.
Full details for RUSSA 6634 - Russian for Russian Specialists |
Spring. |
| BCS1132 |
Elementary Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian II
By the end of this course, students will be able to carry on basic conversations in Bosnian/ Croatian/Serbian on many topics from daily life. They should be able to make polite requests, ask for information, respond to requests and descriptions, impart personal information, and have simple discussions on familiar topics. They will also acquire the skills to read and understand simple informational texts, such as newspaper headlines and menus, announcements and advertisements, and to extract the general idea of longer informational texts. They will master the writing systems of the languages, and should be able to write notes or simple letters and keep a journal.
Full details for BCS 1132 - Elementary Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian II |
Spring. |
| BCS1134 |
Intermed Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian II
The intermediate course in BCS is a continuation of the elementary course and is intended to enhance overall communicative competence in the language. This course moves forward from the study of the fundamental systems and vocabulary of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian to rich exposure to the spoken and written language with the wide range of speakers and situations. The goal of the course is to give students practice in comprehension, speaking, and composition, while broadening their vocabulary and deepening their understanding of grammar and syntax. The course will focus on the following skills: conversation, writing, role-playing, interviewing, and summarizing. To develop these skills the students will be assigned dialogues, language exercises, translations, descriptions, summaries, and a final independent project.
Full details for BCS 1134 - Intermed Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian II |
Spring. |
| FINN1122 |
Elementary Finnish II
The Elementary Finnish II course is designed for students with some prior knowledge of Finnish. Students have an opportunity to practice listening, reading, writing and speaking in Finnish. Students learn to provide information about their opinions and feelings, their families, their immediate environment and their daily activities.
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Spring. |
| FINN1134 |
Intermediate Finnish II
The structure of the Finnish Studies Program at Columbia University ensures that students receive a solid grounding in both the language and the culture of Finland. The Program promotes the development of language ability through students' participation in communicative activities and discussions. The Intermediate Finnish II course provides students a thorough and consistently structured revision of intermediate linguistic competence in Finnish including listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students learn to talk fluently about a wide range of topics from everyday life, speak about recent past, read and understand newspaper articles, and use appropriate grammatical structures.
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Spring. |
| UKRAN1122 |
Elementary Ukrainian II
The purpose of this course is for the students to develop elementary proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, and writing in Ukrainian, while acquiring some basic knowledge of Ukrainian culture, history, geography, and way of life.
Upon completion of the course, students who have attended classes on a regular basis, successfully completed all assignments and all tests and exams with a minimum grade of B- should be able to:
- master Ukrainian pronunciation and grammatical accuracy well enough to be understood by a native speaker of Ukrainian.
- provide basic information in Ukrainian, both orally and in writing, about themselves, their family, likes and dislikes, everyday activities, studying, as well as some immediate needs, such as ordering food and making simple purchases;
- understand and participate in simple exchanges on everyday topics (e.g., meeting people, school, shopping, etc.) in most common informal settings;
- use and understand a range of essential vocabulary related to everyday life (e.g., days of the week, numbers, months, seasons, numbers, telling the time and date, family, food, transportation, common objects, colors, etc.).
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Spring. |
| UKRAN1134 |
Intermediate Ukrainian II
The course starts with a review and subsequent reinforcement of grammar fundamentals and core vocabulary pertaining to the most common aspects of daily life. Principal emphasis is placed on further development of students' communicative skills (oral and written) on such topics as the self, family, studies and leisure, travel, meals and others. A number of Ukrainian language idiosyncrasies like numeral + noun phrases, verbal aspect, impersonal verbal forms, verbs of motion and others receive special attention. Course materials are selected with the aim of introducing students to some functional and stylistic differences in modern Ukrainian as well as distinctions between the Kyiv and Lviv literary variant.
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Spring. |