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Comparative Literature and English
 
 
 

 
 

The Department of Comparative Literature and English houses the Comparative Literature Major, the Major in Literary Studies and the Creative Arts, the English Writing Program, and the English Foundation Program, as well as minors in Comparative Literature, Classical Civilization, Medieval Studies, Critical Theory, and Theater and Performance. We engage in close attention to the written word as a focus for the analysis of historical, social, philosophical and psychological processes, for informed reflection on human value and cultural diversity, and for the exercise of creative imagination. Students are prepared to be critical and creative thinkers, with the capacity to use the English language powerfully and precisely within a world of many languages and cultures.

 

Interdisciplinary Initiatives

The department works closely with faculty in Philosophy, French Studies, the Department of Language Research and Teaching, History, Film Studies, and European and Mediterranean Cultures. Faculty are involved in the interdisciplinary minors in Urban Studies, Visual Culture, Gender Studies, Classical Civilization, Critical Theory, Film Studies, French Studies, Medieval Studies, and Renaissance Studies, and are central to the MA in Cultural Translation.

 

Centers and Partnerships

Faculty in the department are extremely active in research and outreach, as individuals and as part of many initiatives within and beyond the university. Department members organize or co-organize the Center for Writers and Translators, the Arts Arena, the AUP Public Lectures in the Humanities, the Beckett Project, the Saturnian Society, and the transdisciplinary Research Seminar in the Arts, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis. Faculty are active in the AUP Lab Project, in academic institutions and journals (including the European Writing Centers Association, the Centre des Recherches Interuniversitaire sur les Champs Culturels d’Amérique Latine, the Women's History network, and Literary Journalism Studies) and in organizing major international conferences (including the recent Richard Wright centenary conference), inviting visiting speakers, and enabling student conferences and other activities (including Roots and Shoots). The department has working relations with professional bodies such as the Dalkey Archive Press, Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, and the Bilingual Acting Workshop.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Center for Writers and Translators

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
Requirements for the Major in  COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
 

 

FirstBridge
8 FirstBridge courses change every year.
 

GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS
8 EN 110 College Writing, EN 220 Writing and Criticism
Up to 22 French through FR 235 and FrenchBridge
8 Historical and Cross-Cultural Understandings
8 Social Experience and Organization
Up to 8 Scientific and Mathematical Investigations

 

CORE

Required (17 credits)
CL 125 The World, the Text, and the Critic I
CL 150 The World, the Text, and the Critic II
CL 285 Literary Criticism and Theory
CL 320 Production, Translation, Creation, Publication
CL 475 Portfolio
 

Electives
Select seven courses freely from the following lists, building a personal focus with the help of your advisor. At least three courses must be at the 200-level; at least one course from each of the three periods: Classical (Class); Medieval (Med); and Renaissance (Ren).
(28 credits)


Students in courses marked with an asterisk may choose to read the texts in English translation or in the original non-English language (students studying for honors must take at least 2 courses in which they read the texts in the original language).
 

Literary Movements
*CL 253 The Golden Age in Spain and Europe (Ren)
*CL 254 Modern Latin American and Spanish Literature
*CL 255 Saints and Sinners in the Renaissance (Ren)
*CL/FS 265 Le Plaisir du roman: Great Stories of the XIXth Century
*CL 313 The Beginnings of European Literature: Ancient Greece (Class)
*CL 329 Renaissance Comparative Literature (Ren)

*CL 352 European Romantic Poetry: Feeding Upon Infinity
CL 358 The Realist Novel: Documents and Desires
CL 364 Magic Realism and the Fantastic
*CL 368 Worlds of Russian Fiction
*CL 374 Russian Modernism
CL 231 American Fiction (1845-1970)
 

Interdisciplinary Approaches
CL 327 Law, Morality, Society: Guilt in Translation
CL/PL 330 Philosophy and the Theatre
CL 360 Literature and the Political Imagination in the Nineteenth Century
CL/FM 369 The Aesthetics of Crime Fiction
*FS/PY 390 Topics in Literature and Psychoanalysis
CL 400 Interdisciplinary Topics in Literature
 

Writing and Geopolitics
CL/EN 251 English Literature before 1800
CL/EN 252 English Literature since 1800
CL 256 French & American Exchanges in Italian Literature
*CL/HI 333 Discovery and Conquest: Creation of the New World (Ren)
CL/HI 353 In 1871 …: Case Study in Comparative Literature and History
CL 362 Conquering Colonies: America and European Literature
CL 371 20th Century Latin American Writers
*ES/CL 303 European Urban Culture: Naples and Palermo
ES/CL 310 European Urban Culture: Edinburgh the City, Scotland the Kingdom
*FS/ES 340 Littérature et Colonisation
 

Writing Identities and Desires
*CL 219 Socio-Political Space in Classical Antiquity (Class)
*CL 257 The Rise of the Hero and Poet in French Literature (Med)
*CL 258 Loves Sacred and Profane in French Lyric (Ren)
*CL 315 Forming a Western Cultural Identity: The Literature of Ancient Rome (Class)
CL 351 The Romantic Novel of Revolution
CL/ES 343 The Attractions of Paris
*FS/CL 336 Issues in French Women’s Writing
*FS/HI 206 Histoire des Idées I (Ren)
*FS/HI 208 Histoire des Idées II
 

Literature and the Contemporary
*FS/CL 275 Theater in Paris
CL/GS 206 Contemporary Feminist Theory
CL 285 Literary Criticism and Theory
FS/FM 311 Issues in Contemporary French Film and Literature
CL 365 Post-war European Literature
CL 381 Postcolonial Literatures and Theories
CL 376 Modern Sexuality and the Process of Writing
EN 340 The Study of Language
CL 400 Interdisciplinary Topics in Literature
 

Author Focus
*CL/PL 317 Key Texts of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Class)
*CL/ES 325 Dante and Medieval Culture (Med)
CL/DR 338 Shakespeare in Context (Ren)
CL/FM 348 Shakespeare and Film (Ren)
*CL 356 Dostoevsky and the 19th Century Novel
*CL/FS 359 Baudelaire and Flaubert
CL 373 Ulysses and British Modernism
CL 379 Proust and Beckett
LT/CL 350 Intermediate Latin II
LT/CL 450 Advanced Study in Latin
GK/CL 370 Intermediate Ancient Greek II
GK/CL 470 Advanced Study in Ancient Greek
 

Plus GENERAL ELECTIVES to total 128 credits.

 

 
 
Requirements for the Major in  LITERARY STUDIES and CREATIVE ARTS
 

 

FirstBridge
8 FirstBridge courses change every year.


GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS
Up to 8 EN 110 College Writing, EN 220 Writing and Criticism
Up to 22 French through FR 235 and FrenchBridge
8 Historical and Cross-Cultural Understandings
8 Social Experience and Organization
Up to 8 Scientific and Mathematical Investigations
 

CORE
Required (13 credits)
CL 125 The World, the Text, and the Critic I
CL 150 The World, the Text, and the Critic II
CL 320 Production, Translation, Creation, Publication
CL 475 Portfolio
 

Electives for Literary Studies
Select four courses freely from the list of Electives for the Comparative Literature Major, building a personal focus with the help of your advisor.
(16 credits)
 

Students in courses marked with an asterisk may choose to read the texts in English translation or in the original non-English language.

 

Electives for Creative Arts

Select four courses freely from the following list, building a personal focus with the help of your advisor. (16 credits)

 

EN/CL 300 Creative Writing

FM/CL 228 The Art of Screenwriting

DR/EN 200 Theater Arts

DR/FR 277 Acting in French

CL/FS 275 Theatre in Paris

AR 110 Introduction to Drawing

AR 115 Introduction to Painting

AR 120 Materials and Techniques of the Masters

AR 160 Introduction to Photography and Documentary Expression

AR 212 Drawing II

AR 216 Painting II

AR 231 Introduction to Sculpture

CL 398 Internship

FM/CM 218 Writing Fiction for Television

FM 363 Making a Documentary

 

Plus GENERAL ELECTIVES to total 128 Credits

 

 
 

 

Urban Studies

Visual Culture

Gender Studies

Classical Civilization

Critical Theory

Film Studies

French Studies

Medieval Studies

Renaissance Studies

 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 

 

 

24-28 May, 2010

Crossing National Boundaries and Linguistic Borders:  (Re)Thinking and (Re)Situating the Writing Center and WAC Connection in Europe and Beyond

 

This conference will take place at AUP to celebrate the European Writing Centers Association's 12th birthday and the 7th international gathering of a community of scholars, professors, administrators, students, writing center tutors and professionals. 

 
 

25-27 February, 2010

Law and Literature

 

The International Symposium / Colloque International on Law and Literature - Theory & Practice / Droit et littérature - Théories & pratiques, will be held in Paris, Feb. 25-27, 2010 at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA). 

 
 

November 20-21, 2009

Hors Normes | International Conference in Law and Literature

 

Despite their apparent separation, the fields of law and literature have been closely linked throughout history and in recent years have become a fertile area of academic investigation. Very developed in the Anglo-Saxon world, but perhaps less known in France, the movement “Law and Literature” promotes a dialogue between legal scholars, philosophers and literary scholars. The confrontation of these two “fictions de monde” allows a re-examination of Law and Justice in their claims to universality. This interdisciplinary conference presents an exchange between specialists from different disciplines (law, literature, as well as philosophy, political science and film studies) around a common interrogation of Law and its limits.

 
 

Conference of the European Society of Jamesian Studies

 
 

 
 

 
 

Linda Martz's article "Frederick Pethick-Lawrence: l'homme parmi les suffragettes" was just published in Ces Hommes qui epousèrent la cause des femmes by Les Editions de l'Atelier, in a volume edited by Martine Monacelli and Michel Prum with introductions by Françoise Heritier and Geneviève Fraisse.

[AUP - Posted 4 Mar 2010]

 
 

Claudia Roda presented a poster “Modelling responses to the first few hours of exposure to new languages” at the CLIN 2010 conference (Computational Linguistics In The Netherlands) which took place in Utrecht on February 5. The poster was coauthored with Rebekah Rast and Georgi Stojanov. For more info please visit http://www.clin.nl/20/

[AUP - Posted 4 Mar 2010]

 
 

Alice Craven’s article "Science Through Brecht’s Lens: Counter-Intuitive Truths in the Reverse Angle" will be published in an edited volume entitled Science, Technology and the Humanities: A New Synthesis, in Spring 2010.

[AUP - Posted 2 Feb 2010]

 
 

Dan Gunn’s translation of Simon Leys’s essay “The Experience of Literary Translation”, first published in The Cahiers Series no.9, was reprinted in The Best Australian Essays 2009 (ed. Robyn Davidson). This volume also reprinted J.M.Coetzee’s review, “The Making of Samuel Beckett”, of The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume I (of which Dan Gunn is co-editor). The Beckett letters volume was chosen by The Economist in its “Books of the Year”, as it was by Barnes & Noble Review. Several critics chose the volume among their “Best Books of 2009”: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in The Telegraph; David Sexton in the London Evening Standard; Tom Stoppard in The Guardian; Gabriel Josipovici, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, and Stefan Collini in the TLS, the last of whom described the publication as “a triumph.”  (See link).

[AUP - Posted 2 Feb 2010]

 
 

Lissa Lincoln will be conducting a seminar series on "Law, Literature and History" with jurist Marcela Iacub (CNRS), at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS).  The seminar will take place on the first Monday of every month from 17:00-19:00 and is open to the public.

[AUP - Posted 2 Feb 2010]

 
 

Jula Wildberger has completed her article on "Fate" for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ancient History. (View here). Professor Wildberger has also been invited to become a Fellow of the Max-Weber-Kolleg at the University of Erfurt, to present her work during a short visit and become part of the research group Religious Individualization in an Historical Perspective.

[AUP - Posted 2 Feb 2010]

 
 
 
 

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