Spring 2024 Courses
COLT 102 Intro Comparative Literature
- Spring 2024
- Leah Middlebrook
- Introduction to the comparative study of literature. Emphasis on significant works of world literature in their social and political contexts.
COLT 211 Comparative World Literature
- Spring 2024
- Yewulsew Endalew
- Explores literature from a global standpoint. Examines movement of literary forms (e.g., genres, motifs, rhetorical modes) from one culture, region, historical epoch to the next.
COLT 211 Comparative World Literature
- Spring 2024
- Jason Lester
- Explores literature from a global standpoint. Examines movement of literary forms (e.g., genres, motifs, rhetorical modes) from one culture, region, historical epoch to the next.
COLT 212 Comparative World Cinema
- Spring 2024
- Pearl Lee
- Introduces the principles of comparative analysis, exploring the aesthetic, ideological, and socio-economic exchanges between national cinematic traditions. Themes vary by instructor. Recent themes include Melodrama, Zombies, Queer Cinema.
- Spring 2024
- Monique R. Balbuena
- Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of literature and film. Draws on perspectives from cinema studies, media aesthetics, and related fields.
COLT 360 Gender & Identity in Literature
- Spring 2024
- Yei Won Lim
- Introduction to the study of gender in literature, from Asia to Europe to the Americas, and from the classics to the late 20th century.
COLT 360 Gender & Identity in Literature
- Spring 2024
- Laurel Sturgis O’Coyne
- Introduction to the study of gender in literature, from Asia to Europe to the Americas, and from the classics to the late 20th century.
COLT 360 Gender & Identity in Literature
- Spring 2024
- Devina Sindhu
- Introduction to the study of gender in literature, from Asia to Europe to the Americas, and from the classics to the late 20th century.
- Spring 2024
- Nick Wirtz
- Examines genre of narrative from a comparative and global standpoint, reviewing the impact of comics and other visual media on questions of national, regional, and ethnic identity. Offered alternate years.
COLT 380 Topic, Guillermo del Toro
- Spring 2024
- Steven Brown
- The phenomenal success of The Shape of Water (2017), which received four Academy Awards (including Best Director, Best Picture, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design), propelled horror maestro Guillermo del Toro into the spotlight with his unorthodox cinematic love letter to monsters of all stripes (transgressive monsters, sympathetic monsters, victimized monsters). The director of such films as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, The Devil’s Backbone, and Cronos, del Toro has asserted that horror is inherently political: “Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror,” claims del Toro, “One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale. Don’t wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment.” Del Toro’s horror-inflected fairy tales situate monsters as “living, breathing metaphors” for larger social issues. This seminar looks at del Toro’s entire body of work and the unique contributions he has made to world horror cinema and “cínema fantastique.” Special attention will be given to the formal aspects of his filmmaking, its genre hybridity, and its intermedial connections with other works of art and literature.
Works discussed include: Crimson Peak (2015), Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone
(2001), Hellboy (2004), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Mimic (1997), Pacific Rim
(2013), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017), and The Strain (2014-2017).
COLT 380 Topic, Doppelgänger Film
- Spring 2024
- Steven Brown
- Film is in its essence a world of doubles.”–Nicholas Royle
As media theorist Friedrich Kittler and others have noted, cinema from its very inception has been haunted by doubles through the celluloid and digital “ghosts” of the actors’ bodies. Considered both in terms of its intermediality with literary evocations of the uncanny and with respect to the ghostly effects of the cinematic apparatus itself, this seminar will examine the figure of the doppelgänger and its variations (twins, clones, split personalities) in films such as Bilocation (2013), Black Swan (2010), The Dark Half (1993), Dead Ringers (1988), Doppelgänger (2003), The Double (2013), Enemy (2013), The Prestige (2006), and Us (2019).
- Spring 2024
- Leah Middlebrook
- A critical reflection on contemporary US power imbalances and systems of race, ethnic, gender and religious privilege, as viewed through the lens of poetry. Students analyze U.S. poetry in comparative contexts (Europe, Asia, Africa). Depending on instructor, comparison may be across historical periods.
COLT 618 Histories/Theories/Cultures of New Media
- Spring 2024
- Kate Kelp-Stebbins
- Our class considers different traditions in media theory spanning generations, regions, languages, and methodological approaches to a range of media.