Instructor: N. Dames

The European novel in the era of its cultural dominance.  Key concerns: the modern metropolis (London, Paris, St. Petersburg); the figures of bourgeois narrative (the parvenu, the adulterer, the adolescent, the consumer) and bourgeois consciousness (nostalgia, ressentiment, sentimentalism, ennui); subjectivity and its relation to class tactics, labor, money, and social upheaval; the impact of journalism, science, economics.  Works by Goethe, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Turgenev, Zola.

Instructor: K. Karpozilos

In 1972 the British rock band Tyrannosaurus Rex sang “no, you won’t fool the children of the revolution” implying the commitment of the 1968ers to the revolutionary cause; in 1987 David Horowitz, one of the most prominent figures of 1960s radicalism, publicized his regret for belonging to the “destructive generation”. What happens to revolutionary movements when the “great steam engine of history” seems not to be heading to the desired destination? Main goal of this course is to explore the transformation of revolutionary generations and the connection between disillusioned radicals and the shaping of political and intellectual trends of the 20th century.

Instructor: P. Connor

A deep immersion in the theory and practice of translation with a focus on translating into English. The first half of the course is devoted to discussing readings in the history of translation theory while translating brief practical exercises; in the second half, translation projects are submitted to the class for critical discussion. The foreign texts for these projects, chosen in consultation with the instructor, will be humanistic, not only literature as conventionally defined (prose fiction and poetry, memoir and travel writing), but also the gamut of text types in the human sciences, including philosophy, history, and ethnography. The aim is not just to translate, but to think deeply about translating, to develop writing practices by drawing on the resources of theory, past and present, and by examining translations written by professionals.

Enrollment in this workshop is limited to 12 students. Admission into the class is by permission of the instructor. CPLT BC 3011 “Introduction to Translation Studies” is a recommended prerequisite, plus, normally, two advanced courses beyond the language requirement in the language from which you intend to translate. Preference will be given to seniors and to comparative literature majors.  Please submit an application to pconnor@barnard.edu by 30 November 2012 with the following information: your name, year of graduation, and major; a list of courses you have taken in the language from which you intend to translate; any other pertinent courses you have taken; any further relevant information relating to your language ability; a brief (max 300 word) explanation of why you wish to take this workshop. You will be notified of admission by 18 December.

Instructor: R. Ufberg

This course will consider the literature and film of Russia, Poland, the USA and England during 1955-1965, focusing specifically on the phenomenon of literary movements of angry young writers rebelling against a stagnant tradition. We will also read various autobiographical accounts from writers who explain, from their insider’s view, how the various movements started, how they influenced each other, and why and how they came to an end. The primary goal of this course is to acquaint students with literature they most likely have never encountered, and with films they may never have seen before, but which are essential components in the development of prose and cinema not only in the four countries of our studies, but across borders, oceans, and even decades.

Instructor: M. Al-Musawi

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. (Seminar). Chang Octagon Exhibition Room, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 6th floor of Butler Library. This seminar will focus on theorizing the particular contours of radical knowledge production among African diasporic intellectuals in the twentieth century. We will read key works of African, Caribbean, and African American cultural and political movements, with particular attention to the relations between politics and poesis, and the ways that the exigencies of anticolonialism, civil rights, and Pan-Africanism have provoked methodological innovation in interdisciplinary work. We will focus especially on the implications of black radicalism for theories of the archive; to this end, we will not only read current scholarship on the issue, but also take advantage of recent acquisitions of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, including the papers of C.L.R. James, Hubert Harrison, Alexander Gumby, and Amiri Baraka. Participants will be expected to pursue original archival research in their work for the seminar. This is to say that the seminar will offer both an introduction to the methods and standards of archival practice (with an eye to the particular issues raised by African diasporic history), and a practicum in archival research using the holdings of RBML. Readings may include work by W.E.B. Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, C.L.R. James, Amiri Baraka, Ronald Hobbs, Grace Lee Boggs, Howard “Stretch” Johnson, and Alexander Gumby; and secondary scholarship by David Scott, Robert Hill, Arjun Appadurai, Stuart Hall, Michel Rolph-Trouillot, Cedric Robinson, Achille Mbembe, Carolyn Steedman, Saidiya Hartman, and Ann Stoler. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Edwards (bhe2@columbia.edu) by noon on Friday, November 9th, with the subject heading, “Black Radicalism & Archive seminar.” 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.

A GLOBAL CORE course.

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,” 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, the Ottoman Empire and Barbary States.

Bombay/Mumbai’s built form reflects the social and spatial uneven-ness of (colonial) capital, while its distinctive urbanity is the product of the everyday lives and aspirations of those who inhabit it.

When was Bombay?

Bombay’s transformation from an early-modern port city to British India’s commercial and manufacturing hub (and now, megacity) is linked with global economic forces: the city experienced meteoric rise in the aftermath of the American Civil War due to a booming cotton economy. New technologies for rationalizing production and accelerating the circulation of Bombay cotton soon followed. Meanwhile, the plague of 1897 provided planners and government officials with an alibi for mass demolitions, and enabled them to undertake extensive experiments in urban governance and industrial housing. Bombay’s famed cosmopolitanism is thus a vestige of social practices and cultural experiences produced by the contradictory forces of colonial capital: spatial regulation, together with social emancipation.

How do we approach Bombay/Mumbai in this seminar?

Scholarship on Bombay either focuses on the colonial city, or on Mumbai’s status as an icon of postcolonial urbanity. While the former seeks to disaggregate local practice and community formation from the authoritarianism of colonial policy, the latter focuses on a post-1993 Bombay scarred by vicious anti-Muslim violence, and neoliberal strategies of re-territorialization. Instead, this seminar asks how we might bring questions of built form, capital flows, and social life and inhabitation to bear on a history of the city across the colonial/postcolonial divide. By so doing, we will attempt to think about Bombay comparatively together with cities of the global South, while asking, simultaneously, about how Bombay’s distinctive urbanity might force us to alter our approaches to the city; approaches that are largely drawn from modular Euro-American paradigms for understanding urbanization as coeval with modernity, as well as industrialization. We do so in this seminar by focusing on people and practices—subaltern urbanity (and on those whose labor produced the modern city), as well as spatial orders—the informal or unintended city—to ask the question, “what makes and unmakes a city?”

Seeing the City

In order to answer some of these questions, this course includes a spatial mapping component. You will learn to use teachniques of visibilizing the city, and get comfortable with basic (digital) mapping tools and techniques. In order to do so, you will work in small groups of three to four students starting Week 3. You will work through basic tutorials that will enable you to complete a set of spatial mapping exercises in a collaborative context, and then complete a final project for the course in consultation with the instructor.

Instructor: I. Sanders

Focus will be on the often deceptive modernity of modern Central and East European theater and its reflection of the forces that shaped modern European society. It will be argued that the abstract, experimental drama of the twentieth-century avant-garde tradition seems less vital at the century’s end than the mixed forms of Central and East European dramatists.