SYLLABI
Click the pdf icons to download syllabi designed by me. Some of these are partially based on reading lists from previous years.
Below you will find class descriptions of my own courses and pre-designed courses where I have been the instructor.
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
CMLIT 10: Introduction to World Literature
What is world literature, and what do we gain by studying it? Will reading such literature make us better global citizens and more compassionate people, as some have argued? How do we grapple with what one scholar has called the “unimaginable largeness” of a corpus spanning cultures, languages, eras, and geographic regions? Finally, and not least importantly, what are the stakes of these questions in the hyper-connected—and yet often seemingly discordant—world we inhabit today? Over the coming weeks, we will use these inquiries to frame our discussions, as we read and analyze some of the masterpieces of the global literary canon. Along the way, as we travel from imperial China to the pre-Columbian highlands of Latin America, from the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent to a battlefield in northern India, we will examine how works of non-Western literature unsettle “familiar” definitions of genre, plot, and character; identify stylistic, thematic, and narrative similarities, as well as points of divergence, among the texts we encounter; and reflect thoughtfully on our own positions as readers, critics, and human beings in a heterogeneous and complex world literary space. Assignments will include short critical essays, daily reading quizzes, and two exams.
Class size: 100 students
CMLIT 153: International Film and Literature
This course offers an analysis of international film and literature and will provide you with conceptual frameworks and vocabulary for understanding and explaining how and why films and literature function or in some cases do not function within given frameworks. This course strives to help you experience culture critically by analyzing how movies and literary works create meaning(s). The works we will see and read represent a variety of genres and styles. Many of them will be very different from what we are used to seeing and reading. We will challenge the criteria by which you judge culture. To do this you must see beyond these works as mere entertainment by grasping how formal systems create style, effects, and meaning. Furthermore, this course will explore the connections between film, literature, and society.
​​​Class size: 15 students
CMLIT 191 Introduction to Video Game Cultures
This course is grounded on the premise that video games are a form of literature. I have planned it so that it serves as a space to observe, discuss, and further the ways in which video games evolve. Participating and succeeding in this course requires that students’ interaction with games goes beyond the surfaces of entertainment or escapism, and progresses towards critique, criticism, and craft (i.e., observing/reporting, analyzing/theorizing, and creating games. Towards the end of the course, students should be able to denaturalize games, gaming, and gaming cultures by considering their regional, material, linguistic, literary, historical, and political contexts.
Class size: 45 students
CMLIT 415 Girls’ Comics Cultures
This course is a survey of comics made for and by women in regions where comics industries have flourished and maintained sufficient commercial activity to make room for girls’ comics cultures. We will look at the commercial conditions that fostered these cultures, and at the sociopolitical factors that promoted them, regulated them, and sometimes dismantled them. Girls’ comics cultures here means comics created by women, for women readerships, and that share aesthetic, thematic, and communal correspondences as cultural phenomena of their respective time period and region. To begin, this course will situate girls’ comics cultures within the field of comics studies. Next, the course will concentrate on primary texts from a variety of regions and time periods. Secondary texts include elementary comics theory, psychoanalysis and gender theory, queer readings of mainstream comics, commentary on the field of comics studies, and affective labor theory.
ENGL 136 The Graphic Novel
This course will begin by looking at graphic narratives of different lengths in order to examine the formal characteristics of sequential art. Then, we will read important works that have come to be signaled as part of the “canon” of the Graphic Novel, and discuss the importance or necessity of establishing a canon at all. We will end the course by looking at current trends that have diversified the landscape of graphic narratives in the twenty first century. This way, the course will provide you with a formal/technical language to talk about graphic narratives, and will prepare you to discuss these texts critically. Please notice that the great majority of the texts in this class have been originally published in the English language, and are representative of the North American tradition of comics. Other regions of the world have graphic narrative traditions that precede or enrich what we will be studying (i.e., bandes desinées, manga, etc). If you are interested in them, you may approach me during the semester and I can direct you towards resources or other courses that will help you study them.
Class size: 25 students
CMLIT 100 – Reading Across Cultures.
This is a discussion-based, analysis-oriented class, where you will engage with materials from a variety of regions in the world. These materials are grouped under the larger concept of “crossing cultures”, and under smaller themes such as border crossing, identity crossings, cultural crossings, and even virtual crossings. These literary and visual texts will require that we locate ourselves, that we try to imagine the lives of peoples in other places, and that we try to build some common ground with them. The selection of texts and artifacts we will examine in this class range from nonfiction (accounts of real events in real places) to fiction (fictional stories in real places), to speculative fiction (fictional events in fictional places). Immersing oneself in these contexts means fine-tuning one’s cultural sensitivity, acknowledging one’s prejudices and expectations, and resolving any critical conflicts respectfully. I sincerely look forward to going through that process with you.
Class size: 45 students