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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
AND TRANSLATION STUDIES
320 Milbank Hall 212-854- Department Assistant: Sondra Phifer
Mission
Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Barnard College is the study of literary and closely related cultural manifestations across linguistic and cultural boundaries. As a program that builds on the strengths and dedication of faculty teaching in various departments across the campus, Comparative Literature is distinct in its conviction that literary and cultural manifestations are best studied in an international context. The program gives students and faculty a unique opportunity to study literature in world contexts and establish intellectually stimulating relations among languages, cultures, and literary traditions, in order to understand the methodical comparison of texts as a fruitful dialogue. Due to our close affiliation with Columbia University, undergraduate students in Comparative Literature can acquire proficiency in a great variety of foreign languages, including some which are presently not taught at Barnard College. The program enables the student to pursue the study of at least two literatures in two different languages and to explore the possibilities and methods of literary study comparatively across national boundaries. In consultation with her adviser, the student will shape a program that will give her a foundation in her two central literatures (at least one of them in a non-English language) and in one major period, genre, theme, or theoretical issue. The program is supervised by the Committee on Comparative Literature. Program Director: Peter T. Connor (French) Professors: Peter T. Connor (French), Nancy Worman (Classics) Associate Professor: Erk Grimm (German), Emily Sun (Comparative Literature) Senior Lecturer: Brian O’Keeffe (French)
Requirements for the Major in
Comparative Literature
For students who declared in Spring 2017 (and after)
To enter the program, a student must normally have completed the required sequence necessary for entry into the advance literature courses of her major program. This varies from language to language; students should consult the director. Each student, after consultation with the director, chooses an adviser from one of her two fields of concentration in a language. This adviser guides her in developing a sequence of courses appropriate for her goals in the major. All students are required to take the following Twelve (12) courses :
- CPLT BC3001 Introduction to Comparative Literature
- One (1) course in CPLT BC3143 Topics in Comparative Literature
- Six (6) Courses = Three (3) courses in each of TWO distinct literary traditions studied in the original language - Three (3) elective courses in literature, of which: - One (1) pre-modern - One (1) literary theory - One (1) open choice - CPLT BC3997 Senior Seminar Students who wish to major in Comparative Literature, but who for valid reasons wish to pursue a program at variance with the above model, should consult the director. Important note about studying abroad If you plan on spending part or all of junior year abroad, plan to take the CPLT BC3001 Introduction to Comparative Literature during the second semester of your sophomore year. This means contacting the director of Comparative Literature program during the first semester of your sophomore year. Indicate that you plan to be abroad one or both semesters during junior year and discuss when to take core courses. If you plan to be away for the entire junior year, discuss with the program director which other courses can count toward the major when studying abroad. You should also plan to identify advisors before your departure so that you can contact them via e-mail and meet with them at the beginning of your senior year. If you have further questions regarding the thesis process and its parts, please contact the Program Director (pconnor@barnard.edu).
Requirements for the Minor in Translation
Studies
The Minor in Translation Studies allows students to explore the history and theory of translation practices, to consider the importance of translation in today’s world, and to complete a substantial translation or translation-related project. The Minor in Translation Studies will not qualify students to work professionally as translators or interpreters upon graduation. The courses on a transcript that count toward the Minor will demonstrate that the student has acquired basic familiarity with the history and principle theories of translation and interpreting, together with sufficient linguistic preparedness to conduct basic practical work in translation or interpreting. It will serve as a useful qualification for those wishing to enter one of the growing number of post-graduate programs that provide further training in translation and interpreting, both areas of significant employment growth. It will serve equally those wishing to pursue research in the area of translation and interpreting, a burgeoning area of academic specialization. For students generally, whatever their career goals, the Minor can be profitably combined with their major (Anthropology, French, Political Science, German, History, etc.), enhancing the value of their degree and making them more competitive in today’s global job market. The Minor in Translation Studies is supervised by the Director of the Center for Translation Studies along with the Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature. Students wishing to minor in Translation Studies should meet with Professor Peter Connor to discuss the choice of their elective courses.
Six (6) courses are required for the minor:
1. CPLT BC3110 Introduction to Translation Studies 2. Two or three elective courses dealing with the history and/or theory of translation, or with language from an anthropological, philosophical, psychological, social or cultural perspective. Example courses: - AFRS BC3563 Translating Hispaniola - ANTH UN1009 Introduction to Language and Culture - CPLS BC3170 Translating Madness: The Sciences and Fictions of Pathology - CPLT BC3200 The Visual and Verbal Arts - FREN BC3079 HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE - FREN BC3063 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism - PHIL UN3685 Philosophy of Language - PSYC BC3164 Perception and Language - THTR UN3154 Theatre Traditions in a Global Context - THTR UN3167 Dramaturgy 3. One or two language-based courses at the advanced level offering practice in written or oral translation. - For example, a student working with French: - FREN BC3007 Commercial-Economic French - FREN BC3014 Advanced Translation - FREN BC3054 Translation Through FIlm - For example, a student working with Spanish: - SPAN BC3376 Rethinking Spanish Translation - SPAN UN3265 LATIN AMER LIT (IN TRANSLATN) 4. CPLS BC3510 Advanced Workshop in Translation Note: the particular courses qualifying for the minor will vary according to the language chosen by the candidate. With permission of the director of the minor, a student may request credit for an Independent Study involving substantial translation or interpreting work.
CPLT BC3000 GLOBAL LONG-FORM PHOTOGRAPHY: HISTORY AND
MEMORY. 4.00 points****. In this course, we ask - how photography, arguably the artistic medium most tied to the present - can be used to explore the past. How have photographers from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas explored inherited personal and familial legacies? Moving beyond the personal, how have practitioners used the photo essay to explore collective memory? How have they reinterpreted national narratives about dictatorship, war, state-sponsored violence, and environmental destruction? We will be looking at photography as an epistemology. That is – asking how are life's big questions addressed through the medium? Students will view book-length photographic essays produced by some of the world's most respected photographers. Critically, many of those will be outside the North American photographic canon. Photographers include, An My Le, Fazal Sheik, Paula Luttringer, Yael Martinez, Joshua Lutz, Rena Effendi, Rebecca Norris Webb, Kikuji Kawada, Chloe Dewey Mathews, Sophie Ristelhueber, Marcos Adandia, Myako Isiuchi, and others. Critical readings in photography and memory will augment viewings of their works. Over the course of the term, students will develop and deliver their own in-depth photographic essay on a subject of their choice that the instructor has approved. Each student will have two peer critiques of their project. We will explore subject matter, editing, and how testimony and archive are used to give a more contextual reading to long-form photography. This is a demanding seminar/studio class. Students are expected to be making photographic work throughout the semester. Response papers are due weekly, and students must participate in discussions and critiques of each other's works. Over the course of the term, students will develop and deliver an in-depth photographic essay on a subject of their choice that has been approved by the instructor. We will explore subject matter, editing and ways in which testimony and archive can be used to give a more contextual reading to long form photography. We will study photography as an epistemology in and of itself – that is we will look at long-form photography by the study and critique of photographic essays and photographic monographs. Critically we will be looking beyond the North American photographic canon to view the works of global image-makers. Some of the photographers whose in-depth work we will be exploring are: An My Le; Lu Guang; Paula Luttringer; Ori Gherst; Rula Halawani; Luis Gonzalez Palma; Jo Ractcliffe; Shoemi Tomatsu; Fazal Sheik; Sophie Ristelheber; Walid Radd; Kikuje Kawada; Joshua Lutz; Rena Effendi and many others. Viewings of their works will be augmented by weekly critical readings in photography and memory. Students will discuss the photographic essays viewed in class and critical readings in weekly seminars as well as participate in weekly critiques of each other’s works CPLT BC3001 Introduction to Comparative Literature. 3 points****. Introduction to the study of literature from a comparative and cross- disciplinary perspective. Readings will be selected to promote reflection on such topics as the relation of literature to the other arts; nationalism and literature; international literary movements; post-colonial literature; gender and literature; and issues of authorship, influence, originality, and intertextuality. Fall 2021: CPLT BC Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment CPLT 3001 001/00095 T Th 10:10am - 11:25am 302 Milbank Hall Emily Sun 3 26/
CPLT BC3510 Advanced Workshop in Translation. 4 points****. Prerequisites: CPLT BC 3110 - Introduction to Translation Studies is a recommended prerequisite. 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. The workshop will be offered in two sections by Professor Peter Connor and Professor Emily Sun. The sections will share most of the common readings in the history of translation theory, but Professor Sun's section will emphasize issues specific to translating East Asia. Enrollment in each workshop is limited to 12 students. CPLT BC3110 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. Spring 2021: CPLT BC Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment CPLT 3510 001/00325 T 10:10am - 12:00pm 318 Milbank Hall Emily Sun 4 4/ CPLT BC3552 The Arabic Novel. 4.00 points****. The novel in Arabic literature has often been the place where every attempt to look within ends up involving the need to contend with or measure the self against the European, the dominant culture. This took various forms. From early moments of easy-going and confident cosmopolitan travellers, such as Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, to later author, such as Tayeb Salih, mapping the existential fault lines between west and east. For this reason, and as well as being a modern phenomenon, the Arabic novel has also been a tool for translation, for bridging gaps and exposing what al-Shidyaq—the man credited with being the father of the modern Arabic novel, and himself a great translator—called ‘disjunction’. We will begin with his satirical, deeply inventive and erudite novel, published in 1855, Leg Over Leg. It is a book with an insatiable appetite for definitions and comparisons, with Words that had been lost or fell out of use (the author had an abiding interest in dictionaries that anticipates Jorge Louis Borges) and with locating and often subverting moments of connection and disconnection. We will then follow along a trajectory to the present, where we will read, in English translation, novels written in Arabic, from Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Palestine. We will read them chronologically, starting with Leg Over Leg (1855) and finishing with Minor Detail, a novel that was only published last year. Obviously, this does not claim to be a comprehensive survey; for that we would need several years and even then, we would fall short. Instead, the hope is that it will be a thrilling journey through some of the most facinating fiction ever written. Obviously, this does not claim to be a comprehensive survey; for that we would need several years and even then, we would fall short. Instead, the hope is that it will be a thrilling journey through some of the most fascinating fiction ever written CPLT BC3997 Senior Seminar. 4 points****. Designed for students writing a senior thesis and doing advanced research on two central literary fields in the student's major. The course of study and reading material will be determined by the instructor(s) in consultation with students(s). Spring 2021: CPLT BC Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment CPLT 3997 001/00324 W 10:10am - 12:00pm 113 Milstein Center Emily Sun 4 10 Courses Not Offered: Fall 2021 or Spring 2022 CPLT BC3120 Poetics of the Mouth. 3 points****. Not offered during 2021-22 academic year. Explores the imagery of eating, drinking, spitting, choking, sucking (and other unmentionables) in relation to insults and excessive behaviors. Readings from Greek poetry (e.g., Homer, Aristophanes) to modern theory (e.g., Kristeva, Powers of Horror , Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World ), including modern novels and films. CPLT BC3124 Utopian Literature. 3 points****. Oscar Wilde wrote that “a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.” This course reads the concept from Christopher Columbus and Thomas More to the advent of modern socialism. Readings by Campanella, Cavendish, Engels, Bellamy, Gilman, and Portal. CPLT BC3140 Europe Imagined: Images of the New Europe in 20th- Century Literature. 3 points****. Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Compares the diverse images of Europe in 20th-century literature, with an emphasis on the forces of integration and division that shape cultural identity in the areas of travel writings and transculturation/ cosmopolitanism; mnemonic narratives and constructions of the past; borderland stories and the cultural politics of translation. Readings include M. Kundera, S. Rushdie, H. Boell, C. Toibin and others. CPLT BC3142 The Spanish Civil War in Literature and the Visual Arts. 3 points****. Not offered during 2021-22 academic year. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which culminated with the beginning of Francisco Franco's long dictatorship, foreshadowed the WWII European conflict. It generated unprecedented foreign involvement, as well texts and images by artists from both within and outside Spain - from film (documentary and fictional), through painting (Picasso), to narrative and nonfiction.
CPLT BC3145 DERRIDA & LITERATURE. 3 points****. Jacques Derrida was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and his impact on literary studies was enormously significant. The objective of this course is to take stock of Derrida’s contribution to literature, and to do so by assessing the intricate relations he establishes between literature, philosophy, economic and political theory, gender studies, translation studies, postcolonial theory, and theology. The course is divided into six parts. Part 1 introduces Derrida’s approach to ‘deconstruction,’ particularly as regards his engagement with the fundamental concepts of Western thought and the importance he confers upon the notion of ‘writing’ itself. Part 2 examines Derrida’s autobiographical texts wherein he positions himself as a subject for deconstruction, interrogating his own gender, his sense of being an organic, creaturely life-form, the relationship he has to his own language, and the matter of his identity as French, but also as Algerian, and Jewish. While the majority of the Derrida texts we will be reading are excerpts from larger works or short essays and interviews, in this section we will read a full-length text – Monolingualism of the Other – so that we can trace Derrida’s train of thought from beginning to end. In Part 3 we will use an interview conducted by Derek Attridge, “This Strange Institution Called Literature,” as a template for thinking about Derrida’s relation to literature, and in Part 4 we will read our second full-length text by Derrida, namely Given Time 1: Counterfeit Money , an in-depth analysis of a prose poem by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Part 5 considers an aspect of Derrida’s work that reveals the extent of his embrace of provisional, in-between positions for thought in general, and for literary texts in particular, namely translation. For deconstruction is keenly invested in words beginning with ‘trans’: transposition, transplant, trans-valuation, and indeed trans-gender. Translation provides Derrida with a scenario whereby crossings and transits can be imagined – for literary texts, and for identities that wish to remain un-determined by fixed poles or normative values. The course finishes with an assessment of Derrida’s reflections on death, mourning, and the matter of leaving a legacy. In Part 6, we therefore read more of the essay “Living On,” and also Derrida’s final interview, “Learning to Live, Finally.” Not even Derrida could deconstruct away the finality of death, but he did hope to live on. My corresponding hope is that you will feel sufficiently attuned to Derrida’s thought that you consider it important to continue his legacy – to be one of the agents of his living on, survival or survie , a translator and transporter of his thought towards contexts that he could not have foreseen, but which he would doubtless have welcomed as a precious chance for his own work to be considered differently. Taking intellectual risks, thinking otherwise, and inventing new ways of knowing are, after all, the hallmarks of Derridean deconstruction. CPLT BC3161 Myths of Oedipus in Western Drama and Philosophy. 3 points****. Not offered during 2021-22 academic year. This course examines the myth of Oedipus in a range of dramatic and theoretical writings, exploring how the paradigm of incest and parricide has shaped Western thought from classical tragedy to gender studies. Authors studied: Sophocles, Seneca, Corneille, Dryden, Voltaire, Hölderlin, Hegel, Wagner, Nietzsche, Freud, Klein, Deleuze, Guattari, and Butler. CPLT BC3170 Translating Madness: The Sciences and Fictions of Pathology. 3 points****. Not offered during 2021-22 academic year. Examines the discursive exchanges between fictional and scientific accounts of "madness," with an emphasis on how modern literature renders the new diagnostic discourse and how literary portrayals of "madness" were "translated back" into the diagnostic language of psychology. Discussions revolve around the "medical gaze" and its influence on the writers' literary style, motifs and technique; relevant questions concern interdisciplinary issues such as the relationship between genre and case study; hysteria and sexuality; gender construction and psychoanalysis. Readings include texts by Flaubert, Wilde, Daudet, Sacher-Masoch; excerpts from Freud, Charcot, Foucault, Deleuze; and visual documents. CPLT BC3190 Aesthetics of the Grotesque. 3 points****. This course examines the aesthetic phenomenon of the grotesque in its development from the late Renaissance to Postmodernism by comparing major texts in a systematic fashion. The emphasis of our discussions is on the awkwardness and strangeness of a certain kind of prose or drama; we will therefore examine the typical modes of transgression and the forms of excess in literary representations of the body in various between the 15th^ century and the present. The transgression may involve the human body, but writers are also interested in the beauty or ugliness of “the beast.” While we will discuss questions of style and linguistic performance, our main concern is the human imagination: how do characters, narrators and writers relate to the strangeness of the body and the world? How is the literary text shaped by distinct aesthetic patterns? What kind of taboo subjects or problematic and ambiguous aspects of power dynamics in modern societies can be addressed by presenting humans and animals as grotesque figures? Our critical discussions of outstanding examples of are based on readings of major scholarly contributions to the field, in particular the studies of internationally recognized intellectuals such as M.Bakhtin, T.Todorov, J.Kristeva, and W.Kayser. You will be introduced to various historical types of the grotesque, ranging from the ornate and bombastic representations in Renaissance literature to the fantastic deformations and hybrid creatures in contemporary literature. The reading material is representative of different cultures, languages and literatures so that we can conceptualize the grotesque from a critical and comparative perspective. Ultimately, the grotesque is seen as a complicated product of social, political, and cultural conditions rather than merely a formal element of a literary discourse. The representation of “grotesque” settings as well as the formation of “grotesque” identities will be examined by considering aspects such as gender, class, race and ethnicity.
