Courses

Students are required to take ten graduate level courses (600-level) for grades in their first two years of study. Of the ten graded courses, five must be courses offered by the core faculty in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, including a mandatory pro-seminar on comparative methods and theory for all incoming students in the fall semester of their first year.

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Independent Study Field Exam
AS.300.802 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 2/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Closed
  • Seats Available: 3/3
  • PosTag(s): n/a

The Critical Unconscious
AS.211.777 (01)

Criticism in the 21st century has tended to relegate psychoanalysis to a dustbin of fads that proliferated at the end of the prior century but that today are of interest only to balkanized cliques of devotees. Bucking this trend, this seminar will examine the intellectual history and abiding influence of psychoanalysis’s key critical concept: the unconscious. Basing our discussions on in-depth readings from key thinkers in the analytic tradition such as Freud, Lacan, and Klein, as well as the post-analytic philosophical tradition, including Zizek, Butler, Laclau and Mouffe, Deleuze and Guattari, and Jameson, we will work to distill an understanding of the unconscious as essential to the practice of criticism tout court, and as inhering even in those discourses that have sought most stridently to distance themselves from it. Seminar discussions will take place in English; readings will be available in the original as well as in translation.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/20
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL

Independent Study Field Exam
AS.300.802 (04)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 4/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Painting and Subjectivity
AS.010.632 (01)

Readings from a range of theoretically and philosophically interesting texts on painting and the visual arts. Among our authors: Cavell, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, Nancy, Lyotard.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/10
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

Happy and Unhappy Words: Austin, Wittgenstein, and Cavell
AS.300.638 (01)

This seminar studies how words help shaping the world we inhabit and how the power and limits of language affect the possibility of living in a shared world in the works of Austin, Wittgenstein, Cavell and others.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 13/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

How to Read Proust?
AS.300.601 (01)

Given the difficulty of his prose, closely and patiently would seem the best way to read Proust, but who has time – time to read a book that, ironically, begins with “Longtemps” and ends with “le temps”? This course will offer for critical examination surgically selected passages of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as a training ground for the (lost?) art of close reading and as entry points into wide-ranging aspects of literary criticism and theory. Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor. Taught in English. Knowledge of French is desirable, but not required.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 17/20
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Ricardo Piglia, Borges, Derrida and Argentina's Eighteenth Century
AS.215.613 (01)

A voice in Piglia’s Artificial Respiration claims that Argentina did not have an eighteenth century or the Eighteenth Century. Besides Piglia’s palimpsest novel, we’ll study a handful of texts by Borges. Passages from Leopoldo Marechal’s Adan Buenosayres, and Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign Volume Two, in reference to Heidegger’s The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Taught in English.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 12/15
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL

Theory and Praxis of Modern Tragedy
AS.300.619 (01)

This course will examine the philosophy and drama of modern tragedy through the close reading and comparison of a number of key works. We will study plays by Shakespeare (Hamlet and King Lear), de la Barca (Life is a Dream), Racine (Phèdre), Hölderlin (Death of Empedocles), and Ibsen (Master Builder and Hedda Gabler) in conjunction with philosophical writings by Pascal, Leopardi, Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Heidegger and Cavell. Course is open to open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Canceled
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Literature and Truth: Forgery and Fakes
AS.211.606 (01)

Forgery is an eternal problem. It is a literary tradition in its own right, with connections to politics, Classics, religion, philosophy, and literary theory. Spurious writings impinge on social and political realities to a degree rarely confronted by criticism. This course offers a reading of the sort traditionally reserved for canonical works of poetry and prose fiction, spotlighting forgery’s imaginative vitality and its sinister impact on scholarship. Students will study manuscripts and incunabula drawn from JHU’s Bibliotheca Fictiva, the world’s premier collection of literary forgeries.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/12
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL

Literary Pedagogics
AS.300.806 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation Research
AS.300.804 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Approval Required
  • Seats Available: 6/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.300.802 (01)Independent Study Field ExamMarrati, Paola 
AS.300.800 (01)Independent StudyOng, Yi-Ping 
AS.211.777 (01)The Critical UnconsciousTh 1:00PM - 3:00PMEgginton, WilliamGilman 479GRLL-ENGL
AS.300.802 (04)Independent Study Field ExamOng, Yi-Ping 
AS.010.632 (01)Painting and SubjectivityW 4:00PM - 6:00PMWarnock, MollyGilman 177HART-MODERN
AS.300.638 (01)Happy and Unhappy Words: Austin, Wittgenstein, and CavellM 4:00PM - 6:30PMMarrati, PaolaGilman 208
AS.300.601 (01)How to Read Proust?W 4:30PM - 6:30PMEnder, EvelyneGilman 208
AS.215.613 (01)Ricardo Piglia, Borges, Derrida and Argentina's Eighteenth CenturyT 1:00PM - 3:00PMGonzalez, EduardoGilman 479GRLL-ENGL
AS.300.619 (01)Theory and Praxis of Modern TragedyTh 1:30PM - 4:00PMLisi, LeonardoGilman 208
AS.211.606 (01)Literature and Truth: Forgery and FakesW 3:00PM - 5:30PMHavens, Earle Ashcroft, II., Stephens, Walter EBLC MackseyGRLL-ENGL, GRLL-ITAL
AS.300.806 (01)Literary PedagogicsStaff 
AS.300.804 (01)Dissertation ResearchLisi, Leonardo 

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/1
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (02)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 1/1
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Research Practicum
AS.300.890 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00 - 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.300.800 (01)Independent Studyde Vries, Hent 
AS.300.800 (02)Independent StudyLisi, Leonardo 
AS.300.890 (01)Research PracticumFried, Michael 

Column one has the course number and section. Other columns show the course title, days offered, instructor's name, room number, if the course is cross-referenced with another program, and a option to view additional course information in a pop-up window.

Russian Avant-Garde Cinema
AS.300.666 (01)

Russian cinema was born out of the intense artistic experimentation of the fin-de-siècle avant-garde and developed in a climate of dramatic political and cultural change in the twenties and thirties. While subject to draconian censorship in the Soviet period, it nonetheless engaged in active dialogue with the film industries of Western Europe and America and had a lasting impact on world cinema. This course examines the extraordinary flourishing of avant-garde cinema in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s including films by Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, their theoretical writings, and their far-reaching influence on film and film theory. All readings in English, films subtitled in English.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 8/8
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Challenge to Painting: Collage, Montage, Assemblage
AS.010.640 (01)

The invention of Cubist collage is generally regarded as a watershed in twentieth-century art. This seminar will examine key junctures in the rapid proliferation and redefinition of collage strategies primarily in Europe and the United States, including but not limited to Futurist “words in liberty”; Dada and Constructivist photomontage; the Surrealist exploration of desire; Situationist détournement; and selected varieties of postwar assemblage. Frequent meetings in Special Collections.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 4/5
  • PosTag(s): HART-MODERN

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Media Theory in the Age of Big Data
AS.211.748 (01)

This seminar will explore some key themes in contemporary media theory in an age when five tech giants have succeeded in infiltrating the daily lives of global citizens to an unprecedented degree in history. We will study the impact of this saturation on socioeconomic inequality as well as the implications of an almost total loss of privacy. Among the strategies of resistance to the capacity for surveillance these companies have developed we will focus in particular on current examples of feminist media art and voices from the global and cultural periphery as well as tendencies in these practices to emphasize a return to interpersonal connections and the embodied here and now. As case studies we nay include #metoo, slo-film movements from Southern Bahia in Brazil, and the financing and distribution of art films by mega media companies like Netflix.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 24/25
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL

Historical Writing in the Middle Ages
AS.100.728 (01)

The course will begin with readings of literary and critical theory, as a preparation for the study of modes of historical writing in the Middle Ages. We will then read a sampling of medieval historiographical texts, beginning with Eusebius.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 9/10
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Graduate Pro-Seminar
AS.300.647 (01)

This seminar provides an introductory survey in comparative methods and theory. The course fulfills the pro-seminar requirements for CTL but is open to all graduate students.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (04)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Independent Study
AS.300.800 (05)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Patterns of Attention in the Visual Arts
AS.010.703 (01)

This seminar aims to excavate six distinct modalities of attention and attentiveness in the visual arts from Middle Ages to Modernity (cultic, narrational, speculative, ethical, sexual, and artistic). While emphasizing European developments, close consideration will be given to the role of visual attention in Hindu and Islamic visual cultures, providing the opportunity for cross-cultural comparison. Each case study will consider the historically shifting roles given to vision, cognition, imagination, affect, desire and power-knowledge in the culturally prevalent patterns of attention we study, and explore how specific kinds of pictorial schema or spatial environments served to structure and guide, or deflect and disrupt, the attention of their beholders. Finally, we will ask whether the historical study of attention can suggest analytical models or ethical lessons for the (re)mobilization of attentiveness in our own art-historical methods.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 15/15
  • PosTag(s): HART-RENBAR

The Literature of Existence
AS.211.640 (01)

This seminar will explore some key expressions of what could loosely be called existentialist writing from the early twentieth century to the present day, to the end of coming to terms with an emerging “new politics of existence.” While there will be some emphasis on Spanish language materials, including writings by José Ortega Y Gasset, Miguel de Unamuno, María Zambrano, and Jorge Luis Borges, we will also be reading important works by Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Martin Hägglund.

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 15/19
  • PosTag(s): GRLL-ENGL

Ind Stdy-Field Exams
AS.300.801 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/2
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Ind Stdy-Field Exams
AS.300.801 (02)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/2
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Dissertation Research
AS.300.803 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 3/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

In Study Field Exam
AS.300.809 (02)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/2
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Literary Pedagogy
AS.300.805 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Ind Stdy-Field Exams
AS.300.801 (03)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 2/2
  • PosTag(s): n/a

In Study Field Exam
AS.300.809 (01)

  • Credits: 0.00
  • Level: Graduate
  • Status: Open
  • Seats Available: 5/5
  • PosTag(s): n/a

Course # (Section) Title Day/Times Instructor Room PosTag(s) Info
AS.300.666 (01)Russian Avant-Garde CinemaTTh 10:30AM - 11:45AMEakin Moss, AnneGilman 208
AS.010.640 (01)Challenge to Painting: Collage, Montage, AssemblageT 3:00PM - 5:30PMWarnock, MollyGilman 177HART-MODERN
AS.300.800 (01)Independent StudyLisi, Leonardo 
AS.211.748 (01)Media Theory in the Age of Big DataF 2:00PM - 4:00PMWegenstein, BernadetteGilman 479GRLL-ENGL
AS.100.728 (01)Historical Writing in the Middle AgesTh 2:00PM - 4:00PMSpiegel, Gabrielle M 
AS.300.647 (01)Graduate Pro-SeminarStaff 
AS.300.800 (04)Independent StudyMarrati, Paola 
AS.300.800 (05)Independent StudyMarrati, Paola 
AS.010.703 (01)Patterns of Attention in the Visual ArtsW 2:00PM - 4:00PMMerback, MitchellGilman 177HART-RENBAR
AS.211.640 (01)The Literature of ExistenceW 1:00PM - 3:00PMEgginton, WilliamGilman 479GRLL-ENGL
AS.300.801 (01)Ind Stdy-Field ExamsMarrati, Paola 
AS.300.801 (02)Ind Stdy-Field ExamsEakin Moss, Anne, Marrati, Paola 
AS.300.803 (01)Dissertation ResearchLisi, Leonardo 
AS.300.809 (02)In Study Field ExamLisi, Leonardo 
AS.300.805 (01)Literary PedagogyLisi, Leonardo 
AS.300.801 (03)Ind Stdy-Field ExamsLisi, Leonardo 
AS.300.809 (01)In Study Field ExamLisi, Leonardo