2025-2026 Courses
Fall 2025
Graduate Courses
CPLT 7020: History of Literary Theory and Criticism from Romanticism to the Present
Instructor: Dr. Dorota Heneghan
Time: Th 3:00-5:50 p.m.
Course Objectives: 1) To study the history of Western Literary Criticism and Theory from the late Nineteenth Century to the Present, considering the changes in literary thought resulting from an increasingly global cultural perspective; 2) To develop students’ research and writing skills and help them understand the conventions and requirements of academic discourse on literature: 3) To facilitate students’ cultivation of their talents as creative readers and writers.
Topics Addressed in Modern and Contemporary Schools and Movements: The Canon; Formalism; Structuralism, Poetry; Narrative Theory; Media, Culture and Post-Modernism; Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism; Feminism, Gender Studies and Queer Theory; Marxism, New Historicism and Literary History; Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Reader-Response Theory; Postcolonial Theory and Criticism; Race and Ethnicity; Psychoanalysis and its Critics; Ideology and Hegemony; Anthropological Approaches to Literature; Popular Culture; Media Studies; Digital Humanities.
CPLT 7130/THTR 7920: Drama of the African Diaspora
Instructor: Dr. Femi Euba
Time: T, Th 10:30-12:00 p.m.
A study of the dramatic and theatrical expressions of the black cultures of the New World (North and South America, and the Caribbean), identifying, where possible, comparable connections with African counterparts. Works include those by August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, Aime Cesaire, Abdias do Nascimento, and Derek Walcott.
CPLT 7160/FREN 7140: Two Hundred Years of Relation: Towards an Archeology of Caribbean Thought and
Poetics
Instructor: Prof. Bastien Craipain
Time: M 3:30-6:20 p.m.
More than three decades after its publication, Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation continues to offer a defining and seemingly unsurpassable horizon in the evolution of Caribbean thought and poetics. How can we account for the enduring influence of a theory that posits change as its very condition of possibility? This course proposes to tackle this question by probing the depths of Glissant’s work and uncovering the layers of Caribbean discourse embedded in it. Going back in time from the "poetics of Relation" to the politics of the Haitian Revolution, we will examine the works of celebrated and lesser-known figures from the Caribbean archipelago and its circum-locations to assess the nature and limits of their contributions to the wayward genealogies of creole cultures. In so doing, we will not only seek to excavate the Caribbean pasts of our present “Whole-world” but also work to build a relational archive of its discursive formation. Readings may include works by Antonio Benítez Rojo, Sylvia Wynter, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Jean Price-Mars, Fernando Ortiz, Lafcadio Hearn, Alfred Mercier, Ramón Emeterio Betances, Cyrille Bissette, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, etc. All discussions and materials in English, though reading competence in French and Spanish may be desirable.
CPLT 7180: Academic Writing in Comparative Literature
Instructor: Dr. Adelaide Russo
Time: T 3:30-6:20 p.m.
Academic writing techniques to design and develop prospectus, dissertation, and other scholarly genres.
Undergraduate Courses
CPLT 2201/ENGL 2201: Introduction to World Literature: Selected Tales from Eastern and Western Traditions
Instructor: Selma Helal
Time: MWF 2:30-3:20 p.m.
This course offers to explore the art of storytelling through a selection of allegorical tales pertaining to western and eastern traditions. Students will come to see the power of storytelling in foregrounding teachings of ethical and philosophical dimensions across cultures. They will come to see tales as a space for meaning to grow and metamorphose into a symbolic system of reference. The overarching theme of journey in the selection of stories can be recognized through such subthemes as migration/pilgrimage, exile, and love. Some of the readings include allegorical tales by Plato, Ibn al-Muqaffa, Boccaccio, and Suhrawardi.
CPLT 2201/ENGL 2201: The Hero in World Literature
Instructor: Gabrielle Delahoussaye
T, TH 1:30-2:50 p.m.
This course will examine the concept of heroism, as it shapes Western literature from Ancient to Early Modern times. Together, we will discuss ideals of courage and excellence belonging to various cultural, historical, and ethical frameworks. Through encounters with works by Homer, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, we will develop an understanding of what it means to live an exemplary life. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which heroes both uphold and defy the behavioral codes prescribed to them by the societies in which they live. Emphasis throughout will be upon developing the ability to think independently, cogently, and decisively about fundamental issues that arise from reflection on the nature of human existence.
CPLT 2202/ENGL 2202: Introduction to Modern World Literature: The Atomic Age
Instructor: Gabrielle Bologna
Time: MWF 11:30-12:20 p.m.
In this course, we will read our way through the first half of the twentieth century with literature bridging the gap between the imaginary and the real. Moving across genres, from the dystopian to the historical novel, we will encounter visions of post-war environments, technological advances, oppressive regimes, and normative change. As we engage with material authored in the wake of Imperial collapse and increasing international conflict, our focus turns toward a broader question surrounding themes of crisis and revolution, reflecting on how this literary era shapes and challenges our understandings of past, present, and future.
CPLT 2202/ENGL 2202: Modernism, Metempsychosis, Masterpieces
Instructor: Alexander Schmid
Time: MWF 10:30-11:20 a.m.
Modernism is sometimes described as an art movement which eschews classical forms and techniques. But what does it mean for a text to be modern? Need it have been recently written, focus on certain themes, or be expressed in a certain genre? A masterpiece is defined by Harvard professor David Damrosch as a work of near classical value which is itself a literary analogy of a liberal democracy, but what does it really mean for a text to be a masterpiece? Does this term suggest a rank beyond the normal measure? Does it suggest a workmanship not witnessed in the average piece of art? Can a masterpiece also be a classic and piece of world literature? Or does it suggest something as banal as mere popularity? Join me on an adventure from the 17th century through the 20th century to inquire into these questions.
Required Texts:
1. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman, Ecco; Reprint edition,
2005. ISBN: 978-0060934347.
2. Goethe, Wolfgang von. Faust: A Tragedy. Trans. Walter W. Arndt., Ed. Cyrus Hamlin,
W. W. Norton & Company; 2nd Ed. 1998. ISBN: 978-0393972825.
3. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. Ed. Michael R. Katz, W. W. Norton
& Company; 2nd ed., 2000. ISBN: 978-0415045407.
4. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Vintage, first ed., 1986. ISBN: 978-0394743127.
5. Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. Trans. John E. Woods, Vintage, 1996. ISBN: 978-0679772873.
6. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Vintage, 1st Edition, 2016. ISBN: 978-1784870867.
CPLT 2203/SCRN 2203: Global Cinemas: Cinematic Representations of Neocolonialism, Aesthetics, and
Autocriticism
Instructor : Wolé Olúgúnlè
Time: T, TH 09:00-10:30 a.m.
Why do we still experience conflicts and war even when the UN tries to maintain World Peace? Why are there no developments in the Global South despite the independence of these nations? Who is responsible for the underdevelopment of developing Global South countries? Will recolonizing them solve the sociopolitical challenges and underdevelopment? These are a few of the questions that this course wishes to answer. This course is designed to introduce students to artistic and cinematic objects of diverse countries from North America/Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, and a league of others to understand how colonialism, neocolonialism, and autocriticism are shaped and manifested in the 21st-century world’s cinema. Recalling that musical and virtual (re)presentations of social issues and ideas have proven to enhance man’s understanding, critical reflection, criticism, and retention of sociopolitical issues, this course takes a thematic approach in the study of representations of sociopolitical issues in popular cultural forms including films, short stories, newspaper articles, and short essays. With a comparative approach, we will explore the convergence and divergence in cinematic objects while analyzing how they address colonialism, neocolonialism, and autocriticism. Moreover, through the analysis of these critical global political issues, we will engage the questions posed above to understand the political dynamics of sociopolitical issues. We will begin with the definitions of “colonialism, neocolonialism, and autocriticism.” Each thematic area will always entail a class screening of films from all three continental regions of our focus. Film screenings will constitute an entire class period and film discussions will occur in the subsequent class meeting. We will study the works of such filmmakers and writers as Tunde Kilani, Euzhan Palcy, Sharad Patel, Armando Iannucci, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ravi Kumar, Luc Besson, and more. This course is open to students who are interested in films, global politics, social justice, and cultural studies.