phd comparative literature stanford

Ph.D. Program

The Stanford English department has a long tradition of training the next generation of scholars to become leaders in academia and related fields. Our Ph.D. program encourages the production of ambitious, groundbreaking dissertation work across the diverse field interests of our prestigious faculty.

Fusing deep attention to literary history with newer approaches to media, technology, and performance, our department carefully mentors students in both scholarship and pedagogy through close interaction with faculty. Our location on the edge of the Pacific and at the heart of Silicon Valley encourages expansive, entrepreneurial thinking about the interpenetration of arts and sciences.

Program Overview

The English Department seeks to teach and promote an understanding of both the significance and the history of British and American literature (broadly defined) and to foster an appreciation of the richness and variety of texts in the language. It offers rigorous training in interpretive thinking and precise expression. Our English graduate program features the study of what imaginative language, rhetoric, and narrative art has done, can do, and will do in life, and it focuses on the roles creative writing and representations play in almost every aspect of modern experience. Completing the Ph.D. program prepares a student for full participation as a scholar and literary critic in the profession.

Financial Support

We offer an identical five-year funding package to all admitted students with competitive funding available for a sixth year. Funding covers applicable tuition costs, Stanford Cardinal Care health insurance, and living expenses in the form of direct stipend, teaching assistantships or pre-doctoral research assistantships. The department, in conjunction with the School of Humanities and Sciences, is also committed to supporting students' involvement in professional activities and funds many of the expenses for research travel, summer language study, and participation in academic conferences. Student housing is not included in the funding package.

In addition to our standard doctoral funding package, the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE) provides competitive funding to support individual doctoral students, student groups, and department-based projects. VPGE funding opportunities promote innovation, diversity, and excellence in graduate education. Explore their doctoral fellowship and other student funding opportunities.

The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program cultivates and supports a highly-engaged, multidisciplinary and multicultural community of graduate students from across Stanford University, and delivers a diverse collection of educational experiences, preparing graduates to address complex challenges facing the world. Knight-Hennessy Scholars participate in an experiential leadership development program known as the King Global Leadership Program and receive funding for up to three years of graduate study at Stanford. Two applications must be submitted separately; one to Knight-Hennessy and one to the Stanford English graduate degree program by its deadline. Please refer to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program page to learn more and apply.

Teaching Requirements

One pedagogical seminar and four quarters of supervised teaching. Typically a student will teach three times as a teaching assistant in a literature course. For the fourth course, students will have the option of applying to design and teach a Writing Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) for undergraduate English majors or teaching a fourth quarter as a T.A..

1st year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
2nd year: One quarter as T.A. (leading 1-2 discussion sections of undergraduate literature)
3rd/4th/5th years: Two quarters of teaching, including the possibility of TA'ing or teaching a WISE course.

Language requirements

All candidates for the Ph.D. degree must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two foreign languages. One language requirement must be completed during the first year of study. The second language must be completed before the oral examination in the third year.

Candidates in the earlier periods must offer Latin and one of the following languages: French, German, Greek, Italian or Spanish. Candidates in the later period (that is, after the Renaissance) must demonstrate a reading knowledge of two languages for which Stanford’s Language Center regularly offers a reading course, administers a competency exam, or facilitates the administration of an American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Reading Proficiency Test (ACTFL RPT). In all cases, the choice of languages offered must be relevant to the student’s field of study and must have the approval of the candidate's adviser. Any substitution of a language other than one for which Stanford offers a competency exam must also be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies.

Other requirements

All candidates for the Ph.D. must satisfactorily complete the following:

135 units, at least 70 of which (normally 14 courses) must be graded course work
Qualifying examination, based on a reading guide of approximately 70-90 works, to be taken orally at the end of the summer after the first year of graduate work.
University oral examination covering the field of concentration taken no later than the winter quarter of the third year of study.
Submission of the dissertation prospectus
First chapter review with the dissertation advisor and the members of the dissertation reading committee.
Dissertation, which should be an original work of literary criticism demonstrating the student's ability to participate fully as a scholar and literary critic in the profession.
Closing colloquium designed to look forward toward the next steps; identify the major accomplishments of the dissertation and the major questions/issues/problems that remain; consider possibilities for revision, book or article publication, etc.

Office: Building 260, Rooms 127-128

Mail Code: 94305-2031

Phone: (650) 723-3566

Email: [email protected]

Web Site: http://complit.stanford.edu

Courses offered by the Department of Comparative Literature are listed under the subject code COMPLIT on the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses web site .

The Department of Comparative Literature offers courses in the history and theory of literature through comparative approaches. The department accepts candidates for the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. The department is a part of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages .

The field of Comparative Literature provides students the opportunity to study imaginative literature in a wide array of contexts: historical, formal, theoretical, and more. While other literary disciplines focus on works of literature within national or linguistic traditions, Comparative Literature draws on multiple contexts in order to examine the nature of literary phenomena from around the globe and from different historical moments, while exploring how literature interacts with other elements of culture and society. We study fictional narratives, performance, and poetry as well as cinema, music, and emerging aesthetic media.

Along with the traditional models of comparative literature that compare two or more national literary cultures and examine literary phenomena in light of literary theory, the department encourages study of the relationship between literature and philosophy and the enrichment of literary study with other disciplinary methodologies. Comparative Literature also embraces the study of aspects of literature that overgo national boundaries, such as transnational literary movements or the creative adaptation of particular genres to local cultures. In each case, students emerge from the program with enhanced verbal and writing skills, a command of literary studies, the ability to read analytically and critically, and a more global knowledge of literature.

Mission of the Undergraduate Program in Comparative Literature

The mission of the undergraduate program in Comparative Literature is to develop students’ verbal and written communication skills, their ability to read analytically and critically, and their global knowledge of literary cultures and the specific properties of literary texts. The program provides students with the opportunity to study imaginative literature with several methods and a consciousness of methodology.

A Comparative Literature major prepares a student as a reader and interpreter of literature through sophisticated examination of texts and the development of a critical vocabulary with which to discuss them. Along with providing core courses that introduce students to major literary phenomena in a comparative frame, the program of study accommodates the interests of students in areas such as specific regions, historical periods, and interdisciplinary connections between literature and other fields such as philosophy, music, the visual arts, gender and queer theory, and race and ethnicity. Attention to verbal expression and interpretive argument serves students who will proceed into careers requiring strong language and communication skills and cross-cultural knowledge of the world.

Learning Outcomes (Undergraduate)

The department expects undergraduate majors in the program to be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes. These learning outcomes are used in evaluating students and the department's undergraduate program. Students are expected to demonstrate:

the ability to interpret a literary text in a non-native language or to compare literary texts from different linguistic traditions, which may be read in translation.

a self-reflective understanding of the critical process necessary to read and understand texts.

skills in writing effectively about literature.

skills in oral communication and public speaking about literature.

Graduate Programs in Comparative Literature

The department offers a Doctor of Philosophy and a Ph.D. minor in Comparative Literature.

Learning Outcomes (Graduate)

Through completion of advanced course work and rigorous skills training, the doctoral program prepares students to

make original contributions to the knowledge of Comparative Literature and to interpret and present the results of such research,

teach literary analysis and interpretation at all levels with broad historical, cultural and linguistic understanding, and

apply such analysis, interpretation and understanding to a range of fields and vocations.

Faculty in Comparative Literature

Director: Russell Berman

Director of Undergraduate Studies : Burcu Karahan

Professors : Russell Berman (also German Studies), Adrian Daub (also German Studies, on leave Spring), Amir Eshel (also German Studies), Roland Greene (also English), Joshua Landy (also French and Italian), Haiyan Lee (also East Asian Languages and Cultures), David Palumbo-Liu, Patricia Parker (also English, on leave Spring), Joan Ramon Resina (also Iberian and Latin American Cultures), José David Saldívar, Ramón Saldívar (also English), Ban Wang (also East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Associate Professors : Vincent Barletta (also Iberian and Latin American Cultures, on leave), Monika Greenleaf (also Slavic Languages and Literatures), Alexander Key, Indra Levy (also East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Assistant Professor : Marie Huber (on leave)

Senior Lecturers : Cintia Santana, Vered K. Shemtov

Lecturers : Burcu Karahan, Margarita Rosario (Mellon Fellow)

Courtesy Professors: Margaret Cohen, Marisa Galvez, Héctor Hoyos, Bernadette Meyler, Ato Quayson, Nancy Ruttenburg, Gabriella Safran, Kathryn Starkey, Elaine Treharne, Alex Woloch

Courtesy Associate Professors: Mark Greif, Christopher Krebs, Jisha Menon, Grant Parker, Jonathan Rosa, Dafna Zur

Courtesy Assistant Professors: Roanne Kantor, Fatoumata Seck

Emeriti : (Professors) John Bender (also English), John Freccero (also French and Italian), Hans U. Gumbrecht (also French and Italian), Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi (also French and Italian), Mary Pratt (also Iberian and Latin American Cultures)

David Palumbo-Liu

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Courses offered by the Department of Comparative Literature are listed under the subject code COMPLIT on the Stanford Bulletin's ExploreCourses web site .

Mission of the Undergraduate Program in Comparative Literature

Learning Outcomes (Undergraduate)

the ability to interpret a literary text in a non-native language or to compare literary texts from different linguistic traditions, which may be read in translation.
a self-reflective understanding of the critical process necessary to read and understand texts.
skills in writing effectively about literature.
skills in oral communication and public speaking about literature.
Graduate Programs in Comparative Literature

The department offers a Doctor of Philosophy and a Ph.D. minor in Comparative Literature.

Learning Outcomes (Graduate)

Through completion of advanced course work and rigorous skills training, the doctoral program prepares students to

make original contributions to the knowledge of Comparative Literature and to interpret and present the results of such research,
teach literary analysis and interpretation at all levels with broad historical, cultural and linguistic understanding, and
apply such analysis, interpretation and understanding to a range of fields and vocations.

Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature

The major in Comparative Literature requires students to enroll in a set of core courses offered by the department, to complete electives in the department, and to enroll in additional literature courses, or other courses approved by the Chair of Undergraduate Studies, offered by other departments. This flexibility to combine literature courses from several departments and to address literature from multiple traditions is the hallmark of the Comparative Literature major. Students may count courses which read literature in translation; however, every student, especially those planning to pursue graduate study in Comparative Literature, is strongly encouraged to develop a command of non-native languages.

Declaring the Major

Students declare the major in Comparative Literature through Axess. Students must meet with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies to discuss appropriate courses and options within the major, and to plan the course of study. All Comparative Literature degree programs are administered by the DLCL undergraduate student services office located in Pigott Hall, room 128.

Upon declaring the major, each student is assigned an advisor by the Chair of Undergraduate Studies. Students should consult with their advisors at least once a quarter. While the Chair monitors progress to completion of the degree, the advisor oversees the student's general intellectual development and offers advice about courses and projects. Students are also encouraged to develop relationships with other faculty members who may act as mentors.

Overseas Campuses and Abroad Programs

The Department of Comparative Literature encourages study abroad, both for increased proficiency in language and the opportunity for advanced course work. Course work done at campuses other than Stanford is counted toward the major at the discretion of the Chair of Undergraduate Studies and is contingent upon the Office of the University Registrar's approval of transfer credit. To that end, students abroad are advised to save syllabi, notes, papers, and correspondence.

Degree Requirements

All majors in Comparative Literature (including honors) are required to complete the following requirements. All courses applied to the major must be taken for a letter grade, and a grade point average (GPA) of 2.0 or better must be achieved in each core course.

COMPLIT 101 What Is Comparative Literature? . This gateway to the major is normally taken by the end of sophomore year. It provides an introduction to literature and its distinctions from other modes of linguistic expression, and a fundamental set of interpretive skills. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major requirement.
COMPLIT 199 . This senior seminar is designed as a culmination to the course of study while providing reflection on the nature of the discipline. Topics vary.
Electives: Majors must complete at least 40 units of electives. 15 of the 40 units must be COMPLIT courses (excluding COMPLIT 194). The remaining courses should form a coherent intellectual focus requiring approval from the Chair of Undergraduate Studies and may be drawn from Comparative Literature offerings, from other literature departments, or from other fields of interdisciplinary relevance. Up to 10 units of Thinking Matters or SLE courses may be counted towards the elective requirement.

Students whose major concentration involves languages other than their native language(s) are encouraged to receive the Foreign Language Proficiency Notation. Those students who achieve this notation may count up to 15 units of language classes towards their electives in the Comparative Literature Major. The Foreign Language Proficiency Notation is administered by the Stanford Language Center, involves an Oral Proficiency Interview and Writing Proficiency Test, and results in a notation on the student’s official Stanford transcript. Students should achieve a minimum rating of Advanced Low (for cognate languages) or Intermediate High (for non-cognate languages) on the Foreign Service Institute/American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages proficiency scale. Successful completion of the OPI is required to proceed with the WPT. Students are recommended to take the OPI in or before the Winter of their senior year.

Electives are subject to advisor consultation and approval.

Total unit load: Students must complete course work for a total of at least 65 units.

Comparative Literature and Philosophy Subplan

Undergraduates may major in the Comparative Literature and Philosophy subplan that is declared in Axess and apprears on a student's transcript and diploma. Students in this subplan take courses alongside students from other departments that also have specialized options associated with the program for the study of Philosophical and Literary Thought. Each student in this subplan is assigned an advisor in Comparative Literature, and student schedules and courses of study must be approved in writing by the Chair of Undergraduate Studies of Comparative Literature, and the Chair of Undergraduate Studies of the program. See the Philosophy + Literature @ Stanford website.

A total of 65 units must be completed for this option, including the following requirements:

Philosophy and Literature Gateway Course (4 units) COMPLIT 181 Philosophy and Literature . This course should be taken as early as possible in the student's career, normally in the sophomore year.
Philosophy Writing in the Major (5 units) : PHIL 80 Mind, Matter, and Meaning . Prerequisite: introductory Philosophy course.
Aesthetics, Ethics, Political Philosophy (ca. 4 units): One course from the PHIL 170 series.
Language, Mind, Metaphysics, and Epistemology (ca. 4 units): One course from the PHIL 180 series.
History of Philosophy ( ca. 8 units) : Two courses in the history of philosophy, numbered above PHIL 100. Up to five units of SLE may be counted in lieu of one of these two courses.
Related Courses (ca. 8 units) : Two upper division courses relevant to the study of philosophy and literature as identified by the committee in charge of the program. A list of approved courses may be found on Philosophy and Literature web site.
One course, typically in translation, in a literature distant from that of the student's concentration and offering an outside perspective on that literary tradition.
COMPLIT 199 Senior Seminar.

Seminar Paper Requirement: Students must write at least one seminar paper that is interdisciplinary in nature. This paper brings together material from courses taken in philosophy and literature, and may be an honors paper (see below), an individual research paper (developed through independent work with a faculty member), or a paper integrating materials developed for two separate courses (by arrangement with the two instructors). Though it may draw on previous course work, the paper must be an original composition, 18-20 pages in length. It must be submitted to the Chair of Undergraduate Studies and receive approval no later than the end of Winter Quarter in the fourth year of study.

Substitutions and transfer credit are not normally permitted for the PHIL 170 series class or the PHIL 180 series class, and are never permitted for PHIL 80, COMPLIT 181, or the capstone seminar.

Units devoted to acquiring language proficiency are not counted toward the 65-unit requirement.

Honors Program

Students majoring in any DLCL department (i.e., Comparative Literature, French and Italian, German Studies, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, and Slavic Languages and Literatures) who have an overall grade point average (GPA) of 3.3 or above and who maintain a 3.5 (GPA) in their major courses, are eligible to participate in the DLCL's honors program.

Declaring Honors

Prospective honors students must choose a senior thesis adviser from among their home department's regular faculty in their junior year by May 1 . During Spring Quarter of the junior year, a student interested in the honors program should consult with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies of their home department to submit a thesis proposal (2-5 pages), DLCL Honors application, and an outline of planned course work for their senior year. When their applications are approved by their home department, students will request honors through Axess.

Honors theses vary considerably in length as a function of their topic, historical scope, and methodology. They may make use of previous work developed in seminars and courses, but display an enhanced comparative or theoretical scope. Quality rather than quantity is the key criterion. Honors theses range from 40 to 90 pages not including bibliography and notes.

Honors students are encouraged to participate in the DLCL program hosted by Bing Honors College. This DLCL Honors College is designed to help students develop their projects and is offered at the end of the summer before senior year. Applications must be submitted through the Bing program. For more information, view the Bing Honors web site.

Program Requirements

A minimum of 10 units total, described below, and a completed thesis is required. Honors essays are due to the thesis adviser no later than 5:00 p.m. on May 15 , of the terminal year. If an essay is found deserving of a grade of 'A-' or better by the thesis adviser, honors are granted at the time of graduation.

Spring Quarter of the junior year (optional): DLCL 189C Honors Thesis Seminar , 2-4 units S/NC, under the primary thesis adviser. Drafting or revision of the thesis proposal. The proposal is reviewed by the Chair of Undergraduate Studies and the Director of the department and will be approved or returned for submission.
Autumn Quarter of the senior year (required): DLCL 189A Honors Thesis Seminar , 4 units S/NC, taught by a DLCL appointed faculty member. Course focuses on researching and writing the honors thesis.
Winter Quarter of the senior year (required): DLCL 189B Honors Thesis Seminar , 2-4 units S/NC, under the primary thesis adviser. Focus is on writing under guidance of primary adviser.
Spring Quarter of the senior year (option; mandatory if not taken during junior year): DLCL 189C Honors Thesis Seminar , 2-4 units S/NC, under the primary thesis adviser. Honors essays are due to the thesis adviser and student services officer no later than 5:00 p.m. on May 15 of the terminal year.
Spring Quarter of the senior year (required) DLCL 199 Honors Thesis Oral Presentation , 1 unit S/NC. Enroll with primary thesis adviser.

The honors thesis in the DLCL embodies Stanford's excellence in course work and research. It is simultaneously one element of the student’s intellectual legacy and part of the University's official history. The faculty considers the honors thesis to be far more than a final paper; rather, it is the product of solid research that contributes to conversations taking place within a larger scholarly community and representative of the intellectual vitality of the discipline. For all of these reasons, DLCL honors theses will be visible to future scholars researching similar questions through full online access through the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) and may be used as course materials for future Stanford honors preparatory courses. For similar purposes, a printed copy may also be kept in DLCL spaces. Students who wish to limit the availability or formats in which the thesis may be shared may do so by filling out the appropriate form with the DLCL student affairs officer.

Minor in Comparative Literature

The undergraduate minor in Comparative Literature represents a condensed (22-unit minimum) version of the major. It is designed for students who are unable to pursue the major but nonetheless seek an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of literature.

Declaring the Minor

Students declare the minor in Comparative Literature through Axess. Students should meet with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies to discuss appropriate courses and options within the minor, and to plan the course of study. The minor plan is administered through the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL) undergraduate student services office in Pigott Hall, room 128.

Requirements
Plans for the minor are reviewed with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies.
22 unit minimum course plan.
All courses must be taken for a letter grade.
Courses may not duplicate course work for other major or minor programs.
Up to 5 units of SLE or Independent Study may count towards one of the four additional Comparative Literature courses with approval from the Chair of Undergraduate Studies.

Course requirements for the minor in Comparative Literature are:

Minor in Modern Languages

The Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages offers an undergraduate minor in Modern Languages for students demonstrating competency in two modern languages and literatures. This minor draws on literature and language courses offered in this and other literature departments.See the " Literatures, Cultures, and Languages " section of this bulletin for requirements.

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature

University requirements for the Ph.D. are described in the " Graduate Degrees " section of this bulletin.

The Ph.D. program is designed for students whose linguistic background, breadth of interest in literature, and curiosity about the problems of literary scholarship and theory (including the relation of literature to other disciplines) make this program more appropriate to their needs than the Ph.D. in one of the national literatures. Students take courses in at least three literatures (one may be that of the native language), to be studied in the original. The program is designed to encourage familiarity with the major approaches to literary study prevailing today.

Before starting graduate work at Stanford, students should have completed an undergraduate program with a strong background in one literature and some work in a second literature in the original language. Since the program demands an advanced knowledge of two non-native languages and a reading knowledge of a third non-native language, students should at the time of application have an advanced enough knowledge of one of the three to take graduate-level courses in that language when they enter the program. They should be making enough progress in the study of a second language to enable them to take graduate courses in that language not later than the beginning of the second year, and earlier if possible. Language courses at the 100- or 200- level may be taken with approval from the Director of the department or the Chair of Graduate Studies. Applicants are expected to take an intensive course in the third language before entrance.

Students are admitted under a financial plan that attempts to integrate financial support and completion of residence requirements with their training as prospective university teachers. Assuming satisfactory academic progress, fellowship support as a Ph.D. student is for five years.

Application Procedures

Competition for entrance into the program is extremely keen. The program is kept small so that students have as much opportunity as possible to work closely with faculty throughout the period of study. Applicants should review all course and examination requirements, advancement requirements, and teaching obligations carefully before applying to the program. Because of the special nature of comparative literary studies, the statement of purpose included in the application for admission must contain the following information:

A detailed description of the applicant's present degree of proficiency in each of the languages studied, indicating the languages in which the applicant is prepared to do graduate work at present and outlining plans to meet additional language requirements of the program.

A description of the applicant's area of interest (for instance, theoretical problems, genres, periods) within literary study and the reasons for finding comparative literature more suitable to his or her needs than the study of a single literature. Applicants should also indicate their most likely prospective primary field, including the literatures on which they intend to concentrate.

An explanation of how the applicant’s undergraduate education has prepared her or him for work in our program. If there are any gaps in the applicant’s preparation, a plan to address those gaps should be discussed.

The applicant’s reasons for wishing to study in the department.

The application itself must also include:

The results of the general section of the Graduate Record Examination. These results should be sent to Stanford University, ETS code 4704.

A letter of recommendation that focuses on the applicant's language skills, or a current ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) certificate, or a critical paper written in a non-native language.

Recommendations from faculty members in at least two of the literatures in which the student proposes to work, if possible.

A writing sample that the candidate considers to represent his or her best work, preferably demonstrating a comparative analysis.

For further information see the Graduate Admissions web site.

A candidate for the Ph.D. degree must complete three years (nine quarters) of full-time work, or the equivalent, in graduate study beyond the bachelor's degree. The student must take 135 units of graduate work and submit the doctoral dissertation. At least three consecutive quarters of course work must be taken at Stanford.

Students must present three non-native languages, two of them sufficiently to qualify for graduate courses in these languages and the third sufficiently to demonstrate the ability to read a major author in this language. Two languages are certified by graduate-level course work specified below. Only the third language may be certified by examination. Language preparation must be sufficient to support graduate-level course work in at least one language during the first year and in the second language during the second year. Students must demonstrate a reading knowledge of the third non-native language no later than the beginning of the third year.

Literatures in the same language (such as Spanish and Spanish American) are counted as one. One of the student's three literatures usually is designated as the primary field, the other two as secondary fields, although some students may offer two literatures at the primary level (six or more graduate courses).

Whatever their sources of financial support, students are normally expected to undertake a total of five quarters of supervised apprenticeships and teaching at half time. Students must complete those pedagogy courses required by the departments in which they teach.

Minimum Course Requirements

Students are advised that the range and depth of preparation necessary to support superior work on the dissertation, as well as demands in the present professional marketplace for coverage of both traditional and interdisciplinary areas of knowledge, render these requirements as bare minimums.

These courses are designed to acculturate first-year students into the intellectual, professional, and pedagogical modes of the discipline. Students who do not intend to teach language at Stanford or after should consult the Chair of Graduate Studies about whether to take DLCL 301 or replace it with another course on pedagogy.

2. A sufficient number of courses (six or more) in the student's primary field to ensure knowledge of the basic works in one national literature from its beginnings to the present.

3. At least four additional complementary courses, with most of the reading in the original, in two different national literatures (i.e., two courses in each literature).

Minimum course requirements must be completed before the student is scheduled to take the University oral examination. These requirements are kept to a minimum so that students have sufficient opportunity to seek out new areas of interest. A course is an offering of 3-5 units. Independent study may take the place of up to two of the required courses, but no more; no undergraduate courses may be counted toward the required 135 credits. Courses should be taken for letter grades when the option is available.

The principal conditions for continued registration of a graduate student are the timely and satisfactory completion of the university, department, and program requirements for the degree, and fulfillment of minimum progress requirements. Failure to meet these requirements results in corrective measures that may include a written warning, academic probation, and/or the possible release from the program.

Examinations

Three examinations are required. The first two are one hour in duration, the third two hours.

First One-Hour Examination. The genre examination is administered toward the end of the first year. It is designed to demonstrate the student's knowledge of a substantial number of literary works in a single genre, ranging over several centuries and over at least three national literatures, and the theoretical problems involved in the chosen genre and in the matter of genre in general. Students must focus on poetry, drama, or narrative (including the novel), combining core recommendations from the department with selections from their own areas of concentration. Any student who does not pass the exam has the opportunity to retake it before the end of the same spring quarter. Students who do not pass this exam a second time may be dismissed from the program.

Second One-Hour Examination. The theory exam is administered in the autumn quarter of the second year. It is intended to demonstrate the student's knowledge of a particular problem in the history of literary theory and criticism or the ability to develop a particular theoretical position. In either case, this exam should demonstrate wide reading in theoretical and critical texts from a variety of periods. Any student who does not pass the exam has the opportunity to retake the exam the second week of the winter quarter. Students who do not pass this exam a second time may be dismissed from the program.

University Oral Examination. This examination is normally taken during the autumn quarter of the third year. It covers a literary period of about a century in three or more literatures with primary emphasis on a single national literature or, in occasional cases, two national literatures. The reading list covers chiefly the major literary works of the period.

More information about the examinations is available in the Department Graduate Handbook.

Dissertation Reading Committee

The doctoral dissertation reading committee consists of the principal dissertation adviser and at least two other readers. The doctoral dissertation reading committee must have no fewer than three and no more than five members. At least one member must be from the student’s major department. Normally, all committee members are members of the Stanford University Academic Council or are emeritus Academic Council members. The student's department Director may, in some cases, approve the appointment of a reader who is not a current or emeritus member of the Academic Council, if that person is particularly well qualified to consult on the dissertation topic and holds a Ph.D. or equivalent degree. Former Stanford Academic Council members and non-Academic Council members may thus, on occasion, serve on a reading committee. A non-Academic Council member (including former Academic Council members) may replace only one of three required members of dissertation reading committees. If the reading committee has four or five members, at least three members (comprising the majority) must be current or emeritus members of the Academic Council. For additional information, see the GAP's Policy on Dissertation Reading Committees . Students should complete and submit the Dissertation Reading Committee form upon applying for Terminal Graduate Registration status.

Prospectus Colloquium

The prospectus for the dissertation must be prepared in close consultation with the dissertation adviser during the months preceding the colloquium. It should offer a synthetic overview of the dissertation, describe its methodology and the project's relation to past scholarship on the topic, and lay out a complete plan of the chapters.

The prospectus colloquium normally takes place during the quarter after the University oral examination. It is the student's responsibility to set the date and time of the colloquium in consultation with the members of the dissertation reading committee and the department administrator.

If the outcome is favorable by majority vote of the committee, the student is free to proceed with work on the dissertation. If the proposal is found to be unsatisfactory by majority vote, the dissertation readers may ask the student to revise the prospectus and hold a second colloquium.

Qualifying Procedures

Admission to candidacy is an important decision by the department based on its overall assessment of a student’s ability to complete the Ph.D. program. According to University policy, students are expected to follow department qualifying procedures and apply for candidacy by the end of the second year in residence. In reviewing a student for admission to candidacy, the faculty considers a student’s academic progress including but not limited to:

advanced language proficiency
course work
performance on the qualifying (i.e. genre and theory) examinations
successful completion of teaching assistantships
completion of at least three units of work with each of four Stanford faculty members

Beyond the successful completion of department prerequisites, admission to candidacy depends on the faculty's evaluation of whether student has the potential to fulfill the requirements of the degree program. Candidacy is determined by faculty vote. Failure to advance to candidacy results in the dismissal of the student from the doctoral program. Candidacy is valid for five years and students are required to maintain active candidacy through conferral of the doctoral degree. All requirements for the degree must be completed before candidacy expires. The department conducts regular reviews of each student’s academic performance, both before and after admission to candidacy. Failure to make satisfactory progress to degree may result in dismissal from the doctoral program. Additional information about University candidacy policy is available in the Bulletin and GAP .

Annual Review

The faculty provides students with timely and constructive feedback on their progress toward the Ph.D. Annual reviews provide a general assessment and identify developing problems that could impede progress. Possible outcomes of the yearly review include:

continuation of the student in good standing, or
placing the student on probation, with specific guidelines for the period on probation and the steps to be taken in order to be returned to good standing.

For students on probation at this point (or at any other subsequent points), possible outcomes of a review include:

restoration to good standing
continued probation, again with guidelines for necessary remedial steps
termination from the program. Students leaving the program at the end of the first or second year are usually permitted to complete the requirements to receive an M.A. degree, if this does not involve additional residency or financial support.
Ph.D. Minor in Comparative Literature

This minor is designed for students working toward the Ph.D. in the various national literature departments. Students working toward the Ph.D. in English are directed to the program in English and Comparative Literature described among offerings in the Department of English . Students must have:

one non-native language sufficient to qualify for graduate-level courses in that language
the second non-native language sufficient to read a major author in the original language.
except for students in the Asian languages, students must choose a second literature outside the department of their major literature.
a seminar in literary theory or criticism
at least two of the three courses in Comparative Literature should originate in a department other than the one in which the student is completing their degree.

On July 30, the Academic Senate adopted grading policies effective for all undergraduate and graduate programs, excepting the professional Graduate School of Business, School of Law, and the School of Medicine M.D. Program. For a complete list of those and other academic policies relating to the pandemic, see the " COVID-19 and Academic Continuity " section of this bulletin.

The Senate decided that all undergraduate and graduate courses offered for a letter grade must also offer students the option of taking the course for a “credit” or “no credit” grade and recommended that deans, departments, and programs consider adopting local policies to count courses taken for a “credit” or “satisfactory” grade toward the fulfillment of degree-program requirements and/or alter program requirements as appropriate.

Undergraduate Degree Requirements

The Comparative Literature Department counts all courses taken in academic year 2020-21 with a grade of 'CR' (credit) or 'S' (satisfactory) towards satisfaction of undergraduate degree requirements that otherwise require a letter grade.

Required Courses Policy

In academic year 2020-21, as Stanford operates on a four-quarter system, students may opt not to be enrolled in one of the four quarters of the year . Students may therefore be unable to take a Comparative Literature core class (COMPLIT 101, 121, 122, 123, 199) because they are on leave during the quarter it is offered. In these cases, the Chair of Undergraduate Studies will, in coordination with the student’s departmental advisor, suggest appropriate substitute classes and approve one of them.

Graduate Degree Requirements

The Comparative Literature Department counts all courses taken in academic year 2020-21 with a grade of 'CR' (credit) or 'S' (satisfactory) towards satisfaction of graduate degree requirements that otherwise require a letter grade.

Graduate Advising Expectations

The Department of Comparative Literature is committed to providing academic advising in support of graduate student scholarly and professional development. The overall goal of advising, both in the DLCL and the department, is to help graduate students make academic and career choices wisely, and think ahead, in order to craft a long-term plan for their graduate student career and beyond. When most effective, the advising relationship entails collaborative and sustained engagement by both the advisor and the advisee. As a best practice, advising expectations should be periodically discussed and reviewed to ensure mutual understanding. Both the advisor and the advisee are expected to maintain professionalism and integrity. Advising is both an academically invaluable form for the transmission of expertise, as well as a key aspect of creating a strong departmental and Stanford community.

Faculty Advisors

Faculty advisors guide students in key areas such as selecting courses, designing and conducting research, developing of teaching pedagogy, navigating policies and degree requirements, and exploring academic opportunities and professional pathways.

Upon enrolling, students plan their work under the direction of the Director of Graduate Studies or a faculty member designated by the program. When the student selects a more specialized advisor, the transition should involve oral or written communication between both advisors and the student concerning the student's progress, goals, and expectations. It is possible for doctoral students to choose two main advisors at the dissertation stage, provided all agree this is academically sound.
Faculty advisors should meet with assigned students to discuss their selection of courses and to plan from a broader, longer-term perspective, including: discussion of program milestones and a basic timeline; an overview of Department and DLCL offerings beyond courses; student goals and interests and DLCL or Stanford programs that may be relevant; and (for doctoral students) how to transfer previous graduate coursework.
Faculty advisors and graduate students should meet at least once per quarter to assess the advisee's course of study, performance over the past quarter, and plans for the next quarter, as well as longer term plans. If a student has two advisors, the student should meet at least once per quarter with each advisor and at least once per year with both advisors at the same time.
For doctoral students, faculty should help their advisees plan for exams, research grant applications, develop research projects, and plan ahead for both the academic job market and the job search beyond academia.
Faculty advisors should provide feedback about the student's progress to the department during the annual review process. For more information about the annual review, see the Graduate Handbook.
Graduate Students

Graduate students are active contributors to the advising relationship, proactively seeking academic and professional guidance and taking responsibility for informing themselves of policies and degree requirements for their graduate program.

Upon enrolling, students plan their work under the direction of the Director of Graduate Studies or a faculty member designated by the program. As the student develops a field of expertise, the student chooses a program advisor to replace the Director of Graduate Studies role. The transition should involve oral or written communication between both advisors and the student concerning the student's progress, goals, and expectations.
Graduate students and faculty advisors should meet at least once per quarter to assess the advisee's course of study, performance over the past quarter, and plans for the next quarter, as well as longer term plans. If a student has two advisors, the student should meet at least once per quarter with each advisor and at least once per year with both advisors at the same time.
Students should consult with their advisors on all academic matters, including coursework, conference presentations and publications, research travel, and teaching plans.
Students should provide a thorough self-evaluation each year for the annual review. For more information about the annual review, see the Graduate Handbook.

For a statement of University policy on graduate advising, see the " Graduate Advising " section of this bulletin.

Faculty in Comparative Literature

Director: Amir Eshel

Director of Graduate Studies : Amir Eshel

Director of Undergraduate Studies : Alexander Key

Professors : Russell Berman (also German Studies), Adrian Daub (also German Studies), Amir Eshel (also German Studies), Roland Greene (also English), Joshua Landy (also French and Italian), Haiyan Lee (also East Asian Languages and Cultures), David Palumbo-Liu (on leave Autumn), Patricia Parker (also English), Joan Ramon Resina (also Iberian and Latin American Cultures), José David Saldívar, Ramón Saldívar (also English, on leave Winter), Ban Wang (also East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Associate Professors : Vincent Barletta (also Iberian and Latin American Cultures), Monika Greenleaf (also Slavic Languages and Literatures), Alexander Key, Indra Levy (also East Asian Languages and Cultures)

Assistant Professors : Marie Huber

Senior Lecturers : Cintia Santana, Vered K. Shemtov

Lecturers : Burcu Karahan, Marie-Pierre Ulloa

Courtesy Professor: Nancy Ruttenburg

Emeriti : (Professors) John Bender (also English), John Freccero, Hans U. Gumbrecht, Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Mary Pratt

COMPLIT 10N. Shakespeare and Performance in a Global Context. 3 Units.

Preference to freshmen. The problem of performance including the performance of gender through the plays of Shakespeare. In-class performances by students of scenes from plays. The history of theatrical performance. Sources include filmed versions of plays, and readings on the history of gender, gender performance, and transvestite theater. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade. In AY 2020-21, a 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement.

COMPLIT 11Q. Shakespeare, Playing, Gender. 3 Units.

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender.

COMPLIT 31. Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East. 3-5 Units.

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/. Same as: HUMCORE 111 , JEWISHST 150 , RELIGST 150

COMPLIT 33. Humanities Core: Global Identity, Culture, and Politics from the Middle East. 3 Units.

How do we face the future? What resources do we have? Which power structures hold us back and which empower us? What are our identities at college in the Bay Area? In 1850s Lebanon, Abu Faris Shidyaq faced all these same questions (except the last one; he was a Christian magazine editor). In this course we will engage with claims about identity, culture, and politics that some might say come from the "Middle East" but that we understand as global. Ganzeer's graphic novel is as much for California as it is for Egypt. Ataturk's speech is about power and identity just like Donald Trump is about power and identity. In Turkish novels and in Arabic poetry, the people we engage in this course look to their pasts and our futures. What happens next? This is the third of three courses in the Middle Eastern track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study Middle Eastern history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.future. Same as: DLCL 33 , HUMCORE 33

COMPLIT 36A. Dangerous Ideas. 1 Unit.

Ideas matter. Concepts such as revolution, tradition, and hell have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like immigration, universal basic income, and youth play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these "dangerous" ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space. Some weeks will have short reading assignments, but you are not required to purchase any materials. Same as: ARTHIST 36 , EALC 36 , ENGLISH 71 , ETHICSOC 36X , FRENCH 36 , HISTORY 3D , MUSIC 36H , PHIL 36 , POLISCI 70 , RELIGST 36X , SLAVIC 36

COMPLIT 37Q. Zionism and the Novel. 3 Units.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Zionism emerged as a political movement to establish a national homeland for the Jews, eventually leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This seminar uses novels to explore the changes in Zionism, the roots of the conflict in the Middle East, and the potentials for the future. We will take a close look at novels by Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, in order to understand multiple perspectives, and we will also consider works by authors from the North America and from Europe. NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement. Same as: JEWISHST 37Q

COMPLIT 43. Modernity and Novels in the Middle East. 3 Units.

This course will investigate cultural and literary responses to modernity in the Middle East. The intense modernization process that started in mid 19th century and lingers to this day in the region caused Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary cultures to encounter rapid changes; borders dissolved, new societies and nations were formed, daily life westernized, and new literary forms took over the former models. In order to understand how writers and individuals negotiated between tradition and modernity and how they adapted their traditions into the modern life we will read both canonical and graphic novels comparatively from each language group and focus on the themes of nation, identity, and gender. All readings will be in English translation. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/. Same as: HUMCORE 131

COMPLIT 44. Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia. 3-5 Units.

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/. Same as: CHINA 24 , HUMCORE 133 , JAPAN 24 , KOREA 24

COMPLIT 46. Atlantic Folds: Indigeneity and Modernity. 3 Units.

The Atlantic as an infinite doubling of ancient and modern. The Atlantic as an endless, watery cloth of African, American, and European folds, unfolding and refolding through bodies and ideas: blackness, whiteness, nature, nurture, water, blood, cannibal, mother, you, and I. The Atlantic as a concept, a space, a muse, a goddess. The Atlantic as birth and burial. One ocean under God, divisible, with salt enough for all who thirst. Authors include: Paul Gilroy, Gilles Deleuze, Chimamanda Adichie, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Davi Kopenawa, Pepetela, Beyoncé, and José Vasconcelos. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/. Same as: HUMCORE 135

COMPLIT 51Q. Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity. 4 Units.

We may "know" "who" we "are," but we are, after all, social creatures. How does our sense of self interact with those around us? How does literature provide a particular medium for not only self expression, but also for meditations on what goes into the construction of "the Self"? After all, don't we tell stories in response to the question, "who are you"? Besides a list of nouns and names and attributes, we give our lives flesh and blood in telling how we process the world. Our course focuses in particular on this question--Does this universal issue ("who am I") become skewed differently when we add a qualifier before it, like "ethnic"? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade. Same as: AMSTUD 51Q , CSRE 51Q

COMPLIT 55N. Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives. 3-5 Units.

This seminar concerns the design and analysis of imaginary (or constructed) worlds for narratives and media such as films, comics, and literary texts. The seminar's primary goal is to help participants understand the creation of better imaginary worlds - ultimately all our efforts should serve that higher purpose. Some of the things we will consider when taking on the analysis of a new world include: What are its primary features - spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? What is the world's ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? What are the precise strategies that are used by the artist to convey the world to us and us to the world? How are our characters connected to the world? And how are we - the viewer or reader or player - connected to the world? Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. In AY 2020-21, a `CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement. Same as: CSRE 55N

COMPLIT 57. Human Rights and World Literature. 5 Units.

Human rights may be universal, but each appeal comes from a specific location with its own historical, social, and cultural context. This summer we will turn to literary narratives and films from a wide number of global locations to help us understand human rights; each story taps into fundamental beliefs about justice and ethics, from an eminently human and personal point of view. What does it mean not to have access to water, education, free speech, for example? This course has two components. The first will be a set of readings on the history and ethos of modern human rights. These readings will come from philosophy, history, political theory. The second, and major component is comprised of novels and films that come from different locations in the world, each telling a compelling story. We will come away from this class with a good introduction to human rights history and philosophy and a set of insights into a variety of imaginative perspectives on human rights issues from different global locations. Readings include: Amnesty International, Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Andrew Clapham, Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, James Dawes, That the World May Know, Walter Echo-Hawk, In the Light of Justice, Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, Bessie Head, The Word for World is Forest, Ursula LeGuin.

COMPLIT 70N. Animal Planet and the Romance of the Species. 3-4 Units.

Preference to freshmen.This course considers a variety of animal characters in Chinese and Western literatures as potent symbols of cultural values and dynamic sites of ethical reasoning. What does pervasive animal imagery tell us about how we relate to the world and our neighbors? How do animals define the frontiers of humanity and mediate notions of civilization and culture? How do culture, institutions, and political economy shape concepts of human rights and animal welfare? And, above all, what does it mean to be human in the pluralistic and planetary 21st century? Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade. Same as: CHINA 70N

COMPLIT 89. Investigating Identity Through Filipinx Fiction. 5 Units.

This course is both a reading seminar featuring canonical and contemporary Filipinx authors (including Mia Alvar, Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo, Bienvenido Santos, Lysley Tenorio and José Rizal) and a writing workshop where students generate short stories exploring identity. Rizal's seminal novels Noli Me Tangere and El filibusterismo are ¿the earliest artistic expressions of the Asian colonial experience from the point of view of the oppressed¿ and through his work and the work of other Filipinx authors, we discover how both national and individual identities are not only challenged by adversity, trauma, violence, and war but also forged and strengthened by them. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot. Same as: ASNAMST 90E , ENGLISH 90E

COMPLIT 100. CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People. 3-5 Units.

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Dante, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Gogol, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade. Same as: DLCL 100 , FRENCH 175 , GERMAN 175 , HISTORY 206E , ILAC 175 , ITALIAN 175 , URBANST 153

COMPLIT 101. What Is Comparative Literature?. 5 Units.

How can we best talk about literature? What exactly is literature? What is theory? What is comparison? How do these questions fit into our lives? This course is an introduction to Comparative Literature suitable for all students. We will think about poetry, translation, trans feminism (and more), and we will read Maria Lugones, Etel Adnan, Hortense Spillers, and others. This course will be taught online and asynchronously; there will be recorded lectures, the bulk of the discussion will take place in live small groups, and students will submit regular recorded presentations in addition to writing and revising a paper.

COMPLIT 102. Film Series: Understanding Turkey Through Film. 1-2 Unit.

Join us in our quest to understand the great transformation in Turkey and its impact on its people through cinema. Set against the backdrop of the expansion of capitalism and the fundamental cultural, political and social change in the last decade, the movies in this series tell the uneasy stories of individuals whose lives are affected by this disruptive change. By examining the link between the individual experiences and societal change, the films confront issues such as globalization, gender and racial hierarchies, urban transformation, state repression, male domination, and the women's struggle in Turkey. The course consists of 8 Turkish film screenings each of which will be preceded by an introduction by Dr. Alemdaroglu or Dr. Karahan, artistically, historically and politically contextualizing the films, and will be followed by a Zoom discussion and Q&A session led by invited guest scholars of Anthropology, Film Studies, Political Science, Women and Gender Studies or film directors themselves. The students and interested Stanford community will be provided with the streaming links for the movies at the beginning of each week to screen them on their own time, and the discussion sessions will be held on the scheduled class time on Zoom. All films will be in Turkish with English subtitles. Same as: COMPLIT 302

COMPLIT 104A. Voice, Dissent, Resistance: Antiracist and Antifascist Discourse and Action. 5 Units.

The rise of right-wing movements in the United States and in Europe signal a resurgence of nativist and ethno-nationalist politics that rely heavily on racism to advance fascist politics. This course will explore these phenomena both in terms of their historical development and their present-day appearances. The goal will be to understand how those involved in anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles have invented, created, and practiced discourses and actions that attempt to resist racism and fascism, and to evaluate their merits and weaknesses. Historical, philosophic, journalistic, and creative writings will be the basis of study. This is an experimental course driven by the urgency of recent political events. Students should have open minds and be willing to help shape the course. Same as: COMPLIT 304

COMPLIT 107A. Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science. 3 Units.

What contributions did Arabic and Islamic civilization make to the history of science? This course will read key moments in Greek and Islamic science and philosophy and ask questions about scientific method, philosophy, and religious belief. We will read Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Haytham, and Baha al-Din al-Amili, among others. What is the scientific method and is it universal across time and place? What is Islamic rationality? What is Greek rationality? Who commits to empiricism and who relies on inherited ideas? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/. Same as: CLASSICS 47 , HUMCORE 121

COMPLIT 111Q. Texts and Contexts: Spanish/English Literary Translation Workshop. 4 Units.

This course introduces students to the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary to translate literary texts from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. Students will workshop and revise a translation project throughout the quarter. Topics may include comparative syntaxes, morphologies, and semantic systems; register and tone; audience; the role of translation in the development of languages and cultures; and the ideological and socio-cultural forces that shape translations. Same as: DLCL 111Q , ILAC 111Q

COMPLIT 115. Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye. 3-5 Units.

How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" Lolita evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita the film, and Pale Fire, to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces Lolita and Pale Fire. Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian. Same as: COMPLIT 315 , SLAVIC 156 , SLAVIC 356

COMPLIT 118. The Gothic in Literature and Culture. 3-5 Units.

This course introduces students to the major features of Gothic narrative, a form that emerges at the same time as the Enlightenment, and that retains its power into our present. Surveying Gothic novels, as well as novellas and short stories with Gothic elements, we will learn about the defining features of the form and investigate its meaning in the cultural imagination. Gothic narratives, the course will suggest, examine the power of irrational forces in a secular age: forces that range from barbaric human practices, to supernatural activity, to the re-enchantment of modern existence. We will also consider the importance for Gothic authors and readers of the relation among narrative. spectacle and the visual arts. Primary works may include Ann Radcliffe's <e>The Italian, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey</e>, Victor Hugo's <e>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</e>, E.T.A. Hoffman's <e>The Sandman</e>, Mary Shelly's <e>Frankenstein</e>, and Edgar Allen Poe's <e>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</e>. We may also do a section on vampires, including Bram Stoker's <e>Dracula</e>, and its remake in film by F.W. Murnau and Werner Herzog. Critical selections by Edmund Burke, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Terry Castle, among others. Same as: ENGLISH 138E

COMPLIT 119. The Turkish Novel. 3-5 Units.

Designed as a survey, this course will examine the modern Turkish novel from the early days of the Republic to the present day. We will examine the aesthetic, political, and social aspects of the Turkish novel by reading major samples of national, historical, philosophical, village, and modernist novels. Discussions will be conducted in English. Students will have an option to read the primary sources in Turkish or in English. Contact Burcu Karahan for meeting time and place. Same as: COMPLIT 319

COMPLIT 121. Poems, Poetry, Worlds. 5 Units.

What is poetry? How does it speak in many voices to questions of philosophy, history, society, and personal experience? Why does it matter? The reading and interpretation of poetry in crosscultural comparison as experience, invention, form, sound, knowledge, and part of the world. The readings address poetry of several cultures (Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Occitania, Peru) in comparative relation to that of the English-speaking world, and in light of classic and recent theories of poetry. Same as: DLCL 141

COMPLIT 122. Literature as Performance. 5 Units.

The purpose of this course is to re-embed great dramatic texts in a history and theory of performance, using Bay Area and Stanford productions, audiovisual materials, and your own trans-medial projects to help us reconceive theater off the page, moving in time, space and thought. Same as: DLCL 142

COMPLIT 123. The Novel and the World. 5 Units.

The European Design of the Novel. The course will trace the development of the modern literary genre par excellence through some of its great milestones from the 17th century to the present. Works by Cervantes, Austen, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Queirós, Kafka, Woolf, Verga, and Rodoreda. Same as: DLCL 143

COMPLIT 124C. Napoleon. 3-5 Units.

Who was Napoleon? A fierce patriot or a traitor of the Revolution? A beloved emperor or a merciless dictator? There is not one single or indeed final answer to these questions: in this course we shall learn to make a distinction between the historical figure (his life and actual deeds) and the literary character (how his detractors or enthusiasts represented him). We will explore the multi-faceted representations of Napoleon with a particular focus on his portraits in poems, novels, essays, paintings and sculptures. The syllabus will include readings and excerpts from Balzac, Stendhal, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Manzoni, Foscolo, Calvino. Taught in English. Same as: FRENCH 124A

COMPLIT 127B. The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story. 3-5 Units.

Short stories from Israel, the US and Europe including works by Agnon, Kafka, Keret, Castel-Bloom, Kashua, Singer, Benjamin, Freud, biblical myths and more. The class will engage with questions related to the short story as a literary form and the history of the short story. Reading and discussion in English. Optional: special section with readings and discussions in Hebrew. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade. In AY 2020-21, a 'CR' grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement. Same as: JEWISHST 147B

COMPLIT 128. Literature of the former Yugoslavia. 3-5 Units.

What do Slavoj Zizek, Novak Djokovic, Marina Abramovic, Melania Trump, Emir Kusturica, and the captain of the Croatian national football team have in common? All were born in a country that no longer exists, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). This course will introduce masterpieces of Yugoslav literature and film, examining the social and political complexities of a multicultural society that collapsed into civil war (i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s. In English with material available in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian. Same as: REES 128 , SLAVIC 128

COMPLIT 131. Coming of Age in the Middle Ages. 3-5 Units.

It is often said that adolescence is a modern invention, and that people in earlier times expected children to act like adults as soon as they were physically able to do so. But the literature that survives from the European Middle Ages reveals a deep preoccupation with questions of how to form socially-competent individuals. What role did literature play in disseminating norms and models for adult behavior? This course introduces students to a range of works from 1100 to 1500CE that portray the process of becoming an adult or prescribe what it should look like: behavior manuals, treatises, epic narratives, romances, and literary 'letters' from parents to children. Students gain familiarity with a range of historic genres and develop skills in close reading and critical analysis. Readings are in English.

COMPLIT 132A. Nostalgia as a Global Form. 3 Units.

The course will explore the waves of nostalgia that have swept the globe in the past decades. We will look at contemporary expressions of nostalgia across different media, including literature, cinema, art, spoken word, street art and social media. We will examine nostalgic narratives related to a variety of cultural phenomena such as exile, migration, colonialism, globalization and technological advancements. We will focus on case studies from various countries such as Israel, the former Soviet Union, India and the UK, and explore them in their specific cultural context, while also exploring nostalgia as a global trend of Late Modernity. Our readings will be accompanied by fundamental theoretical texts on nostalgia, including writings by Svetlana Boym, Fred Davis, Zygmunt Bauman and others.

COMPLIT 133A. Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean. 4 Units.

This course explores texts and films from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will explore the connections between Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the Caribbean through both foundational and contemporary works while considering their engagement with the historical and political contexts in which they were produced. This course will also serve to improve students' speaking and writing skills in French while sharpening their knowledge of the linguistic and conceptual tools needed to conduct literary analysis. The diverse topics discussed in the course will include national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Djibril Tamsir Niane, Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Patrick Chamoiseau, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Dani Laferrière and Ousmane Sembène. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement. Same as: AFRICAAM 133 , AFRICAST 132 , COMPLIT 233A , CSRE 133E , FRENCH 133 , JEWISHST 143

COMPLIT 134A. Classics of Persian Literature. 3-5 Units.

Why do poems that were written hundreds of years ago still capture the imagination? How is love configured in the texts of a distant culture? Who sings the tales and who are the heroes? This course offers an introduction to the central works of Persian literature, from the 10th century to the present, across the genres of epic, romance, lyric, and novel. As we become acquainted with texts from a millennium of literary history, we will touch upon questions of performance (music and dance), storytelling, profane and divine love, the nature of spiritual quests, the development of narrative and poetic form, the formal and ethical aspects of translation, and, finally, the meaning of modernity in a non-Western context. Readings include: the Book of Kings by Ferdowsi (d.1020); Layla and Majnun by Nezami (d.1209); The Conference of the Birds by Attar (d.1221); selections from the Masnavi and Divan of Rumi (d.1273); the Rose Garden by Sa`di (d.1292), selections from the Divan of Hafez (d.1390); The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (d.1951); and selected modern poems. Taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 234

COMPLIT 138. Literature and the Brain. 3 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?. Same as: COMPLIT 238 , ENGLISH 118 , ENGLISH 218 , FRENCH 118 , FRENCH 218 , PSYC 126 , PSYCH 118F

COMPLIT 139A. Jaguars and Labyrinths: A Survey of South American Short Fiction. 3-5 Units.

10 South American short stories in 10 weeks. We will read tales of jaguars and octopuses, labyrinthic cities and eerie parks, magicians and mediums, time loops and spatial stretches. Each of the works will offer a unique insight into South American literature, history, and culture. We will focus on 20th and 21st century stories that deal with the future of techno-science, the interaction between Western and indigenous worldviews, the intersection of fiction and reality, the relation between the human and the non-human, and the ecological planetary crisis. Authors include Clarice Lispector, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, João Guimarães Rosa, Vilém Flusser, and Conceição Evaristo. Taught in English, no previous knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese required. Note: Students with a background in Portuguese and/or Spanish may use this course as a platform to enhance their linguistic proficiency and their close-reading skills in the target languages. Same as: ILAC 139

COMPLIT 142. The Literature of the Americas. 5 Units.

A wide-ranging overview of the literatures of the Americas inncomparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures as well as the distinctive national and cultural elements of a diverse array of primary works. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes--the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, magic realism, Noigandres--in unaccustomed conversation with each other. Same as: AMSTUD 142 , CSRE 142 , ENGLISH 172E

COMPLIT 142B. Translating Japan, Translating the West. 3-4 Units.

Translation lies at the heart of all intercultural exchange. This course introduces students to the specific ways in which translation has shaped the image of Japan in the West, the image of the West in Japan, and Japan's self-image in the modern period. What texts and concepts were translated by each side, how, and to what effect? No prior knowledge of Japanese language necessary. Same as: JAPAN 121 , JAPAN 221

COMPLIT 145. Reflection on the Other: The Arab Israeli Conflict in Literature and Film. 3-5 Units.

How literary works outside the realm of Western culture struggle with questions such as identity, minority, and the issue of the Other. How the Arab is viewed in Hebrew literature, film and music and how the Jew is viewed in Palestinian works in Hebrew or Arabic (in translation to English). Historical, political, and sociological forces that have contributed to the shaping of these writers' views. Guest lectures about the Jew in Palestinian literature and music. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take course for a Letter Grade. Same as: AMELANG 126 , JEWISHST 106

COMPLIT 147. Facts and Fictions: Writing the New World in Early Modernity. 3-5 Units.

How was knowledge about the colonies in America established? What was the role of fiction in this process? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of literature and history. It provides students with an overview of historical and fictional writings that shaped the early modern imagination about colonial spaces in Europe and the Americas. Students will look into the process whereby poets and novelists made unfamiliar places more familiar to their European and American audiences, as well as into how historians used myths and fictions to build knowledge about those foreign places and cultures. Readings span fictional prose, histories, epic poems, philosophical writings, engravings and maps. Authors may include St. Teresa, Camões, Cervantes, Inca Garcilaso, Catalina de Erauso, Mendes Pinto, Bacon, Sor Juana, Antonio Vieira, and Margaret Cavendish. Students will practice close reading techniques and historical analysis, writing papers combining the two. Texts will be available in English. Same as: 1500-1700

COMPLIT 148. Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts. 2-4 Units.

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a letter grade or `CR¿ grade satisfies the Ways requirement. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade. Same as: COMPLIT 267 , FRENCH 260A , MUSIC 146N , MUSIC 246N

COMPLIT 149. The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures. 3-5 Units.

Focus is given to emergent theories of culture and on comparative literary and cultural studies. How do we treat culture as a social force? How do we go about reading the presence of social contexts within cultural texts? How do ethno-racial writers re-imagine the nation as a site with many "cognitive maps" in which the nation-state is not congruent with cultural identity? How do diaspora and border narratives/texts strive for comparative theoretical scope while remaining rooted in specific local histories. Note: This course must be taken for a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit. In AY 2020-21, a "CR" grade will satisfy the WAYS requirement. Same as: CSRE 149 , ILAC 149

COMPLIT 154A. Film & Philosophy. 3 Units.

Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Same as: ENGLISH 154F , FRENCH 154 , ITALIAN 154 , PHIL 193C , PHIL 293C

COMPLIT 155A. The Mafia in Society, Film, and Fiction. 4 Units.

The mafia has become a global problem through its infiltration of international business, and its model of organized crime has spread all over the world from its origins in Sicily. At the same time, film and fiction remain fascinated by a romantic, heroic vision of the mafia. Compares both Italian and American fantasies of the Mafia to its history and impact on Italian and global culture. Taught in English. Same as: ITALIAN 155

COMPLIT 159. Asian American Film and Popular Culture. 4 Units.

Tracing the evolution of Asian American cultural representations from the silent film era through the first generation of Asian American YouTube stars, this course examines the economic, political, and cultural influence of Asian American screen images on U.S. society. Through a focus on both mainstream and independent productions, we discuss the work of Asian American actors, audience members, media producers, consumers, and activists. Possible films and TV shows to be discussed include The Cheat (1915), Shanghai Express (1932), Flower Drum Song (1961), Chan is Missing (1983) Fall of the I Hotel (1983), Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1989), Sa-I-Gu, (1992), Saving Face (2004) Crazy Rich Asians (2018), To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018), TV episodes of the Mindy Project, and work by early Asian American YouTube stars including Michelle Phan, HappySlip, and KevJumba. Same as: AMSTUD 115 , ASNAMST 115

COMPLIT 161E. Narrative and Narrative Theory. 5 Units.

An introduction to stories and storytelling--that is, to narrative. What is narrative? When is narrative fictional and when non-fictional? How is it done, word by word, sentence by sentence? Must it be in prose? Can it be in pictures? How has storytelling changed over time? Focus on various forms, genres, structures, and characteristics of narrative. nEnglish majors must take this class for 5 units. Same as: ENGLISH 161

COMPLIT 178. Metamorphosis and Desire: Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton. 1-5 Unit.

A recurring motif in the myths of poetry's origins is a metamorphosis provoked by erotic desire, from the nymph Daphne transformed into a laurel tree as she escapes the god Apollo to the bard Orpheus dismembered by impassioned Maenads. This course explores the entanglement of these themes in Renaissance verse across plays by Shakespeare, epic poetry by Spenser and Milton, and narrative poems by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries in continental Europe. We will situate these works amid critical perspectives on desire, love, and gendered subjectivity in early modernity and against the classical background of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses', whose tales of eroticism and transformation shaped so much of Renaissance literary and artistic production.

COMPLIT 179. Rumi: Rhythms of Creation. 3-5 Units.

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the thought, poetics, and legacy of one of the towering figures of Persian letters, Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273). After discussing the literary ancestors (Sana'i, `Attar), we will trace the mystico-philosophical foundations of Rumi's thought through close readings of the lyrical (Divan-e Shams) and narrative poems (Mathnavi-ye ma`navi), the prose works (Fihe ma fihe), and the letters. Literary analyses will be followed by an exploration of music as a structuring principle in Rumi's work and the role of sama` (spiritual audition) as a poetic practice. From there, we will look at the ritual and symbolism of the dervish dance, the foundation of the Mevlevi order, the interconnectedness of space (architecture) and poetic form that is exemplified in the Mevlevi dervish lodges, and the literary and philosophical echoes of Rumi in Ottoman culture, above all Seyh Galip's masterpiece Hüsn ü Ask (1782). The course will be complemented by digressions on Rumi in contemporary Persian and Turkish music, including live musical performances. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 249

COMPLIT 181. Philosophy and Literature. 3-5 Units.

What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department. Same as: CLASSICS 42 , ENGLISH 81 , FRENCH 181 , GERMAN 181 , ILAC 181 , ITALIAN 181 , PHIL 81 , SLAVIC 181

COMPLIT 183. Self-Impersonation: Autobiography, Memoir, Fictional Autobiography. 5 Units.

This course will examine the intersecting genres of fiction, autobiography, and memoir. Topics will include the literary construction of selfhood and its constituent categories; the role of language in the development of the self; the relational nature of the self (vis-à-vis the family, "society," nation, God); the cultural status of "individuality"; conceptions of childhood; and the role of individual testimony in our understanding of family, religious and cultural identity. In addition to short theoretical works, authors may include: Marguerite Duras; Elena Ferrante; Sam Shepard; Gertrude Stein; Karl Ove Knausgaard; Marcel Proust; Vladimir Nabokov; Primo Levi; Roland Barthes; and J. M. Coetzee. Same as: ENGLISH 183E

COMPLIT 184. READING RUMI. 3-5 Units.

Introduction to the work of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) in the original Persian. Through close readings of the poems and prose texts we will explore the ways in which Rumi's thought informs his poetic language and continues to resonate with us today. Topics to be touched upon in connection with the primary texts include: Islamic philosophy; theories of literature in the Arabo-Persian world; poetic genres in medieval Persian literature; meter, rhyme, and metaphor; and, finally, fundamental questions of translation and translatability. Special emphasis will be placed on understanding Rumi within the historical context. Readings in Persian. Two years of Persian at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Persian track in the MELLAC minor.

COMPLIT 188. In Search of the Holy Grail: Percival's Quest in Medieval Literature. 3-5 Units.

This course focuses on one of the most famous inventions of the Middle Ages: the Holy Grail. The grail - a mysterious vessel with supernatural properties - is first mentioned in Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," but the story is soon rewritten by authors who alter the meaning of both the grail and the quest. By reading three different versions, we will explore how they respond differently to major topics in medieval culture and relevant to today: romantic love, family ties, education, moral guilt, and spiritual practice. The texts are: Chrétien de Troyes' "Perceval," Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival," and the anonymous "Queste del Saint Graal." All readings will be available in English. Same as: COMPLIT 388 , GERMAN 188 , GERMAN 388

COMPLIT 194. Independent Research. 1-5 Unit.

COMPLIT 199. Senior Seminar. 5 Units.

What is criticism? When we interpret literature today, are we fulfilling the critical vocation? What are the alternatives? We consider the origins of the idea of the critic in nineteenth-century culture, its development in the twentieth century, and its current exponents, revisionists, and dissenters. Senior seminar for Comparative Literature Senior majors only.

COMPLIT 204A. Digital Humanities Across Borders. 3-5 Units.

What if you could take a handwritten manuscript, or a pile of 100 books, and map all the locations that are referenced, or see which characters interact with one another, or how different translators adapted the same novel -- without reading through each text to manually compile those lists? Digital humanities tools and methods make it possible, but most tools and tutorials assume the texts are in English. If you work with text (literature, historical documents, fanfic, tweets, or any other textual material) in languages other than English, DLCL 204 is for you. In 1:1 consultation with the instructor, you'll chart your own path based on the language you're working with, the format of the text, and what questions you'd like to try to answer. No previous programming or other technical experience is required, just a reading knowledge of a language other than English (modern or historical). We'll cover the whole process of using digital tools, from start to finish: text acquisition, text enrichment, and analysis/visualization, all of which have applications in a wide range of job contexts within and beyond academia. You'll also have the chance to hear from scholars who are doing digital humanities work in non-English languages, about their experience working across the technical and linguistic borders within their discipline, and within the broader DH community. While this course will be online and primarily asynchronous, there will be opportunities for students to meet synchronously throughout the quarter in language- and tool-based affinity groups. Same as: DLCL 204 , ENGLISH 204

COMPLIT 207. Why is Climate Change Un-believable? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Action. 5 Units.

The science is there. The evidence is there. Why do people still refuse to recognize one of the greatest threats to human existence? Why can't, why won't they believe the truth? The time to act is slowly evaporating before our eyes. To answer this question requires an interdisciplinary approach that investigates many of the ways global warming has been analyzed, imagined, represented, and evaluated. Thus we welcome students of any major willing to embark on this common project and to participate fully. We will challenge ourselves to move between and amongst texts that are familiar and those we will bring into the conversation. There will be much that we miss, but we hope this course will at least begin a serious conversation in a unique way. The course will run on two parallel tracks: on the one hand, we will delve into textual representations and arguments; on the other hand, we will attempt to develop a sensibility for how climate change makes itself manifest in the physical world through a series of workshops and site visits in the Bay Area. The first track of this course will center on the discussion of three science fiction novels: The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The second track of this course is comprised of a series of workshops that aims to develop spatial and material literacy relevant to climate change awareness. It will engage topics such as: scale, atmosphere, measure, material reciprocity, and garbage repurposing. One of the primary goals of this course is to not only understand the problem of climate change, but also how to best act upon it. Thus the required final assignment for this class can be a recommendation for action based on a critical review of the topic of climate change and already existing activism. It can take the form of a paper, a video, an installation art project, a podcast, etc.. But in all cases your work must analytically engage the specific medium of literary expression.

COMPLIT 208. The Cosmopolitan Introvert: Modern Greek Poetry and its Itinerants. 3-5 Units.

Overview of the last century of Greek poetry with emphasis on modernism. Approximately 20 modern Greek poets (starting with Cavafy and Nobel laureates Seferis and Elytis and moving to more modern writers) are read and compared to other major European and American writers. The themes of the cosmopolitan itinerant and of the introvert, often co-existing in the same poet, connect these idiosyncratic voices. The course uses translations and requires no knowledge of Greek but original texts can also be shared with interested students. Note: The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

COMPLIT 210. Poetic Forms. 4 Units.

A comparative discussion of the development and history of major poetic forms, from the Sonnet to Terza Rima and to prose poems. Special attention will be given discussing different rhythms and rhymes, and to translating forms. The readings will include poems by French, Yiddish, English/American and Hebrew writers. Part of the work will include experimenting with writing and/or translating poems that follow the poetic forms that are discussed in class.

COMPLIT 218A. Japanese Performance Traditions. 2-5 Units.

Japanese performance traditions present a distinct challenge to modern Western concepts of gender, performance, self-expression, and even the human body itself. This course introduces the socio-historical underpinnings of these traditions, and invites students to engage in a fundamental questioning of the relationship between performance, gender, and cross-cultural interpretation. This course is designed for students with interests in performance, gender, and media as well as those with an interest in Japan. Genres covered include Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, and Butoh. Same as: JAPAN 141 , JAPAN 241

COMPLIT 220. Renaissance Africa. 3-5 Units.

Literature and Portuguese expansion into Africa during the sixteenth century. Emphasis on forms of exchange between Portuguese and Africans in Morocco, Angola/Congo, South Africa, the Swahili Coast, and Ethiopia. Readings in Portuguese and English. Taught in English. Same as: AFRICAST 220E , ILAC 220E , ILAC 320E

COMPLIT 222A. Myth and Modernity. 3-5 Units.

Masters of German 20th- and 21st-Century literature and philosophy as they present aesthetic innovation and confront the challenges of modern technology, social alienation, manmade catastrophes, and imagine the future. Readings include Nietzsche, Freud, Rilke, Musil, Brecht, Kafka, Doeblin, Benjamin, Juenger, Arendt, Musil, Mann, Adorno, Celan, Grass, Bachmann, Bernhardt, Wolf, and Kluge. Taught in English. Note for German Studies grad students: GERMAN 322 will fulfill the grad core requirement since GERMAN 332 is not being offered this year. NOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Eshel's consent. Please contact him directly at [email protected] and answer these 2 questions: "Why do you want to take this course?" and "What do you think you can add to the discussion?" Applications will be considered in the order in which they were received. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. Same as: GERMAN 222 , GERMAN 322 , JEWISHST 242G , JEWISHST 342

COMPLIT 225. Word and Image. 3-5 Units.

What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century. Same as: ARTHIST 265A , ARTHIST 465A , ITALIAN 265 , ITALIAN 365

COMPLIT 228. Critical Translation Studies. 3-5 Units.

Seminal works of translation theory and scholarship from a wide array of disciplinary, regional, linguistic, and historical perspectives. Readings are in English, but students must have at least two years of training or the equivalent in another language, or permission from the instructor. (Important note: Students who wish to count this course toward requirements in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures must have permission from their EALC advisor.). Same as: JAPAN 123 , JAPAN 223

COMPLIT 229B. Camus. 4-5 Units.

"The admirable conjunction of a man, of an action, and of a work" for Sartre, "the ideal husband of contemporary letters" for Susan Sontag, reading "Camus's fiction as an element in France's methodically constructed political geography of Algeria" for Edward Said, Camus embodies the very French figure of the "intellectuel engagé," or public intellectual. From his birth in 1913 into a poor European family in Algeria to the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, from the Mediterranean world to Paris, Camus engaged in the great ethical and political battles of his time, often embracing controversial positions. Through readings and films, we will explore his multiple legacies. Readings from Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Assia Djebar, Kamel Daoud, Mouloud Feraoun, Alice Kaplan, Edward Said, Edwidge Danticat. Students will work on their production of written French, in addition to speaking French and reading comprehension. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement. Same as: CSRE 129 , FRENCH 129 , HISTORY 235F

COMPLIT 231B. Cultural Hybridity in Central-Eastern Europe. 2-5 Units.

Historically shaped by shifting borders and mixing of various cultures and languages, identities in-between have been in abundance in Central-Eastern Europe. This course offers a comprehensive study of the oeuvre of several major Central-European authors of modernity: the Ukrainian-Russian Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), the Czech-German-Jewish Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Austrian-Galician-Jewish Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), the Ukrainian-Galician Olha Kobylyans¿ka (1863-1942), the Russian-German Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), the Jewish-Polish-Galician Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), and the Polish-Argentinean Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969). Performing their selves in two or more cultures, these writers were engaged in identity games and produced hybrid texts with which they intervened into the major culture as others. In the course, we will apply post-structuralist and post-colonial concepts such as minor language, heterotopia, in-betweenness, mimicry, indeterminacy, exile, displacement, and transnationalism to the study of the writers oeuvres. We will also master the sociolinguistic analysis of such multi-lingual phenomena as self-translation, code-switching, and calquing and examine various versions of the same text to uncover the palimpsest of hybrid identities. Same as: SLAVIC 160 , SLAVIC 360

COMPLIT 233A. Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean. 4 Units.

COMPLIT 234. Classics of Persian Literature. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 236. Literature and Transgression. 3-5 Units.

Close reading and analysis of erotic-sexual and aesthetic-stylistic transgression in selected works by such authors as Baudelaire, Wilde, Flaubert, Rachilde, Schnitzler, Kafka, Joyce, Barnes, Eliot, Bataille, Burroughs, Thomas Mann, Kathy Acker, as well as in recent digital literature and online communities. Along with understanding the changing cultural, social, and political contexts of what constitutes "transgression" or censorship, students will gain knowledge of influential theories of transgression and conceptual limits by Foucault, Blanchot, and contemporary queer and feminist writers. Same as: FEMGEN 236

COMPLIT 236A. Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge. 3-5 Units.

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race. Same as: AFRICAAM 236B , CSRE 140S , FRENCH 236 , FRENCH 336 , HISTORY 245C , URBANST 140F

COMPLIT 237. Fascism after Fascism. 3-5 Units.

When World War II ended, most of the states that described themselves as "fascist" ended with it. Nevertheless, fascism haunted postwar democracy as an ever-present threat. The question of what exactly had characterized fascism, and what parts of it persisted within liberal democracies themselves, were continuously and contentiously debated. This question has emerged all the more forcefully in recent years as "illiberal," or "right-wing populist," movements and governments have begun to question the basic premises of liberal democracy. What was fascism, and what would it mean for it to return? This course considers writings by philosophers, historians, journalists and writers, and moves from early anti-fascist writings to critiques of online movements and neo-reactionaries. Same as: GERMAN 237

COMPLIT 238. Literature and the Brain. 3 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?. Same as: COMPLIT 138 , ENGLISH 118 , ENGLISH 218 , FRENCH 118 , FRENCH 218 , PSYC 126 , PSYCH 118F

COMPLIT 239. Queer Theory. 3-5 Units.

Do we really need a theory in order to be queer? Queer Theory emerged in response to feminist thought, and the study of the history of sexuality, building on their insights, but also uncovering their blind spots. Without Queer Theory, few of the discourses around desire, power and gender identity that we take for granted on college campuses today would exist. Yet there is also a real risk that reality has left the theory behind. In this course, we will try to answer the question: What do we need queer theory for? Do we still need it? And if so, of what kind? The course is designed to introduce students to core texts of queer theory, and to connect them to current debates, be this around trans rights, the representation of homosexuality or the fight against campus sexual assault. Same as: FEMGEN 239 , GERMAN 239

COMPLIT 243. The Age of Beloveds: Inflections of Desire in Persian and Ottoman Literature. 3-5 Units.

This course follows the trajectory of Islamicate love poetry from its emergence in medieval Persian letters to the court of the Ottoman Sultans. Our point of departure will be the emergence of a unique doctrine of love in Persian literature between the 11th and the 14th centuries, from the confluence of courtly, romantic and mystical ideas. Tracing the gradual imbrication of sacred and profane desire, we will study the advice on marital love in early Mirrors for Princes, the exaltation of heterosexual love in romances, the recasting of love in the context of a mystical erotology, and, finally, the enduring legacy of this discourse of love in ghazal poetry. We will then explore the theme of love, oscillating between heterosexual, homoerotic, and mystical in Ottoman lyric poetry by Sufi, Sultan, and woman poets, spreading over four hundred years until the 19th century. In looking at these texts, we will touch upon questions regarding the ideals and realities of love in Persian and Ottoman society, the protean nature and all-encompassing scope of longing in Perso-Ottoman letters, and the metaphysical implications of the hierarchical structure underlying the Persianate codes of love. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 243A. From Idol to Equal: Changing Images of Love in 20th-Century Persian and Turkish Literature. 3-5 Units.

This course will explore the changing images of love in pivotal works of modern Persian and Turkish literature. Classes will include close readings and discussions of poems, short stories, and plays with particular attention to the constellation of lover/beloved, the theme of romantic love, and the cultural and historical background of these elements. Our starting point will be the adoption of the novel as a form in the late 19th century. From there, we will explore different figurations of love in key texts of the 20th century up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978) and the coup d'état in Turkey (1980). Themes will include the end of empire and the demise of the concubine, the portrayal of the homeland as lover, secularization and the lifting of the veil, the figure of the female pioneer, the conflict of western and eastern morals, the prostitute as a new paradigm, the emergence of female writers, and avantgarde conceptions of love. Open to undergraduate and graduate students. All readings and discussions will be in English.

COMPLIT 243B. Advanced Readings in Arabic Literature and Science II. 3-5 Units.

Advanced reading in Arabic literature (adab) and science (`ilm) for graduate students. Open to undergraduates with four years or more of Arabic.

COMPLIT 243G. Advanced Readings in Arabic Literature and Science I. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 244. Modern Persian Poetry. 3-5 Units.

Drawing on poems, songs, and films in addition to theoretical texts, this course retraces the struggle for a modern poetic language in Iran from the time of the Constitutional Revolution (1905/6) to the Islamic Revolution (1978/79), and beyond. Topics include: the unresolved relationship between tradition and modernity; poetry as a vehicle of enlightenment and revolution; the quest for a new poetic expression of love; the emerging possibility of a female voice in Persian poetry; the construction of historical memory through literature; responses to the experience of modern alienation; the figure of the poet as dissident; and the subversive force of poetic form itself. Poets to be read are Iraj, Bahar, Nima, Shamlu, Sepehri, Akhavan Sales, Forugh, and Esma'il Kho'i as well as some non-canonical figures. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 245. Introductory Ottoman Turkish. 1-3 Unit.

This course is an introduction to basic orthographic conventions and grammatical characteristics of Ottoman Turkish through readings in printed material from the 19th and 20th centuries. Selected readings will range from poetry to prose, from state documents, newspaper and journal articles to reference works. Course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Prior knowledge of modern Turkish is required (Completion of COMPLIT 248A , COMPLIT 248B Reading Turkish I&II and COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish OR AMELANG 184 & 185 First & Second Year Turkish OR a solid knowledge of Turkish grammar.) Please contact the instructor for more information.

COMPLIT 245A. Arabic Cultures/Conversations. 1 Unit.

Arabic Cultures in Conversations. We will meet once a week for an hour to talk in Arabic about poetry, music, and culture.

COMPLIT 248A. Reading Turkish I. 2-4 Units.

Reading Turkish I is an introduction to the structures of the Turkish language necessary for reading. It is designed to develop reading competence in Turkish for graduate students. Undergraduates should consult the instructor before enrolling for the course. Essential grammar, syntax points, vocabulary, and reading skills will be emphasized. This is not a traditional language course that takes an integrated four-skill approach; since the goal is an advanced reading level, the focus is mainly on grammar, reading comprehension, and translation. With full concentration on reading, we will be able to cover advanced material in a short amount of time. The course is conducted in English, but students will be exposed to the sounds of Turkish, and will have the opportunity to practice pronunciation in class. NOTE: COMPLIT 248A Reading Turkish I is followed by COMPLIT 248B Reading Turkish II in the Winter and COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish for Research in the Spring.

COMPLIT 248B. Reading Turkish II. 2-4 Units.

This course is the continuation of COMPLIT 248A Reading Turkish I, which served as an introduction to the structures of the Turkish language necessary for reading. It is designed to develop reading competence in Turkish for graduate students. Undergraduates should consult the instructor before enrolling for the course. Essential grammar, syntax points, vocabulary, and reading skills will be emphasized. This is not a traditional language course that takes an integrated four-skill approach; it focuses only on reading, and as a result we will be able to cover advanced material in a short amount of time. This course is conducted in English, but students will be exposed to the sounds of Turkish, and will have the opportunity to practice pronunciation in class. COMPLIT 248B is followed by COMPLIT 248C Advanced Turkish for Research in the Spring.

COMPLIT 248C. Advanced Turkish-English Translation. 2-4 Units.

This course is the continuation of COMPLIT 248A Reading Turkish I and COMPLIT 248B Reading Turkish II. Refining advanced grammar, reading, and translation skills in modern Turkish through intensive reading and translation from a variety of source texts. Emphasis on Turkish cultural, historical, literary, and political texts depending on students' academic interests. Prerequisites COMPLIT 248A & B or prior knowledge of Turkish and consultation with the instructor is necessary.

COMPLIT 249. Rumi: Rhythms of Creation. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 249A. The Iranian Cinema: Image and Meaning. 1-3 Unit.

This course will focus on the analysis of ten Iranian films with the view of placing them in discourse on the semiotics of Iranian art and culture. The course will also look at the influence of a wide array of cinematic traditions from European, American, and Asian masters on Iranian cinema. Note: To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a letter grade or 'CR' grade satisfies the Ways requirement. Same as: GLOBAL 249A

COMPLIT 249B. Iranian Cinema in Diaspora. 1-3 Unit.

Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: to satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a letter grade or 'CR' grade satisfies the Ways requirement. Same as: GLOBAL 249B

COMPLIT 249C. Contemporary Iranian Theater. 1-3 Unit.

Today, Iranian plays both in traditional and contemporary styles are staged in theater festivals throughout the world and play their role in forming a universal language of theater which combine the heritages from countries in all five continents. Despite many obstacles, some Iranian plays have been translated into English and some prominent Iranian figures are successful stage directors outside Iran. Forty-six years ago when "Theater in Iran" (a monograph on the history of Iranian plays) by Bahram Beyzaie was first published, it put the then contemporary Iranian theater movement "which was altogether westernizing itself blindly" face to face with a new kind of self-awareness. Hence, today's generation of playwrights and stage directors in Iran, all know something of their theatrical heritage. In this course we will spend some class sessions on the history of theater in Iran and some class meetings will be concentrating on contemporary movements and present day playwrights. Given the dearth of visual documents, an attempt will be made to present a picture of Iranian theater to the student. Students are expected to read the recommended available translated plays of the contemporary Iranian playwrights and participate in classroom discussions. Note: to satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a letter grade or 'CR' grade satisfies the Ways requirement. Same as: GLOBAL 249C

COMPLIT 252A. Great Arabic Poetry. 3-5 Units.

Introduction to the canon of Arabic poetry from the sixth to the twenty-first century. Imru' al-Qays, al-Mutanabbi, Mahmud Darwish, and more. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor.

COMPLIT 252B. Great Arabic Prose. 3-5 Units.

Introduction to the best Arabic Literature from the 790s to 2016. Al-Jahiz, Naguib Mahfouz, and much more. Readings in Arabic. Two years of Arabic at Stanford or equivalent required. Counts for the Arabic Track in the MELLAC Minor. Note: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for WAYS credit.

COMPLIT 257. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.

What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.". Same as: COMPLIT 357A , FEMGEN 257X , FEMGEN 357X , FRENCH 257 , FRENCH 357 , ITALIAN 257 , ITALIAN 357

COMPLIT 258A. Existentialism, from Moral Quest to Novelistic Form. 3-5 Units.

This seminar intends to follow the development of Existentialism from its genesis to its literary expressions in the European postwar. The notions of defining commitment, of moral ambiguity, the project of the self, and the critique of humanism will be studied in selected texts by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Unamuno, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Joan Sales. Same as: ILAC 211 , ILAC 311

COMPLIT 263. A History of Silence in Literature. 3-5 Units.

An analysis of theological and mystical texts as well as secular works of poetry and prose, from the Middle Ages to the present, exploring both the specific nature and the philosophical implications of silence in literature. Following a historical trajectory, we will first look at silence in medieval thought: as the necessary silence of apophasy in the works of negative theology and as a memory space in accounts of mystical ascension from the Islamic tradition (Bayazid Bastami). After this will come an examination of various moments in more recent literary history: the silence in face of the sublime that pervades the Romantics; the metaphysical uprooting of Büchner's Lenz (1839) that is captured in the paradox of a silence whose screams reach across the horizon; the fragmentation of Hölderlin's late poetry; the crisis of language described in Hofmannsthal's Chandos Letter (1902), prefiguring Wittgenstein; the dissolution of words as a "language of space devoid of dialogue" in Antonin Artaud; the straining away from existence and speech in Beckett's The Unnamable (1953); and, finally, the silence of the breath turn, as an ethical injunction after the Holocaust in Paul Celan. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.

COMPLIT 264. Crossing the Atlantic: Race and Identity in the African Diaspora. 3-5 Units.

This course interrogates the relationship between literature, culture, race and identity in the African diaspora. We will analyze racial discourses through literature, and various forms of cultural expression while examining the role of class and gender in these configurations. As we follow the historical and geographical trajectories of people of African descent in different parts of the world, students will explore literary and political movements with the objective of examining how race has been constructed and is performed in different regions of the diaspora. Our readings will take us from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana, France, and Senegal to Cuba, Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Topics discussed will include: Race, identity, gender, class, memory, oral tradition, Afro-Caribbean religions, Negrismo, Négritude, Antillanité, Créolité, colonialism, modernity and national belonging. Readings will include the works of: Jean Price-Mars, Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Frantz Fanon, Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejon, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edouard Glissant, among others. Taught in English. Same as: CSRE 265 , FRENCH 264

COMPLIT 264T. Race, Gender, Justice. 4 Units.

The question of justice animates some of the most influential classics and contemporary plays in the dramatic canon. We will examine the relationship between state laws and kinship obligations in Sophocles's Antigone. We will trace the transnational circulation of this text and its adaptations in Gambaro's Argentinian Antigona Furiosa, and Fugard and Kani's South African The Island. We will read Shakespeare's Othello and consider questions of racism, misogyny, and intimate partner violence, investigate the reverberations of these themes in the OJ Simpson trial, and explore its afterlife in Toni Morrison's Desdemona. We will take up questions of sexual violence via John Patrick Shanley's Doubt and Ariel Dorfman's Chilean classic, Death and the Maiden. We will examine themes of police brutality and racial vulnerability in Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight and Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When it Goes Down. Through close readings of plays, we will explore the inter-articulation of intimacy and violence, intimidation and transgression, vengeance and forgiveness within the context of larger struggles for gender and racial justice. We will read plays in light of contemporary reckonings with the US criminal justice system: the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the former appeals to the criminal justice system to restore victims¿ rights, the latter urges a thorough dismantling of the carceral state. How do we understand these divergent responses to augment or abolish punitive structures?. Same as: TAPS 264S

COMPLIT 267. Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts. 2-4 Units.

COMPLIT 268. Socialism: Theory, Literature, Practice. 3-5 Units.

The prospect of socialism has circulated in the cultural and political programs of many countries, and socialist programs have informed the real governance structures in some. This course examines some of the theoretical texts that have described socialism as well as critical responses. In addition, the treatment of socialism in literature will be discussed as well as considerations of the outcomes of institutionalized programs. Readings will include texts by authors such as Marx, Lenin, Hayek, Friedman, Koestler, Steinbeck, Wolf, Brauenig, Wright and others. Same as: GERMAN 268

COMPLIT 281E. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 381E , FRENCH 214 , FRENCH 314 , ITALIAN 214 , ITALIAN 314

COMPLIT 283A. Modern Notions of 'The Holy'. 3-5 Units.

This course explores the question, "What may we call 'holy' in the modern era?" by focusing on key writers and thinkers, who in various ways, and in different times raised this question: Friedrich Hölderlin, Hermann Cohen, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Else Lasker-Schüler, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Margarete Susman, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, and Judith Butler.nnThis course will be synchronous-conducted, but will also use an innovative, Stanford-developed, on-line platform called Poetic Thinking. Poetic Thinking allows students to share both their scholarly and creative work with each other. Based on the newest technology and beautifully designed, it will greatly enhance their course experience. Same as: COMPLIT 383A , GERMAN 283A , GERMAN 383A , RELIGST 283A , RELIGST 383A

COMPLIT 285. Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation. 3-5 Units.

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Fanon, Glissant, de Beauvoir, Meddeb, Duras. Prior knowledge of French language required. Same as: CSRE 285 , FRENCH 185 , FRENCH 285

COMPLIT 286. Forming the world: Pragmatism and Aesthetics. 3-5 Units.

This course will explore key pragmatist philosophical and theoretical approaches to literature, the visual arts, and music. How are human lives mediated by and through aesthetic experience, in the realm of the private as well as the public. Rather than positing a metaphysical idea of beauty, the thinkers and artists we engage ask how texts and artworks render us sensitive to our multifaceted contingencies, and how we may speak and write about them. Readings and viewings include R. W. Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson, Martin Heidegger, John Dewey, T. W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty, Terrence Malick, J. M. Coetzee, Bruno Latour, Marilynne Robinson, Nancy Fraser, Rita Felski, Tania Bruguera, Yivve Citton, Richard Moose, Cheryl Misak, and Shannon Sullivan, among others. Same as: GERMAN 286

COMPLIT 290A. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.

With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 390A , FRENCH 290 , FRENCH 390 , ITALIAN 290 , ITALIAN 390

COMPLIT 302. Film Series: Understanding Turkey Through Film. 1-2 Unit.

COMPLIT 304. Voice, Dissent, Resistance: Antiracist and Antifascist Discourse and Action. 5 Units.

COMPLIT 307. Proust and His World. 3-5 Units.

This course is a chance to read together Proust's <e>A la recherche du temps perdu</e>. This seven-volume novel is a stylistic tour de force, a brilliant meditation on defining elements of modernity, and an eccentric meander through art, history and the self. We will look closely at Proust's narrative edifice, and its poetic achievements. We will augment our reading of the novel with secondary selections that enable us to explore the many themes and questions raised by the work, ranging from fashion as a serious mode of modern expression to the phenomenology of memory to the decadence of French culture on the eve of the First World War. We'll look at the importance of Proust for structuralist and post-structuralist critics of the 1960s-1980s, whose paradigms continue to resonate today. We'll also consider together the interest and limits of a single-author course, and the value of absorptive, "slow" reading in our multi-tasking era. Supplementary readings might include selections from Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin, Henri Bergson, Gérard Genette, Gilles Deleuze, Eve Sedgwick, Maurice Samuels, and Caroline Weber. Reading knowledge of French strongly recommended. Same as: FRENCH 307A

COMPLIT 315. Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 316. Scholarship and Activism for Justice. 1 Unit.

In this weekly discussion group we will center on scholarship that addresses issues of social inequity and ways to act for change.

COMPLIT 319. The Turkish Novel. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 320A. Epic and Empire. 5 Units.

Focus is on Virgil's Aeneid and its influence, tracing the European epic tradition (Ariosto, Tasso, Camoes, Spenser, and Milton) to New World discovery and mercantile expansion in the early modern period. Same as: ENGLISH 314

COMPLIT 327. Genres of the Novel. 5 Units.

Provides students with an overview of some major genres in the history of the modern novel, along with major theorists in the critical understanding of the form. Novels might include works by Cervantes, Defoe, Lafayette, Radcliffe, Goethe, Scott, Balzac, Melville, and Woolf. Theorists might include Lukacs, Bakhtin, Jameson, Gallagher, Barthes, Kristeva, and Bourdieu. *PLEASE NOTE: Course for graduate students only.*. Same as: ENGLISH 327 , FRENCH 327

COMPLIT 334A. Concepts of Modernity I: Philosophical Foundations. 5 Units.

In the late eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant proclaimed his epoch to be "the genuine age of criticism." He went on to develop the critique of reason, which set the stage for many of the themes and problems that have preoccupied Western thinkers for the last two centuries. This fall quarter survey is intended as an introduction to these themes and problems. The general course layout draws equal parts on Koselleck's practice of "conceptual history" (Begriffsgeschichte) and on Jameson's "cognitive mapping." After consideration of an important, if often under-appreciated precedent (the baroque), we turn our attention to the conceptual triad of subject, reason and critique, followed by that of revolution, utopia and sovereignty. Authors may include Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lukács, and others. This course is the first of a two-course sequence. Priority to graduate students in MTL, ILAC, and English. Same as: ILAC 334A , MTL 334A

COMPLIT 334B. Concepts of Modernity II: Culture, Aesthetics, and Society in the Age of Globalization. 5 Units.

Emphasis on world-system theory, theories of coloniality and power, and aesthetic modernity/postmodernity in their relation to culture broadly understood. Same as: ENGLISH 334B , MTL 334B

COMPLIT 348. US-Mexico Border Fictions: Writing La Frontera, Tearing Down the Wall. 3-5 Units.

A border is a force of containment that inspires dreams of being overcome, crossed, and cursed; motivates bodies to climb over walls; and threatens physical harm. This graduate seminar places into comparative dialogue a variety of perspectives from Chicana/o and Mexican/Latin American literary studies. Our seminar will examine fiction and cultural productions that range widely, from celebrated Mexican and Chicano/a authors such as Carlos Fuentes (La frontera de cristal), Yuri Herrera (Señales que precederan al fin del mundo), Willivaldo Delgaldillo (La Virgen del Barrio Árabe), Américo Paredes (George Washington Gómez: A Mexico-Texan Novel), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), and Sandra Cisneros (Carmelo: Puro Cuento), among others, to musicians whose contributions to border thinking and culture have not yet been fully appreciated such as Herb Albert, Ely Guerra, Los Tigres del Norte, and Café Tacvba. Last but not least, we will screen and analyze Orson Welles' iconic border films Touch of Evil and Rodrigo Dorfman's Los Sueños de Angélica. Proposing a diverse and geographically expansive view of the US-Mexico border literary and cultural studies, this seminar links the work of these authors and musicians to struggles for land and border-crossing rights, anti-imperialist forms of trans-nationalism, and to the decolonial turn in border thinking or pensamineto fronterizo. It forces us to take into account the ways in which shifts in the nature of global relations affect literary production and negative aesthetics especially in our age of (late) post-industrial capitalism. Same as: ILAC 348

COMPLIT 353B. Hannah Arendt: Facing Totalitarianism. 3-5 Units.

Like hardly any other thinker of the modern age, Hannah Arendt's thought offers us timeless insights into the fabric of the modern age, especially regarding the perennial danger of totalitarianism. This course offers an in-depth introduction to Arendt's most important works in their various contexts, as well as a consideration of their reverberations in contemporary philosophy and literature. Readings include Arendt's The Origin of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, Between Past and Future, Men in Dark Times, On Revolution,Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Life of the Mind, as well as considerations of Hannah Arendt's work by Max Frisch, Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, and others. Special attention will be given to Arendt's writings on literature with an emphasis on Kafka, Brecht, Auden, Sartre, and Camus. This course will be synchronously conducted, but will also use an innovative, Stanford-developed, online platform called Poetic Thinking. Poetic Thinking allows students to share both their scholarly and creative work with each other. Based on the newest technology and beautifully designed, it greatly enhances their course experience. Same as: GERMAN 253 , GERMAN 353 , JEWISHST 243A

COMPLIT 357A. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.

What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.". Same as: COMPLIT 257 , FEMGEN 257X , FEMGEN 357X , FRENCH 257 , FRENCH 357 , ITALIAN 257 , ITALIAN 357

COMPLIT 359A. Philosophical Reading Group. 1 Unit.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with Professor Robert Harrison is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English. Same as: FRENCH 395 , ITALIAN 395

COMPLIT 368A. Imagining the Oceans. 5 Units.

How has Western culture constructed the world's oceans since the beginning of global ocean exploration? How have imaginative visions of the ocean been shaped by marine science, technology, exploration, commerce and leisure? Primary authors read might include Cook, Banks, Equiano, Ricketts, and Steinbeck; Defoe, Cooper, Verne, Conrad, Woolf and Hemingway; Coleridge, Baudelaire, Moore, Bishop and Walcott. Critical readings include Schmitt, Rediker and Linebaugh, Baucom, Best, Corbin, Auden, Sontag and Heller-Roazen. Films by Sekula, Painlevé and Bigelow. Seminar coordinated with a 2015 Cantor Arts Center public exhibition. Visits to the Cantor; other possible field trips include Hopkins Marine Station and SF Maritime Historical Park. Open to graduate students only. Same as: ENGLISH 368A , FRENCH 368A

COMPLIT 369. Introduction to the Profession of Literary Studies. 1-2 Unit.

A survey of how literary theory and other methods have been made institutional since the nineteenth century. The readings and conversation are designed for entering Ph.D. students in the national literature departments and comparative literature. Same as: DLCL 369 , FRENCH 369 , GERMAN 369 , ITALIAN 369

COMPLIT 371. Critical Theory and Ecology: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. 2-5 Units.

This class will bring together aesthetics, politics, and art around ecological questions. We will survey the key themes in ecocritical humanities and critiques of anthropocentrism by reading selected chapters from Literature and the Environment (Timothy Clark). We will move on to the Marxist eco critique of capitalist economy, human alienation from nature, alienated labor as well as Frankfurt school critiques of instrumental rationality. Major readings include The Enemy of Nature (Kovel), Creating an Ecological Society (Magdofff and Williams), chapters from The Robbery of Nature (Foster and Clark), and essays by Adorno and Benjamin. Taking a comparative perspective, we will study Chinese eco-narratives such as Waste Tide (Chen Qiufan) and Unfolding Beijing (Hao Jingfang).nnChinese is not required. PhD students are required to write a term paper of 20-25 pages. MA and undergraduate students will write two essays of 8 pages in response to the questions.n nTexts to be purchased. Literature and the Environment (Timothy Clark); Creating an Ecological Society (Magdofff and Williams); The Robbery of Nature (Foster and Clark). The rest of readings are available on Canvas. Same as: CHINA 371

COMPLIT 377. Medieval Lyric: How Lyric Moves. 3-5 Units.

Through the study of various vernacular premodern traditions, this graduate level course examines the qualities that make texts "lyric" and place them into conversation with contemporary theories of lyric. The course will situate medieval lyric within the critical discourse of poetics, the Global South, the archive, and anachrony. We will consider the movement of verse within and among various material contexts (song, manuscript, artworks, objects, tombstones). Poets considered: troubadours, trouvères, Galician-Portugese cantigas d'amigo, Stilnovists, Dante, Petrarchan poetry, Jean Renart, Charles d'Orléans, Villon, Pound, Brazilian Concrete Poetry. Same as: FRENCH 377 , ITALIAN 377

COMPLIT 381E. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 281E , FRENCH 214 , FRENCH 314 , ITALIAN 214 , ITALIAN 314

COMPLIT 383A. Modern Notions of 'The Holy'. 3-5 Units.

This course explores the question, "What may we call 'holy' in the modern era?" by focusing on key writers and thinkers, who in various ways, and in different times raised this question: Friedrich Hölderlin, Hermann Cohen, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Else Lasker-Schüler, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hannah Arendt, Margarete Susman, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, and Judith Butler.nnThis course will be synchronous-conducted, but will also use an innovative, Stanford-developed, on-line platform called Poetic Thinking. Poetic Thinking allows students to share both their scholarly and creative work with each other. Based on the newest technology and beautifully designed, it will greatly enhance their course experience. Same as: COMPLIT 283A , GERMAN 283A , GERMAN 383A , RELIGST 283A , RELIGST 383A

COMPLIT 388. In Search of the Holy Grail: Percival's Quest in Medieval Literature. 3-5 Units.

COMPLIT 390A. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.

With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English. Same as: COMPLIT 290A , FRENCH 290 , FRENCH 390 , ITALIAN 290 , ITALIAN 390

COMPLIT 397. Graduate Studies Colloquium. 1 Unit.

Colloquium for graduate students in Comparative Literature. Taught in English. May be repeated for credit.

COMPLIT 398L. Literary Lab. 2-5 Units.

Gathering and analyzing data, constructing hypotheses and designing experiments to test them, writing programs [if needed], preparing visuals and texts for articles or conferences. Requires a year-long participation in the activities of the Lab. Same as: ENGLISH 398L

COMPLIT 399. Individual Work. 1-15 Unit.

COMPLIT 680. Curricular Practical Training. 1-3 Unit.

CPT course required for international students completing degree. Prerequisite: Comparative Literature Ph.D. candidate.

COMPLIT 802. TGR Dissertation. 0 Units.

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Comparing the Literatures: Contemporary Perspectives — Introduction

Comparative literature — besides being the name of an academic discipline, field of research, and study program in institutions of higher education — stands for a great tradition of the humanities. Since its beginning around 1800, it serves as a ground for significant enterprises of literary studies in academic frameworks in Europe, North and South America, the Near and the Far East. This field involves classical philology and esthetics, critical theory, semiotics and narratology, translation studies, post-colonial theory, exile and migration studies, gender and queer theories, the visual arts, and eco-poetics, to name a few. It also reflects core questions regarding the experience (and the representation) of the world. Comparative literature serves also as a cultural paradigm, associated with multilingualism and cultural diversity, yet not free from blind spots — Western universalism, Eurocentrism, orientalist views, heteronormative assumptions. Its “death” as a discipline was announced a while ago — its “rebirth,” too. The very idea of comparison — the association of different case studies from the literatures of the world — continues, however, to challenge our research and teaching. Following David Damrosch’s book, “Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age,” we (Amir Eshel, Galili Shahar, and Vered Shemtov) invited colleagues and graduate students from our programs of comparative literature at Stanford University and at Tel Aviv University to reflect on the core issues of our field: its origins and histories, current questions, multi-perspectives and methods, and its contemporary implications in our institutions in North America and in Israel/Palestine. The essays thus reflect not just “case studies” in comparative literature but also the effort of saving the local — in a global age.

This effort, too, was associated with Damrosch’s book. Reflecting, however, on its origins, Damrosch recounts a dazzling trick. In one of his previous books, Meetings of the Mind , Damrosch invented three interlocutors: the Israeli semiotician Dov Midrash, the multilingual aesthete Vic d’Ohr Addams, and the feminist film theorist Marsha Doddvic. All three are anagrams of Damrosch’s own name. Each one presents opposing positions he considers and partly accepts. All of them mock “the blandly liberal Damrosch, who thinks he can persuade all the warring parties to get along together.”

Blending the kind of irony we encounter at the turn of the nineteenth century in the work of the German romantics with his panoramic familiarity with the history and practice of comparative literature, Damrosch urges us to do two things at the same time: to acknowledge and respect the infinite diversity of literary production across cultures and locations while we simultaneously strive to discover similarities and moments of formal and thematic conversion. The spirit of Damrosch’s move to both refract any stable notion of comparative literature and to work toward productive engagement and exchange accompanies all contributions to this collection. Any attempt to suggest that all contributors share a single vision of what comparative literature is or should be is bound to dissolve, just as Damrosch discovered, in his own name, his own position, and at least three others captured in the names of Midrash, Addams, and Doddvic. The essays gathered in this special double issue can be addressed as another way of revealing and naming the challenges, contradictions, critiques, and ironies of comparative literature as represented in his book.

Turning to one of the first moments in the history of comparative literature, Nir Evron’s “Herder on Shakespeare, Nominalism, and Obsolescence” revisits Johann Gottfried Herder’s 1773 essay on Shakespeare. Herder’s critical essay is essential for our notion of comparative literature as a discipline, Evron argues, since it both recognizes the consequences of adopting a “culturalist and historicist self-image that it promotes” and models “the nominalist and culturalist outlook” which has been crucial in its history. Herder’s meditation on cultural finitude in Shakespeare, Evron argues, originates in his “insistence that human beings are social and historical creatures” — an insight with far-reaching implications for comparative literature and all other humanistic fields of study.

Casting his gaze at an earlier point of departure for a comparative perspective, Iyad Malouf, in “Medieval Othering: Western Monsters and Eastern Maskhs ,” offers a manifold reading of “medieval Othering” while focusing on the figures of monster and maskh . While monsters had an integral role in defining the non-Christian Other in the West, maskhs , Malouf argues, played a similar role in what came to be known as “the East.” Examining the meaning, function, and interaction of monsters and maskhs in the Middle Ages, the article shows, may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of “medieval Othering,” a practice and a prejudice still operative today in cultural and political discourse across the globe.

Practices of distancing and exclusion are also at the center of Uri S. Cohen and Manar H. Makhoul’s “Political Animals in Palestine-Israel.” Employing the conceptual shift at work in ecocriticism and animal studies regarding “ecology” as a trope of “coexistence,” they examine narratives which touch on the milestone year 1948 in the history of the modern Middle East. The animals of Palestine as they emerge in these narratives, they argue, offer us a glimpse into literature’s capacity to examine the idea of equality: “the equal value of all life, human and animal.” Animals emerge here as a powerful trope in the striving to lend an ear to untold or ignored aspects of 1948 as a historical trauma, to get closer to “the secrets of Palestine and its destruction.” Comparing literary works as they give voice to the language of animals may transcend our pure emotional reaction to the pain of the single sentient creature and open possibilities of genuine listening among the two parties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The question of nationalism and national conflict is similarly driving Victoria Zurita’s “Remedios in Valinor: Magical Realism, Transnationalisms, and the Historicity of Literary Value.” Zurita confronts here two forms of “transnationalism” — regionalism and cosmopolitanism — as they appear in Damrosch’s Comparing the Literatures . Assessing Damrosch’s arguments on the comparability of magical realism and examining their implications for his book’s larger aims, Zurita probes the assumption of some of the major voices in the “transnational turn,” especially in the field of global modernisms, in their attempt to transcend the specificities of the literary works in question.

Sarah Stoll’s “Kafka’s ‘Gehilfen’ — The Castle in between Nature Theater and Yiddish Theater” turns to one of the major scenes of European modernism, Prague, and to one of this movement’s canonic representatives, Franz Kafka. Focusing on Kafka’s The Castle , Stoll suggests that we read the posthumously published novel as “a theater play in which the protagonist is trying to achieve a role that was never made for him.” K.’s attempt to create his own reality is in Stoll’s reading “the allegory of a minor, that means a revolutionary, writing.” Relating to both world theater and to the Yiddish theater of its time, The Castle reveals itself here as a site of personal and communal struggle with cultural prejudice. Kafka’s diary entries on the Yiddish theater lend Stoll’s comparative interpretation further weight. She displays how prose, drama, and personal narrative grapple with and test the national creed.

Whereas linguistic marginalization characterizes the view of Yiddish in early twentieth century Prague, Michèle Bokobza Kahan’s “The Female Novelists of the Emigration of the French Revolution: Presentation of a Literary Scene” draws our attention to gender as a site of conflict and literary production. Presenting novels of emigration during the French Revolution written by such women as Stéphanie de Genlis, Adélaïde de Souza, Isabelle de Charrière, and Claire de Duras, Kahan focuses on the notion of hospitality. Highlighting the link between emigration and hospitality, she suggests that the writers in question mobilized their literature to pursue professional recognition — to validate and bring about a recognition of their writing choices and practices. Employing Judith Schlanger’s term “literary scene,” Kahan presents the writers and works at the center of her article as helping us to negotiate an interpretative perspective which exceeds the binary of the “local” and the “global.”

Comparative literature’s capacity to examine narrative across geographic location, genre, and even discipline guides Haiyan Lee in “Apples and Oranges? An Idiosyncratic Comparison of Literature and Anthropology.” From her standpoint as a specialist in Chinese literature, she considers the kind of knowledge literary studies produces. Moving between the personal and the theoretical, she suggests that anthropology can provide useful tools in making sense of politically and culturally distant texts in the age of world literature. She illustrates this provocative point by turning to flat characters in traditional Chinese fiction in light of new research in the anthropology of mind. Literary studies, she urges us to consider, should move toward the “new humanities” in order to become relevant to broader constituencies.

The biases of Western thought regarding genre take center stage in Teddy Fassberg’s “Languages of Gods and the Structures of Human Literatures: An Essay in Comparative Poetics.” Fassberg challenges the conventional, reductive notion of literature as comprised of merely two complementary, comprehensive categories: poetry and prose. Probing the validity of this restrictive view as it emerges as early as ancient Greek and Roman thought, Fassberg then demonstrates that the “poetry” versus “prose” dichotomy is nowhere to be found in the neighboring ancient literary cultures of biblical Hebrew and early Islam. Fassberg then proceeds to argue that the manufactured difference between the two genres correlates to Greek and Roman concepts of divinity, specifically the language of their gods. Fassberg furthermore ties his theoretical move to Erich Auerbach’s argument in Mimesis regarding the separation and mixture of styles in antiquity.

In “Rethinking the Dictionary: Holocaust Dictionaries in Global Perspective,” Hannah Pollin-Galay and Betzalel Strauss challenge another restrictive view: the relegation of the dictionary outside of the literary field. Questioning this practice, they urge us in their article to discover in the dictionary a rich locus of literature and of comparative cultural interpretation.

Centering on Holocaust-Yiddish dictionaries, they reveal — in the succinctness of the dictionary entry and in the capaciousness of the dictionary as a cultural endeavor — “ethical, emotional, and even spiritual potency.” Exemplifying the methods of comparative literature, they include in their discussion a broad array of sources, such as the Oxford English Dictionary , an interwar lexicon of Yiddish jargon, the Chinese Erya, and the Hebrew-Arabic Ha-Egron . Their examination leads then to the discovery of a productive tension within the genre: while the dictionary promises to organize and categorize language, it often reveals that which is unknowable in speech and in experience.

The notion of experience also guides Tal Yehezkely in “Airing Literature: Reading with the Sense of Smell.” While comparative literature thus far centers on language in its various iterations, the article urges us to explores forms of reading inspired by “both the sense of smell, and the phenomenon of smell.” The article begins by laying out its theoretical foundation. It formulates a comparative model deriving from the conceptual history of smell and from its attributes as a physical phenomenon. Yehezkely then proceeds to examine the peculiar materiality of smell as part of an atmosphere and the possible implications it might have when we examine what links or separates “literature” and “life.”

Literature’s ability to touch on “life” as a tangible, corporal category guides J. Rafael Balling in “Between Times: The Case of Yiddish Transness.” Balling here examines literature as it challenges normative concepts of gender. His article traces the literary undermining of any stable sense of time and place. Turning to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story, “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” [“Yentl der Yeshive Bokher”], Balling uncovers the narrative’s capacity to suspend medical categorizations of transness. Bashevis Singer’s work is exemplary in this regard, Balling shows, since it mobilizes such rich and diverse sources as Yiddish demons, rabbinic writings, and early-twentieth century sexological accounts of gender variance. “Yentl” emerges in Balling’s reading as a powerful opportunity to overcome prejudice in regard to gender variance. The work invites us to imagine the possibility of accepting the productive intersections of temporal, linguistic, and geographical migrations.

The capacity of literature to imagine realities which far exceed normative modes of individual and communal life informs Adi Molad’s “The Circus Comes to Town: Reading Gershon Shofman’s Hebrew Literature in the Ring.” Through the lens of Gershon Shofman’s work, Molad examines the circus as a liminal space in which corporal, subjective, and communal norms solidify and refract. Since the trope of the traveling circus as a lush amalgamation of the eclectic and the unique is a metaphor for transcending domesticity and nationality, it lends itself to examine this work of Hebrew literature as pursuing “a supranational theme that expresses the worldly in literature.” Focusing on three circus stories by Shofman, Molad shows that physical power does not necessarily translate into national domination or political subjugation. The circus becomes in this article a powerful lens through which we can see how the literary imagination and our attempts to interpret the literary far exceed any limitation of a single national language or a single national creed.

This double issue ends with an essay by Dharshani Lakmali Jayasinghe entitled “When Translating Ultra Minor Literatures is Not Enough to Counter Epistemicide.” Lakmali’s annotated translation of a selection of quatrains by Thotagamuwe Sri Rahula Therato was published previously in Dibur’s Curated magazine. The essay explores “some of the challenges that scholars working on what David Damrosch calls ‘ultra Minor’ literatures from the Global South must contend with, particularly the politics of organizing and compiling bibliographies.”

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Comparative Literature

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School of Humanities and Sciences

While Comparative Literature seeks to prepare its students for reading and research in the languages and histories of different societies and periods, it is also dedicated to their critical and cultural analysis.

What You'll Study

While it seeks to prepare its students for reading and research in the languages and histories of different societies and periods, it is also dedicated to their critical and cultural analysis. Literary theory in all its forms helps to break down the borders between national literary fields, as well as between literary studies and other disciplines. Indeed, the discipline of Comparative Literature asks, often, just what "literature" is, and how it functions as a product of (and response to) our imaginations, our languages, and our social and economic lives. Students in our courses, majors in the department, and graduate students in the Ph.D. program all interact to shape debates about the place of the verbal arts (and the methods of their study) in past times and our own.

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Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Undergraduate Program in Comparative Literature
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Complit 101.

What Is Comparative Literature?

COMPLIT 107A

Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science (CLASSICS 47, HUMCORE 121)

COMPLIT 114

Masterpieces: Kafka (GERMAN 150, JEWISHST 145)

COMPLIT 121

Poems, Poetry, Worlds (DLCL 141)

COMPLIT 122

Literature as Performance:

COMPLIT 123

The Novel and the World (DLCL 143)

COMPLIT 127B

The Hebrew and Jewish Short Story (JEWISHST 147B)

COMPLIT 149

The Laboring of Diaspora & Border Literary Cultures (CSRE 149, ILAC 149)

COMPLIT 181

Philosophy and Literature (CLASSICS 42, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)

COMPLIT 31

Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East (HUMCORE 111, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150)

COMPLIT 36A

Dangerous Ideas (ARTHIST 36, EALC 36, ENGLISH 71, ETHICSOC 36X, FRENCH 36, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36, TAPS 36)

COMPLIT 51Q

Comparative Fictions of Ethnicity (AMSTUD 51Q, CSRE 51Q)

COMPLIT 55N

Black Panther, Hamilton, Díaz, and Other Wondrous Lives (CSRE 55N)

The PhD Minor in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts (PLA) provides both rigorous training in the student’s minor field and an exciting program of courses at the interdisciplinary boundary of philosophy with literature and the arts. Students in the program work together with faculty and fellow students in a vibrant community of scholars from across Stanford humanities.

The Director of Graduate Studies for the PLA PhD Minor is Joshua Landy (Comparative Literature).

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School of Humanities and Sciences

Showing 41-50 of 54 results.

Arnold Rampersad

The sara hart kimball professor in the humanities, emeritus.

BLDG. 460, Margaret Jacks Hall
Department of English
Stanford, California 94305-2070

Vaughn Rasberry

Associate professor of english and of african and african american studies.

Bio Vaughn Rasberry studies African American literature, global Cold War culture, the European Enlightenment and its critics, postcolonial theory, and philosophical theories of modernity. As a Fulbright scholar in 2008-09, he taught in the American Studies department at the Humboldt University Berlin and lectured on African American literature throughout Germany. His current book project, Race and the Totalitarian Century, questions the notion that desegregation prompted African American writers and activists to acquiesce in the normative claims of postwar liberalism. Challenging accounts that portray black cultural workers in various postures of reaction to larger forces--namely U.S. liberalism or Soviet communism--his project argues instead that many writers were involved in a complex national and global dialogue with totalitarianism, the defining geopolitical discourse of the twentieth century. His article, "'Now Describing You': James Baldwin and Cold War Liberalism," appears in an edited volume titled James Baldwin: America and Beyond (University of Michigan Press, 2011). A review essay, "Black Cultural Politics at the End of History," appears in the winter 2012 issue of American Literary History. An article, "Invoking Totalitarianism: Liberal Democracy versus the Global Jihad in Boualem Sansal's The German Mujahid," appears in the spring 2014 special issue of Novel: a Forum on Fiction. For Black History Month, he published an op-ed essay, "The Shape of African American Geopolitics," in Al Jazeera English. An Annenberg Faculty Fellow at Stanford (2012-14), he has also received fellowships from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Vaughn also teaches in collaboration with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the programs in Modern Thought and Literature, African and African American Studies, and American Studies.

Contact Info Mail Code: 2087

Judith Richardson

Senior lecturer in english.

Bio Judith Richardson is a senior lecturer in English and program coordinator for American Studies. After receiving her PhD from Harvard University, Judith began teaching at Stanford in 2001, offering a range of courses on American literature, including classes on women writers, early American literature, autobiographies, and the literature of cities. The author of Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley (2003) she continues to write and lecture—at Stanford and beyond—on the history and literature of New York, and on issues of place and cultural memory more broadly. She is currently working on a book about nineteenth-century America’s “plant-mindedness,” its multivalent obsession with vegetable matters.

Stanford, California 94305-2087

David Riggs

Mark pigott obe professor in the school of humanities and sciences, emeritus.

(650) 723-2635 (office)

Nancy Ruttenburg

William robertson coe professor of american literature and professor, by courtesy, of comparative literature and of slavic languages and literatures.

Bio Nancy Ruttenburg is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature in the English Department at Stanford. She also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. She received the PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford (1988) and taught at Harvard, Berkeley, and most recently at NYU, where she was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2002-2008. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political, religious, and literary expression in colonial through antebellum America and nineteenth-century Russia, with a particular focus on the development of liberal and non-liberal forms of democratic subjectivity. Related interests include history of the novel, novel theory, and the global novel; philosophy of religion and ethics; and problems of comparative method, especially as they pertain to North American literature and history. Prof. Ruttenburg is the author of Democratic Personality: Popular Voice and the Trial of American Authorship (Stanford UP, 1998) and Dostoevsky's Democracy (Princeton UP, 2008), and she has recently written on the work of J. M. Coetzee and on Melville’s “Bartleby.” Books in progress include a study of secularization in the postrevolutionary United States arising out of the naturalization of “conscience” as inalienable right, entitled Conscience, Rights, and 'The Delirium of Democracy'; and a comparative work entitled Dostoevsky And for which the Russian writer serves as a lens on the historical development of a set of intercalated themes in the literature of American modernity. These encompass self-making and self-loss (beginning with Frederick Douglass's serial autobiographies); sentimentalism and sadism (in abolitionist fiction); crime and masculinity (including Mailer's The Executioner's Song); and the intersection of race, religious fundamentalism, and radical politics (focusing on the works of James Baldwin and Marilynne Robinson). Her courses will draw from both these projects. Prof. Ruttenburg is past president of the Charles Brockden Brown Society and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, a University of California President's Research Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Social Science Research Council for Russian and East European Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council for Learned Societies.

Bldg 460, Margaret Jacks Hall
Stanford, California 94305
(650) 725-1644 (office)

Ramon Saldivar

Hoagland family professor of humanities and sciences and professor of english, of comparative literature and, by courtesy, of iberian and latin american cultures.

Current Research and Scholarly Interests My current research is concerned with the relationships among race, form, genre, representing what Jeffrey T. Nealon has recently term the “post-postmodern.” In the latest version of this research presented at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin I use Sesshu Foster's "Atomik Aztex" as an example twenty-first century racial imaginaries. Part fantasy, part hallucinatory sur-realism, part muckraking novel in the grand realist protest tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), part historical novel in the mode of Vassily Grossman’s great Stalinist era masterpiece, Life & Fate (1980) set during the battle of Stalingrad, part ethnographic history about religious, military, and social structure of the pre-Columbian Aztec (Nahua, Mexica) world, part LA noir, and wholly Science Fiction alternative and counterfactual history, it exemplifies many of the criteria of the “post-postmodern.” Moreover, in addition to this range of formal matters, Atomik Aztex is concerned with two other topics: •a reconceptualization of the way that race affects the formations of history, and •the reshaping of the form of the novel in order to represent that reconceptualization. With eighty-two characters populating the story, itself a plotted compendium of at least two radically separate yet intertwined universes of action, in a continually shifting movement from past, present, and future times, Atomik Aztex is a radical experiment in novelistic form. Using the tools of quantitative formalism developed for literary use by the Stanford University Literary Lab, I wish to show how the work of the computational humanities, in conjunction with traditional hermeneutic methods of literary analysis can help us understand the radical turn of contemporary American fiction toward speculative realism.

BLDG. 460, Rm. 322
(650) 725-1213 (office)

Kathryn Starkey

Edward clark crossett professor of humanistic studies and professor, by courtesy, of english, of history and of comparative literature.

Bio Kathryn Starkey is Professor of German in the Department of German Studies and, by courtesy, Professor of English, History, and Comparative Literature. Her work focuses primarily on medieval German literature from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and her research topics encompass visuality and materiality, object/thing studies, manuscript illustration and transmission, language, performativity, and poetics. She has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Palermo (2011) and Freiburg im Breisgau (2013 and 2018). Recent book publications (since 2012) include: * Things and Thingness in European Literature and Visual Art, 800-1600, edited with Jutta Eming (Berlin/New York, 2021). * Animals in Text and Textile. Storytelling in the Medieval World, edited with Evelin Wetter. Riggisberger Berichte, Vol. 24 (Riggisberg, Switzerland, 2019). * Sensory Reflections. Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, edited with Fiona Griffiths (Berlin/New York, 2018). * Neidhart: Selected Songs from the Riedegger Manuscript, edited and translated with Edith Wenzel, TEAMS series in bilingual medieval German texts (Kalamazoo, MI, 2016). * A Courtier’s Mirror: Cultivating Elite Identity in Thomasin von Zerclaere’s “Welscher Gast” (Notre Dame, 2013). * Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan, edited with Jutta Eming and Ann Marie Rasmussen (Notre Dame, 2012). Professor Starkey is the PI for the Global Medieval Sourcebook (https://sourcebook.stanford.edu/) for which she received a NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (2018) as well as awards from the Roberta Bowman Denning Fund for Humanities and Technologies at Stanford (2016, 2017, 2018). Her current research projects include a co-authored (with Fiona Griffiths) textbook for the Cambridge Medieval Textbook series on A History of Medieval Germany (900-1220). Professor Starkey has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the UNC Institute for the Arts and the Humanities, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC). Before joining the faculty at Stanford in 2012 she taught in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

450 JANE STANFORD WAY, BLDG. 260
Pigott Hall, Room 109
STANFORD, California 94305
(650) 724-3622 (office)

Alice Staveley

Senior lecturer of english.

Bio Alice Staveley teaches a range of courses on British modernism, contemporary British and Canadian fiction, and Virginia Woolf. She has won the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching (2016-2017) and directs the Honors Program in English and the Digital Humanities Minor. She has taught in the Oxford tutorial system, the History and Literature concentration at Harvard University, and Stanford's Introduction to the Humanities Program (2001-2006). Research interests include: modernism; narratology; book and periodical history; women and the professions; feminist and cultural theory; and digital humanities. Her current book project examines Virginia Woolf's life as a publisher. Select publications include: Woolf’s short fictional feminist narratology; Woolf’s European reception; photography in Three Guineas; modernist marketing; and transnational archival feminisms. She co-founded and co-directs of The Modernist Archives Publishing Project, a critical digital archive of documents related to modernist publishing supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the Roberta Bowman Denning Digital Fund for Humanities and Technologies. http://modernistarchives.com Recent digital humanities research involves quantitative analysis of modernist book-sales records.

BLD 460 Margaret Jacks Hall
OFFICE ADDRESS: 460-328
Stanford, California 94305-2020

Elizabeth Tallent

Bella mabury and eloise mabury knapp professor of humanities.

Bio Elizabeth Tallent previously taught literature and creative writing at the University of California at Irvine, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of a novel, Museum Pieces, and three collections of short stories, In Constant Flight, Time with Children, and Honey, and a study of John Updike's fiction, Married Men and Magic Tricks. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Grand Street, The Paris Review, and The Threepenny Review, and in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Award collections. Her story "Tabriz" received 2008 Pushcart Prize Award. In 2007 she was awarded Stanford's Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, and in 2008 she received the Northern California Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa's Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing "the extraordinary gifts, diligence, and amplitude of spirit that mark the best in teaching." In 2009 she was honored with Stanford's Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching." Her short story "Never Come Back" appeared in the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011.

Contact Info Mail Code: 2087 (650) 725-0755 (fax) [email protected]

Elaine Treharne

Roberta bowman denning professor and professor, by courtesy, of german studies and of comparative literature.

Bio I am a Welsh medievalist with specializations in manuscript studies, archives, information technologies, and early British literature. I have published widely in this area, focusing on religious poetry and prose, and manuscripts from c.600 to c.1300. I teach core courses in British Literary History, on Text Technologies, and Palaeography and Archival Studies. I supervise honors students and graduate students working in early literature, Book History, and Digital Humanities and I am committed to providing a supportive and ethical environment in all my work. My current projects focus on death and trauma, on manuscripts and on the long history of writing systems. I am co-editing a revised version of N. R. Ker’s Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon for Oxford University Press (2025). I recently published Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book with OUP in 2021; A Very Short Introduction to Medieval Literature (OUP, 2015); Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English (OUP, 2012); and the Cambridge Companion to British Medieval Manuscripts, co-edited with Dr Orietta Da Rold for CambridgeUP in 2020. I am the Director of Stanford Text Technologies (https://texttechnologies.stanford.edu), and, with Claude Willan, published Text Technologies: A History in 2019 (StanfordUP). Other projects include CyberText Technologies; research into the long history of personal archives; and Medieval Networks of Memory with Mateusz Fafinski, which analyzes two thirteenth-century mortuary rolls. Text Technologies' initiatives include an annual collegium now in its seventh year: the first, on “Distortion” was published as Textual Distortion in 2017; the fourth was published by Routledge as Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age in 2020. I am the Principal Investigator of the NEH-Funded 'Stanford Global Currents' (https://globalcurrents.stanford.edu/) and Co-PI of the AHRC-funded research project and ebook, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, 1060 to 1220 (Leicester, 2010; version 2.0 https://em1060.stanford.edu/). With Benjamin Albritton, I run Stanford Manuscript Studies; and with Thomas Mullaney and Kathryn Starkey, I co-direct SILICON (https://silicon.stanford.edu/). I have been an American Philosophical Society Franklin Fellow, a Princeton Procter Fellow, and a Fellow of the Stanford Clayman Institute for Gender Studies. I'm a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries; a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; an Honorary Lifetime Fellow of the English Assocation (and former Chair and President); and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. In April 2021, I became a Trustee of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (https://www.llgc.org.uk/).

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ExploreDegrees Archive, 2011-12

Explore courses, alphabetical index, bulletin archive.

This archived information is dated to the 2011-12 academic year only and may no longer be current.

For currently applicable policies and information, see the current Stanford Bulletin .

Ph.D. Minor in Comparative Literature

This minor is designed for students working toward the Ph.D. in the various foreign language departments. Students working toward the Ph.D. in English are directed to the program in English and Comparative Literature described among the Department of English offerings. Students must have:

A knowledge of at least two foreign languages, one of them sufficient to qualify for graduate-level courses in that language, the second sufficient to read a major author in the original language.
A minimum of six graduate courses, of which three must be in the department of the second literature and three in the Department of Comparative Literature, the latter to include a seminar in literary theory or criticism. At least two of the three courses in comparative literature should originate in a department other than the one in which the student is completing the degree. Except for students in the Asian languages, students must choose a second literature outside the department of their major literature.

Stanford Humanities Today

Arcade: a digital salon.

Hope: The Future of an Idea | 2024 Spring Salon

Where is hope in humanities research? Perhaps it's a concept with a particular history, perhaps a force whose effects are latent or invisible; or it may be absent altogether for reasons to explain. Does hope motivate one's work? What does hope mean intellectually and personally?

Please join us for brief responses to these questions by current fellows, followed by a general discussion with Q&A moderated by SHC Director Roland Greene . The event will conclude with a reception.

About the Speakers

Samia Errazzouki (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow) is a historian of early Northwest Africa. She holds a PhD in history from the University of California, Davis and an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. Her research and teaching focuses on trans-regional histories of racial capitalism, slavery, and empire. Errazzouki formerly worked as a Morocco-based journalist with the Associated Press, and later, with Reuters. She is currently a co-editor of Jadaliyya and assistant editor of The Journal of North African Studies .

Jisha Menon (Violet Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow) is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is the author of Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021) and The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge UP, 2013). She is also co-editor of two volumes: Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict (Palgrave-Macmillan Press, 2009) and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Joseph Wager (SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow) is a PhD Candidate in Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University. He is writing a dissertation focused on the form of the stories about desaparecidos, what is said about desaparecidos, in contemporary Colombia and Mexico. The dissertation places social-scientific inquiry, the work of activists and collectives, and legal instruments in dialogue with art installations, film, novels, performances, and poems. Underpinning this combination is 1. the idea that human-rights changes stem from how individual and collective actions resist institutionalization or translate into institutions and 2. that cultural products (e.g., art) and their form are crucial to the understanding of such processes.

Ya Zuo (External Faculty Fellow) is an associate professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a cultural historian of middle and late imperial China. She is the author of Shen Gua’s Empiricism (Harvard University Press, 2018) and a range of articles on subjects such as theory of knowledge, sensory history, medical history, book history, and the history of emotions.

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Education About Beyond3Rs

Stanford university is a premier destination to study laboratory animal well-being. stanford offers programs for students and professionals to focus on laboratory animals at each level of education, including undergraduate, graduate, veterinary, and researcher training., undergraduate education.

Undergraduate students can build a solid background in laboratory animal science and welfare through courses at Stanford University.

The Department of Comparative Medicine, alongside other departments at Stanford University, provide many avenues for undergraduate education in topics related to the 3Rs. Opportunities for undergraduates include offerings in: Introductory Seminars, the Leland Scholars Program (LSP), and research through Bio-X and directed study. Many of these provide students with exposure to laboratory animal research and well-being issues.

See below for examples of relevant courses available to undergraduate students.

Featured Undergraduate Courses

BIO 145: Animal Behavior (BIO 245) Instructor: Gordon, D.

Animal behavior with an emphasis on social and collective behavior. How do animals interact with each other and the rest of the world around them? This is a project-based course in a seminar format, including class discussion of journal articles, and independent research projects based on observing the behavior of animals on campus.

Instructor: Gordon, D

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BIO 4N: The Science and Ethics of Personalized Genomic Medicine Instructor: Fraser, H.

We will explore the exciting field of personalized genomic medicine. Personalized medicine is based on the idea that each person's unique genome sequence can be used to predict their risk of developing diseases, and could perhaps even be edited using CRISPR to improve health. We will discuss the science behind these approaches; where they are heading in the future; and the ethical implications such technology presents. Student presentations will be emphasized, and students will also get to explore and analyze a real person's genome.

Instructor: Fraser, H.

COMPMED 80N: Animal behavior: sex, death, and sometimes food! Instructor: Garner, J.

Preference to freshmen. Behavior is what makes animals special (thirsty plants don't walk to water), but why do animals behave the way they do? What does their behavior tell us about their inner lives, and about ourselves? What do lipstick and cuckoos and fireflies have in common? Why would nobody want to be a penguin? What do mice say to each other in their pee-mail? Learning how to think about questions like these gives us a unique perspective on the natural world. Format: Flipped, Student-centered, Community of learners, with online and in-person discussion. Discussion and criticism of video examples, and documentaries, and student presentations. Topics: History and approaches to animal behavior; development of behavior, from genetics to learning; mechanisms of behavior, from neurons to motivation; function of behavior, from honest signals to selfish genes; the phylogeny of behavior, from domestication to speciation; and modern applications of behavior, from abnormal behavior, to conservation, to animal welfare, and animal consciousness.

Instructors: Garner, J. (PI)

COMPMED 81Q: Aardvarks to Zebras: The A to Z of Animal Anatomy Instructor: Casey, K.

Preference to sophomores. Ever wonder what cats and narwhals have in common? Maybe you haven't, but despite their seemingly different lifestyles and habitats (i.e. sleeping on couches versus swimming in oceans), they are both mammals! In this seminar, students will gain an appreciation for basic mammalian anatomic and physiologic principles that span across multiple species while emphasizing key differences that render each species unique. Through student projects, we will explore evolutionary adaptations that have driven the success of a variety of species within the context of their natural environments. In addition to a weekly lecture, anticipated laboratory sessions will reinforce anatomic principles through a combination of rodent cadaver dissection, organ and bone specimens, and use of virtual reality demonstrations. Furthermore, as conditions allow, students will have the opportunity to visit Año Nuevo State Park to experience a guided viewing of northern elephant seals within their natural habitat. Students with a passion for science will gain a fundamental understanding of anatomy that is applicable to future careers in medicine, biomedical research, veterinary medicine, and ecology/conservation.

Instructors: Casey, K.

COMPMED 84Q: Globally Emerging Zoonotic Diseases Instructor: Felt, S.

Preference to sophomores. Infectious diseases impacting veterinary and human health around the world today. Mechanisms of disease, epidemiology, and underlying diagnostic, treatment and control principles associated with these pathogens.

Instructors: Felt, S.

COMPMED 91N: And that's why cats should never eat garlic! Instructor: Vilches-Moure, J.

Did you know that although we love garlic, it could make cats very sick? And how come if a human or a dog gets a heart attack they'll end up with a scar, but some fish can regenerate parts of their hearts? In this course, we will explore how select diseases can manifest themselves similarly or differently in different animal species. Students will have the opportunity to interpret physical exam findings, examine blood lab tests (bloodwork), look at X-rays (radiographs), and see what some of these diseases look like at the microscopic level (histology). Students will also discuss how humans benefit from understanding diseases in veterinary species, and how veterinary species benefit from understanding diseases in humans. This course will be of interest to those wanting to learn more about disease processes, and those interested in pursuing careers in biomedical fields including veterinary and human medicine. Oh, and one last thing don't cook with non-stick pans if you have indoor birds. Why? Sign up for the course to find out!

Instructors: Vilches-Moure, J. (PI)

COMPMED 185: Animal Use in Biomedical Research Instructor: Albertelli, M.

Preference to freshmen. How and why animals are used in biomedical science. Addresses human and animal disease entities and how animal research has contributed to the treatment and cure of disease. SignificantPreference to freshmen. How and why animals are used in biomedical science. Addresses human and animal health and how animal research has contributed to the treatment and cure of disease. Significant portions of this course are devoted to documenting the humane care and treatment of laboratory animals in research, including, but not limited to such topics as law and ethics, animal behavior, animal modeling, and the animal activist movement. Course topics will also include: history of animals in research, environmental enrichment for research animals, and research animals in the media.

Instructors: Albertelli, M.

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COMPMED 189: Ouch it Hurts! The Comparative Neurobiology of Pain Instructor: Pacharinsak, C.

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on understanding the basic neurobiology of pain pathways. Topics include the physiology, pharmacology, and clinical aspects of effective pain management. In both humans and animals pain is part of the protective mechanisms that prevent further injury to the body. However, if the pain process continues unchecked, it can become extremely detrimental.

COMPMED 199: Undergraduate Research Repeatable for credit

Investigations sponsored by individual faculty members. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-3 | Repeatable for credit

MED 73N: Scientific Method and Bias Instructors: Ioannidis, J.

Offers an introduction to the scientific method and common biases in science. Examines theoretical considerations and practical examples where biases have led to erroneous conclusions, as well as scientific practices that can help identify, correct or prevent such biases. Additionally focuses on appropriate methods to interweave inductive and deductive approaches. Topics covered include: Poppe's falsification and Kuh's paradigm shift, revolution vs. evolution; determinism and uncertainty; probability, hypothesis testing, and Bayesian approaches; agnostic testing and big data; team science; peer review; replication; correlation and causation; bias in design, analysis, reporting and sponsorship of research; bias in the public perception of science, mass media and research; and bias in human history and everyday life. Provides students an understanding of how scientific knowledge has been and will be generated; the causes of bias in experimental design and in analytical approaches; and the interactions between deductive and inductive approaches in the generation of knowledge.

Instructors: Ioannidis, J.

Master of Laboratory Animal Science

Graduate education in laboratory animal science and well-being can be pursued through the The Master of Laboratory Animal Science (MLAS) degree program within the Department of Comparative Medicine. This program is a flexible, one to two year graduate program designed for students who want to pursue advanced careers in biomedical research, focusing on animal modeling and biomethodology, laboratory animal science, organizational management and facility design, regulations and compliance, and animal welfare.

Our graduates find employment in pharmaceutical companies, academia, or pursue training in Medical or Veterinary schools. The program was designed to give students the ability to customize their academic research experience. The MLAS degree program may also be taken by Stanford undergraduate students as a coterminal degree program.

Featured Projects from MLAS Alumni

Each year, MLAS students design and conduct innovative research projects related to laboratory animal well-being.

Kaleigh Beacham, MLAS 2023

Stereotypy is a type of abnormal repetitive behavior common in captive animal populations, including laboratory mice. Some mouse stereotypies involve seemingly strenuous behaviors and postures like backflipping, climbing, and twirling. Kaleigh's (she/her) project aims to determine whether stereotypy causes repetitive strain injuries in these mice. The presence of repetitive strain injury presents a welfare concern and may also threaten the validity of studies performed on stereotypic animals. Kaleigh is now attending Harvard Medical School.

Kyna Byrd, MLAS 2023

Kyna's (they/them) primary research interest is animal welfare and environmental enrichment. Previously as a Master's student in Dr. Garner's lab, their thesis project involved zebrafish enrichment and finding creative solutions to improve zebrafish well-being in laboratory settings without compromising the cleanliness of the tank environment. Now, Kyna is employed by Stanford as an Animal Welfare Specialist, and is spending their days implementing welfare and enrichment solutions to improve the lives of animals at Stanford.

Kendall Coden, MLAS 2023

Kendall's (she/her) project focused on understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of stereotyped behaviors. In animals, presence of these behaviors is exacerbated by several factors such as being raised in barren environments. There is strong evidence that the presence of stereotypies signifies underlying neurological damage and emotional distress. In understanding the neurobiological basis of these behaviors, we can look for interventions to prevent onset, or reduce severity of, these behaviors. Kendall is now a PhD student at University of Michigan.

Featured Graduate Courses

BIOMEDIN 215: Data Science for Medicine Instructors: Shah, N.

The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) has created a new source of big data namely, the record of routine clinical practice as a by-product of care. This graduate class will teach you how to use EHRs and other patient data to discover new clinical knowledge and improve healthcare. Upon completing this course, you should be able to: differentiate between and give examples of categories of research questions and the study designs used to address them, describe common healthcare data sources and their relative advantages and limitations, extract and transform various kinds of clinical data to create analysis-ready datasets, design and execute an analysis of a clinical dataset based on your familiarity with the workings, applicability, and limitations of common statistical methods, evaluate and criticize published research using your knowledge of 1-4 to generate new research ideas and separate hype from reality.

Instructors: Shah, N.

BIOS 216: The Practice of Reproducible Research Instructor: Goodman, S.

The course will focus on computational approaches to ensure that all data, code, and analyses can be captured in a reproducible workflow, to be confirmed and replicated by you in the future, by other members of your team, and by reviewers and other researchers. We will cover how to satisfy FAIR principles, version control, how to create a git repository, utilize Github and how to create a reproducible dataset. Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of R.

Instructors: Goodman, S.

BIOS 239: Science Ethics: More Than Just Experiments Instructors: Sudhof, T.; Thome, C.

We will cover the philosophical framework of bio(medical)ethics and good scientific practice in daily modules. The itinerary includes the History of Bioethics, Formal Logic, Moral Philosophy (Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, Deontology, Feminist Ethics), Medical & Bioethics, Animal Welfare, Good Scientific Practice, and Science Ethics.

Instructors: Sudhof, T.; Thome, C.

BIOS 285: Rodent Animal Models: Selection, Detection, Dissection, Inspection Instructor: Casey, K.

This 2-week mini-course will discuss pragmatic approaches to rodent utilization with the aim of empowering graduate students across multiple disciplines to maximize rodent-derived data and minimize the redundant use of animals in biomedical research. Topics will include an introduction to clinical models, practical aspects of rodent blood collection and interpretation, algorithmic approaches to tissue collection for research applications, and an introduction to rodent histopathology, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence. Course instructors include board-certified laboratory animal medicine clinicians and comparative pathologists that are expert h these topics. This course is open to graduate students with or without prior rodent experience.

COMPMED 205: Animal Use in Biomedical Research Instructor: Albertelli, M.

How and why animals are used in biomedical science. Addresses human and animal health and how animal research has contributed to the treatment and cure of disease. Significant portions of this course are devoted to documenting the humane care and treatment of laboratory animals in research, including, but not limited to such topics as law and ethics, animal behavior, animal modeling, and the animal activist movement. Course topics will also include: history of animals in research, environmental enrichment for research animals, and research animals in the media. Includes hands-on workshops covering animal handling, aseptic rodent surgery, and mouse breeding.

Instructors: Albertelli, M. (PI)

COMPMED 202: Research Biomethodology for Laboratory Animal Science Instructor: Huss, M.

Emphasis is on providing introductory training and practical, hands-on research animal biomethodology. Topics include basic care and principles guiding the use of research animals, animal health and welfare, enrichment, basic mouse handling, rodent breeding, and the principles of rodent aseptic surgery and anesthesia. The objective of this course is to teach basic skills in animal handling, animal care, and biomethodological research techniques. Content delivered online and in-person.

Instructors: Huss, M. (PI)

COMPMED 209: Laboratory Animal Medicine Seminar Instructor: Nagamine, C.

Focuses on husbandry, care, and diseases of major laboratory animal species (rodents, fish and amphibians, swine, sheep, rabbits, monkeys); regulatory and compliance, applied principles of animal modeling, and factors that influence animal research, animal behavior, and research reproducibility. The objective of this course is to provide students with an overview of the history of laboratory animal science, current industry standards and practices, and the fundamentals of laboratory animal diseases. Department consent is required for enrollment. May be repeated for credit. The course is virtual. Must attend 7 out of 10 seminars in the quarter for a satisfactory grade.

Instructor: Nagamine, C.

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COMPMED 211: Robust, reproducible, real-world experimental design and analysis for life and biomedical scientists Instructor: Garner, J.

So you've taken all these stats classes and learned a bunch of equations, but now you have to design and analyze your own experiments, and you're feeling lost and all those equations and classes really don't make sense. DON'T PANIC, we've all been there, and this is the class for you! Try learning these essential skills a different way - conceptually and hands-on without equations. Emphasis is on real-world experimental design and analysis in the life sciences, with particular focus on modern techniques that maximize power and minimize sample size, and avoiding common errors contributing to false discovery and the reproducibility crisis. This is a flipped-classroom. Class time is devoted to discussion of assigned reading (primarily Grafen & Hails 2002 "Modern statistics for the life sciences"), hands on guided work-through of example data sets, and developing analyses for the students' own research data. The objective is to provide students with a foundational conceptual understanding of biostatistics, particularly as applied to the design and planning of animal-based research projects.

COMPMED 260: Masters Laboratory Animal Science Practicum/Laboratory Research Instructors: Albertelli, M.; Bentzel, D. ; Casey, K.; Darian-Smith, C.; Felt, S.; Garner, J.; Green, S.; Hestrin, S. ; Huss, M.; Nagamine, C.; Pacharinsak, C. ; Parker, K. ; Vilches-Moure, J.

Research laboratory and clinical service (pathology, diagnostic laboratory, surgery, husbandry, anesthesiology, aquatics, facility business and management, etc.), quarterly rotations for students enrolled in the Master's of Laboratory Animal Science program. The objective of this course is to provide students with hands on experience in research laboratories using animal models and to provide experience working in the daily operations of a large, veterinary service center. Fulfills the practicum and research requirements of MLAS students.

Instructors: Albertelli, M. ; Bentzel, D. ; Casey, K. ; Darian-Smith, C. ; Felt, S.; Garner, J.; Green, S.; Hestrin, S. ; Huss, M.; Nagamine, C.; Pacharinsak, C. ; Parker, K. ; Vilches-Moure, J.

COMPMED 290: Laboratory Animal Science Professional Development and Career Exploration Instructors: Green, S.

Focus is on career development for graduate students and trainees enrolled in a trainee program in the Department of Comparative Medicine. Seminar topics include career pathways in laboratory animal science, resume preparation, manuscript preparation and authorship, life in academics, life in industry and biopharma, regulatory agencies, veterinary and medical school. Speakers include faculty, speakers from industry and pharmaceutical companies, veterinary school and medical school graduates, regulatory and compliance professionals, research scientists, and animal research program/laboratory managers. Students may choose to shadow veterinary clinical faculty or rotate through basic science laboratory, by special arrangement. The objective is to introduce students to the multiple career pathways available to individuals with advanced training in laboratory animal science. May be taken up to six quarters.

Instructor: Green, S.

COMPMED 299: Graduate Research Repeatable for credit

Prerequisite: consent of instructor. (Staff)

Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum | Units: 1-18 | Repeatable for credit

EPI 206: Meta-research: Appraising Research Findings, Bias, and Meta-analysis (CHPR 206, MED 206, STATS 211) Instructors: Ioannidis, J.; Kvarven, A.

Open to graduate, medical, and undergraduate students. Appraisal of the quality and credibility of research findings; evaluation of sources of bias. Meta-analysis as a quantitative (statistical) method for combining results of independent studies. Examples from medicine, epidemiology, genomics, ecology, social/behavioral sciences, education. Collaborative analyses. Project involving generation of a meta-research project or reworking and evaluation of an existing published meta-analysis. Prerequisite: knowledge of basic statistics.

Instructors: Ioannidis, J.

EPI 264: Foundations of Statistical and Scientific Inference (STATS 264) Instructor: Goodman, S.

The course will consist of readings and discussion of foundational papers and book sections in the domains of statistical and scientific inference. Topics to be covered include philosophy of science, interpretations of probability, Bayesian and frequentist approaches to statistical inference and current controversies about the proper use of p-values and research reproducibility.

Instructor: Goodman, S.

IMMUNOL 258: Ethics, Science, and Society (INDE 281) Instructor: Martinez, O.

This discussion focused Ethics, Science, and Society interactive mini-course will engage Immunology graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty in learning and conversations on topics in responsible research (including animal subjects, authorship, collaboration, conflicts of interest, data management, human subjects, mentor-mentee relationships, peer review, publication, research misconduct, and social responsibility) and diversity in science, informed by readings, case studies, individual reflections, and more. Some of the driving themes in this course include: what it means to do research well and how to and not to achieve this, why doing research well and with integrity is important, and who are researchers currently and who should they be.

Instructor: Martinez, O.

LAW 5805: Animal Law Instructor: Wagman, B.

This course presents a survey of the historical and current status of this rapidly developing specialty. In brief, animal law encompasses all areas of the law in which the nature -- legal, social or biological -- of nonhuman animals is an important factor. It is an objective and logical specialization of a challenging area -- one with a growing number of cases and laws, increasing public and practical interest, and significantly different historical, legal and philosophical foundations than most other courses. Topics covered include animal cruelty, animals as property, tort claims regarding animals, legal issues involving farm animals and animals in entertainment, and federal statutes regarding certain groups of animals. The Animal Law course has been described as intellectually stimulating and ethically challenging, and synthesizes a wide range of legal concepts, and the course materials apply traditional ideas to legal concepts associated with animals in new ways. Students have called it a great bar review class, because concepts from many areas of law are covered with respect to their application to animals and their interests. More and more firms, large and small, are providing pro bono (and paying) work in the animal law area, as the field gains momentum and reputability in the legal community. Mr. Wagman is a lawyer in San Francisco, with a full-time animal law practice, representing organizations and individuals in a wide range of cases. He is one of the authors of the Animal Law casebook, two other animal legal texts, and has been practicing animal law for most of his 30-year career. His practice includes litigation, consultation, legislative work, and extensive writing and lecturing on various animal law topics. The class includes regular updates on his current cases, which for this semester includes a case that will be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court in the October 2022 term. He also regularly provides real-life experiences from the front lines of the field. Special Instructions: Students have the option to write an independent research paper in lieu of the final exam with consent of instructor.

Instructor: Wagman, B.

PEDS 255: Scientific Integrity: Responsible Conduct of Research Instructor: Sakamoto, K.

This course introduces standard and acceptable practices in the life sciences, with an emphasis on responsibilities in research activities such as record keeping, data treatment, authorship, peer review, mentoring and participation in research that engages human or animal subjects. Conflicts of interest, ownership of date and other intellectual property and potential problems stemming from use of data from human genetics or stem cell experiments are examples of additional topics for discussion. Open to upper-level undergraduate students, medical students, graduate students and M.D. and Ph.D. postdoctoral fellows. This course is required for trainees supported by the NIH Pediatric Nonmalignant Hematology and Stem Cell Biology training program.

Instructor: Sakamoto, K.

ACLAM Residency

Laboratory animal welfare is a potential focus area within the Laboratory Animal Medicine residency program sponsored by the Department of Comparative Medicine. This 3-year program emphasizes the clinical, pathological, regulatory, and administrative aspects of laboratory animal medicine. The training program is officially recognized by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine ( ACLAM ). Successful program completion satisfies eligibility requirements for specialty board certification.

Stanford has a rich history of training top-notch veterinarian specialists in laboratory animal medicine and pathology.

Training Workshops

All personnel working with animals in research at Stanford must undergo training on animal care and use. The Veterinary Service Center (VSC) offers hands-on training workshops for a variety of procedures involving animals in science.

How to Go Beyond3Rs

Embracing Variability

Harmonizing animal and human research, spontaneous disease models, and biomarkers

Housing and Husbandry

Improving enclosures, enrichment, handling, nutrition, and other husbandry practices

Reproducibility and Translation

Experimental design, animal-to-human translation, and "the science of doing science"

Stanford students receive Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships

The award provides generous funding for immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate degrees.

Six Stanford graduate students are among this year’s recipients of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans , a merit-based program for immigrants and children of immigrants.

The Stanford students are among 30 outstanding scholars to receive the fellowship, selected for their achievements and their potential to make meaningful contributions to the United States across fields of study. They each will receive up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies at institutions across the country.

Established in 1997, the fellowship program has provided more than $80 million in funding to students studying in a range of fields, from medicine and the arts to law and business.

Following are the 2024 Paul & Daisy Sorors Fellows from Stanford.

Sara Bobok (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

Sara Bobok and her family immigrated to the United States from Hungary when she was 2, seeking greater economic opportunity. She is pursuing a JD at Stanford Law School and a master’s degree at Stanford Graduate School of Education.

An advocate for children, Bobok spent high school summers volunteering at a Transylvanian orphanage and dedicated school years to fundraising and organizing donation drives for the children. At Harvard University, she studied social studies with a minor in mathematical sciences to better understand the historical, political, and economic roots of inequality.

Bobok has interned with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, researched bail reform at Harvard Law School, designed civic engagement policy with Boston’s then-City Council President Michelle Wu, and served as a strategist for Hungary’s Momentum party. She also spearheaded a project on Hungarian child trafficking prevention, supporting the very orphanages that inspired her work, and served as director of the tutoring program for the Association to Benefit Children, a youth aid organization in East Harlem, New York. She aspires to be a lawyer, educator, and advocate.

Sharon Loa (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

Sharon Loa was born in Puente Piedra, Peru. At age 6, she and her mother relocated to Missoula, Montana. At Stanford, she is pursuing an MD/PhD in cancer biology.

At 16, Loa became a certified pharmacy technician, which led her to wonder how drugs behaved in cells and what effect they had on a patient’s body. Her interest in medicine led her to the University of Montana, where she studied biochemistry. There, Loa worked on research leading to the discovery of three novel protein structures using X-ray crystallography in Professor Klara Briknarova’s lab. Loa also restructured and transformed her university chemistry courses by creating training programs and mentorship opportunities.

After college, Loa received the National Institutes of Health Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. There, she established programs for postbaccalaureate fellows and underrepresented students entering medical schools.

She is on a mission to pioneer diagnostic methods to improve identification and treatment of diseases, deliver compassionate and equitable care, and shape the next generation of physicians through inclusive and innovative education.

Malavika Kannan (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

Stanford senior Malavika Kannan was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Central Florida in a tight-knit community of Indian immigrants, including her parents, who emigrated from South India. After completing her bachelor’s degree in comparative studies in race and ethnicity this year, she will pursue a Master of Fine Arts in fiction.

Growing up, Kannan became increasingly aware of the impacts of gun violence, police violence, and racism on her community. In high school, she and her classmates organized a school-wide walkout against gun violence. Kannan also worked with such organizations as March For Our Lives, the Women’s March, and Giffords.

Kannan’s experiences as an organizer influenced her writing, an art form she views as inherently political, imaginative, and community oriented. Her writing on identity, culture, and politics has appeared in The Washington Post , Teen Vogue , Refinery29 , and San Francisco Chronicle . She’s also the author of the young adult novel All the Yellow Suns . She intends to become a novelist and professor of literature.

James Occean (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

James Occean was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and immigrated to the U.S. at age 10. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in bioinformatics at Johns Hopkins University. This fall, he will begin a PhD program in cancer biology at Stanford, supported by the fellowship.

Occean earned a BS in biomedical sciences from the University of South Florida, where he was a first-generation college student. There, he conducted epidemiological research to identify predictors and risk factors for intimate partner violence among women in his native country. He also researched how trauma exposure increases susceptibility to psychiatric disorders and studied genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie post-traumatic stress disorder.

After college, Occean earned a postbaccalaureate fellowship at the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. In Payel Sen’s lab, he investigated how changes in epigenetic modifications and chromatin drive mammalian aging and related decline. He also contributed to several peer-reviewed publications, secured over $140,000 in research grants for his work on DNA hydroxymethylation, and received the Early Career Scholar award from the American Aging Association.

Akshay Swaminathan (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

Akshay Swaminathan was born in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, to immigrants from Tamil Nadu, India. At Stanford, he is an MD candidate and is pursuing a PhD in biomedical data science. He is also a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

After finding an online community of polyglots in high school, Swaminathan developed pedagogical techniques that helped him learn over 10 languages. At Harvard College, he used languages to connect with and serve others. He was executive director of Refresh Bolivia, a global health nonprofit, where he helped build a primary health care clinic serving Indigenous residents in Cochabamba. He led Harvard Chinatown ESL, a program offering free English classes to adult Chinese immigrants. He also published five textbooks to teach English to Chinese speakers. He is the founder of Start Speaking, which helps language learners improve fluency.

As a data scientist, Swaminathan builds data-driven tools for patients, clinicians, and policymakers. At Flatiron Health, he developed methods to analyze observational clinical data to support FDA decision-making. At the virtual mental health company Cerebral, he helped deploy a suicide detection system that served over 500,000 patients across the U.S.

At Stanford, Swaminathan is developing approaches to safely and effectively use artificial intelligence to deliver health care. He plans to become a physician, combining data science and medicine to strengthen health systems in low-resource areas.

Evelyn Wong (Image credit: Courtesy PD Soros Fellowships)

Evelyn Wong was born in East Los Angeles, California, to Teochew-Vietnamese refugees. At Stanford, she is pursuing an MD/PhD in biophysics and is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

A first-generation college student, Wong graduated from Harvard University, where she studied neuroscience and Spanish literature. As an undergraduate, she received the Herchel Smith Fellowship for her thesis project at the MIT McGovern Institute, developing a next-generation protein sequencing platform. Beyond academics, she mentored young refugees in Boston and worked in free clinics serving undocumented and recently incarcerated individuals. She founded the nonprofit CovEducation, which provides programs and services to bridge academic achievement gaps. As a Marshall Scholar, Wong earned an MPhil from the Division of Medicine at University College London, where she optimized existing neurotechnologies to understand cortical brain function.

At Stanford she is developing flexible electrodes to record neural signals from deep, hard-to-reach structures in the mammalian brain. She is a co-director of the Stanford Asylum Collaborative, providing medical and psychological evaluations to support individuals seeking asylum in the United States. Wong aspires to a career as a physician-neuroengineer, working at the intersection of asylee health and neurotechnology to tackle technical and structural barriers to neuropsychiatric care.

Undergraduate Essay Prizes: Submissions due May 2024

Here are the forms to submit papers to the DLCL Undergraduate Academic Prizes / Department Awards. Before you begin, make sure the student author's name is removed from the essay document, to ensure fair judging. Please sign into your Stanford account before clicking these links. All submissions are due Monday May 6 by 4:00pm PDT. Comparative Literature French and Italian: French* French and Italian: Italian German Studies Iberian and Latin American Cultures Slavic Languages and Literatures For papers written by undergraduate students and turned in as coursework for DLCL and Language Center courses during for Spring 2023 - Spring 2024. Cross-listed courses allowed, if taught by a DLCL-affiliated instructor. Co-terms can submit papers for undergraduate or 200-level courses. Instructors may also nominate student papers using these forms. Generally, papers written in a language of the program (if relevant) will be given higher consideration than papers written in English. Creative works (prose, poetry) can be submitted if they meet the coursework requirements above. *French and FrenLang papers should have the instructor's comments included, if given. Questions: email Judy Nugent jnugent2 [at] stanford.edu (jnugent2[at]stanford[dot]edu) . Submissions will not be accepted by email or in-person, unless the submission form doesn't work. The winners will be contacted by email in June.

Congratulations to our Spring 2024 graduates receiving master’s or doctoral degrees

Shannon Fine (M.A. in Comparative Literature), Vasilije Ivanovic (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies), and Damla Undar (M.A. in Comparative Literature).

Graduate Division recognizes outstanding students, postdocs, and faculty

On April 5, the UCR Graduate Division presented awards to several students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty for their outstanding contributions to UCR’s research and teaching mission.

Grad awards

Taryn Dunivant , a doctoral student in plant biology, received the Yvonne Danielsen Endowed Graduate Award. Her thesis investigates the world of parasites, specifically the arms race between a nematode and its plant host. A first-generation college student, Dunivant attended community college after several years of being in the work force. She has successfully mentored students with similar non-traditional backgrounds and received awards for her outreach and engagement.

Other graduate students who received this award are Shabnam Etemadi and Ann Song .

Three students received Dissertation Year Fellowships that provide support for three quarters to outstanding students to help them focus on their dissertation work and complete their doctoral degrees in a timely manner. Each student receives a research allowance and travel grant. The awardees are Michaela Leung , Joseph Paul Bernardoni , and Ramona Martinez .

Leung is a fourth-year graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences. She is a dedicated teacher and mentor, and has worked to promote women in STEM, including lending support to the Women+ of Color Project. She has worked extensively with NASA, including as executive secretary on a NASA review panel, and is currently a NASA ExoExplorer – one of only 12 in the nation that NASA has selected to receive mentorship from experts in the fields of exoplanet science and engineering. Her research uses the knowledge of gases to look for indications of biological gas production on planets outside our solar system.

Emma Wilson talks at Graduate Division awards ceremony

Bernardoni specializes in the philosophy of ethics. His dissertation, “Unwrapping the Present: The Nature, Value and Social Function of Personal Gifts,” explores the concepts of human connection through gift giving. He contrasts the wide-ranging encounters we have with gift opportunities including ritual and ceremonial, charitable, market exchange, and personal gift giving. His thesis is that the personal gift demonstrates care and not just ethical respect. He has mentored students in the summer research program.

Martinez’s research focuses on the positive health benefits of social connection. She points to evidence that social connections are important for our physical health, with lonely or socially isolated people being more susceptible to disease. Besides being an outstanding researcher, Martinez mentors students not normally represented in academia. She received the Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. She has authored two book chapters.

Thelma Patnett , Aral Greene , and Iliana Cuellar are winners of the UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship Awards. The awards aim to enhance faculty pathways for historically underrepresented groups. They provide a year of stipend and tuition and a $10 000 professional development grant to be used within the remainder of the student’s doctoral education.

Patnett is in her sixth year in the Anthropology Program. Her dissertation, “Survival and Subversive Care: Ethnographic Narratives of Nicaraguan Women and Queer Exiles in Costa Rica and the US,” addresses the survival strategies that have evolved because of empire and war on the dispossessed populations of Nicaraguan women and queer refugees in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the U.S. A first-generation student, Patnett has established a mental health support pipeline for student-parents. She also serves as the founding member and organizer of UCR’s first Mesoamerica Working group to bring attention to critical issues affecting the Central American population.

Greene is in the fourth year of her doctoral studies in environmental sciences. She investigates the loss of nitrogen in arid environments. She is determining how and where nitrogen loss takes place and measuring nitrogen compounds in the watershed and atmosphere. Her preliminary data suggests that nitrogen is lost primarily to the atmosphere in arid zones. She received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation. She is a recipient of the campus-wide Outstanding Teaching Award. She believes her research can bring land managers, urban scientists, and social scientists together to work on problems that disproportionally impact marginalized communities.

Cuellar is a first-generation Salvadoran Latinx student in her sixth year of the Comparative Literature Program. Her thesis is titled “Palimsexts and Body Doubles: Autotheory in the films of Agnes Varda, Albertina Carri, Laeitita Masson and Lina Rodriguez.” Her work points out the lack of recognition of female filmmakers in popular culture and asks about the filmmakers’ perception of self. Her work analyzes multiple feminist performances that look inward and counter the classical male perception of women in literature and film. Her research has received support from the UCR Center for Ideas and Society and a National Humanities Center grant.

Postdoc awards

The Graduate Division also gave out 2024 Excellence in Postdoctoral Research awards. The recipients are Inaiara de Souza Pacheco , Giulia Scarparo , and Feng Tang .

Lidia Kos Inaiara de Souza Pacheco Peter Atkinson Rodolfo Torres Rick Redak

de Souza Pacheco grew up in an area of Brazil where most children do not finish high school. She is now a postdoctoral scholar in entomology. Her research focus is to generate mutants of the glassy-winged sharpshooter — a major invasive and agricultural pest that transmits bacterial pathogens. Her broader long term research goals are to help develop more sustainable agriculture. She has successfully generated two mutated sharpshooter gene lines. She plans to modify the sharpshooter so that it cannot transmit bacterial pathogens responsible for crop damage. She is the recipient of several scholarships and has been invited to present her work at national and international meetings.

Scarparo is also a postdoctoral scholar in entomology. Her research examines the genes responsible for host parasite interactions in Formica ants. Her hypothesis is that supergenes involved in parasitism drove the socialization of insects we see today. She has presented her work at multiple venues and has helped organize several conferences and symposia. She teaches and mentors students under the U.S. Department of Agriculture grant “Six Legs, Endless Possibilities: Training the Next Generation of Agricultural Scientists.”

Tang is a fourth-year postdoctoral researcher in chemistry. His general area of research is investigating mechanisms of DNA damage induced by environmental exposure and cancer. He has developed methods to map oxidation-induced lesions in DNA on a genome-wide scale and at a single-nucleotide resolution. He is the recipient of a highly prestigious National Institutes of Health K99 award , putting him on the path to an independent career.

Faculty awards

Raquel Rall , an associate professor and associate dean of strategic initiatives in the School of Education, and Quinn McFrederick , a professor of entomology, each received the 2023/2024 Commitment to Graduate Diversity Award.

Rall’s research focuses on leadership, access, and equity in higher education. She is the recipient of multiple awards including the 2021-22 School of Education’s Faculty Mentoring Award. The UCR African Student Program awarded her “Faculty Member of the year” in 2020. She serves on the Systemwide UC Black Administrator’s Council and is a member of the Black Community Council at Stanford University.

McFrederick’s research focuses on symbiotic relationships that involve insects. He investigates the microbiome of bees, parasites of bees, microbes that help protect bees, and how all of these vary with the type of bee. McFrederick joined UCR in 2014 and has mentored two postdoctoral scholars, eight graduate students and 18 undergraduates. He has also served on the Department of Entomology’s outreach committee, which visits more than 30 schools a year and helps organize the Riverside Insect Fair.

Jimmy Calanchini is the Academic Senate 2023/24 awardee of the Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentor award.

A professor of psychology, Calanchini joined UCR in 2018. He studies attitudes to behavior, including on a regional scale, the influence of bias in memory and the processes that underlie implicit bias. He uses mathematical modeling, which, he proposes, can link the fields of cognitive and social psychology. He has a deep commitment to mentorship and passion for encouraging and supporting diversity within his own lab and the Department of Psychology. In 2021 he was awarded the Graduate Division “Commitment to Graduate Diversity Award.”

Related Awards

Graduate students recognized for academic excellence and research achievements, ucr chef wins gold medal in cooking challenge, student photographer wins r’card contest for sunset campus overview, ucr winner of 2024 cio 100 award for it excellence.

IMAGES

Comparative Phd Readings 11-08
Stanford University
(PDF) A Review of the Comparative Research Method
American Comparative Literature Association Conference 2021
How to Write a Comparative Literature Review
Stanford University Comparative Literature Poster Series

VIDEO

Comparative Literature
Study Comparative Literature (M.Phil.) at Trinity
Comparative Literature Thematology
Paradigms in Reading Literatures by Prof. B. Tirupati Rao
Literature Review
International Comparative Education at Stanford GSE

COMMENTS

Comparative Literature
The Department of Comparative Literature brings into sharper focus literatures and cultures from around the world by holding them under a comparative light. It expands the boundaries of national traditions and bring them in dialogue with each other. Our curriculum seeks to prepare students for reading and research in the languages and histories ...
Comparative Literature People
Vincent Barletta. Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures and of Comparative Literature. Research Interests. Catalan Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Luso-Brazilian Languages, Literatures & Cultures. Medieval Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Philosophy and Literature. Poetry and Poetics.
Ph.D. Program
The Stanford English department has a long tradition of training the next generation of scholars to become leaders in academia and related fields. Our Ph.D. program encourages the production of ambitious, groundbreaking dissertation work across the diverse field interests of our prestigious faculty. Fusing deep attention to literary history ...
PhD Admissions
Stanford PhD students may also apply to KHS during their first year of PhD enrollment. If you aspire to be a leader in your field, we invite you to apply. The KHS application deadline is October 11, 2023. ... Modern Thought and Literature 450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 460, Room 219 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2022.
Comparative Literature
Email: [email protected]. Web Site: ... Graduate Programs in Comparative Literature. The department offers a Doctor of Philosophy and a Ph.D. minor in Comparative Literature. Learning Outcomes (Graduate) Through completion of advanced course work and rigorous skills training, the doctoral program prepares students to ...
Comparative Literature Courses
Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean (AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, FRENCH 133, JEWISHST 143) Seck, F. (PI) Yu, K. (TA)
David Palumbo-Liu
I was a founding faculty member of Stanford's Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE), which was established in 1997. From 1999 to 2005 I served as director of the Program in Modern Thought and Literature. During that period I helped initiate and organize major conferences on Rational Choice Theory and the Humanities and ...
Comparative Literature
Before starting graduate work at Stanford, students should have completed an undergraduate program with a strong background in one literature and some work in a second literature in the original language. ... All graduate students, starting with the 2020/21 cohort, must participate in the Comparative Literature Graduate Students Colloquium ...
Comparing the Literatures: Contemporary Perspectives
Comparative literature — besides being the name of an academic discipline, field of research, and study program in institutions of higher education — stands for a great tradition of the humanities. Since its beginning around 1800, it serves as a ground for significant enterprises of literary studies in academic frameworks in Europe, North and South America, the Near and the Far East.
David Palumbo-Liu's Profile
B.A., University of California, Berkeley, Comparative Literature (Chinese, French, English) (1988) David Palumbo-Liu is part of Stanford Profiles, official site for faculty, postdocs, students and staff information (Expertise, Bio, Research, Publications, and more). The site facilitates research and collaboration in academic endeavors.
International Comparative Education (ICE)
Master's program. This 12-month, full-time residential course of study combines an interdisciplinary overview of major issues in international and comparative education, development, and policy with specialized coursework in students' areas of interest. The program's two tracks—International Comparative Education (ICE) and International ...
Comparative Literature
Indeed, the discipline of Comparative Literature asks, often, just what "literature" is, and how it functions as a product of (and response to) our imaginations, our languages, and our social and economic lives. Students in our courses, majors in the department, and graduate students in the Ph.D. program all interact to shape debates about the ...
PhD Minor
The PhD Minor in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts (PLA) provides both rigorous training in the student's minor field and an exciting program of courses at the interdisciplinary boundary of philosophy with literature and the arts. Students in the program work together with faculty and fellow students in a vibrant community of scholars from ...
Browse School of Humanities and Sciences
She received the PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford (1988) and taught at Harvard, Berkeley, and most recently at NYU, where she was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2002-2008. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political, religious, and literary expression in colonial through antebellum America and ...
Comparative Literature, Ph.D.
The Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at Stanford University is committed to providing students the resources and training needed to successfully complete a challenging and rewarding intellectual project. Stanford University. Stanford , California , United States. Top 0.1% worldwide. Studyportals University Meta Ranking.
Comparative Literature Undergraduate Program
Comparative Literature and Philosophy Subplan. Undergraduates may major in Comparative Literature with a special subplan in interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of literature and philosophy. Students in this option take courses alongside students from other departments that also have specialized options associated with the program for ...
Beyond3Rs
Beyond3Rs at Stanford is the place to go for advancing the well-being of laboratory animals. What We Do We imagine a world where animal research benefits everybody — not only all humans, but other animals, too — and where the well-being of research animals is seen as the most central piece of successful biomedical research.
Ph.D. Minor in Comparative Literature
Students working toward the Ph.D. in English are directed to the program in English and Comparative Literature described among the Department of English offerings. Students must have: A knowledge of at least two foreign languages, one of them sufficient to qualify for graduate-level courses in that language, the second sufficient to read a ...
Hope: The Future of an Idea
Jisha Menon (Violet Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow) is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is the author of Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021) and The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan and the Memory of ...
Education
Stanford University is a premier destination to study laboratory animal well-being. Stanford offers programs for students and professionals to focus on laboratory animals at each level of education, including undergraduate, graduate, veterinary, and researcher training. ... The Department of Comparative Medicine, alongside other departments at ...
Stanford students receive Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships
Sharon Loa was born in Puente Piedra, Peru. At age 6, she and her mother relocated to Missoula, Montana. At Stanford, she is pursuing an MD/PhD in cancer biology. At 16, Loa became a certified ...
Undergraduate Essay Prizes: Submissions due May 2024
Before you begin, make sure the student author's name is removed from the essay document, to ensure fair judging. Please sign into your Stanford account before clicking these links. All submissions are due Monday May 6 by 4:00pm PDT. Comparative Literature French and Italian: French* French and Italian: Italian German Studies
Congratulations to our Spring 2024 graduates receiving master's or
Shannon Fine (M.A. in Comparative Literature), Vasilije Ivanovic (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies), and Damla Undar (M.A. in Comparative Literature).
Graduate Division recognizes outstanding students, postdocs, and
The Graduate Division presented awards to students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members on April 5, 2024. ... Cuellar is a first-generation Salvadoran Latinx student in her sixth year of the Comparative Literature Program. Her thesis is titled "Palimsexts and Body Doubles: Autotheory in the films of Agnes Varda, Albertina Carri ...