| The Transatlantic Renaissance-(Same as ENGLISH 310) | This course considers the emergence of a transatlantic culture in the early modern period. How is the Renaissance of Europe and England fashioned in a conversation with the cultural forms and material realities of the colonial Americas? And how do colonial writings expand and complicate the available understanding of the Renaissance? The course is organized along a set of key issues, each one treated through several primary and secondary works. While the primary readings include a selection of major English texts of the period, the secondary readings emphasize the touchstones of the past twenty-five years in this developing field as well as recent, wide-ranging scholarship from several of the areas that intersect with the course such as history, geography, and law. European and American authors include Thomas More, Philip Sidney, Thomas Lodge, William Shakespeare, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and lesser known figures.
| Win |
| The Literature of the Americas—(Same as ENGLISH 172E.) |
This course offers a wide-ranging overview of the literatures of the Americas in comparative 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 world-views 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.
GER:DB-Hum, EC-AmerCul
| Win |
| Poems, Poetry, Worlds: An Introductory Course |
What is poetry? How does it speak to us in many voices? Why does it matter? The course introduces poetry as a genre, as an experience, as a field in literary studies, and as an indispensable part of an educated person's world-view. The readings address poetry of several cultures in comparison, with some attention to the poetry of the English-speaking world. Moreover, the course develops a conversation between standpoints: convention and experiment, the historical past and the present, old and new worlds, and many more. World poetry, I believe, is not a stable canon of texts or an abstraction, but such a wide-ranging conversation. And poetry in English is not an isolated event, but an important part of that conversation.
One of the goals of the course is to convey a basic knowledge of how poetry works, how it has been read in different times and places, how it has changed over time, and how a familiarity with poetics can contribute to your experience of a poem. No familiarity with poetry is necessary, only the will to think about particular poems and poetry in general.
The final aim of the course is to capture the reflection on worlds and their making that is important to world poetry. What is a world in poetry? How does poetry describe and explain worlds to one another? In answering questions like these, we account for some of poetry's force as an intellectual and ethical practice, and make contact with an understanding long established across many cultures: that poetry tells us things no other kind of writing can tell us, about not only ourselves but our existence in society, culture, and the world.
Readings include: medieval to modern poetry of western Europe and the Americas; contemporary poetry of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the U.S.; and present-day experimental digital, sound, and visual poetry.
Syllabus available at syllabus.stanford.edu
GER:DB-Hum
| Aut |
