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Cultural Stdy/Comparative Lit (CSCL) Courses

Academic Unit: Cultural Studies & Comp Lit

CSCL 1001W - Introduction to Cultural Studies [AH WI DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1001 until 08-SEP-20
Culture is a site of struggle, over meanings, values, history, and reality. This course introduces students to cultural studies as a conceptual, interpretive, and interdisciplinary approach to the role that culture plays in defining reality and to the possibilities for contesting those definitions. Through exploring the rituals and practices of culture that shape our perceptions of the world, often in ways we take for granted, the course seeks to develop a critical understanding of the relationships between individual and society, representation and reality, as well as theory and practice
CSCL 1101W - Literature [LITR WI]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1101 until 08-SEP-20, was CSCL 1101 until 05-SEP-00
What is literature? Today the term literature embraces all things printed, from fiction to nonfiction to advertising (yes, even your junk mail), from highbrow to low. This course will take a comparative view of the term literature as well as its ideas, practices, and forms. Given that literature historically has been tied to writing, to print, or to the book, what does it mean to study literature today?in an age when the book (and possibly print itself) may be vanishing?
CSCL 1201V - Honors Course: Cinema [AH WI]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: CSCL 1921W (inactive, starting 21-MAY-01, was CSCL 1921 until 21-MAY-12, was CSCL 1921 until 05-SEP-00), SCMC 1201V, SCMC 1201W, ARTH 1921W (starting 05-SEP-00, was ARTH 1921 until 05-SEP-00), CSCL 1201W (starting 08-SEP-15, was CSCL 1201 until 08-SEP-15, was CSCL 1201 until 05-SEP-00)
Introduction to the critical study of the visual in modernity, presented through sustained analysis of the cinema and cinematic codes. Emphases on formal film analysis and major film movements and conventions in the international history of cinema. Students develop a vocabulary for formal visual analysis and explore major theories of the cinema. *Students will not receive credit for CSCL 1201V if they have already taken CSCLW, SCMC 1201W, ARTH 1921W, CSCL 1921W, CSCL 1201 or SCMC 1201
CSCL 1201W - Cinema [AH WI]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1201 until 08-SEP-15, was CSCL 1201 until 05-SEP-00, CSCL 1921W (inactive, starting 21-MAY-01, was CSCL 1921 until 21-MAY-12, was CSCL 1921 until 05-SEP-00), SCMC 1201V, SCMC 1201W, ARTH 1921W (starting 05-SEP-00, was ARTH 1921 until 05-SEP-00), CSCL 1201V
Introduction to the critical study of the visual in modernity, presented through sustained analysis of the cinema and cinematic codes. Emphases on formal film analysis and major film movements and conventions in the international history of cinema. Students develop a vocabulary for formal visual analysis and explore major theories of the cinema. *Students will not receive credit for CSCL 1201W if they have already taken SCMC 1201W, CSCL 1201V, SCMC 1201V, ARTH 1921W, CSCL 1921W, CSCL 1201 or SCMC 1201
CSCL 1202W - Media: Word, Image, Sound [AH WI TS]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: SCMC 1202W
Introduction to the critical and theoretical study of media and technology from Aristotle to the modern world. The first half of the course emphasizes theoretical readings in dialogue with historical apparatuses (printing press, photography, radio, cinema, television) and various expressive objects (the bible, early film, ethnographic sound recordings). The second half turns to the modern culture industry since World War II, and introduces students to the critical study of mass culture, the concept of ideology, and of the relationship between corporate power and media conglomerates.
CSCL 1301W - Reading Culture: Theory and Practice [AH WI]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1301 until 05-SEP-00
Culture and cultural conflict. Reading cultural theory/texts such as film, literature, music, fashion, commercial art, and built environment.
CSCL 1401W - Reading Literature: Theory and Practice [LITR WI]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1401 until 05-SEP-00
How can we read/understand different ways that literature is meaningful? Emphasizes practice in reading a broad spectrum of world literature, literary theory.
CSCL 1501W - Reading History: Theory and Practice [WI HIS]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 1501 until 05-SEP-00
What is history? How can we understand its meanings/uses? Emphasizes practice in reading cultural texts from various historical perspectives.
CSCL 3005 - Seminar in Critical Thought
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
Exploration of concepts and problems foundational to the practice of critique. Focus on paradigmatic concerns and shifts underpinning humanistic inquiry, from the past to the present, such as representation, narrative, ideology, subjectivity, power and violence, and transformation. Groundwork for understanding the European critical tradition and key challenges from non-European sources.
CSCL 3111W - Close Reading [LITR WI]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3557W until 05-SEP-17, was CSCL 3557 until 05-SEP-06
History/theory of 'close reading' (i.e., the most intense encounter between reader and text) exemplified through critical texts. Students perform close readings of various texts.
CSCL 3117 - Concepts of Literary Study [LITR]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3110 until 22-JAN-19, was CSCL 3771 until 17-JAN-17
This course begins by asking what this strange thing we call literature is, this six-thousand year old form of writing that brings into existence, each time a work is read, a world that did not previously exist. Sometimes that world is one in which we long to live, sometimes it is dark and foreboding, all death and despair; sometimes we seek it out as an escape from our daily lives, sometimes we enter it to be able to better understand those same lives, to come back to them refreshed, not just emotionally but intellectually -- for if literature does involve an immersion in the not-actually-existent, a departure from the everyday world, it does so by engaging us from within the world and in such a way that it is able to recast our everyday world and make us think it in new ways. And literature does all this with that most everyday of things, language. By attending to the ways authors and scholars mobilise language?s expressive, analytic and conceptual resources, with this course we shall learn various methods of critically appreciating and engaging complex literature, while gaining insight into how the practices of literary criticism and theory relate to, and help us understand, the world in which we live, how language shapes and forms that world and literature?s unique place and role in that world and its forming.
CSCL 3120 - Poetry as Cultural Critique
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3174 until 06-SEP-16, ENGL 3012 (inactive)
Examines the status of "poetry" in several cultures of the Americas bringing together techniques of close reading and broad cultural inquiry.
CSCL 3122 - Movements and Manifestos [LITR]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3179 until 05-SEP-17
Movements that emerge when a group of writers, filmmakers, artists, composers, or musicians puts forth a new definition of literature, film, art, or music?and sets in motion new relations (aesthetic and social) of word, image, sound. Manifestos?statements of position?that articulate or counter such definitions. Movements created by scholars or critics after the fact. Focuses on one or two related movements (e.g., romanticism and realism, surrealism and negritude, new wave and third cinema).
CSCL 3123 - Jewish and German Writing at the Margins: Multilingualism, Race, Memory
(3 cr; Prereq-No knowledge of German required; some work in German must be done in order to count this course toward a German minor or a German, Scandinavian, Dutch major.; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3631 until 16-JAN-18, GER 3631 (starting 07-SEP-99, was CSCL 3631 until 06-SEP-05, was JWST 3631 until 07-SEP-99), JWST 3631
How are minority stories, novels, and poems constructed at the margins of a majority culture's language? This course addresses this question by exploring the complexity of Jewish culture in modernity, with a focus on 20th and 21st century German and American literature. We will first tackle the open-ended and endlessly productive question of what is meant by Jewish culture. What is a Jewish writer and is there such a thing as Jewish writing? What makes a text ? How do Jewish authors challenge the assumptions of majority culture in their work? What role do multilingualism and translation play in the formation of Jewish cultures at the margins? We will trace the lines of affinity between the U.S. and Europe to explore the entangled histories of Germans and Jews, and between German Jews and Turkish Germans, as we look at works that challenge and expand the definition of Jewishness in the 20th century. Additional topics to be considered include how the legacies of American slavery and European colonialism shape our understandings of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, and whether Jewish writing should be understood under the rubric of whiteness? Moving beyond the approach to German Jewish literary studies anchored in Weimar Germany, we will explore the circulation of Jewish memory between Europe and the U.S. in the aftermath of the Holocaust. We will read works by, among others, Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, Gershon Scholem, Hannah Arendt, Benjamin Stein, Walter Benjamin, Barbara Honigmann, Helene Cixous, Raymond Federman, W.G. Sebald, Allen Ginsberg, Adeena Karasick, Alfred Kazin, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Avram Sutzkever, Zafer Senocak.
CSCL 3130W - Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures and Theory: 1700 to the Present [LITR WI GP]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Fall Odd, Spring Even Year)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3621W until 05-SEP-17
Readings in colonial/postcolonial literatures/theory from at least two world regions: Africa, the Americas, the Arab world, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific. Cultural/psychological dynamics and political economy of world under empire, decolonization, pre- vs. post-coloniality, globalization.
CSCL 3141 - Classics of World Literature [LITR]
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Every Fall)
This will be an introduction to the concept of world literature ? that is, literature from the Arab, Asian, African, Latin American and Oceanic worlds, not only the English-speaking countries of England and its former colonies. And it will introduce students to some of the basic methods of comparative literary study such as close reading, genre analysis, etymology, stylistics, and translation. We will discuss classic problems confronted within comparative literature such as collective authorship, the spirit of a people, the historical reconstruction of the past through the study of language, comparative cultural value, and the effects on language and learning prompted by technology (in the form, for example, of the ?digital humanities?). We will ask how comparative literature differs from other forms of literary study, but most of all concentrate on the low-tech (but not anti-technological) reading of literary texts ? the student alone with a book in their hand -- while mastering as one?s own a handful of the enduring classics of world literature ? books that have influenced many generations of thinkers and writers but that, oddly, are not typically covered in any college curriculum: not in English classes, humanities introductions, or general knowledge courses. Our focus will be on books that happen both to be central to Western and world culture as part of the inheritance of its educated citizens, but also that happen to be lost at the same time, known about rather than known, invoked but not studied, quoted from but not generally understood. We will be addressing books, in other words, that deeply inspired, but also shaped the thinking of many of the scientists, artists, and scholars of the past, and which were once common knowledge ? the expected points of departure for all educated men and women. In our own day, their influence has hardly waned ? although not in their original form. Modern film and television industries, for instance, rely heavily
CSCL 3210 - Cinema and Ideology [AH]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3115 until 16-JAN-18, SCMC 3210
The cinema as a social institution with emphasis on the complex relations it maintains with the ideological practices that define both the form and the content of its products. Specific films used to study how mass culture contributes to the process of shaping beliefs and identities of citizens.
CSCL 3211 - Global & Transnational Cinemas [GP]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3176 until 16-JAN-18, SCMC 3211
This course explores Global and Transnational Cinemas as alternative traditions to the dominant Hollywood-centered accounts of film history. Students will grapple with the historical, social, and political motivations of cinematic projects that critique traditions of national cinema, or that resist the hegemonic force of neocolonial cultural centers. Italian Neo-realism and the French New Wave will be examined as movements that challenge politics and mass culture. Third Cinema in Latin America and pan-African cinematic movements will be examined through their struggles with both colonialism and the rise of post-colonial dictatorships. Indian and Japanese cinemas of the 50s & 60s will mark out new possibilities of filmmaking and distribution. Finally, counter-hegemonic and experimental movements in U.S.-based film, such as the L.A. Rebellion and Fluxus, will allow students to understand how opposition to Hollywood style could exist within the very centers of cultural power while also reaching out to larger global communities.
CSCL 3212W - Documentary Cinema: History and Politics [AH WI CIV]
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3178W until 06-SEP-16, was CSCL 3178 until 22-JAN-08, SCMC 3212W
This course explores the ethics and aesthetics of documentary cinema, arguably the very first genre of film. We will track the way documentary has widened from largely instructional and experimental uses early in its history to become a distinct genre among today?s familiar feature films. We will screen early documentaries, which may include shocking ethnographies (Nanook of the North, The Mad Masters). Over the course of the term, the syllabus makes its way to recent exemplars of the genre (films may include: Amy, American Teen, I Am Not Your Negro, A Jihad for Love, Generation Wealth, Fetish, Blackfish and so on). One of our aims will be to explore students? relations as viewers and documentarians themselves (via smartphones, Instagram, etc.) to this participatory, revelatory, and always controversial, politically fraught film practice. Documentary Cinema includes both full class lectures and discussions as well as small group discussion of films and readings, and may include the opportunity for students to create their own personal documentary. Intellectually, the course balances out a study of the grammar of documentary as an artistic practice with explorations of the ways the genre reflects broader currents of cinematic and cultural history. By the end of the semester, students should have a stronger understanding of the ways documentary cinema opens our senses to the world around us.
CSCL 3220W - Screen Cultures [AH WI TS]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3220 until 04-SEP-18, SCMC 3220W, RM 1203 (inactive, ending 20-JAN-09, was DHA 1203 until 07-SEP-10), CI 1871 (ending 08-SEP-09, starting 05-SEP-06, was PSTL 1571 until 06-SEP-16, was GC 1571 until 05-SEP-06)
Screens increasingly define the ways that we communicate with one another and how we encounter the world. This course will offer a critical, historical approach to the emergence of ?screen cultures? from the beginning of photography and cinema to our own age of ubiquitous touch screen displays. We will pay a great deal of attention to the ways that such technologies drive our patterns of consumption and production as well as how they create and define our social environments.
CSCL 3221 - On Television [CIV]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3177 until 16-JAN-18, SCMC 3221
We will study writings on television and specific TV shows from a variety of angles to understand the rise of American broadcast technologies, how race and class are crafted on TV, representations of gender and the home, postmodernity and late capitalism, the rise and demise and of taste, global television and the public sphere, the production of ?reality? in our present historical moment, and changes in televisual technologies. Throughout the course, we will also consider what constitutes television?the technology, the form, and the content?and learn to read these three facets of it concurrently.
CSCL 3231 - Comedy: Media, Politics & Society [AH]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3175 until 22-JAN-19
What makes some jokes so funny? And why do we laugh? In this course, we will approach the topic of comedy from every angle. We will study theories and philosophies of humor, and will survey many different forms of the genre?film, television, viral web videos, internet memes, stand-up, improv, sketch comedy, absurdist theater, and political satire. And, of course, we will write and perform our own comedy in the classroom. By studying the history and formations of comedy, we will think about how jokes can help us change the rules of everyday life and imagine a new way forward.
CSCL 3251 - Popular Music and Mass Culture [AH]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3250 until 03-SEP-19, was CSCL 3172 until 05-SEP-17
This course investigates the ways popular music is imbricated with the our identities, social affiliations and attitudes towards others on the scale of millions of people?what we might call ?mass culture.? We will explore how popular music produces emotion, a sense of intoxication, and erotic desire; how it can be linked with self-discipline, bodily exercise, state security, sovereign authority, patriotism, courage, punishment, and violence; and how music might be heard related to labor and work, consumerism and consumption, and capitalism more broadly. We will puzzle over the ways music can give coherence to a cultural group, accompany moral education and action, challenge or reinforce gender conventions, mobilize and disperse political resistance, or lead one into a trance of spiritual and religious ecstasy. While we will still attend to a variety of ?purely? musical elements both large and small (chords, verses, choruses, singing styles, lyrics, etc.), our central focus will be on forming a more philosophical view of its functions within popular culture. Genres to be discussed include rock, pop, hip-hop, R&B, electronic dance music, performances of the national anthem, and experimental music.
CSCL 3282 - European Intellectual History: The Modern Period, 1750-Present
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Spring Even Year)
Equivalent courses: CSCL 5282 (inactive), HIST 3282 (starting 02-SEP-08, was HUM 3282 until 07-SEP-99), HIST 5282 (inactive)
Second of a two-semester course. European thought in its historical/cultural context. Emphasizes development of philosophical/scientific thought, its relation to thinking about the individual and the community. Readings are from original sources.
CSCL 3310W - The Rhetoric of Everyday Life [WI CIV]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3173W until 16-JAN-18, was CSCL 3173 until 05-SEP-00
How discourse reproduces consciousness and persuades us to accept that consciousness and the power supporting it. Literary language, advertising, electronic media; film, visual and musical arts, built environment, and performance. Techniques for analyzing language, material culture, and performance. (previously 3173W)
CSCL 3322 - Visions of Nature: The Natural World and Political Thought [ENV]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3361 until 17-JAN-17, was EEB 3361 until 07-SEP-99
Scientific and cultural theory concerning the organization of nature, human nature, and their significance for development of ethics, religion, political/economic philosophy, civics, and environmentalism in Western/other civilizations.
CSCL 3323 - Science and Culture [AH]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3331 until 16-JAN-18
Science and technology engaged through historical and cultural manifestations from film, literature, and YouTube to scientific and philosophical essays. Relations among humanities, science, economics, politics, philosophy and history. Psychiatry and drugs, food and agriculture, sexuality, religion and science, climate change.
CSCL 3334 - Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs [LITR]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3461 until 16-JAN-18
Historical/critical reading of figures (e.g., uncanny double, monstrous aberration, technological hybrid) in mythology, literature, and film, from classical epic to sci-fi, cyberpunk, and Web. (previously 3461)
CSCL 3335 - Aliens: Science Fiction to Social Theory [DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3465 until 16-JAN-18
In English, the word ?alien? designates both immigrants from other countries and beings from other worlds. Aliens of all sorts are everywhere; they tend to provoke fascination, fantasy, and for many, fear and anxiety. But the deeper philosophical significance of aliens says as much about us as it does about them. In this course, we will explore these questions through a range of novels, films, and artworks from the 1890s to the present day, with an emphasis on science fiction and American popular culture.
CSCL 3350W - Sexuality and Culture [WI DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3456W until 16-JAN-18, was CSCL 3456 until 05-SEP-00, GLBT 3456W
Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.
CSCL 3351W - The Body and the Politics of Representation [WI HIS]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3458W until 16-JAN-18, was CSCL 3458 until 05-SEP-00
Western representation of the human body, 1500 to present. Body's appearance as a site and sight for production of social and cultural difference (race, ethnicity, class, gender). Visual arts, literature, music, medical treatises, courtesy literature, erotica. (previously 3458W)
CSCL 3352W - Queer Aesthetics & Queer Critique [LITR WI DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3352 until 04-SEP-18
Is there such a thing as global queer aesthetic? If so, how do various modes of representation and expression (novels, poetry, and sophisticated uses of language across film, television and video, digital media, pop music and punk) elaborate and enact queerness in particular material ways while also helping to create a larger, intermedial queer culture?
CSCL 3405 - Marx for Today [AH DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
A century and a half after the publication of Karl Marx?s Capital, Vol. 1 (1867), this course will reflect on the political urgency of our current moment in order to understand the relevance and complexity of Marx and the Marxist tradition. We will pursue an intensive study of primary readings written by Karl Marx himself, exploring the social, philosophical, and political history of Marxist thought and familiarizing ourselves with key concepts such as labor-power, primitive accumulation, the commodity, use value, exchange-value, surplus-value, crisis, money, and capital. As we study Marx as a theoretician, we will also examine his work as a political revolutionary, writer, and correspondent with many of the most important revolutionary figures of his day. Here we will foreground his analysis of the labor of enslaved Black persons in the plantation economies of the Southern United States?which he ties to the labor markets of capitalism in Europe?as well as his more explicit critiques of slavery and colonialism. Following this close reading of Marx and the Marxist tradition, we will consider the ways that critical thinkers and political activists, both in the United States and globally, continue to resist, create, and dream under the banner of Marxism throughout the twentieth century and into our own new century. We will center questions of racial justice through the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and contemporary Marxist scholars of race, indigeneity, and diaspora, focusing on Du Bois?s attention to the links between race and social class in America. Alongside critical reappraisals of Marx?s thought, we shall think about the influence of Marx?s writings on political activists in the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, and on American labor, as well as on South American revolutionaries like Carlos Marighella. We will then move to a study of Marxist feminism, linking race and gender in U.S. and global Marxisms through readings by Black Panther activis
CSCL 3412W - Psychoanalysis [WI]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3412 until 05-SEP-00
The work of Sigmund Freud has withstood years of controversy to install itself as foundational to the way we understand the relationship between individual desires, social structures, and cultural practices. This is in part because Freud?s writings were not restricted to the domain of psychology. His writings also renewed grand philosophical questions in ways that dramatically transformed them. He asked: What is a human subject? What are the causes of her actions? What are the nature and motivations of her engagement with others? In the many decades since his early publications, Freud?s key concepts like the ego, the superego, the id, the unconscious, and the significance of dreams and jokes have had an enduring influence in Western culture. This course introduces students to a range of psychoanalytic writings from Freud?s early theories of mental structure and human development to contemporary applications, re-workings, and critiques of psychoanalysis. We will discuss concepts like the unconscious, sexuality, disavowal, repression, neurosis, melancholia, the pleasure principle and the death drive. By the end of the course, we will have developed a sense of the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis for understanding pressing global issues such as sexual identification and its formation, racism, neo-fascism, extreme political division, war and nationalism, climate change, and the destruction of democratic ideals. Authors read may include Melanie Klein, Franz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, David Eng, Slavoj Zizek, Henry Stack Sullivan, Kalpana Sheshadri- Crooks and Margaret Mahler. Readings will be complemented with short stories, literary excerpts, film clips, as well as discussion of current political issues.
CSCL 3425W - Critical Theory and Social Change [AH WI DSJ]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 3311W until 22-JAN-19, was CSCL 3321W until 05-SEP-17, was CSCL 3321 until 05-SEP-00
This course introduces students to influential thinkers in the field of critical theory, broadly conceived. Critical theory is similar to philosophy because it asks big questions that stretch the boundaries of human knowledge. But it is distinct in its focus on practical change?critical theory advocates for a more just and emancipated human world. Its key techniques are the diagnosis and critique of histories, systems, and ideologies of social power. Critical theory emerged from a group of Marxist intellectuals in the 1920s and 30s who were concerned about the rise of fascism, the staggering inequalities produced by industrial capitalism, the trauma of mass violence, and the numbing standardization of modern life. Since then, the field has expanded to encompass concerns about structural racism, gender inequality, the rise of neoliberalism, the expansion of modern carceral and mental health systems, and the ongoing inequities wrought by histories of slavery, colonization, and imperial conquest. Featured authors may include Sigmund Freud, W. E. B. Du Bois, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Patricia Hill Collins, Malcom X, Jackie Wang, Angela Y. Davis, Sheldon George, Alfredo Carrasquillo, Joshua Javier Guzman, Willy Apollon, Jean Rouch, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Saidiya Hartman, bell hooks, Edouard Glissant, Aurora Levins Morales, Michael Rothberg, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Christopher Pexa, Yuichiro Onishi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Lewis Gordon, and Barbara Christian.
CSCL 3631 - Jewish Writers and Rebels in German, Austrian, and American Culture [LIT IP]
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: was GER 3631 until 07-SEP-21, was GER 3631 until 07-SEP-99, was JWST 3631 until 07-SEP-99
Literary/cultural modes of writing used by Jewish writers in Germany, Austria, and America to deal with problems of identity, anti-Semitism, and assimilation. Focus on 20th century. All readings (novels, poetry, stories) in English.
CSCL 3896 - Internship for Academic Credit
(1 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 4 credits; may be repeated 2 times)
CSCL students who would like to pursue paid or unpaid internships can also earn credit toward their degree. This course includes a series of reflective assignments on the internship experience that help students develop their career goals, aspirations, and plans. CSCL students often find internships at media companies, advertising agencies, film festivals, arts institutions and galleries, publishing houses, non-profits, and community organizations. Typically a student?s work is supervised and evaluated by a site coordinator and the instructor works with a student on readings and assignments. Credits taken are determined by the number of weekly or total hours for onsite internship work, course readings, assignments, and meetings. The following are minimum hours and weekly averages based on a 16 week semester: 1 credit - 45-hour minimum (average 3-4 hours per week) 2 credit - 90-hour minimum (average 5-7 hours per week) 3 credit - 135-hour minimum (average 8-9 hours per week) 4 credit - 180-hour minimum (average 10-12 hours per week) There is also a deferred enrollment section of the course that allows students to take a summer internship followed by fall enrollment for credit. Students interested or registered in this section must contact the instructor at the start of their internship or during registration for more information. Students are also encouraged to apply for CLA Internship and Leadership Scholarships. For more information on this course or internship possibilities, please contact the Film Studies Coordinator (stou0046@umn.edu). Students can also use Goldpass to search for internship possibilities.
CSCL 3910 - Topics in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (Topics course)
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 24 credits; may be repeated 8 times)
Topics vary by instructor and semester
CSCL 3993 - Directed Study
(1 cr [max 3]; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 3 credits)
Guided individual reading or study. Prereq-instr consent, dept consent, college consent.
CSCL 4993 - Directed Study
(1 cr [max 3]; A-F or Audit; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 6 credits; may be repeated 2 times)
Guided individual study.
CSCL 5302 - Aesthetics and the Valuation of Art
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSDS 5302 until 07-SEP-99, CSDS 5302, CL 5302 (inactive)
Society, ideology, and aesthetic value considered in light of recent critical theories of visual art, music, and literature. Meditations of place, social class, gender and ideology on aesthetic judgment in post-Renaissance Western culture.
CSCL 5303 - Sound Studies
(3 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Fall Odd Year)
Equivalent courses: SCMC 5303
What is sound? Among the various ways of absorbing the world through the senses (looking, reading, watching, touching, tasting), what is unique to the actions of listening and hearing? And over the course of human history, how has sound been variously deployed, framed, and constructed? This course covers a diverse range of topics in the fast-developing interdisciplinary field of Sound Studies from the philosophy of sound to psychoanalytic theories of the voice, the gendered histories of telephones, accounts of radio and decolonization, film sound, sonic expressions of race, the politics of global popular music, mobile media technologies, and cutting-edge approaches to sound art.
CSCL 5305 - Vision and Visuality: An Intellectual History
(3 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 5305 (inactive), CL 5305 (inactive)
Central role of vision/visuality in modernity. Modern age as scopic regime. Ways that ideas/ideologies of perception have shaped aesthetic experience within social existence.
CSCL 5331 - Discourse of the Novel
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall)
Equivalent courses: was CL 5331 until 18-JAN-11, was CL 5331 until 02-SEP-08, was CLIT 5331 until 06-SEP-05, was CLIT 5331 until 18-JAN-05, CL 5331 (inactive, was CLIT 5331 until 17-JAN-06)
Comparative study of the novel, 18th century to present. Its relations to ordinary language practices, emergent reading publics, technologies of cultural dissemination, problems of subjectivity, and its role in articulating international cultural relations.
CSCL 5401 - Origins of Cultural Studies
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CSCL 5501 until 05-SEP-17, CSDS 5401 (inactive), ENGL 5501, CL 5401 (inactive)
Intellectual map of the creation of cultural studies as a unique approach to studying social meanings. Key figures and concepts, including nineteenth- and early twentieth century precursors.
CSCL 5411 - Avant-Garde Cinema
(4 cr; A-F or Audit; offered Every Fall)
In 1939, the art critic Clement Greenberg defined avant-garde art in opposition to the ?kitsch? of mass-produced culture. To what extent does this conception of the avant-garde apply to the cinema?an institution and art form that supposedly requires machines and industrial modes of production? This course introduces students to key works of avant-garde and experimental film made by artists working on the margins of commercial film and mainstream art institutions. From the first half of the twentieth century, we will consider influential films made under the banners of Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dada, and discuss their complex relation to Hollywood commodities. In the postwar period, we will explore a range of increasingly global experimental film practices, from the queer underground cinema in Latin America to the use of film projection in avant-garde performance. We will examine these practices in light of larger debates about medium specificity as well as the aesthetics and politics of the personal vs. the structural. In the final unit, we will reflect on the way contemporary artists, scholars, and curators have assembled a tradition of avant-garde cinema in the age of new media, and contemplate new directions we want it to take.
CSCL 5555 - Introduction to Semiotics
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CL 5555 until 23-MAY-11, was CL 5555 until 02-SEP-08, was CLIT 5555 until 06-SEP-05, was CLIT 5555 until 18-JAN-05, CL 5555 (inactive, was CLIT 5555 until 17-JAN-06), CSDS 5555 (inactive, starting 05-SEP-06)
Problems of the nature of the sign; sign function; sign production; signifying systems as articulated in philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and art theory. Application of semiotics to various signifying practices (literature, cinema, daily life).
CSCL 5666 - Film Music: Theory, History, Practice
(4 cr; A-F only; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Role of music in American/European film from early 20th century silent cinema to near present. Narrative features, shorts, documentary, horror, thriller, science fiction, comedy, cartoon. Film music as social/cultural practice and as part of political economy within culture industry.
CSCL 5833 - Marx, Freud, Nietzsche: Intellectual Foundations
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Three thinkers who defined modernity: Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. Central tenets of their thought/terms associated with their theories. Their careers portrayed against the background of their times; their place in intellectual history.
CSCL 5910 - Topics in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature (Topics course)
(3 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 32 credits; may be repeated 8 times)
Topics specified in Class Schedule.
CSCL 5993 - Directed Study
(1 cr [max 3]; Student Option; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 9 credits; may be repeated 9 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 5993 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15)
Guided individual reading or study. Prereq-instr consent, dept consent, college consent.
CSCL 8001 - Basic Research Seminar in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature I
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Fall)
Equivalent courses: CL 8001 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13, was CLIT 8001 until 17-JAN-06), CSDS 5555 (inactive, ending 05-SEP-06), CSDS 8001 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13)
Key texts, positions, problematics in field of comparative critical theory. Historical precursors, influential contemporary debates, disciplinary genealogies.
CSCL 8002 - Basic Research Seminar in Comparative Literature II
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8002 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13), CL 8002 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13, was CLIT 8002 until 17-JAN-06)
Key texts, positions, problematics in field of comparative critical theory. Special attention to historical precursors, influential contemporary debates, disciplinary genealogies.
CSCL 8333 - FTE: Master's
(1 cr; Prereq-Master's student, adviser and DGS consent; No Grade Associated; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; 6 academic progress units; 6 financial aid progress units)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8333 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15), CL 8333 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15, was CLIT 8333 until 17-JAN-06)
(No description)
CSCL 8362 - Modernity and Its Others
(4 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring)
Equivalent courses: was CL 8362 until 21-JAN-20, was CLIT 8362 until 17-JAN-06
Dialectical interrogation of Western and non-Western theories of modernity. Reckoning with differences and variations in its history, providing an account of the normative category of modernity (designated as European), and alternative articulations around the globe.
CSCL 8444 - FTE: Doctoral
(1 cr; Prereq-Doctoral student, adviser and DGS consent; No Grade Associated; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; 6 academic progress units; 6 financial aid progress units; may be repeated for 8 credits; may be repeated 8 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8444 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15), CL 8444 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15, was CLIT 8444 until 17-JAN-06)
(No description)
CSCL 8666 - Doctoral Pre-Thesis Credits
(1 cr [max 6]; Prereq-Doctoral student who has not passed prelim oral; no required consent for 1st/2nd registrations, up to 12 combined cr; dept consent for 3rd/4th registrations, up to 24 combined cr; doctoral student admitted before summer 2007 may register up to four times, up to 60 combined credits.; No Grade Associated; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 2 times)
Equivalent courses: was CL 8666 until 21-JAN-20, was CLIT 8666 until 17-JAN-06, CSDS 8666 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15)
Doctoral pre-thesis credits.
CSCL 8777 - Thesis Credits: Master's
(1 cr [max 18]; No Grade Associated; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 50 credits; may be repeated 10 times)
Equivalent courses: CL 8777 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13)
TBD
CSCL 8888 - Thesis Credit: Doctoral
(1 cr [max 24]; Prereq-Max 18 cr per semester or summer; 24 cr required; No Grade Associated; offered Every Fall, Spring & Summer; may be repeated for 100 credits; may be repeated 10 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8888 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15), CL 8888 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15, was CLIT 8888 until 17-JAN-06)
(No description)
CSCL 8901 - Intro to the Profession: Critical Methods of Research, Pedagogy, and Creative Work in the Humanities
(3 cr; Prereq-Grad comp lit major; Student Option; offered Every Spring)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8901 (starting 20-JAN-15), CL 8901 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15, was CLIT 8901 until 17-JAN-06, was CSDS 8901 until 05-SEP-00, was CLIT 8901 until 05-SEP-00, was CSDS 8901 until 07-SEP-99)
Prepares graduate majors for teaching. Issues of pedagogy. Preparing syllabi for specific courses that graduate instructors teach. Required for students planning to teach in Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature.
CSCL 8902 - Methodologies Colloquium
(1 cr; Prereq-CL/CSDS/CSCL grad major or instr consent; S-N only; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 2 credits; may be repeated 2 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8902 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15), CL 8902 (inactive, starting 20-JAN-15)
Presentations by CSCL faculty. Methods in relation to the field as a whole. Library component. Meetings with research librarians.
CSCL 8910 - Advanced Topics in Comparative Literature (Topics course)
(3 cr [max 4]; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 24 credits; may be repeated 8 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8910 (starting 20-MAY-19), CL 8910 (inactive, ending 03-SEP-19, starting 20-MAY-19, was CLIT 8910 until 17-JAN-06)
Practical applications of specific methodologies and theories to a determined area. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
CSCL 8920 - Advanced Topics in Comparative Literature (Topics course)
(3 cr; Student Option; offered Periodic Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 15 credits; may be repeated 5 times)
Equivalent courses: was CL 8920 until 21-JAN-20, was CLIT 8920 until 17-JAN-06, CSDS 8920 (inactive, starting 28-MAY-13)
Practical applications of specific methodologies and theories to a determined area. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
CSCL 8992 - Directed Reading in Comparative Literature
(1 cr [max 4]; Prereq-instr consent; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 12 credits; may be repeated 12 times)
Equivalent courses: was CL 8992 until 21-JAN-20, was CLIT 8992 until 17-JAN-06
CSCL 8993 - Directed Study
(1 cr [max 4]; Prereq-instr consent ; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 48 credits; may be repeated 12 times)
Equivalent courses: CSDS 8993 (inactive, starting 06-SEP-16)
Catalog Description: Directed Study in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature
CSCL 8994 - Directed Research
(1 cr [max 4]; Prereq-instr consent; Student Option; offered Every Fall & Spring; may be repeated for 4 credits)
Equivalent courses: was CSDS 8994 until 21-JAN-20, CL 8994 (inactive, starting 06-SEP-16, was CLIT 8994 until 17-JAN-06)
Directed Research in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature

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