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Graduate
Course Descriptions
Fall 2005
Comparative Literature | Foreign
Languages | French |
German | Greek | Latin |
Russian | Spanish
| Comparative
Literature |
CPLT 597T [=FILM 597T] The Chineseness in Chinese
Films - Prof. Ye
W 2:30 - 5:00 PM/Screenings 7:00-10:00 PM
The Chinese cinema, which in this course includes films
made in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, was little known
to America until 1985 when Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth made a
sensational debut at the Hong Kong Film Festival and, later
on, all over the world. Since then, two decades have lapsed
and many events have happened on the other side of the Pacific.
The Tiananmen Incident, the robust economy in China, the tri-party
politics in Taiwan and the ending of British sovereignty in
Hong Kong . . . Politically there are countless differences
among the governments in the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong;
in the reel world, however, everybody is now doing business
with everybody else. Directors and performers shuttle from one
venue to another. Hong Kong films use locations in Taiwan and
Taiwanese films, in the Mainland. Together, Chinese filmmakers
have “invaded American market” (Time Magazine):
their films are imported to America; their productions are funded
by American companies; and some of them are now directing or
performing in American films. For the first time in history,
ordinary Americans began to learn about Chinese culture--not
through literature, theater, or history classes, but through
films. Do these Chinese films make a real window to Chinese
culture? This course is designed to study not only recent Chinese
films but also the “Chineseness” in them. Our discussions
will be focused on three major aspects:
I. The Relationship between Cinema and Life
II. The Chinese Cultural Heritage
III. The Newest Development in Chinese Cinema
Special efforts will be made to introduce Taiwanese directors,
who are talented but, for various reasons, under-presented.
It is our goal to learn more of the common heritage of the
Chinese people in general through a cursive survey of their
most important films of the last two decades.
Averagely, we study one or two films per week. Before each
film, I will give you a questionnaire. Please keep those questions
in mind while screening the film, do some research afterwards,
and hand your answer to me at the beginning of the next class.
To be more focused, in the 2nd week, each student will discuss
with me and choose two research topics for the mid-term and
final essays. The two topics are also your 10-minute presentation
topics in class. Before the presentation, you need to prepare
copies of a handout, which should include the outline, the
reference material, and questions for your classmates. In
both presentations and essays, I am looking for three things:
originality, organization, and research. Please be aware of
USC's policy of class attendance, which is also important
in the grading.
Grading: Classroom: Discussions 30% Presentation A (10 minutes)
10% Presentation B (10 minutes) 10%
Mid-term Essay (10 pages for undergraduates, 15 pages for
graduates) 20%
Final Essay (15 pages for undergraduates, 25 pages for graduates)
30%
CPLT 700-001 Proseminar in Comparative Literature -
Prof. Vazsonyi
M 2:30 - 3:20
Introduction to the formal study of Comparative Literature and
Modern Languages & Literatures. The class will examine four
interrelated areas: 1) the nature of literary study; 2) current
professional conditions for comparatists and literary scholars;
3) designing a coherent program of study; and 4) writing on
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CPLT 701 [=CLAS 598/ENGL 733] Classics of Western
Literary Theory -
Prof. Miller
T 5:30 - 8:15
The purpose of this course is to examine the birth of western
literary theory in its historical, cultural, and technological
contexts. As such we will be examining the work of practicing
poets, philosophers, literary scholars, rhetoricians, and
theologians. One of our themes will be how changes in the
role and nature of poetry in ancient western society played
a determining role in how that poetry was understood and theorized.
Literary theory, then, did not simply apply itself to a pre-existing
object, and debate its qualities, but represented an evolving
and contested form of social self-understanding whose changes
reflected not merely internal intellectual challenges but
also social, political and technological changes of far reaching
consequence. The goal of this course, then, is not only to
provide students with an initiation into the founding texts
of modern literary reflection, but also a more profound understanding
of the contexts out of which those texts arose, and a deeper
understanding of the role literature and literary reflection
play in the historical evolution of social power.
We begin with the Odyssey, one of the founding texts of western
literature. The Odyssey is remarkable for the prominent roles
played in it by poets, storytellers, creators of elaborate
fictions (Odysseus? Cretan tales), and exemplary myths (the
constant citation of the Agamemnon story as a paradigm for
interpreting the events in the poem). In it, poetry and its
social function in an oral society are dramatized and debated.
Next, Havelock provides crucial background to understanding
the role of poetry in ancient Greek society and Plato’s
hostility to it by examining the problematic of the transition
from an oral to a literate society. We, then, begin an intensive
engagement with some of Plato’s most challenging and
difficult texts on poetry, rhetoric, and the role of discourse
in society.
With Aristotle's Poetics, we begin the examination of post-Platonic
theories of poetry and the sustained attempt to provide a
reasoned underpinning to the poetic enterprise that Plato
both stigmatizes and appropriates. All of these later theories,
to one degree or another, involve increased concern with the
formal structure of poetry. In Horace's doctrine of the dulce
et utile, we see a fusion of the traditional Roman focus on
practical morality with an Aristotelian and Callimachean influenced
obsession with the pursuit of formal perfection. With Longinus,
we observe two related responses to the hegemony of the Roman
empire and the death of city-state politics in the ancient
Mediterranean. He sees literary forms as essentially rhetorical
genres and confine themselves to observations on style and
form. Ironically, the ascendancy of rhetoric over philosophical
or poetic modes of reflection marks the death of oratory as
a vital discourse in the life of the ancient polity.
We close by looking at Augustine’s remarks on interpretation
in the Confessions as the gateway to Medieval Christian hermeneutics.
Augustine’s interpetive practice combines a neo-Platonic
metaphysics with both a Christian eschatology and deep concern
with practical morality.
Requirements: There will also be a take-home midterm and
a comprehensive final examination. Students will be expected
to come to class ready to discuss the material. Failure to
prepare adequately will result in a reduction in the student’s
participation grade.
Participation 10% Midterm 25% Final 35% 15 page term paper
30%
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CPLT 703 [=ENGL 735] Post –Colonial Literature
and Theory -Prof. Garane
TTH 2:00 - 3:15
The course will present major concepts and issues in
postcolonial theory. These include the definition of the term
“postcolonial” and its relation to the term “postmodernism,”
along with issues concerning representation and resistance,
feminism and post-colonialism, universality and difference,
nationalism, hybridity, ethnicity, language, “space,”
and “place”.
Required readings will likely be from the following texts:
Ashcroft et al. Post-colonial Studies Reader
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture
Eagleton, Terry. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Race, Writing, and Difference (Selections)
Memmi,Albert. Colonizer and Colonized
Said, Edward. Orientalism
CPLT 750 Cultural Theory: Anatomies of Comedy - Prof.
Marsh
W 3:00 - 5:30
This interdisciplinary course seeks to analyze the complexities
of a particularly slippery cultural field: comedy. Indeed, perhaps
the most distinctive feature of comedy is precisely its indefinable
quality. While comic presences have pervaded the cultural production
of all civilizations since antiquity, there has never been a
critical consensus on the nature of comedy itself. It can be
subversive and conservative, disruptive of common assumptions
concerning gender, race, nationalism and class, or, alternatively,
an escapist diversion from crude reality. This course will examine
a series of literary and filmic texts –from Aristophanes
to Eddie Izzard –while surveying a body of theoretical
work (Bakhtin, Bergson, Freud etc.). It aims to explore the
variety of contrasting (and often conflicting) philosophical,
psychological and sociological approaches to comedy and will
consider, among other elements, black humor, the nature of jokes,
comedy and violence, the dysfunctional body, comic utopianism
and whether a “national sense of humor” exists.
CPLT 880A [=WOST 796A] Seminar/Female 20th - C China
- Prof. Alber
TTH 12:30 - 1:45
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| Foreign
Languages |
| Language Teaching in International Business
FORL 703C Language Training in International Business II
MWF 1:25 - 2:40 PM Ye
FORL 703F Language Training in International Business II MWF
1:25 - 2:40 PM Grimes
FORL 703G Language Training in International Business II MWF
1:25 - 2:40 PM
FORL 703I Language Training in International Business II MWF
1:25 - 2:40 PM DiGiacomantonio
FORL 703J Language Training in International Business II MWF
1:25 - 2:40 PM Sakakibara
FORL 703P Language Training in International Business II MWF
12:00 - 1:15 PM de Oliveira
FORL 703S-01 Language Training in International Business II
MWF 1:25 - 2:40 PM Evans
FORL 703S-02 Language Training in International Business II
TTH 3:00 - 5:00 PM Evans
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| French |
FREN 511 Techniques of Literary Analysis - Prof. Lane
TTH 2:00 - 3:15
Intensive study and practice (oral and written) of techniques
of literary analysis applied to poetry, drama, and prose narrative;
mastery of MLA format for presenting and documenting research.
Students will be responsible for discussing in class specific
assignments prepared at home. The grade will be determined based
on the following:
in-class literary analyses (oral and written)
-oral mid-term (explication de texte)
-explications de texte (written)
-short research project using MLA format*
* for graduate students
Texts: Schofer, Peter et al., Poèmes, Pièces,
Prose : Introduction à l'analyse de textes littéraires
français.
MLA Handbook, 6th edition
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| FREN 776 Teaching Foreign Language in College
- Prof. Dumenil
TTH 9:30 - 10:45 AM
In this course, we will learn how to teach Introductory (109/110),
and Elementary (121) French courses using a proficiency-based
approach. To that aim, we will critique and discuss each chapter
of the textbook used in French 109, 110, and 121. We will
learn how to choose and develop authentic materials for each
chapter in order to use these materials effectively. In addition,
we will learn how to prepare and grade tests, how to give
oral proficiency interviews to first-year students; how to
evaluate different textbooks for selection at the first-year
level, and how to prepare a syllabus.
FREN 777 Supv Teaching Foreign Language in College -
Prof. Dumenil
TBA
FREN 780 19th Century French Literature - Prof. Day
M 4:00 - 6:45 PM
A survey of French poetry, theater, and fiction from the nineteenth
century, with appropriate attention to the cultural context.
The course will cover most of the titles on the M.A. reading
list for the nineteenth century. Analysis of poetry will focus
on theme, image, style, and the influence of preceding models.
Our study of fiction will include analysis of narrative structures
and will entertain various theoretical considerations, such
as the representation of genders or of the historical moment.
Students will present one or two short exposés, will
prepare a detailed project outline (instead of a term paper),
and will take a final exam. Authors to be studied (for some,
excerpts rather than whole works) include Balzac, Baudelaire,
Chateaubriand, Constant, Duras, Flaubert, Hugo, Huysmans, Lamartine,
Mallarmé, Musset, Rimbaud, Sand, Staël, Stendhal,
Verlaine, Vigny, and Zola.
FREN 790 20th-C. Literature and Culture: Tradition
and Innovation - Prof. Lane
TH 4:00 - 6:45 PM
The course will examine several sets of tensions informing
the political, social and intellectual history of 20th century
France, using the texts below as points of entry. Certain
concepts (the problem of the self, the family, tension between
traditional and progressive aesthetics and politics, class
and gender dynamics) will be highlighted while leaving space
for the development of individual research. Lecture and discussion
in French.
Course grade will be based on weekly reading journals and
class discussion (20%), one in-class report and written précis
(20%), a research paper (30%), and a final exam (30%).
Apollinaire et Valéry, selected poems (Xerox packet)
(nothing to buy)
Marie Darrieussecq. Truismes
Marguerite Duras. L’Amant
Jean Genet. Les Bonnes.
Eugène Ionesco. Les Chaises
Marcel Proust. Du côté de chez Swann
Pascale Roze. Le Chasseur Zéro
Nathalie Sarraute. Le Planétarium.
Jean-Paul Sartre. La Nausée
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| German |
GERM 700 Pro-seminar - Prof. Mueller
T 2:30 - 5:00 PM
GERM 740 German Romanticism - Prof. Vazsonyi
M 3:30 - 6:00 PM
Traditionally treated as a literary period which lasted in its
most concentrated form from ca. 1796 until 1815, with a marked
tapering off following the chill of the Congress of Vienna,
“romanticism” was considered by the “Romantics”
themselves as an idea which transcended the narrow confines
of period and genre. With this tension between “epoch”
and “idea” in mind, this course will serve as an
intensive introduction to the guiding theoretical principles
of romanticism as articulated by some of its most committed
advocates, while also examining the cultural and historical
context from which these ideas emerged. While focusing on exemplary
literary works from the period, the course will also investigate
the “most romantic of all arts” (E.T.A. Hoffmann):
music. The course will begin with Friedrich Schiller’s
self-conscious treatment of the distinctions between classical
writing and a romantic/idealistic literary agenda (Über
naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung), and end with Richard
Wagner’s apotheosis of romanticism which foreshadows the
aesthetic principles of modernism (Tristan und Isolde).
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GERM 776 Teaching Foreign Language in College - Prof.
Ducate
MW 2:00 - 3:15 PM
The purpose of this course is to explore the question: How does
one effectively teach a foreign language? We will do this by
investigating several different theories of second language
acquisition (SLA) and approaches to foreign language (FL) teaching.
During the course, you will gain both practical knowledge to
incorporate into your everyday teaching as well as an understanding
of which approaches to teaching might be more effective than
others in various classroom contexts and why. Among the topics
we will discuss are: teaching methodologies and approaches,
theories of SLA, the National Standards, teaching the 4 skills
and grammar in a communicative FL classroom, teaching culture,
and testing. Through the activities you complete and our discussions,
you will gain experience rating and developing activities for
the 4 skills (listening, reading, reading, writing), culture,
and grammar, writing tests, and evaluating textbooks for their
proficiencies in teaching these skills.
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GERM 777 Supv Teaching Foreign Language in College
- Prof. Ducate
TBA
The purpose of this course is for you to receive feedback on
your teaching so that you get an idea of your strengths and
weaknesses in the classroom and so that you can continue to
improve throughout the semester. I will observe you at least
twice during the semester - both with announced and unannounced
visits. After an observation, please make an appointment to
speak with me about your class. Your grade in this class will
be determined by your attendance at the coordination meetings,
your observations of other teachers, and how well you incorporate
recommendations for improvement from one class observation to
the next.
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| Greek |
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GREK 533 Sophocles - Prof. Beck
MW 11:15 - 12:15 PM
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| Russian |
RUSS 598G [=LING505R] Structure of Russian - Professor
Ford
MWF 12:20 - 1:10 PM
An introduction to the linguistic structure of Russian, with
particular attention to phonology and morphology. Topics include
practical Russian phonetics, especially as contrasted with English;
phonetic vs. phonemic transcription; the economical but occasionally
deceptive Russian spelling system; word-building in Russian;
and the one-stem analysis of Russian verbs. |
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| Spanish |
SPAN 315 Intensive Readings - Prof. Hill
TTH 2:00 - 3:15
SPAN 512 Adv Writing & Research/Spanish - Prof. Charlebois
M 5:30 - 8:00 PM
SPAN 515 [=LING 504] Intro to Spanish Linguistics
- Prof. Dernoshek
TTH 5:00 - 6:15 PM
In this course we will develop an increased awareness of the
marvel that is human language, and in particular, the Spanish
language. We will pose such questions as, "What is language?
How is it used? How does it work?" Although these questions
may seem trivial ?? after all, we all know how to use our
native language without any particular conscious effort ??
we will discover that there is an important distinction between
knowing how to use a language and knowing precisely how it
works. By analyzing the grammatical structures of Spanish
(in the widest sense of the term 'grammar', including the
sound system) and making comparisons with English, we will
achieve a greater understanding of how the Spanish language
works (and to a lesser degree, how English does too). We will
see how the meanings we wish to communicate are encoded in
structures, and how these are then transmitted via sound.
Consequently we will be in a better position to anticipate
and answer the questions that our students ask us, and to
respond with precision, clarity and confidence. The goals
of the course are the following:
- to show the existence of recurrent structures in Spanish,
which is a system of symbols. These regularities occur in
all languages of the world, and at all levels of language:
sound-, word-, meaning- and sentence structure.
- to encourage the self-examination of one's thoughts,
attitudes and beliefs about language;
- to become aware of the diversity of human language and
its systematicity; !
- to be able to apply what is learned to improve the teaching
of Spanish in our classes;
- to develop and retain in the future a more profound comprehension
of the miracle of language.
Topics to be covered include: the sounds and sound structure
of Spanish; syllabification, emphasis and written accentuation;
various ways that words are put together in Spanish; the structure
of verbal tenses; different types of pronouns and their implications
for language teaching; the 10 types of se; the various types
of subordination and coordination; a sketch of the history
of the Spanish language; and others.
SPAN 538 20th Century Spanish Literature - Prof.
Mabrey
MW 4:00 - 5:15 PM
SPAN 771 Spanish American Modernism - Prof. Camacho
W 5:30 - 8:00 PM
Two tendencies have prevailed among the critics of modernismo.
The first persisted in seeing modernismo as a school that emerged
in 1888 with the publication of Azul [Blue] and culminated in
1916 with the death of Rubén Darío (1867-1916). This first attempt
at categorization put the emphasis on the formal and stylistic
aspects of the movement, and interpreted it as a copy of the
French literary models in vogue at the end of XIX century. While
this version subjected Spanish American Modernismo to the European
literary trends of the time, the second integrated it into a
broader process characterized by the economic, political and
social breakdown, familiar to us under the label of Modernity.
In this course we will analyze the ways poets dealt with the
"crisis of Modernity", its shapes and turns in Latin America,
its representation of the poet, women and other cultures, as
well as its insistence on the changing Times and the Ills of
the new period. Special emphasis will be placed on its most
representative figures such as José Martí, Rubén Darío and Julián
del Casal.
SPAN 776 Teaching Foreign Language in College - Prof.
Dernoshek
M 10:00 - 12:30 PM
The Teaching of Foreign Languages in College. (3) Basic principles
of foreign language teaching in college combined with practical
demonstrations. Required of all graduate assistants. This course
will not count toward the 30-hour M.A. requirements.
SPAN
777 Supv Teaching Foreign Language in College - Prof. Dernoshek
W 10:00 - 11:00 AM
Supervised Instruction in Teaching Foreign Languages in College.
(1) Supervised direction of foreign language teaching in college.
Required of all graduate assistants who are teaching. This
course will not count toward the 30-hour M.A. or M.A.T. degree.
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