Courses

We tell stories for many reasons: to entertain; to seduce; to complain; to think. This course draws upon the literatures and cultures of the romance languages to explore the role of narrative in our construction and understanding of the world.

Full details for ROMS 1102 - FWS: The Craft of Storytelling

What is a culture, and how do we know one when we see it?  This course draws upon the histories and texts of French, Spanish, Italian, and/or Portuguese speaking worlds to discuss issues of identity, difference, politics, place, and community.

Full details for ROMS 1108 - FWS:Cultural Identities/Cultural Differences

What kind of information do images - in photography, painting, and/or film - convey?  What kind of impact do they have on the minds and the bodies of their audiences?  This course foregrounds the role of visual culture in the societies where Spanish, French, Portuguese, and/or Italian is spoken, and it asks students to dwell upon how visual material interacts with spoken and written language.

Full details for ROMS 1109 - FWS: Image and Imagination

Some of the most important and intriguing thinkers, from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, have done their thinking in the romance languages.  This course explores a body of work that would be called philosophical by some, theoretical by others, and that, beyond these names, struggles to articulate fundamental concepts, problems, discourses, and situations.

Full details for ROMS 1113 - FWS: Thinking and Thought

The course will offer an overview of video art, alternative documentary video, and digital installation and networked art. It will analyze four phases of video and new media: (1) the development of video from its earliest turn away from television; (2) video's relation to art and installation; (3) video's migration into digital art; (4) the relation of video and new media to visual theory and social movements. Screenings will include early political and feminist video (Ant Farm, Rosler, Paper Tiger TV, Jones), conceptual video of the '80s and '90s (Vasulka, Lucier, Viola, Hill), gay and multicultural video of the '90s (Muntadas, Riggs, Piper, Fung, Parmar), networked and activist new media of the 21st century (Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Disturbance Theater, SubRosa, Preemptive Media). Secondary theoretical readings on postmodernism, video theory, multicultural theory, and digital culture will provide students with a cultural and political context for the discussion of video and new media style, dissemination, and reception.

Full details for ROMS 3115 - Video and New Media: Art, Theory, Politics

Further study of historical developments in the Romance languages will be interleaved with readings of significant Romance texts from the 9th to 13th centuries, both notarial and literary. Topics covered include: More on medieval diglossia and scribal practices. How medieval glosses bear on the study of early Romance. Losses and innovation in the Romance lexicon. Formation of three high-frequency irregular verbs: be, have, and go. Raising and yod effects in Spanish and Italian, yod metathesis in French. Verb morphology from Latin to Romance with emphasis on the synthetic past, the periphrastic past and future, newly created past participles, and the conditional mood. Students will become acquainted with the resources for studying medieval documents and produce an annotated translation of an excerpt from a pre-1400 Romance text as a final project.

Full details for ROMS 3220 - History of Romance Languages II

Psychoanalysis considers the human being not as an object of treatment, but as a subject who is called upon to elaborate an unconscious knowledge about what is disrupting her life, through analysis of dreams, symptoms, bungled actions, slips of the tongue, and repetitive behaviors.  Freud finds that these apparently irrational acts and behavior are ordered by the logic of the fantasy, which provides a mental representation of a traumatic childhood experience and the effects it unleashes in the mind and body-effects he called drives.  As "unbound" energies, the drives give rise to symptoms, repetitive acts, and fantasmatic stagings that menace our health and sometimes threaten social coexistence, but that also rise to the desires, creative acts, and social projects we identify as the essence of human life.  Readings will include fundamental texts on the unconscious, repression, fantasy, and the death drive, as well as case studies and speculative essays on mythology, art, religion, and group psychology.  Students will be asked to keep a dream journal and to work on their unconscious formations, and will have the chance to produce creative projects as well as analytic essays.

Full details for ROMS 3560 - Freud and the Invention of Psychoanalysis

This seminar offers a systematic introduction to methods of literary interpretation from Romanticism to the present, with a particular emphasis on the German roots of hermeneutics and critical thought. At stake is the formation and development of literary criticism around 1800 with Schleiermacher's "universal hermeneutics" and Friedrich Schlegel's notions of the fragment and irony. The two main trajectories the seminar follows are: the hermeneutic-interpretative tradition beginning with Schleiermacher, proceeding through Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Freud, and ending with Gadamer's epochal work Truth and Method. The second trajectory addresses the Critical Theory in the guise of Marx, Lukacs, Kracauer, Adorno, and Benjamin. Finally, we will look at critical thought today in Germany and its two most influential representatives: Kittler and Luhmann.

Full details for ROMS 4245 - Critical Thinking and Literary Methods

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for ROMS 4410 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

A far-reaching distrust and crisis of authority seems to be coextensive with the European Enlightenment and modernity—but what is authority? Amidst the different attempts at definition and classification, at least one thing is certain: our relation to authority is never simple and straightforward, but is the site of intense fantasmatic activity, mixing guilt, defiance, respect, resentment, terror, justice, and love. The word itself is highly evocative, and part of its power lies in the halo of images and meanings it conjures. Our investigation of the problem of authority will be guided by two great writers of the twentieth century, rarely read together, Franz Kafka and Jean Genet.

Full details for ROMS 4635 - Authority and Anti-Authority: Kafka and Genet

The comparative seminar explores pleasure and its relationship with neoliberalism. We will follow adopt an interdisciplinary approach and a historical trajectory, starting with the Ancient world though to the contemporary. Our investigation of philosophical reflections on pleasure and neoliberalism will engage important concepts such as the market, subjectivity, pornography, culture, movie viewing, gender and queerness. We will rethink and theorize how new/old media, literary, and other artistic productions facilitate the expression, the search for, and the achievement of pleasure. Through public speaking (class discussions, student presentation) and deep attention to writing (weekly reaction papers, and a final paper), the students will refine their theoretical, conceptual, and artistic accounts of pleasure and neoliberalism and their mutual imbrication.

Full details for ROMS 4948 - Pleasure and Neoliberalism

Focuses on language teaching as facilitation of learning, thus on the learner's processing of language acquisition and the promotion of reflective teaching. Pedagogical approaches will be addressed from a learner-centered perspective involving effective language learning strategies and analysis.

Full details for ROMS 5070 - Methodology of Romance Language Learning and Teaching

Urban Representation Labs are intended to bring students and faculty into direct contact with complex urban representations spanning a wide media spectrum and evoking a broad set of humanist discourses. Students will leverage archival materials at Cornell to launch new observations and explore unanticipated approaches to urban culture that derive from previously understudied archival materials. The goal is twofold: to demystify the representational technologies involved in presenting the city, and to unpack the political, cultural, and aesthetic values and priorities embedded in every form of presentation. Urban Representation Labs are offered under the auspices of Cornell University's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities grant. For current special topic seminar description and application instructions, visit: urbanismeseminars.cornell.edu/courses/.

Full details for ROMS 6380 - Urban Representation

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for ROMS 6410 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

A far-reaching distrust and crisis of authority seems to be coextensive with the European Enlightenment and modernity—but what is authority? Amidst the different attempts at definition and classification, at least one thing is certain: our relation to authority is never simple and straightforward, but is the site of intense fantasmatic activity, mixing guilt, defiance, respect, resentment, terror, justice, and love. The word itself is highly evocative, and part of its power lies in the halo of images and meanings it conjures. Our investigation of the problem of authority will be guided by two great writers of the twentieth century, rarely read together, Franz Kafka and Jean Genet.

Full details for ROMS 6635 - Authority and Anti-Authority: Kafka and Genet

FREN 1210-1220 is a two-semester sequence. This is the second half of the sequence designed to provide a thorough grounding in French language and an introduction to intercultural competence. French is used in contextualized, meaningful, and critical thinking activities to provide practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Development of analytical skills for grammar leads students toward greater autonomy as language learners. Students continue developing their writing skills by writing and editing compositions. Readings are varied and include literary texts and a short novel.  Daily preparations and active participation are required.

Full details for FREN 1220 - Elementary French

FREN 1230 is an all-skills course designed to improve pronunciation, oral communication, and reading ability; to establish a groundwork for correct writing; and to provide a substantial grammar review. The approach in the course encourages the student to see the language within the context of its culture.

Full details for FREN 1230 - Continuing French

This intermediate-level course is designed for students who want to focus on their speaking and writing skills. Emphasis is placed on strengthening of grammar skills, expansion of vocabulary and discourse levels to increase communicative fluency and accuracy. The course also provides continued reading and listening practice as well as development of effective language learning strategies.

Full details for FREN 2090 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation I

This one-credit course is focused on oral communication in French; to take this course students must be concurrently enrolled in FREN 2090.  Because the course is designed especially to encourage students to study abroad in France, it focuses on the colloquial use of French in that country.

Full details for FREN 2091 - Oral Practice for Study Abroad

This course emphasizes conversation based on short stories, poems, a play, a novel, cartoons, newspaper articles, short videos, and oral presentations by students. The goals of improving grammatical accuracy and enriching vocabulary in oral and written expression of French are achieved in a live setting during vigorous classroom discussions, as well as through written and oral analyses of the texts.  Compositions on student-selected topics and a detailed grammar review aid in reaching the goals.  Themes and emphases may vary from section to section.

Full details for FREN 2095 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation II

In this course, furthering oral communication skills and writing skills is emphasized.  A comprehensive review of fundamental and advanced grammatical structures is integrated with short stories, literary excerpts, videos, poems, and articles from French magazines or newspapers, all chosen for thematic or cultural interest.  Students write weekly papers (essays and translations), have daily conversations focusing on the topics at hand, and give at last one presentation in class.

Full details for FREN 2180 - Advanced French

This course, designed to follow FREN 2095, introduces students to an array of literary and visual material from the French and Francophone world.  It aims to develop students' proficiency in critical writing and thinking, as well as presenting students with the vocabulary and tools of literary and visual analysis.  Each section of FREN 2310 will have a different focus-for example, colonialism and the other, or the importance of women and sexual minorities in French and Francophone history, performance in literature and film, or image and narrative-but all sections of FREN 2310 will emphasize through writing assignments and in-class discussions, the development of those linguistic and conceptual tools necessary for cultural and critical fluency.

Full details for FREN 2310 - Introduction to French and Francophone Literature and Culture

This course will introduce students to some of the key cinematic and cultural movements in France in the twentieth century.  From Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937) and its depiction of shifting social classes in the First World War through the New Wave's concerns with the legacies of the Second World War, feminism, and May 1968 in the work of Resnais, Varda and Godard, we will broach through film contemporary debates around immigration, identity and exclusion in twenty-first century France.  The class will combine discussion, presentations, class scene analysis and readings from journalisatic and film criticism texts, and will be conducted in French.

Full details for FREN 2320 - Introduction to French and Francophone Film

The course provides a survey of the book from ca. 1100 to 1500, with emphasis on the development of the book in Western Europe, especially France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, and Spain.  It focuses on the many roles of the book in medieval societies, with special attention paid to production, dissemination, and reading practices. The collection of manuscripts and incunabula in Kroch Library allows a "hands-on" approach to learning.  Along the way, we will read excerpts from some of the most influential texts of the Middle Ages, such as the Song of the Nibelungs: The Romance of Alexander; the Scvias of St. Hildegard of Bingen: Dante's Divine Comedy; Jacobus de Varagine's Golden Legend; and the travel narratives of Marco Polo or Bernhard von Breydenbach.

Full details for FREN 2350 - The Medieval Book: Objects and Texts

This 1-credit optional course aims to expand the students' vocabulary, and advance their speaking and reading skills as well as enhance their knowledge and deepen their cultural understanding by supplementing non-language courses throughout the University.

Full details for FREN 3020 - French Foreign Language Across the Curriculum (FLAC)

In this course, both seminar and workshop, students discuss writing about translation, mostly in French, and practice translating from French to English.  The theoretical texts studied represent a variety of perspectives and the French texts translated, a variety of literary and non-literary genres.  Students will investigate ways of addressing various types of difficulties they encounter in the process of translating across languages and cultures with the aim of developing their own principled approach to translating.

Full details for FREN 3160 - Translating French: Theory and Practice

This course is conceived as a critical introduction to a cultural and political debate that appeared in the years of Mitterrand's France and reached its climax in the last decade.  It will focus on a French society deeply shaped by immigration and globalization.  In which way do the youth of the "banlieue" - mostly formed by postcolonial Blacks and Muslims - create their own culture with the French culture?  How have literature, essays, movies, documentary films, "national identity" carried on by governments reacted to these transformations?  Selecting literary texts (by Maryse Condé, Zahia Rahmani, Adb El Malik) and other cultural productions, the course will explore the new expressions of France as an "imagined community".

Full details for FREN 3400 - French Identities: 21st Century Culture and Society in France

This class offers a critical presentation of French cinema as an art form, from the late 1930s to the 2000s. A particular emphasis will be seen on "modern cinema," i.e. the "Nouvelle vague" movement and it "Rive gauche" counterpart. Pictorial creation, the interweaving of fiction and reality, or experimental modes of narration will be important questions for us. We'll study at least one movie feature every week and consider works by directors such as Gdard, Varda, Resnais, Marker, Duras, Bresson, Renoir, Melville, Kechiche and others.

Full details for FREN 3465 - The Art of French Cinema

This course will offer an historical overview of responses to bodily and cognitive difference.  What was the status of the monster, the freak, the abnormal, the (dis)abled, and how are all of these concepts related?  How have we moved from isolation and institutionalization towards universal design and accessibility as the dominant concepts relative to (dis)ability?  Why is this shift from focusing on individual difference as a negative attribute to reshaping our architectural and more broadly social constructions important for everyone?  What are our ethical responsibilities towards those we label as "disabled"?  Authors to be studied include: Ambroise Paré, Emmanuel Levinas, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Lennard Davis, Tobin Siebers, Simon Baron-Cohen.

Full details for FREN 3520 - (Dis)ability Studies: A Brief History

Monsters have preoccupied France for a long time. Their stories reveal a great deal about French notions of difference, expressed in the form of gender, race, species, social class, religion, and culture. Since the medieval period, monsters evoke the tension between normativity and the exceptional, the idealized body (generally masculine) and the abnormal one (according to Foucault). We will also consider questions of moral monstrosity, monstrosity as an evocation of the boundaries of life and of humanity, and how discourses of monstrosity call into question our concepts of knowledge. Is there such a thing as monstrous epistemology, a category to which we can exile all that which does not fit into our systems of thought ? Authors to be studied will include:  Chrétien de Troyes, François Rabelais, Ambroise Paré, Victor Hugo, Gaston Leroux, and Michel Foucault.

Full details for FREN 3531 - Les Monstres

Psychoanalysis considers the human being not as an object of treatment, but as a subject who is called upon to elaborate an unconscious knowledge about what is disrupting her life, through analysis of dreams, symptoms, bungled actions, slips of the tongue, and repetitive behaviors.  Freud finds that these apparently irrational acts and behavior are ordered by the logic of the fantasy, which provides a mental representation of a traumatic childhood experience and the effects it unleashes in the mind and body-effects he called drives.  As "unbound" energies, the drives give rise to symptoms, repetitive acts, and fantasmatic stagings that menace our health and sometimes threaten social coexistence, but that also rise to the desires, creative acts, and social projects we identify as the essence of human life.  Readings will include fundamental texts on the unconscious, repression, fantasy, and the death drive, as well as case studies and speculative essays on mythology, art, religion, and group psychology.  Students will be asked to keep a dream journal and to work on their unconscious formations, and will have the chance to produce creative projects as well as analytic essays.

Full details for FREN 3560 - Freud and the Invention of Psychoanalysis

Vichy, the Holocaust, the Algerian War, and May 68 are crucial events that continuously resurge in France, where they are reinterpreted through the prism of the present. Far from being monolithic, this process of reworking the past is plural and conflictive, alternating moments of forgetting, anamnesis and depression, and shaking old national narratives (the so called roman national).  This seminar will analyze different dimensions of French remembrance, taking into account historical works, novels, and films.  It will explore French historical consciousness as a factory of multiple, changing identities.

Full details for FREN 3720 - French Realms of Memory

In the XIX century, both literature and medicine shaped the birth of the idea of the psyche.  A new medical discipline like psychiatry (at that time called "alienism") considered the pathologies of the soul at the same time as romantic authors investigates the misfortunes and sufferings of the individual in modern society.  Clinical cases (Charcot, Freud) could be read like novels and scientific theories similarly fed fictions (Maupassant, Zola, etc.).  This course will explore these reciprocal influences between literature and medicine in France through medical case studies and fiction, taking into account both classical texts and the most recent research.  At the intersection between madness, psychiatry, literature, cultural history and narrative theory, it raises questions about personal identities and the birth of modern subjectvities.

Full details for FREN 3850 - Literature & Medicine in the 19th Century

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for FREN 4200 - Special Topics in French Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for FREN 4300 - Honors Work in French

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).  We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought.

Full details for FREN 4368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for FREN 4415 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

Full details for FREN 4720 - Women's Stories/From The Margins

This interdisciplinary seminar would like to offer new hypotheses on the ways poetry is understood and experienced by a reader's mind. Our methodology, while non-reductionist, will take into account the current state of cognitive science, and also build on literary theory and philosophy (both "analytic" and "Continental"). Poetry makes use of cognitive structures and paths, of formal repetitions and algorithms-but it also alters and challenges the usual boundaries of thought. Thus, we need to consider both the ordinary and the extraordinary, if we ever want to explain the mental performance of the poetic. A comparative corpus of poems (written in European languages, from Antiquity to the 20th century) will be used throughout the semester. Students from very diverse backgrounds but with an interest in mind and/or language and poetry are welcome.

Full details for FREN 6180 - Poetry and Mind

This seminar will study the problem of transmission in psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on its stakes for political history and theory. Freud's Moses and Monotheism addresses the unconscious and intersubjective dimensions of the act that founds a people, which "imprints" itself on the people in ways that exceed the framework of allegiance. "How," he asks of Moses, "did one single man come to stamp his people with its definite character and determine its fate for millennia to come?" This transmission is further remarkable in being non-linear, discontinuous, distorted by repression, skipping many generations and crossing continents, but imposing itself nonetheless. My hypothesis is that Freud's argument might shed light on one of the central problems of political theory: the status of what Rousseau calls "the act by which a people is a people." The act as psychoanalysis understands it is not something we can know, interpret, or anticipate, but something by which we are "struck" both psychically and in the body, where it leaves its traces or impressions. What then is involved in being "struck" by the act of another, and how might it help us to understand the stakes of the act for those who receive it? What role do the unconscious and the body play in the subjectivation of the people and the transmission of its legacy? We will read psychoanalytic texts alongside works of political theory by Rousseau, Marx, CLR James, Du Bois, Arendt, Derrida, Rancière, Zizek, and Badiou.

Full details for FREN 6240 - Psychoanalysis and Historical Transmission

Designed for those with little or no background in French. Aims primarily to develop skill in reading French. Covers grammar basics, extensive vocabulary, and strategies for reading in a foreign language. Some flexibility in selecting texts according to fields of interest.

Full details for FREN 6300 - French Reading for Graduates

This seminar will focus on the writings of the polymorphous Martinican poet and thinker, Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).  We will attend to the historical context of French colonialism, particularly in the Caribbean, that gives his writing part of its impetus and to the anticolonial intellectuals with whom he engages (chiefly Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon) as well as to his major self-professed influences (William Faulkner, Saint-John Perse, Hegel) and to an array of interlocutors and fellow-travelers as well as a few dissenters. The seminar will examine the main preoccupations of Glissant's writing (world histories of dispossession and plantation slavery, creolization, Relation, opacity, flux, transversality, Caribbean landscapes as figures of thought, the All-World, etc.) but our focus will be on reading Glissant and attending carefully to the implications of his poetics and of his language for decolonial thought. 

Full details for FREN 6368 - Reading Édouard Glissant

Guided independent study for graduate students.

Full details for FREN 6400 - Special Topics in French Literature

There is an astonishing discrepancy between our perception of the Holocaust as a central event of the twentieth century and its marginal place in postwar culture.  It is during those years, nevertheless, that the destruction of European Jews aroused an intellectual debate whose philosophical, political, and literary contributions constitute landmarks for contemporary culture and criticism.  The course will explore the reasons for such a discrepancy, reconstructing the steps of the integration of the Holocaust into our historical consciousness.  It will analyze some of the most significant attempts to think such a trauma made by German-Jewish exiles (Arendt, Adorno, Anders), the survivors of the Nazi camps (Améry, Levi, Celan, Antelme), as well as the public intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (Sartre, Bataille, MacDonald, etc).

Full details for FREN 6415 - The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)

"Absolutism" is a political and cultural concept more resonant in its abstraction than most. It nevertheless appears capable of generating a proliferation of both conscious and unconscious associations by which and through which our culture constantly reinvents itself. This course will examine some of the major political theorists of the late 16th and 17th centuries who tried to define "absolutism" as a viable political program for societies in dramatic change. We will also look at literary (and artistic) works that form absolution's cultural appropriations: plays, (Corneille, Rotrou, Racine, Molière) short fiction, theological sermons will be analysed.

Full details for FREN 6880 - Absolutism

This is an introductory level course desiged for students who have no previous knowledge of Italian.  In this course, students develop all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in Italian, and are introduced to Italian culture and to current social and political questions.

Full details for ITAL 1202 - Italian II

The aim of this course is to help students familiarize themselves with one of the most important, and world-renowned aspects of Italian culture, or rather "La Cucina Italiana". This course will combine different language learning approaches like grammar and audio/oral activities such as video clips, role play activities in class, interviews regarding food topics, etc., as well as some "hand-on" lessons. Class will alternate grammar and conversation lessons, while adding a few practical cooking activities that will focus on recipes and traditions that characterize different geographical regions of Italy.

Full details for ITAL 1212 - Italian Food Culture

An intensive elementary Italian language course. This 6-credit course covers material presented in ITAL 1201 and ITAL 1202 in just one semester. It's offered to students who cannot study Italian in the Fall, but can only do it in the Spring semester.

Full details for ITAL 1401 - Intensive Elementary Italian

An intermediate-level course that aims to further develop intercultural, reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities in ITAL 2201. Students will be guided in perfecting their communication skills, improving their cultural proficiency, and developing a critical eye toward printed and visual material drawn from literature, history, politics, science, and arts in the Italophone world. Conversation skills will be practiced in daily discussions and in individual or group projects and presentations. A variety of written assignments will help students increase the range, accuracy, and stylistic appropriateness of their writing. Review of select grammar topics is part of this course, as is reading a short contemporary novel.

Full details for ITAL 2202 - Italian IV

The course provides a survey of the book from ca. 1100 to 1500, with emphasis on the development of the book in Western Europe, especially France, Germany, Italy, the Low Countries, and Spain.  It focuses on the many roles of the book in medieval societies, with special attention paid to production, dissemination, and reading practices. The collection of manuscripts and incunabula in Kroch Library allows a "hands-on" approach to learning.  Along the way, we will read excerpts from some of the most influential texts of the Middle Ages, such as the Song of the Nibelungs: The Romance of Alexander; the Scvias of St. Hildegard of Bingen: Dante's Divine Comedy; Jacobus de Varagine's Golden Legend; and the travel narratives of Marco Polo or Bernhard von Breydenbach.

Full details for ITAL 2350 - The Medieval Book: Objects and Texts

This survey of modern Italian culture aims to acquaint students with the most important social, political and artistic developments occurring in Italian culture today. These include the effects of geographic and national fragmentation on political life in post-Risorgimento Italy; the "Southern Question" as it is known in Italy, especially the relation between southern regions like Sicily and Calabria and the North;  the phenomenon of "Cosa Nostra"; Italian contributions to world cinema in classics like "Rome Open City", "The Bicycle Thief", and more recently "Gomorrah"; Italian cooking and its relation to national identity; and Italy as a multi-ethnic territory. By providing students with a variety of cultural, political, and anthropological perspectives on Italian culture, students will get to see (and eat) for themselves how Italian culture is produced and consumed globally today.  Readings include selections from the works of Leonardo Sciascia and Carlo Levi and from film directors Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Sergio Leone, and Roberto Benigni.  A group of secondary readings will be used to complement our discussion of the current trends and issues facing contemporary Italy.

Full details for ITAL 2900 - Perspectives in Italian Culture

Full details for ITAL 3020 - Italian Practicum

Populism today has never been more 'popular.'  From Turkey to India, to Italy, to the United States, populism and populist leaders appear to be in ascendence, which leads to some questions:  What exactly do we mean when we say populism and what can we do to resist?  In this course we will examine the term underpining populism, "popolo" and ask who or what is a people?  What relations of force does populism name and what practices-political, aesthetic, ethical-can combat it?  Readings will mainly come from the Italian tradition, though not only: Machiavelli, Marx, Gramsci, Bobbio, Foucault, Agamben, and Braidotti are featured as are a number of writings from European feminist thinkers working on the relation of patriarchy to populism.

Full details for ITAL 3720 - Contemporary Populism

Guided independent study of special topics.

Full details for ITAL 4200 - Special Topics in Italian Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for ITAL 4300 - Honors in Italian Literature

This course, offered entirely in English, is open to advanced undergraduates and graduates who want to learn more about the relations of politics to art in general and the cultural politic of "autonomia" more specifically.  This movement, primarily associated with Italy, continues to have widespread influence around the globe.  During the 1960s and 70s in Italy and elsewhere, workers, and intellectuals began to think collectively about a social terrain outside of dominant structures such as the State, the political party or the trade union.  How does their "refusal to work" shape culture and vice versa?  What kinds of cultural productions can come "outside of the State" or from constituent power?  We will begin the course by tracing the term autonomy (self-rule) from antiquity to the modern period with emphasis on its relation to culture.  We will then focus on the period of the 1960s and 70s, with experimental and mainstream cinema of Antonioni, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Petri and others; with writers such as Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nanni Balestrini; with arte povera as one "origin" of contemporary conceptual art; architecture and the reformation of public space in the wake of the situationism; and critics or theorists including Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Franco Berardi (Bifo), Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and so on.  We will conclude with the potential relevance of autonomist-or-some might say post autonomist-thought for the present and future.

Full details for ITAL 4710 - Labor and the Arts

Guided independent study for graduate students.

Full details for ITAL 6400 - Special Topics in Italian Literature

This course, offered entirely in English, is open to advanced undergraduates and graduates who want to learn more about the relation of politics to art in general and the cultural politics of "autonomia" more specifically.  This movement, primarily associated with Italy, continues to have widespread influence around the globe.  During the 1960s and 70s in Italy and elsewhere, workers and intellectuals began to think collectively about a social terrain outside of dominant structures such as the State, the political party or the trade union.  How does their "refusal to work" shape cultural and vice versa?  What kinds of cultural productions can come "outside of the State" or from constituent power?  We will begin the course by tracing the term autonomy (self-rude) from antiquity to the modern period with emphasis on its relation to culture.  We will then focus on the period of the 1960s and 70s, with experimental and mainstream cinema of Antonioni, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Petri and others: with writers such as Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nanni Balestrini; with arte povera as one "origin" of contemporary conceptual art; architecture and the reformation of public space in the wake of situationism; and critics or theorists including Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Franco Berardi (Bifo), Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Paolo Virno and so on.  We will conclude with the potential relevance of autonomist-or-some might say postautonomist-thought for the present and future.

Full details for ITAL 6710 - Labor and the Arts

In this course, students work on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish. Students will also develop their intercultural competency. The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input. Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra! Po polsku 1" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries. This class covers chapters 0-9. If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 1131 - Elementary Polish I

In this course, students work on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish. Students will also develop their intercultural competency. The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input. Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra! Po polsku 1" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries. This class covers chapters 10-20. If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 1132 - Elementary Polish II

In this course, students continue working on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish. Students will also enhance their intercultural competency. The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input. Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra! Po polsku 2" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries. This class covers chapters 1-10. If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 1133 - Intermediate Polish I

In this course, students continue working on their ability to speak, write, read, and understand contemporary Polish. Students will also enhance their intercultural competency. The instructor uses communicative language teaching with emphasis on structured input. Students use the textbook and workbook "Hurra! Po polsku 2" supplemented by Polish-English chapter dictionaries. This class covers chapters 11-20. If a student is not sure of his or her language level, he or she can contact the Polish instructor, Ewa Bachminska, at eb583@cornell.edu.

Full details for POLSH 1134 - Intermediate Polish II

Eastern Europe has contributed unique films to the global cinema. In this class, students will watch, discuss, and write about a variety of movies: Oscar winners and lesser-known films, thrillers and comedies. Our films come from Poland, Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan etc. In addition to learning film terminology, students will have the opportunity to become acquainted with the cultures, history, and geography of Eastern Europe. They will write film reviews, do research on the topic of their choice, and write a research assignment. All class films are available for streaming through Blackboard for students to watch them in their free time.

Full details for POLSH 1301 - FWS: East European Film

In this class, students master their language skills: oral communication, listening and reading comprehension as well as creative and formal writing.  Students also deepen their cultural competence.  Classroom discussions include issues of contemporary Poland and various aspects of Polish culture.  Students have writing assignments and one oral presentation in class.

Full details for POLSH 2103 - Advanced Polish I

PORT 2010-2020 is a full year course intended for students who have already taken the first level of Portuguese, or as an intensive introductory course for those who are native/near native speakers of Spanish.  An all-skills course with particular emphasis on Brazilian Portuguese spoken within the contexts of its culture, it presents a fast-paced review focused on improving grammatical accuracy, pronunciation and on enriching vocabulary.

Full details for PORT 2010 - Intermediate Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers I

Intended for students who have already taken the first level of Portuguese, or as an intensive introductory course for those who are native/near native speakers of Spanish.* An all-skills course with particular emphasis on Brazilian Portuguese spoken within the contexts of its culture, it presents a fast-paced review focused on improving grammatical accuracy, pronunciation and on enriching vocabulary.

Full details for PORT 2020 - Intermediate Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers II

From white sand beaches, samba, and carnival, to poverty, violence, and urban chaos, few cities offer so much to the imagination as Rio de Janeiro.  From the early nineteenth century to the present Rio has been the backdrop, object, birthplace, and protagonist of countless novels, movies, songs, and sociological studies.  In this course we turn to the city as text and explore the multiple possibilities of a hermeneutics of urban space.  Shifting the focus of cultural analysis from the national to the urban, this course approaches the multiple images and complex reality of Rio from a broad range of perspectives and fields of inquiry through a wide range of materials including historical documents and narratives, literary works, theoretical pieces, films, and numerous online tools.

Full details for PORT 3210 - Reading Rio

Few areas of cultural expression can rise to the importance of music in Brazilian life. This seminar-style course employs discussion, critical reading and listening – and hands-on music-making – to investigate Brazilian culture, history, and politics through the lens of its music.  Samba will be a significant focus, but we will also discuss a range of additional regional and national styles. Along with two class meetings per week, our "discussion" will coincide with rehearsals for Deixa Sambar, Cornell's Brazilian ensemble. The course will be taught in English. Music experience is not necessary, but engagement in music-making is an integral part of the course.

Full details for PORT 3480 - Brazilian Culture through its Music

Guided independent study of specific topics. For undergraduates interested in special topics not covered in courses.

Full details for PORT 4200 - Special Topics in Brazilian Literature

Guided independent study of specific topics. For graduates interested in special topics not covered in courses.

Full details for PORT 6400 - Special Topics in Brazilian Literature

While building language proficiency and accuracy through communicative activities, the course encourages students to actively interact with one another. The instructor facilitates communication and provides feedback and language learning strategies that guide students to take responsibility of their own learning and become active participants in the process. The course also introduces students to the many peoples and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world, prompting them to make comparisons with their own culture. Additionally, lectures provide students with opportunities to reflect on relevant grammar topics and assist students in developing language learning strategies. Class discussions are conducted entirely in Spanish. After 1220, students may take SPAN 1230, SPAN 2070, or SPAN 2090 depending on their LPS score which is the final exam.

Full details for SPAN 1220 - Elementary Spanish II

The goal of this low-intermediate course is to achieve a higher level of comprehension as well as to advance oral and written expression in a cultural context. Classes are in Spanish and the language is actively used in communicative and creative activities. Students engage in linguistic and literary analysis of texts to acquire new vocabulary, complete analytical exercises, and develop reading strategies. Students continue developing writing skills through composition, give oral presentations, and review grammatical structures independently with some clarification by the instructor as needed. After this course, students may take SPAN 2000, SPAN 2070, or SPAN 2090.

Full details for SPAN 1230 - Continuing Spanish

This class is a survey of music practices among Mexican communities both in Mexico and in the U.S. Taking contemporary musical practices as a point of departure, the class explores the historical, cultural, and political significance of a wide variety of Mexican music traditions (including indigenous, folk, popular, and art music, dating back to the 16th Century) from a transnational perspective.

Full details for SPAN 1321 - Music of Mexico and the Mexican Diaspora

Provides a conversational grammar review, with dialogues, debates, compositions, and authentic readings on health-related themes. Special attention is given to relevant cultural differences and how cultural notions may affect medical care and communication between doctor and patient. The objective of 2070 is to provide practice in real-life application, such as taking a medical history, calming a patient, and how to speak to a Hispanic patient in a culturally acceptable manner. After this course, a student may take SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, SPAN 2170, or SPAN 2095.

Full details for SPAN 2070 - Intermediate Spanish for the Medical and Health Professions

This intermediate course develops accurate and idiomatic oral and written expression in a cultural context. Students achieve a higher level of syntactical and lexical competence through reading and discussing literary texts and viewing films. Particular emphasis is on writing and editing academic essays with peer/instructor feedback. Classes are in Spanish and the language is actively used in oral presentations and communicative, creative, and critical-thinking activities. Students review grammar structures on their own, with clarification and support of the instructor. After this course, students may take SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, SPAN 2170, or SPAN 2095.

Full details for SPAN 2090 - Intermediate Spanish I (Composition and Conversation)

This advanced-intermediate course is designed to prepare students for study abroad, entry into the major, and advanced-level courses. Students study stylistics, analyze and discuss texts, view films, and acquire advanced reading strategies. Continued emphasis is on writing and editing academic essays with peer and instructor feedback. Classes are in Spanish, and the language is actively used in oral presentations and communicative, creative, and critical-thinking activities. Students review grammar structures on their own, although the instructor may clarify as needed. The course is a pre-requisite for the major and may be taken concurrently with SPAN 2140, SPAN 2150, or SPAN 2170.

Full details for SPAN 2095 - Spanish Intermediate Composition and Conversation II

This advanced course will focus on spoken Spanish in its formal and informal registers, regional dialects, and pronunciations.  Authentic texts from across different genres of film, newspapers, fiction, songs, and essays will be used to develop all skills with emphasis on oral production, as well as intercultural and pragmatic competence.  Students will further their fluency and accuracy by engaging in activities that might include debates, oral presentations, and interviews.

Full details for SPAN 2130 - Advanced Spoken Spanish

Introductory survey of modern Spanish literature. Students develop their analytical skills and learn basic literary concepts such as genre (drama, lyric, short story, and novel) and style (romanticism, realism, etc.) as well as male/female perspectives and the translation of literature to film language. The survey introduces students to Spain's cultural complexity through readings of works by authors representative of its diverse linguistic and literary traditions.

Full details for SPAN 2140 - Modern Spanish Survey

Readings and discussion of representative texts of the 19th and 20th centuries from various regions of Latin America. Among the authors considered are Sarmiento, Hernández, Martí, Darío, Agustini, Cortázar, García Márquez, Poniatowska, and Valenzuela.

Full details for SPAN 2150 - Contemporary Latin American Survey

This course explores major texts and themes of the Hispanic tradition from the 11th to the 17th centuries. We will examine general questions on literary analysis and the relationship between literature and history around certain events, such as medieval multicultural Iberia, the creation of the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492; the encounter between the Old and the New Worlds; the 'opposition' of high and low in popular culture, and of the secular and the sacred in poetry and prose. Readings may be drawn from medieval short stories and miracle collections; chivalric romances, Columbus, Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, among others.

Full details for SPAN 2170 - Early Modern Iberian Survey

This course, which is required for the major, is designed to help the learner develop increased accuracy and sophistication in writing in Spanish for academic purposes and continued oral practice in Spanish. To this end, there will be ample writing and revising practice, with a focus on specific grammatical and lexical areas, customized to the needs of the students enrolled in the course.

Full details for SPAN 2180 - Advanced Spanish Writing Workshop

Interdisciplinary course offered every spring. Topics vary by semester, but readings always focus on current research in various disciplines and regions of Latin America. The range of issues addressed include the economic, social, cultural, and political trends and transitions in the area. In the weekly meetings, instructors and guest lecturers facilitate student discussions. Students taking the course are required to participate in all class discussions and write a research paper in their chosen focus area.

Full details for SPAN 2200 - Perspectives on Latin America

Interdisciplinary course offered every spring.  Topics vary by semester, but readings always focus on current research in various disciplines and regions of Latin America. The range of issues addressed include the economic, social, cultural, and political trends and transitions in the area.  In the weekly meetings, instructors and guest lecturers facilitate student discussions.  Students taking the course are required to participate in all class discussions and write a research paper in their chosen focus area.

Full details for SPAN 2205 - Perspectives on Latin America in Spanish

This 1-credit optional course aims to expand the students' vocabulary, and advance their speaking and reading skills as well as enhance their knowledge and deepen their cultural understanding by supplementing non-language courses throughout the University.

Full details for SPAN 3020 - Spanish Foreign Language Across the Curriculum (FLAC)

This course seeks to explore the cultural and linguistic diversity of Spain and its political stakes by analyzing texts from regions that still remain in the periphery of Peninsular studies: Catalonia, Basque Country, and Galicia.  We will examine how identities are shaped and contested in Spain by examining current political debates and discussing literary and theoretical works by authors such as Prat de la Riba, Juan Marsé, Carme Riera, Sabino Arana, Jon Juaristi, Bernardo Atxaga, and Manuel Rivas. 

Full details for SPAN 3240 - Iberian Modern Political Cultures

As globalization draws the Americas ever closer together, reshaping our sense of a common and uncommon American culture, what claims might be made for a distinctive, diverse poetry and poetics of the America? How might we characterize its dominant forms and alternative practices? What shared influences, affiliations, concerns and approaches might we find and what differences emerge? Ranging across North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean, this course will place in conversation such figures as Poe, Stein, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Neruda, Vallejo, Borges, Parra, Césaire, Walcott, Bolaño, Espada, Waldrop, Vicuña, Hong, and Rankine.

Full details for SPAN 3800 - Poetry and Poetics of the Americas

As twentieth century globalization fostered large-scale chronological synchronization and cyberculture brought immediate hyperconnection, contemporary writers and visual artists have figured new ways of spatializing time and representing the multifarious experience of Latin American present in global culture. What is "the contemporary"? Do we live in global synchronicity or in local out of sync? Reconsidering concepts of time, art history and contemporaneity through theoretical writings by philosophers, critics and art historians, we will study works of Latin American writers and artists, focusing on new logics of narrative causality and new uses of series and archives furthered by the experience of wandering, acceleration, and porous relationships between historical and private time. We will also analyze narrative and visual strategies for "recovering time", "representing" the past and renewing the dialogue with tradition by means of anachronic rereadings, appropriation, mutation and "reboot."

Full details for SPAN 4080 - New Configurations of Time in Contemporary Latin American Art and Fiction

Guided independent study of special topics. For undergraduates interested in special problems not covered in courses.

Full details for SPAN 4200 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.

Full details for SPAN 4300 - Honors Work in Spanish

The fantastic and the supernatural are the fundamental elements of this course, in which we will analyze Latin American short stories, novels, and films featuring ghosts, vampires, monsters, witches, zombies, haunted houses, and ecological horror.  We will explore issues relating to colonialism, class, race and gender issues, in the context of the debate between tradition and modernity in the continent.  The texts range from the 19th century to present.

Full details for SPAN 4855 - Latin American Horror

Networked digital information and communication technology has become the dominant mode through which we experience the everyday.  The internet has changed our ideas about reality, identity, consumption, participation, authorship, originality, attention economy and control, profoundly transforming artistic practices.  The course will explore the extensive effects of digital culture on contemporary art and fiction, analyzing new aesthetic forms and devices inspired by acceleration, demterialization of the object, information overload, and by the non-linearity, multimediality and unlimitedness of the hyertext.  In a world still fragmented by network inequality, we will also focus on the work of Latin American writers and artists who have turned technological gap into creative took, rendering delay,digital debris, poor image and misuse a means of critical rupture. The course will also explore forms of reconstructing an occluded reality or disrupting the real by means of materialization, repetition and reenactment.

Full details for SPAN 6090 - Latin American Art and Fiction in the Age of the Internet

Guided independent study for graduate students. For graduates interested in special problems not covered in courses.

Full details for SPAN 6400 - Special Topics in Spanish Literature

This course explores how Caribbean music-such as son, merengue, and reggaetón-dialogues with literature in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and New York.  Theoretical readings on Caribbeanness (Benítez-Rojo, Glissant) and ethnomusicology (Flores, Moore, Rivera-Rideau) animate our interdisciplinary examination of Aftro-Antillean poetics (Nicolás, Guillén), Cuban neo-Barogue aesthetics (Severo Sarduy), coloniality and cultural consumption (Luis Rafael Sánchez), queer Caribbean diasporas (Mayra Santos-Febres), and soundtracks from Dominican urbanity (Rita Indiana).

Full details for SPAN 6780 - Hispanic Caribbean Rhythms and Aesthetics