Recent Courses
100-level courses: Tragedy; Studies in Short Fiction; 20th-Century
Fiction; Dreams and Literature; Literature and Ethics; Music and Literature;
Comic Fiction; Composition in Context
200-level courses: Introduction to World Literature I and
II; Modern Japanese Literature; Eros and Massacre: Japanese Literature
and Film; Modern Japanese and Chinese Women Writers; Madness, Murder
and Mayhem: 19th-Century Russian Literature; Revolution, Revelation
and Revenge: 20th-Century Russian Literature; Introduction to African-American
Literature; Theatre as Social Critique: Modern and Postmodern Performance;
Heroism Ancient and Modern; Women Writers of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance; Opera; Survey of Caribbean and Latin American Literature
in Translation; Reason and its Discontents: 18th-Century European
Literature; European Literature: 19th-Century Novel; Introduction
to Literary Theory
300-level courses: The Fiction of the Future; Philosophy
and Literature; Utopias, Anti-Utopias, Dystopias; Studies in Contemporary
African Literature; Studies in Africana Literary Movements; Topics
in Genre Studies: Detective Story, Tradition and Experiment; Translation:
Latin American Women Writers; Adoration and Theft: A Study of Literary
Borrowing; Dante: The Divine Comedy; Translation: Literature of
Homelessness and Exile; Topics in Feminist Critical Theory; Practical
Feminist Criticism: Across Gender/Sex/Race; Literature and Imperialism;
Heroes and Bandits in Chinese History and Fiction
400-level courses: Feminist Theory; Seminar: Contemporary
African-American Literature; Seminar: Criticism; Shakespeare Around
the Globe: Traditions and Experiments
Senior Seminar and Senior Project
Recent Senior Projects
There
are, in a sense, no representative senior projects. Some students
write traditional papers on subjects ranging from Japanese literature
("Psychology, Philosophy and Religion in Yukio Mishima's The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion") to films ("What is the
'Male Gaze' in Hollywood's Suspense/Thriller Genre and How it is
Being Subverted") to African fiction "'Once Upon a Time
in A Country With No Name...': The Role of Language, Oral Narration,
and Time and the Traditions of Imperialism and Resistance in Ngugi's
Matigari") to the Babar stories ("The Elevation of an
Elephant: A Critique of the Social and Political Implications of
the 'Education' of Babar"). Others have done translation projects
(Rosa Montero's Beloved Master, for example) or projects combining
creative writing and literary analysis.
Special Programs
Most students
majoring in comparative literature take advantage of the opportunities
for study abroad, both in Hamilton's programs and in programs run
by other institutions. Students have studied in such places as France,
Chile, Spain, India, Ireland, Nepal, Scotland, England and Kenya.
Some have also worked as research assistants with faculty members,
both during the summer and during the academic year.
Working
in cooperation with other departments, the Comparative Literature
Department has helped bring some of the most important writers and
literary critics to campus, including Alice Walker, Maya Angelou,
Adrienne Rich, Grace Paley, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. As often
as possible, speakers work with students either in small seminars
or in regular classes.
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