COL 1000L            Theories of Literature and Criticism (Staff)
his course is a general introduction to contemporary theories of literature and to modern approaches to literary texts.  It is normally taken by all first year students and is meant to provide guidance for more advanced work in specific critical domains.

 COL 1210L            Recent Trends in Narrative Theory (J. Miller)
In this course, we will examine the foundational principles of what has come to be known as "classical" narratology and we will trace the impact on it of contemporary trends in critical theory. Through a survey of a selected number of important statements by theorists of narrative, we will attempt to identify the issues, problems and contexts that have arisen in recent years with respect to the brand of narrative theory that was "inspired" by structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s.

COL 1255H            Aspects of Structuralism (R. Le Huenen)
This course will begin with a brief examination of the principles of structuralism as they are found in the work of Saussure, and Lévi-Strauss.  Concentrating on the French scene, the reading will include such theorists as Todorov, Genette, Greimas and Barthes.  The core of the seminar will be devoted to a critical evaluation of the main structuralist concepts, paradigms and methods and to the study of some exemplary procedures of textual analysis. Special attention will be given to the distinction between formal and systematic constructs (Genette, Greimas) and more experimental and open approaches. (Todorov, Barthes) which lead the way to post-structuralism.

COL 2000L            Hermeneutics and Historicity of Texts (Prof. M.J. Valdes)
This seminar will examine Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes in terms of its production in the seventeenth century and its reception in the ensuing centuries. The course will also consider the appropriation of Don Quixote by popular culture and in the other arts. The texts used will be the Martín de Riquer edition in Spanish and the Samuel Putnam translation in English. The approach used will be that of hermeneutic phenomenology developed by Professor Valdés since 1982. All lectures will be in English.

COL 1700H            Humor in Postmodernity (E. Kushner)
Humour in Postmodernity? Humour, as has often been pointed out, is a most serious matter.  It is ever-present, and profoundly embedded in the literature and culture of the latter XXth century, intertwined with its deepest tragedies. This course will attempt to target the structures and qualities of humour in a comparative manner, by considering, first of all, the variety of cultural attitudes towards its very definition; secondly, by exploring a certain number of approaches to the functioning of humour in literary texts: linguistic, semiotic, psychoanalytic, narratological, sociocritical, hermeneutic; and thirdly, by concentrating upon a small number of recent literary texts rich in humour.                                   

COL 2500L            Literature and Post-Structuralism (P. W. Nesselroth)
This course will focus on the evolution of literary analysis from a structuralist methodology based on static binary oppositions to a post- structuralist one, based on dynamic indeterminacies (Derrida's deconstruction), where categorical dualities such as "either/or", "yes/no", "proper/improper", "inside/outside", etc., overflow into each other and overcome their own semantic limitations and textual demarcation lines.  Reading thus becomes a meaning producing type of "écriture", an activity which plays on the borderline between what is controllable in a language and what is not.  The general aim of this course will be to show that, far from being the nihilistic and destructive current fad that some silly critics denounce, Derridian deconstructive essays are not only extremely rigorous and playful "close readings" but also very illuminating and rewarding new readings of canonical literary works.

JIC 5000L            Narrative and Intertextuality in Italian Fiction (R. Capozzi)
Notions of embedded narratives, narrative frames, cornice, repetition and difference, intertextual echoes, polyphony, and dialogical discourse will be traced in Boccaccio’s Decameron.  The works of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco will demonstrate how these notions are further developed and illustrated in contemporary encyclopedic fictions (with references to J.L.Borges, J.Barth, T. Pynchon etc.). Selected pages from the works of Propp, Bakhtin, Todorov, Kristeva, Barthes, Riffaterre, Lottman, Segre, Corti, and Eco will provide the theoretical background for the lectures and class discussions.