CLS NewsNewsletter of the Program in Comparative Literary Studies

Spring 2011V3, Issue 3

Program in Comparative

Literary StudiesProgram DirectorMichal P. Ginsburg

m-ginsburg@northwestern.edu

Director of Graduate StudiesAlessia Ricciardi

a-ricciardi@northwestern.edu

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Michal P. Ginsburgm-ginsburg@northwestern.edu

Program AssistantJane Holt

jane-holt@northwestern.edu

CLS Office 1-117 Crowe Hall

847-491-3864

http://www.complit.northwestern.edu/

Newsletter Producedby Meredith Lane

Good bye and good luckto our graduating seniors

Anna Alber plans on staying at Northwestern another year to complete her BA/MA in Comparative Literature.

Jesse Anderson-Lehman is planning on enjoying a year off before starting grad school. “My plans are relatively free-form at this point, but I’d love to find a balance between relaxing, traveling, and finding a job that can build up some disposable income while also better preparing me for the work I’ll be doing in grad school.”

Leah Bettag just got accepted to a program called AUSL (the Academy of Urban School Leadership). She will be student teaching at a Chicago public high school starting this summer, while working on an MA in Teaching.

Megan Crognale plans to stay at Northwestern to finish her BA/MA in Comparative Literature. She will continue her Ital-ian studies and begin to learn German, her third language.

Katherine Densmore hopes to go into the publishing industry. “I am not sure what aspect of the industry I will end up in, but I plan to live in LA and work at a literary agency initially. I am very interested in book-to-screen editing and acquisitions. I also would like to write screenplays.”

Clockwise from top left: Stephanie Hu, Lilly Skol-nik, Luke Vanderlinden, Anna Alber, Megan Cro-gnale, Jesse Anderson-Lehman, Irina Dykhne, Katherine Densmore, Leah Bettag

What’s Next?

continued on next page

Recent and Upcoming EventsLecture by Paola Marrati

of Johns Hopkins UniversityOn May 5th, Paola Marrati, Professor of Philosophy at the Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Humanities Center gave a lecture on “Belief, Agency, Loss: Cavell and Deleuze on Cinema and Modernity.” Her lecture was co-sponsored by the De-partments of French & Italian and Philos-ophy; the Programs in Critical Theory, Screen Cultures, and

Rhetoric and Public Culture; and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

Professor Marrati specializes in modern and contemporary French Philosophy, American Pragmatism and Skepticism, Phenomenology, Philosophy and Cinema, and Feminist and Queer Theory.

CLS Faculty/Graduate Student ColloquiumWednesday, May 1812:30-2:00 pmCLS Seminar Room, Crowe 1-125

Katie Hartsock will present “Soul’s Syntax: The Translat-ability and Poetics of Augustine’s Confessions.”Professor Reginald Gibbons will present “The Persistence of Ancient Poetics.”

Lunch will be served; copies of the papers are available through the CLS office.

Upcoming LectureProfessor Rei Terada, UC Irvine, will be on campus on Tuesday, June 7 at the invitation of the graduate students in CLS.

She will give a lunch-time gradu-ate seminar on her recent book, Looking Away (12:30 to 2 pm) and a public lecture entitled “Rev-olution-Restoration, 1814--” at 4:00 pm. Both events will take place in the CLS Seminar Room Crowe Hall 1-125.

Rei Terada is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Di-rector of the Critical Theory Emphasis at UC Irvine. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Looking Away (Har-vard University Press).

Professor Ernesto Laclau introduc-ing Professor Paula Marrati.

Graduating Seniors, continuedIrina Dykhne plans to move back to her home state of California and work in marketing for a few years before applying to law school. “I am currently considering practicing either Art or Entertainment Law but it changes all the time. I also want to continue pursuing my passion for writing on a freelance basis.”

Stephanie Hu will either be attending law school or acting as a paralegal in New York. “I hope to pick up a fourth language, continue my endless cheese-tasting adventures and plow through a stack of books that have been sitting on my desk for too long. Eventually, I would like to use the close-reading skills I have gained through my Comparative Literature studies and apply them towards exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals.”

Lilly Skolnik will either be spending next year in Luxembourg on a Fulbright fellowship, or working full-time in Chicago. “In either case, I am simultaneously excited to graduate, terrified of adulthood, and feeling nostalgic about college.”

Luke Vanderlinden will be teaching reading skills classes in the Chicago area this summer through the Institute for Read-ing Development. In September he will move back to the Twin Cities to catch up with family and friends. “At the moment I have not secured employment, but I would be glad to work as a teacher, tutor, or baker. I am also looking into various programs which connect recent graduates with non-profit organizations.”

Undergraduate NewsLilly Skolnik, a graduating senior with a double major in CLS and French, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa 2011!

Irina Dykhne’s senior essay, “Quest for National Self-Iden-tity: Neoprimitivist Theory and Practice in Russian Art and Literature”, will be the feature article in the 2011 Northwest-ern Undergraduate Research Journal! The NURJ is an an-nual publication, print and online, that serves to showcase outstanding research done by Northwestern undergraduates from all academic fields within the University. This year’s publication contains 7 articles from fields as diverse as psy-chology to anthropology to environmental engineering. This year’s issue will be presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on May 23rd.

Kevin Echavarria, a CLS major, was accepted to the Mel-lon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program as a member of its third cohort. The MMUF Program is designed to pre-pare minority undergraduate students at universities across the country interested in attending graduate school and/or pursuing a Ph.D. in various academic fields, as well as for students interested in pursuing academic careers. MMUF fellows pursue a research project during their two under-graduate years in the program with the help of a faculty advi-sor. As part of the program, Kevin will also be spending his summer on campus participating in the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) put on by the Northwestern Graduate School.

Kevin writes: “I’m extremely interested in examining the relationship between classic literary texts and present-day Latino literary culture. What piqued my interest in this sub-ject was Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in which Diaz seamlessly incorporates allusions to works such as Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener and W.B Yeats’ “Easter, 1916” into the story of a young Dominican sci-fi nerd growing up in New Jersey. I’m planning on meeting with several faculty members to refine and direct my project as I move forward. Moreover, I feel like the CLS education that I’m pursuing will help me a great deal in my approach to these disparate literary cultures as I look to analyze how modern authors bridge the gap between them. I am very ex-cited at the opportunities I’ll have over the next two years thanks to the MMUF.”

Paris Undergraduate Program in Critical Theory, Literature, and MediaEleven Northwestern undergraduates will participate in the Paris Undergraduate Program in Critical Theory, Literature, and Media in its first year. The students will be introduced to major trends and issues in Critical Theory through a se-ries of courses, including a Special Topics in Theory course taught by Professor Marc Crepon that will focus on Jacques Derrida’s book Monolingualism of the Other as well as other texts by Derrida, Levinas, and Benjmain, and a course on critical theory and the study of politics taught by the pro-gram’s director, Michael Loriaux.

Graduate Student NewsTwo of CLS’s graduate students—Genevieve Amaral and Brett Brehm, won a fellowship to the Paris Program in Crit-ical Theory. They will be spending the next academic year in Paris, participating in a seminar taught by Professor Sam Weber in the Fall and working on their dissertation.

Caitlyn Doyle won a three-year fellowship from Canada’s Social Studies and Humanities Research Council.

Incoming grad studentsNext year, CLS will welcome eight new graduate students. Maziyar Faridi received his BA in English litera-ture and a graduate degree in translation studies from Ferd-wosi University in Iran. His main interests are transnational canons and critical theory. Martin Hodkin received undergraduate degrees from both New York University and Yeshiva University. While his main focus will be in German studies, he also has excellent knowledge of Spanish and Hebrew. Pamela Krayebuhl graduated from the Rhetoric department at UC Berkeley and her main interests are screen cultures and critical theory. She is also the recipient of the Emily Chamberlain Cook prize in poetry.

Ruth Martin’s interests are rhetoric and public cul-ture, classical traditions, and antebellum American litera-ture. She has a BA in Fundamental: Issues and Texts from the University of Chicago. Marjan Mohammadi holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in English literature from Islamic Azad University and Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. Her main interest is in African studies. Olufolahan Olowoyeye received his BA in Com-parative Literature and Slavic Literature from Stanford Uni-versity; he is also the recipient of the Leytes prize for out-standing undergraduate honors thesis. He is interested in the relations between literature and philosophy. Frederika Tevebring is a native of Sweden but re-ceived her education at the Free University in Berlin. She is interested in the reception of the classical tradition, espe-cially in Germany. Benjamin Trivers received his BA in Comparative Literature and German at Brown University and spent a cou-ple of years after his graduation in Latin America, teaching English. He is interested in German, English, French and Latin American literature as well as in critical theory.

FALL WINTER SPRINGCLS 104 Freshman Seminar: World Literature & Human Rights Firat Oruc

CLS 201 Reading World Literature Nasrin Qader & Jorg Kreienbrock

CLS 202 Interpreting Culture Hannah Feldman

CLS 206 Literature and Media Domietta Torlasco

CLS 207 Intro to Critical Theory Mark Alznauer

CLS 211 Studies in Genre: Satire Cynthia Nazarian

CLS 304 Studies in Theme: Urban Tales Peter Shen

CLS 304 Studies in Theme: Sinophone Travel Peter Shen

CLS 302/ENG 368 Major Periods of World Literature: Other Hearts of Darkness Evan Mwangi

CLS 313 Texts & Contexts: Middle Eastern Literature & The World Rebecca Johnson

CLS 303 Literary Movements: Modernism Peter Fenves

CLS 312 Authors & Their Readers: Jorge Luis Borges Alejandra Uslenghi

CLS 311 Theory & Practice of Poetry Translation Reginald Gibbons

CLS 304 Studies in Theme: Through Laby-rinths: Spaces, Images, and Stories Elisa Marti-Lopez

CLS 383 Special Topics in Theory: Reading Foucault Penelope Deutscher

CLS 314 Transnational CinemasFirat Oruc

CLS 314 Transnational Lit & Cinema: 20/21st C Lit & Film from Morocco to Iran Brian Edwards

CLS 383 Special Topics in Theory: Theory of Tragedy Vivasvan Soni

CLS 383 Special Topics in Theory: Gender and Sexuality in the Moving Image Domietta Torlasco

CLS 375 Lit & Its Others: Mozart & Musical Theatre of Enlightenment Martin Mueller

CLS 398 Senior Seminar Kasey Evans

CLS 410 Theories of Literature: The Question of Sublimation Now Alessia Ricciardi

CLS 411 Critical Practices: The Aesthetic Christopher Bush

CLS 412 Literary Studies Colloquium

CLS 414 Studies in Genre: The Logic of Poetry Susannah Gottlieb, Reginald Gibbons

CLS 413 Studies in Theme: Brazil & the US: Generation, Degeneration, Miscege-nation Cesar Braga-Pinto

CLS 486 Studies in Lit and the Disci-plines: Russian Avant-garde in Lit & Arts. Nina Gourianova

CLS 488 Topics in Comp Lit:The Uncanny I: Literature and the First Person Singular (Shakespeare, Hölderlin) Samuel Weber

CLS 488 Special Topics in Comp Lit: Circulation Brian Edwards

CLS Yearly Schedule 2011-2012

FALL WINTER SPRINGCLS/AMES 271-2 Japanese Lit in Trans: Medieval & Early Modern Phyllis Lyons

CLS/JEWISH ST 279-1 Modern Jewish Literature in Trans: An Introduction Marcia Gealy

CLS/AMES 271-4 Japanese Lit in Trans Modern Japanese Writers Phyllis Lyons

CLS 274/AMES 274-1 Chinese Lit in Trans: Early & Medieval Bruce Knickerbocker

CLS/AMES 274-2 Chinese Lit in Trans: Late Imperial Chinese Fict & Lit Bruce Knickerbocker

CLS/AMES 274-3 Chinese Lit in Trans: Modern Chinese Literature Bruce Knickerbocker

Courses in non-Western literatures in translation offered through CLS