What is poetry and what place does it have among literary forms? What is its relation to culture, history, and our sense of speakers and audiences? This course will focus on various problems in poetic practice and theory, ranging from ancient theories of poetry in Plato and Aristotle to contemporary problems in poetics. In some semesters a particular school of poets may be the focus; in others a historical issue of literary transmission, or a problem of poetic genres, such as lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetry, may be emphasized. The course will provide a basic knowledge of scansion in English with some sense of the historical development of metrics. This course is a good foundation for those who want to continue to study poetry in literary history and for creative writers concentrating on poetry.

This class explores the international emergence of modernism, typically from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. We will examine the links between modernity, the avant-garde, and various national modernisms that emerged alongside them. Resolutely transatlantic and open to French, Spanish, Italian, German, or Russian influences, this course assumes the very concept of Modernism to necessitate an international perspective focusing on the new in literature and the arts -- including film, the theatre, music, and the visual arts. The philosophies of modernism will also be surveyed and concise introductions provided to important thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson, Freud, and Benjamin.

This course begins in the regular semester--students are provided a general introduction to South African history, politics, environment, and performance through a range of resources: scholarly literature, film, music, and online resources; with particular focus on sites, communities,and events included in the two week intensive travel to South Africa (either Fall semester Intro with winter break travel; or spring semester Intro with late spring intensive travel). Students are given guidelines for writing about and representing live performances and experiences of exhibits and heritage sites. For fall/winter travel: focus is on Cape Town's New Year's Festival performed by those historically called "Cape Coloured" a Festival that makes complicated understandings of race, slavery, and transatlantic translation of borrowed culture. For the Spring/late spring travel, the destination is music festivals in mid-May. Both classes include visits to Robben island, Kirstenbosch gardens; "Cape Malay' heritage sites; travel to KwaZulu Natal, and to Johannesburg's apartheid museum, Soweto's anti apartheid destinations, the Cradle of Humankind works heritage site, a game park, and the Union Buildings in Pretoria. En route we will stop over to view Khoisan rock art.

Never before has poetry been so inescapable. Hip hop, the soundtrack of our times, has made rhyme, meter, and word-play part of our daily lives. How did this happen? This course begins not on the page, but in the bardic traditions of Homer's Iliad, which encoded many of the values of its time in oral formulas. Poetry was, however, no mere encyclopedia, but also a source of risk, as we will read in Plato's warning against its hypnotic powers, and in the excesses of the Bacchae. We continue through 19th and 20th century attempts to recover these classic traditions (Wordsworth, Longfellow, Pound). Yet Europe was not the only center of poetic production. How does the Homeric tradition relate to living traditions of West African singing poets (griots) and Southern African praise songs? And what traces of these traditions can we hear in the blues? We will listen to early blues recordings and discuss the politics of collecting folklore, and the genius of African American modernists (Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Georgia Douglas Johnson) who bought vernacular speech onto the page. We will read and listen to a number of 20th century poets inspired when page meets stage in jazz poetry, dub poetry, spoken word, and hip hop. Assignments will include 2 papers, 2 small-group performances, memorization exercises, and a creative adaptation of one poem. See the Comparative Literature website for descriptions of current offerings at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/Complit/

This course will provide a wide-ranging introduction to the literatures of South Asia from roughly 1500 to the present, as well as an exploration of their histories and impact on South Asian society today. How are literary movements and individual works - along with the attitudes towards religion, society, and culture associated with them - still influential in literature, film, and popular culture? How have writers across time and language engaged with questions of caste, gender, and identity? We will read from the rich archive of South Asian writing in translation - from languages that include Braj, Urdu, Bangla, and Tamil - to consider how these literatures depict their own society while continuing to resonate across time and space. Topics of dicussion will include the Bhakti poetries of personal devotion, the literature of Dalits - formerly referred to as the Untouchables - and the ways in which literature addresses contemporary political and social problems. Students will leave this course with a sense of the contours of the literatures of South Asia as well as ways of exploring the role of these literatures in the larger world. No prior knowledge of South Asia is required; this course fulfills the cross-cultural analysis requirement.

This course will introduce students to an exciting topic at the intersection of literature and cultural representation, taught by a young scholar at the cutting edge of the field. Requirements will include a number of oral presentations, and students will learn how to communicate clearly, thoughtfully and effectively on complex material.

This course will introduce students to an exciting topic at the intersection of literature and cultural representation taught by young scholars at the cutting edge of the field. Requirements will include a number of oral presentations, and students will learn how to communicate clearly, thoughtfully and effectively on complex material.