First-Year Studies: Japanese Literature: Ancient Myths to Contemporary Fiction
From the Sun Goddess Amaterasu ruling the Plain of Heaven to a superfrog saving Tokyo from mass destruction, this course is an introduction to the richness and diversity of Japanese literature in English translation. During the fall semester, we will focus on ancient, classical, medieval, and early modern texts (8th to 19th century). Readings will include creation myths, epic tales of imperial courtiers and samurai warriors, folktales, drama, and poetry. During the spring semester, we will read 20th- and 21st-century writers, including Natsume Soseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Enchi Fumiko, Abe Kobo, Oe Kenzaburo, Murakami Haruki, and Ogawa Yoko. Films, historical texts, and critical essays will complement these literary texts to help us sharpen and challenge our interpretive approaches.
Literature courses
- Abbreviated Wisdom: How the Short Story Works
- Acting Up: Theatre and Theatricality in 18th-Century England
- African American Literature: Constructing Racial Selves and Others
- After Eve: Medieval Women
- Declarations of Independence: American Literary Masterworks
- Dostoevsky and the Age of Positivism
- Eight American Poets
- 18th-Century Women of Letters
- Empire of Letters: Mapping the Arts and the World in the Age of Johnson
- Epic Vision and Tradition from the Odyssey to Walcott's Omeros
- First-Year Studies: Amid the Tears and Laughter: The Political Art of Ancient Greek Tragedy and Comedy
- First-Year Studies: Autobiography in Literature: Self/Life/Writing
- First-Year Studies: Calles y Plaza Antigua: The Country and the City in Literature and Film
- First Year Studies in History and Literature: The Two World Wars of the Twentieth Century
- First-Year Studies in Literature
- First-Year Studies: Japanese Literature: Ancient Myths to Contemporary Fiction
- First-Year Studies: Modern Myths of Paris
- First-Year Studies: The Three Crowns of Florence: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and the Beginnings of Modern
- Green Romanticisms
- Literary London
- Lorca’s World: From Granada to New York, Literature in Translation
- Modernism and Fiction
- New Media Literacies
- “New” World Literatures: Fictions of the Yard
- New World Studies: Maroons, Rebels, and Pirates of the Caribbean
- Romantic Poetry and Its Consequences
- Seventeenth-Century English Literature: Tradition and Transformation
- Sex in the Machine
- Small Circle of Friends: A Topic in Renaissance Literature
- Studies in the 19th-Century Novel
- The Forms and Logic of Comedy
- The Greco-Roman World: Its Origins, Crises, Turning Points, and Final Transformations
- The Making of Modern Theatre: Ibsen and Chekhov
- The Nonfiction Essay: Writing the Literature of Fact, Journalism, and Beyond
- The Poetics and Politics of Translation
- The Poetry Book: Text and Design
- Typology of the Narrator
- Warriors, Rogues, and Women in Breeches: Adventurous Lives in Early Modern Transatlantic Literature: Literature in Translation
Vera Wang '71 addresses Class of 2013; photos, videos, media clips available on Commencement site