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Literature Undergraduate Course Descriptions
Summer Session I 2026 (S126)

LTAM 110 - Latin American Literature in Translation
Contrafeminicide Movements
Proposed Instructor: Carolina Ramirez Moreno

LTAM 110 will be a synchronous remote course.

This course focuses on feminicide in Latin America–examining and understanding the social, cultural, and political responses aimed at disrupting its normalization. Students will engage with the history and growth of contrafeminicide movements, analyzing how activist movements challenge patriarchal systems and advocate for social justice. These approaches will enable us to observe and analyze the evolving movements over time and representations of individuals via interdisciplinary approaches.

  • LTAM 110 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEA 120A - Chinese Films
Cinematic Cartography: Chinese Cities and Cultural Imagination
Proposed Instructor: Yuchen Yan

LTEA 120A will be a synchronous remote course.

This course takes students on a cinematic tour of Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Through close engagement with landmark films produced from the 1930s to the present, students will gain perspectives on: 1) the role of cities in the history of Chinese film culture; 2) how cinema offers a lens for understanding urban landscapes, memoryscapes, and everyday urban experience, transforming cities into sites of cultural imagination; 3) how cinematic and urban spaces evolve alongside social change, intimate narratives, and personal practice. Highlighted works include Cheng Bugao's An Amorous History of Chinese Screen (1931), Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994), and Ho Wi Ding's City of Last Things (2018). For the final project, students may choose between a research essay and a creative film project.

  • LTEA 120A will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTEA 120A will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • If students work out a plan with the instructor to do the readings and assignments in Chinese, LTEA 120A may be petitioned to count towards the Chinese Language concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEA 138 - Japanese Films
The Anime Craze
Proposed Instructor: Wentao Ma

LTEA 138 will be a synchronous remote course.

What fuels the global fascination with anime? This course examines anime as a transnational art form that moves between fantasy and technology, fandom and industry. We will explore how anime constructs worlds of desire, affect, and identity while shaping global youth culture. From Spirited Away to Attack on Titan and Your Name, students will analyze how animation becomes a site of imagination, labor, and cultural exchange.

  • LTEA 138 will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTEA 138 will count towards the Region (Asia) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTEN 149 - Topics: English-Language Literature
Queer joy, resistance, and survival in Angels in America and RENT
Proposed Instructor: Caleb Mertz-Vega

By the end of 1995 the mysterious disease dubbed “the gay plague” had infected over 500,000 individuals and killed over 300,000. The lack of response from the Reagan and Bush administrations sent the LGBTQ+ and allied communities into crisis mode taking on the fight against HIV/AIDS with minimal resources. Many saw this as a direct attack on the LGBTQ+ community by the government, others as God’s wrath on sinners. This course considers two plays (RENT and Angels in America) and poetry from the Castro, New York, and Vermont to illuminate methods of survival and coping with the Pandemic that was particularly deadly in the early 90's. We will survey tales of survival with a particular interest in theater as an affective stage where the otherwise, healing, and longevity becomes legible.

LTEN 180 - Chicano Literature in English (d)
(Cross-listed with ETHN 139)
Proposed Instructor: Yomira Varela Guadiana

In this course, we will explore Chicana/x/o literature from the 19th-century to the present day. We will read key novels, stories, and poetry, learning about how Chican@ literature captures the historical displacement and violence against Mexican-Americans. We will explore ideas on race, ethnicity, gender, immigration, and labor together to gain a better understanding of how Chican@ literature captures both the challenges towards social justice and the resilience of different struggles.

  • LTEN 180 will count towards the Region (The Americas) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 100 - Mythology
Greek Mythology
Proposed Instructor: Jacobo Myerston

LTWL 100 will be a synchronous remote course.

Explore the fascinating world of ancient Greek mythology—its gods, heroes, and stories that have shaped culture for thousands of years. In this class, you’ll uncover what myths are, how they function in society, and why they continue to inspire art, literature, and film today. Through history, theory, comparison, and modern reception, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how Greek mythology continues to define the way we tell stories and see the world.

  • LTWL 100 will count towards the History concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTWL 123 - Vampires in Literature
Proposed Instructor: Nilufar Karimi

LTWL 123 will be a synchronous remote course.

Queering the Vampire Trope

This course explores how throughout history, vampire literature and media has persisted, responding to sociopolitical contexts such as settler colonial occupation, war, and environmental disaster. We will look at how different vampire tropes, such as the bloodthirsty predator, the primal lover, the exiled settler on Werewolf territory, the hypnotist, the suicidal immortal, and the exceptional “good vampire,” can help us understand power through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, and (dis)ability. Focusing on vampires written by women of color, students will read works by Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Ana Lily Amirpour, and more, alongside theoretical texts. Students will be encouraged to ask questions about how vampires (and those in their periphery) push the boundaries of the so-called “natural” human body, challenging and sometimes supporting normative ideas about power. For instance, we will study how films such as Amirpour’s Vampire Western, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Hopkinson’s “Greedy Choke Puppy” use the figure of the vampire in order to imagine queer futures.

LTWR 100C - Short Fiction Craft
Proposed Instructor: Kimaya Kulkarni

An exploration of time and space in fictional narratives. This course is a chance to engage with non-linear storylines, different shapes of sentence and paragraph, and to play with language and page to write your own stories.

Summer Session 1 2026 (S126) Global Seminars

The following Global Seminars are being offered. Students must apply and be accepting into the Global Seminars Program to enroll in these courses.

LTAF 120GS - Literature and Film of Modern Africa
Spanish Memories, African Hopes Through Literature and Film
Proposed Instructor: Oumelbanine Zhiri

This Global Seminar will examine some of the major themes of the 18-20th Century (revolution, industry and industrialization, empire…) in their global meaning, with a focus on Spain and its relations with North Africa. Field trips will include a two-night visit to Morocco, to compare the contemporary Muslim culture and its ancient architecture with Granada. Another field trip will entail two nights in Madrid where we will meet with groups that work on immigration issues as well as visit the culturally diverse neighborhood of Lavapies.

  • LTAF 120GS will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTAF 120GS will count towards the Region (Africa) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTCS 172GS - Special Topics in Screening Race/Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality
Imagining France through Television & Film
Proposed Instructor: Phoebe Bronstein

This media studies course will look at how French films imagine France, from the rural countryside to cities and the French Riviera. We will pay particular attention to how narratives of class, race, and gender shape representations of both region and nation in French cinema and television. For instance, the classic La Règle du Jeux (1939) raises questions about the end of the aristocracy, class tensions, and crime in the French countryside, while the contemporary global hit Lupin (2021-Present) picks up on similar conversations in the setting of Paris, adding the dimension of race, immigration, and legacies of French colonization.

  • LTCS 172GS will count towards the Media concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTSP 123GS - Topics in Modern Spanish Culture
Identity and Culture in Multicultural Spain
Proposed Instructor: Ryan M. Bessett

In this course we will discuss various aspects of multicultural Spain with an emphasis on Catalan identity. First, we will provide an overview of the Autonomous Communities of Spain and then focus on Galicia, the Basque Country, Valencia and Catalonia. Following this, we will spend the rest of the session on language, culture and politics in Catalonia. This is a project-based course and students will connect what they learn in the classroom with experiences they have and data they collect in the community.

  • LTSP 123GS will count towards the Region (The Mediterranean) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTSP 123GS will count towards the Region (Europe) concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.
  • LTSP 123GS will count towards the Spanish Language concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.

LTSP 174GS - Topics in Culture and Politics
Language and Ideologies in multilingual Spain
Proposed Instructor: Ryan M. Bessett

This course explores the various language communities in Spain, with an emphasis in Catalonia (the region in which Barcelona resides). Spain is home to several languages in addition to Spanish, the principal of which are Catalan, Galician, and Basque. We will examen the history of these languages in Spain. We will also discuss how language attitudes create ideologies (positive and negative), as well as other aspects of the use of language in Spain, including linguistic landscapes, language choice, education and linguistic politics, and language phenomenon deriving form a bilingual community (like borrowing and codeswitching). This course is a project-based course, students will conduct several mini-projects by collecting data in the local community in order to make connections with the material discussed in class.

  • LTSP 174GS will count towards the Spanish Language concentration for the World Literature and Culture major.