Graduate Course Offerings for Spring 2026
Modern Languages and Linguistics
FOL5934-02 Computer Assisted Translation
Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya
Th 4:50–7:50
This course provides professional training for graduate students to develop the essential skills required for a career in the modern translation industry. Graduate students will gain experience and knowledge of the theory and practice of computer-assisted translation (CAT) and post-editing. The course is hands-on, focusing on practical application and critical analysis of translation technologies. Topics will include terminology management, machine translation engines, quality assurance, and project management, all within a professional and ethical framework.
Students must have high proficiency in English and a language other than English as a prerequisite for this course. Previous academic or professional experience with translation is not required.
FOW 5956-01 A Walkthrough Urban Theory
Aimée Boutin
T 4:50-7:20
Walking in the city is a distinctively modern activity, and accordingly, the figure of the flâneur functions as shorthand for modernist notions of leisure, spectacle, and elite urban experience across a range of disciplines, from literary studies and art history to urban studies and media theory. Focused on key critical texts in the literature on the flâneur, the graduate seminar examines the theorization of urban mobility with particular attention given to interactions with the social or built environment, and connections between walking, memory, selfhood, sensory experience, creativity and narrative. We will also consider how flânerie has been deployed in a range of artistic forms and trace the history of flâneurs as types from their emergence in the eighteenth in specific geographic contexts to their transformations in the twenty-first century around the world.
In English, open to all grads.
EALC-CHINESE
ASN 5475: Second Language Acquisition of East Asian Languages
Zhiying Qian
M 3:05-5:35
Second Language Acquisition of East Asian Languages provides an in-depth exploration of how learners acquire Chinese and Japanese as additional languages. The course examines theoretical and empirical research on the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse, with particular attention to features that distinguish East Asian languages from Indo-European ones. Topics include the acquisition of non-alphabetic writing systems, tones and pitch accents, and typologically distinct word order patterns. Cognitive, social, and cultural factors shaping learning are also considered. In addition, the course surveys instructional approaches and pedagogical applications, helping students connect research findings to classroom practice. Through readings, discussions, and projects, students will develop both a theoretical grounding in second language acquisition and a practical understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by East Asian languages.
Offered in English with all readings in English.
CHI 5505 Readings in Chinese Literature: Advanced Readings in Chinese Tales
Yanning Wang
TR 1:20-2:35
This course aims at improving and maintaining graduate students’ Chinese proficiency through literary works. By exploring the classic Chinese tales through reading, discussing, and completing oral/written projects, students will not only advance their language proficiency, but also attain extensive understanding of Chinese literature and culture.
This course is taught in Chinese and open to all graduate students with the requisite proficiency in Chinese.
CHT 5935 Studies in Pre-Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: Chinese Literature and Daoism
Yanning Wang
TR 11:35-12:50
In this course, students explore the intersection of Chinese literature and Daoism/Taoism, China’s indigenous religion. Interacting with each other in significant ways, both are crucial to our understanding of Chinese culture. Students will examine written texts and visual images, such as poetry, fiction, hagiography, illustrations, charts, and diagrams. Topics will include key Daoist concepts and images; representative primary texts and scholarly studies; and interdisciplinary perspectives in studying Chinese literature.
This course is taught in English and open to all graduate students.
EALC-JAPANESE
JPT 5935-01 Contemporary Japanese Literature
Franz Prichard
T Th 1:20-2:35
This course introduces the creative perspectives on contemporary life in Japan illuminated by works of literary and visual media. Students will survey the environmental, social, and cultural histories that inform Japan’s present day as expressed by Japan’s leading authors and artists. The course will foster critical skills in interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to the study of contemporary Japanese literary and visual culture in regional and global contexts. For non-Japanese concentrators, all primary texts are presented in translation, including works by Ishimure Michiko, Ito Hiromi, Kawakami Mieko, Kobayashi Erika, Li Kotomi, Murata Sayaka, Suzuki Izumi, Yoshimoto Banana, Yu Miri, and more. This course is cross-listed with an undergraduate section JPT4124. Graduate students enrolled in JPT5935-1 will be evaluated at a higher level through rigorous written assessments that involve critical reflection on the texts and themes covered in the course. Supplementary readings will also be provided.
Course taught in English. Open to graduate students from other programs/departments.
JPT 5935-02 Japanese Media Studies
Dr. Franz Prichard
T 3:05-5:20 & Th 3:05 - 4:20
This course examines the vivid perspectives of documentary film, photography, literature, and other visual media from Japan. We explore the shifting contours of documentary practices as filmmakers, artists, writers, and thinkers forged creative new forms of ethical and aesthetic responses to the ecological disasters, dispossession of regional communities’ lands and livelihoods, and the expansive forms of violence at play in the Cold War remaking of the Japanese nation-state from the postwar period to the present. Participants in the course will collaboratively reconsider the ways Japanese documentary media unsettle existing boundaries and methodologies of media criticism and practice to foster interdisciplinary and transnational approaches to Japan’s diverse media cultures in their regional and global contexts. For non-Japanese concentrators, all materials will be engaged with in English. Prerequisites: None.
Language of Class Discussion: English. No reading knowledge in Japanese required.
Open to graduate students from other programs/departments.
FRENCH
FRW 5599 20th Century Literature. Espaces fracturés: autobiographies, histoire et mémoire
Vincent Joos
M W F 4:50-5:40
The humanities teach us to examine ourselves and our world, a practice Socrates deemed essential to a meaningful life. Self-knowledge means recognizing our strengths, weaknesses, and limits, which, in many cases, allows us to act with virtue and to pursue happiness through moral practice. Literature, especially autobiographies, plays a central role in this process by showing how individual lives are shaped by both personal agency and collective forces. This course traces autobiographical writings from Montaigne in the sixteenth century to twentieth-century Francophone authors such as Claude Simon, Jean-Claude Charles, Gisèle Pineau, and Assia Djebar. By reading these works alongside critical texts, we will explore how colonialism, war, and social fractures shape memory, identity, and the self, and ask fundamental questions about freedom, agency, and the ways literature allows us to reflect on the relation between the individual and society.
This course is taught in French primarily, with sessions in English when needed.
FRW 5900 Special Topics: Vodou, Race and Revolution in Haiti, 1804-2011
Martin Munro
T R 11:35-12:50
Haiti is one of the most fascinating countries in the Americas. There are two dominant conceptions of Haiti: that it is the first black republic in the New World and also the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. This course seeks to understand and go beyond these two clichéd ideas of Haiti, and consider some of the diverse ways it has been represented in film, poetry, fiction, ethnography, and historiography from the eighteenth century to the present. We will consider works by Haitians, but also representations of Haiti from the outside, by European and American travelers, ethnographers, and novelists. The aim will be to set up a dialogue between the various representations and to consider how they have contributed to our understanding of this most complex and intriguing American nation. Key themes will include: race, class, violence, politics, and religion.
Offered in English with all works available in translation.
GERMAN
GEW 5208 The Magic of Lyric Poetry & The Art of Interpretation
Christian Weber
M, W 4:50-6:05
This course analyzes in-depth some of the greatest masterpieces of German lyric poetry ranging from the medieval ages to the present time. It engages in the art of interpretation through close readings that are informed by poetical traditions, rhetorical techniques, and hermeneutic methods. Our survey of lyric poetry pursues three overarching agendas: 1. to explore the specific potential of the lyrical genre for expressing individual subjectivity. 2. to trace the transformation of lyrical forms as indicative of emerging philosophical ideas and symptomatic of larger cultural-historical shifts. 3. to reflect on the linguistic flexibility and innovative power of poetic language (i.e. poetry as an enhancement of common language).
This course in taught in German.
GEW 5596 Postwar Collective Memories
Birgit Maier-Katkin
Th 1:20-4:20
The course explores responses in film and literature that treat the legacy of Nazi Crimes Against Humanity from a Postwar Germany perspective. Drawing on the perspectives of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, helpers, resisters, and members of the subsequent generations, the course investigates how cultural memory is created in the aftermath of these horrific events, how filmmakers, writers, and memorials reveal a multiplicity of voices and reflect on the indelible mark of the Nazi past in Germany. The primary aim of this course is to study the ways in which one represents, remembers, and comes to terms with traumatic historical events from the perspective of survivors as well as members of the second and preceding generations. We will examine the techniques by which one bears witness to it, and the extent to which this event challenges the foundational narratives of a discourse of remembrance.
The course is taught in English, all works are available in German and English.
Italian
ITW 5505 Italiane, Italiani! Gender in Italian Culture
Silvia Valisa
W 3:05-5:50
This class explores modern Italian culture by discussing texts, movies, and social events from the standpoint of their gender politics.
LINGUISTICS
LIN 5727 Quantitative Methods for Language Research
Michael Leeser
TR 1:20-2:35
This course introduces students to specific research methodologies and statistical procedures used in quantitative experimental research on language. It will provide students with the means to critically evaluate quantitative research in any area of language studies and the basic tools to design and carry out a data-based research project.
Taught in English.
LIN 5770 Computational Linguistics
Tom Juzek
TR 11:35-12:50
This course is a hands-on introduction to computational linguistics (including computational phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics), in parts using AI-assisted programming. Students blend coding with theory (incl. information-theoretic foundations of LLMs) to analyze language and solve linguistic problems.
Taught in English.
SLAVIC
RUS 5415 Graduate Russian Conversation
Nina Efimov
TR 1:20–2:35
The course explores subtle points of advanced Russian grammar and sophisticated style in the works of Russian classics and current mass media.
Language of instruction Russian. Reading knowledge of Russian is required. Open to students with advanced knowledge of Russian.
RUW 5579 Modern Russian Literature
Nina Efimov
T 4:50–7:50
The course investigates the contemporary significance of Russian modern literature. The style, literary devices, and narrative world of modern Russian authors as well as their philosophical conceptions will be the core of the seminars. The comparative method based on close reading of the texts will be combined with contemporary literary approaches.
The course is taught in English, open to all grads.
RUW 5930 Gogol and Ukrainian Romanticism
Robert Romanchuk
T Th 9:45–11:00
This seminar puts the great Romantic writer Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol) into dialogue with various structuralist and post-structuralist disciplines as it restores him to his Ukrainian context. It traces how Gogol’s early publications lent coherence to literary works written in and about Ukraine in the 1820s and early 30s, and how the “New” Russian and Ukrainian literatures alike grew out of this formation (and, indeed, directly from Gogol's own writings) in the later 1830s and early 40s. It also serves as an introduction to structural linguistics and anthropology and Lacanian psychoanalysis, together with related fields.
Taught in English with English-language translations and a tutorial in Russian/Ukrainian for students majoring in Slavic and Russian.
SPANISH
SPN 5785 Acoustic Phonetics of Spanish
Carolina González
TR 9:45-11:00
This course introduces the basics of acoustic phonetics and its application to Spanish sounds. It provides practice in the analysis of Spanish consonants, vowels, stress, and intonation using the acoustic software Praat. This course also focuses in developing essential research skills applicable to phonetics and beyond.
Taught in Spanish.
SPW 5195 Latin American Speculative Fiction
Jeaninne Murray-Román
TR 3:05-4:20
What does the imagination of future times and faraway planets, alternative realities and counterfactual histories, reflect about our societies? This course focuses on the 20th and 21st –century Latin American science fiction. We will read novels and graphic novels and view films from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Argentina to consider the different historical contexts that produce these technological imaginaries as well as to confront the ethical dilemmas they pose.
Taught in Spanish.
SPW 5586 The Early Hispanic Episteme
Keith Howard
TR 9:45-11:00
Taking medieval and early modern Iberia as a case study, examinations of a selection of texts revolve around the usefulness, or lack thereof, of some of the contemporary West's most prominent social constructions of subject formation.
Taught in Spanish.