Online courses

The Department of English Literature and Linguistics is offering a selection of online courses. While all courses in the department are being made available remotely as needed during the pandemic, these courses are designed to be fully virtual and are taught entirely online regardless of coronavirus-related restrictions.

Here are the online courses offered in 2020-21:

 

Linguistics

493 Noun Phrases - Dr. Gabi Danon

The seminar 'Noun Phrases' (37-493) surveys the major questions in the study of the syntax of noun phrases. Looking at the different ways in which the components of a noun phrase combine and interact with each other, we will address questions about the roles and positions of functional categories, grammatical features (person, number, gender, definiteness, case), determiners, quantifiers and numerals. Much of the seminar will be devoted to discussing linguistic phenomena from different languages, looking at cross-linguistic variation on the one hand and attempts to uncover and analyze universal principles in the syntax of the noun phrase on the other hand.

This is an asynchronous online course, where all materials and discussion take place on the course Moodle website. Every week new materials and activities will be posted for the students to complete at their own pace during that week. This will include video lectures, reading assignments, forum discussions and short writing assignments, in which students will gain familiarity with research literature and apply their knowledge to the analysis of data from different languages.

 

Literature

303 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature - Dr. Daniel Feldman

This online course surveys major trends and genres in British literature from the 1660s through 1890s. Through a combination of pre-recorded lectures, online discussion forums, regular quizzes, and group video meetings, we will study the intellectual and aesthetic movements that shaped English culture from the tumultuous years of the Restoration through the period of the Enlightenment followed by the Romantic and Victorian eras. Particular focus will be paid to the tension between expressions of collective and personal identity as it evolved in this span and gave rise to the English novel. We will analyze first editions of books in digital archives and sample the art and music of these periods. Major texts include Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, Lyrical Ballads, Frankenstein, and Hard Times. Regular online exercises serve as the basis of your grade.

 

676 Literature in the Arts - Prof. Evan Fallenberg

 

For as long as humans have been writing texts, the written word has inspired artists of all kinds and served as a springboard to painting and sculpture, music, dance, theater, opera and other arts.  This online course will examine texts and the art that has sprung from them through reading, listening, viewing, experiencing, attending virtual performances and exhibitions, and potentially creating something of our own.  Participants will receive weekly modules for review, complete written assignments, and take part in online group discussions, culminating in a final project.
 
 
8870 Translation and Prosody - Prof. Marcela Sulak

Literary translators attempt, on a most basic level, to carry a literal meaning from one language to another across a text. Yet, as translation often involves surveying and mapping the boundaries of a literary world, a good translator recognizes that words often work within culturally and politically significant prosodic and rhyming forms. In a world marked by mass displacement of populations, in which much national and international literature is written by poets and writers in exile,  prosody can be a tent in which the Old World takes refuge in the New. Poetry is, as Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef puts it, a palm frond that will "carry pollen from exile to exile,” or it can serve as the path by which a conquering cultural force makes inroads into a formerly sovereign one. In this course, students will become acquainted with options and strategies available for translating poetry into English while attending to artistic, cultural and politically significant features of the works they are translating.

 
The course will be divided into weekly reading assignments and exercises with individual written feedback on each assignment. Students can complete each reading and written assignment at any time during the week, but they should make sure that each week they complete one unit. The last one-third  of the seminar will be devoted to students' individual translation/poetry projects, to be discussed in meetings held on Zoom or in person on the Bar-Ilan campus, depending on the student's location and preference.

 Required books:

Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte
The Craft of Translation, ed. John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte.
The Sounds of Poetry, Robert Pinsky
 
Poems, translations, and any additional reading will be available through Moodle.