Course: Comparative Literature 202
Medium: Website - See this Project!
Description: Harriet and Leone, founded by graduate students in the Comparative Literature Department, provides an online forum for exchanging creative work related to questions raised in the humanities.
We bring our training in research and critical thinking to bear on creative pieces, ranging from short fiction, poetry, memoirs and critical essays, to ask questions of the world: how is the human, human, today? Such thought demands engagement of a wide audience; thus, the web. This collaborative project emerged in conjunction with Comparative Literature 202, Modern and Contemporary Literature. Kerstin Schaars, the instructor, invited teaching assistants to contribute creative work related to the course theme, "Violence in the Time of Love," the title of which plays upon Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous work, Love in the Time of Cholera. Students visiting the website were encouraged to investigate, beyond course requirements, applicability of issues raised in class: challenges of working in multiple languages ("Death of Cedar"), alternative forms of narration ("Last Song"), and critical engagement with literary texts ("Sea Change"). The instructors have since assumed editors' roles to publish new work emphasizing the website's critical and collaborative spirit, with a particularly comparative slant. Featuring short, creative work over longer academic pieces, we engage a readership beyond the university. We use the online forum to expand possibilities for thinking via multiple media: besides written pieces the website features visual works, and multimedia projects incorporating both written prose and sound recordings. A new collection, themed "A Life," is scheduled for online publication at www.harrietandleone.net during 2010.
Project 38
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