A survey course on major works in German literature, philosophy, and critique from the mid-eighteenth century to the twentieth century. Close reading of representative texts opens onto broader ramifications in cultural and intellectual history with further consideration of societal and political tensions.

Examines how the1001 Nights, popularly known in the West as the Arabian Nights, is transformed and adapted for different media and genres. Focuses on a variety of films, (e.g., The Thief of Baghdad, Chu Chin Chow, Aladdin), illustrations/images (e.g., Doré, Chagall, Matisse), musical and balletic renditions (e.g., Rimsky-Korsakov, Fokine), translations (e.g., Galland, Lane, Burton, Haddawy), and re-tellings of stories (e.g., Poe, Barth, Mahfouz, Sebbar, Zimmerman). Also considers the role of the 1001 Nights in contemporary popular culture.

Recent breakthroughs have inspired hopes and fears that artificial intelligence is about to transform the economy, politics, culture, and social life. Many religious and philosophical traditions hail the capacity for language and reasoning as the defining trait that makes us different from other animals. Large language models therefore call into question what it means to be human. And they are already disrupting professions that a humanities or liberal arts education traditionally prepared students to pursue, from programming to law and finance to screenwriting. 

In this class, we will explore over three thousand years of literature about what it means to create and live with artificial intelligences. In the process, we will address urgent questions about the purpose of work, the nature of love, the limits of agency, and the essence of creativity, examining the wisdom and imagination that history has to offer. At the same time, we will ask whether literature itself might constitute a kind of AI, with its vast repository of data about human experience and its variety of forms for recombining them–noting that, at least since Alan Turing, computer scientists have treated “imitation” or mimesis as a key test of their machines. 

Finally, we will investigate how contemporary writers and artists are incorporating generative AI into their creative practices and experiment with doing so ourselves. By the end of the semester, students will have developed strong skills in close reading by analyzing canonical texts from across the canon and prompting several kinds of large AI models. You will have encountered treasures from Harvard’s archives and museums and produced a portfolio of creative projects. No prior knowledge of coding is required.

In this course, students will read English translations of novels that have won major prizes. In addition to exploring themes of contemporary literature from around the world, special attention will be paid to the role of translation in shaping the work and its reception, and to the question of what makes for a prize-winning translation. Each week students will read a prize-winning translation alongside reports from the prize committee, reviews of the translation, and what the translators say about their work.

Assignments:

Write a 2000-word analysis of the translation decisions in a novel translation, with reference to the source text and to the translator’s stated goals, if available.

Write a 1000-word book review of a translated novel, including a discussion of the translation.

Imagine that you are one the committee for one of the prize-winning novels we have read. Write a 2000-word argument for one of the short-listed titles to be chosen in its place.

This course satisfies the Arts & Humanities distribution requirement, counts towards the Secondary in Translation Studies, and may be taken pass/fail upon application. Reading knowledge of one language in addition to English is required.

This course reviews the influential major films of Stanley Kubrick—Paths of Glory (1957), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999), among other earlier films and his unfinished project A.I. Artificial Intelligence (dir. Spielberg 2001). The films will be considered in their historical, cultural, and film studies contexts. Topics include Cold War politics, literary adaptation, the depiction of violence on screen, and the relationship between popular culture and scholarship. We will pay special attention to Kubrick’s interest in war, science fiction, and technology, including artificial intelligence.

35mm screenings of the films will be held at the Harvard Film Archive as part of this course.

No prerequisites.