One of the towering literary figures of the 20th century, Italo Calvino is remembered for his inventiveness, versatility, philosophical acuity, and interest in exploring combinatorial and computational approaches to creative practice. Using as its point of departure his 1967 lecture Cybernetics and Ghosts, the course is built around readings of some of Calvino’s most celebrated novels, among them: The Castle of Crossed Destinies, If on a winter’s night a traveler, and Invisible Cities. But we will also read from his Six Memos for the Next Millennium and critical writings, from writings by figures in contemporary cybernetics and communication theory, and from the Italian structuralist tradition, Oulipo, and the Programmed Art movement of the 1970s. Class assignments will involve the speculative, creative, and critical use of Generative AI tools and the generation of plausible “new” works by Calvino forty years after his death.
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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