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  • Richard Serrano
  • Richard Serrano
  • Professor of French and Comparative Literature
  • Office Location: AB 4179, CAC
  • Phone: 848-932-9474

A Humanities Professor's Enduring Connection with Students

Education:

B.A. Stanford (English)
M.A., Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley (Comparative Literature)

Fields of Research:

Modern French and Francophone poetry; Maghrebi Literature in French and Arabic; Classical, Andalusian and Modern Arabic poetry; Classical Chinese poetry; Korean poetry.

My current book project investigates the introduction of modernity to Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.  While all three countries are in the Chinese cultural orbit, Korea and Taiwan were colonized by Japan, while Vietnam was colonized by France.  Does this matter for the local understanding of the global phenomenon of modernity?

Books (click on image for details):

Book Serrano

Other Publications:

  • "Reading the Alhambra." Visible Writings. Cultures, Forms, Readings. Ed. Marija Dalbello and Mary Shaw. New Brunswick: Rutgers University PRess, 2011, 293-303.
  • “Beyond the Length of an Average Penis: Reading across Traditions in the Poetry of Timothy Liu.”  Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005,190-208.
  • "Makhali-Phal: Cambodian Dancing Girl at the Francophone Epicenter." Special issue, Literature and Society in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, (Journal of Commonwealth and Post-colonial Studies 7:2, Fall 2001, pp. 7-32).
  • "Calixthe Beyala: Griotte Postmoderne ou Plagiaire?" Nouvelles écritures francophones: Vers un nouveau baroque? (Montréal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2001, 338-346).
  • "Translation and the Interlingual Text in the Novels of Rachid Boudjedra."Maghrebian Mosaic: A Literature in Transition. (Ed. Mildred Mortimer. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000, 27-40).
  • "Nedjma." Entry in African Literature and Its Times. (Ed. Joyce Moss. Santa Monica: Moss Publishing, 2000, 289-296).
  • "Translation and the Interlingual Text in the Novels of Rachid Boudjedra". In Critical Perspectives on Maghrebian Literature. (Ed. Mildred Mortimer. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Spring 2000).
  • "Fans, Silks, and Ptyx: Mallarmé and Classical Chinese Poetry." Comparative Literature 50.3. (Summer 1998, 220-241).
  • "Lacan's Oriental Language of the Unconscious." SubStance #84. (Vol. 26.3, 1997, 90-106).
  • "Al-Buhturi's Poetics of Persian Abodes." Journal of Arabic Literature. (Vol. XXVIII, 1997, 68-87).
  • "Al-Sharif Al-Taliq, Jacques Lacan, and the Poetics of Abbreviation." Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Writing.(Ed. J.W. Wright, Jr. & Everett Crowson. Columbia University Press, 1997, 140-157).
  • Translation of Abu Nuwas' "Drunkenness After Drunkenness." Literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From Antiquity to the Present.(Ed. Willis Barnstone & Tony Barnstone. Prentice Hall, 1995, 1010-1011).

Graduate Courses:

  • Islam and the Text in Franchophone Literature of the Magreb
  • Poetry
  • Césaire, Damas and Senghor
  • French and Francophone Poetry
  • Genre and the Algerian War
  • Francophone Literature and the Imperative of History
  • Postcolonial Writer/Postmodern Condition

 

Undergraduate Courses:

  • Past Today: Why Conflicts Endure (An SAS Signature Course)
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  • Rilke
  • Poetry
  • North African Literature in French
  • Modern Poetry
  • Introduction to Francophone Poetry
  • Multiple Cultures of the Maghreb
  • Introduction to World Literature
  • Fin-de-siècle France and the Far East
  • Introduction à la poésie francophone
  • Remembering and Queer Literature
  • Lyric Poetry in Comparative Context
  • Aspects of French Literature
  • Advanced Grammar and Composition
  • Représentations de la famille dans la littérature maghrébine d'expression française

Program Connections:

Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures
Program in Comparative Literature
Center for African Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies