LIT 93 — Rumi in Translation: Poetry, Mysticism, and Transformation
Quarter: Winter
Instructor(s): Carolyn Sinsky
Date(s): Jan 12—Mar 2
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Tuesdays
Class Meeting Time: 5:30—7:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $495
Refund Deadline: Jan 14
Unit(s): 1
Status: Registration opens Nov 30, 8:30 am (PT)
Nearly eight centuries after his death, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī remains one of the world’s most beloved poets. His verses on ecstatic love, longing, loss, and spiritual transformation resonate across cultures, languages, and religious traditions. But who was Rumi, and how did a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic become a global literary phenomenon? This course explores Rumi’s poetry through close readings of selected works, including passages from the Masnavi and his celebrated ghazals. We’ll consider enduring themes, including the beloved as both human and divine, suffering and healing as spiritual metaphors, music and movement as pathways to transcendence, and longing as a force of transformation. We will also compare Coleman Barks’s influential English adaptations with translations made directly from Persian, asking what is gained, lost, and reinvented as poetry travels across languages and cultures. Students will deepen their appreciation of Rumi's poetry and the traditions that shaped it, discovering why his work continues to speak so powerfully across centuries and cultures.
No knowledge of Persian or prior familiarity with Rumi's poetry is required.
CAROLYN SINSKY
Literary Scholar and Writer
Carolyn Sinsky received a PhD in comparative literature from Yale, where she received the Vardis & Opal Fisher Fellowship and the Prize Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching literature and writing. She has taught literature and writing at Yale, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Great Books Summer Program at Stanford. She teaches classes in the close reading of literature and poetry. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Rumi, Haleh Liza Gafori (Ed., Trans), Gold (ISBN 978-1681375335)
(Required) Rumi, Jawid Mojaddedi (Trans), The Masnavi, Book One (ISBN 978-0199552313)
(Optional) Rumi, Coleman Barks (Trans), The Essential Rumi (ISBN 978-0062509598)
(Optional) Rumi, Franklin D. Lewis (trans), Swallowing the Sun (ISBN 978-1851689712)
(Required) Rumi, Jawid Mojaddedi (Trans), The Masnavi, Book One (ISBN 978-0199552313)
(Optional) Rumi, Coleman Barks (Trans), The Essential Rumi (ISBN 978-0062509598)
(Optional) Rumi, Franklin D. Lewis (trans), Swallowing the Sun (ISBN 978-1851689712)