Graduate

Lucretius was a follower of Epicurus, whom Marx called the greatest representative of Greek enlightenment. In his poem On the Nature of Things, Lucretius seeks to convert his fellow Romans to an Epicurean way of life. He explains in detail what the world is made of (atoms) and that there is no reason to fear the gods or death. Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation on Epicurus and Lucretius. He was especially enthusiastic about the idea, which was developed by Lucretius, that humans are free to shape their own lives.

Must be taken in sequence. This seminar is a regular graduate seminar held in conjunction with a Sawyer Seminar sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The course will examine philosophical and aesthetic issues associated with the problem of non-discursive representation in both major texts of the philosophical and literary tradition running, roughly speaking, from Kant to the present. Relevant works by contemporary philosophers and critics will also be discussed. The seminar is linked to two conferences on the topic and will include individual visits to the seminar by conference participants.

PQ: Consent of instructor, outside students will be accepted, with the class size limited to 15 students, as long as the majority of 32students are ComLit Grad students and PhD students in English Language and Literature. Fulfills the core course requirement for CompLit students. This course will explore major trends in Western literary criticism from Plato to the late eighteenth-century . The course will take as its particular focus the critical treatment of epic in the following: Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Horace, Montaigne, Sidney, Le Bossu, St. Evremond, Dryden, Addison, Voltaire, and Burke. The course will also examine some twentieth-century approaches to epic (e.g., Auerbach, Curtius, Frye) in order to assess continuities and discontinuities in critical method and goals. Students will be encouraged to write final papers on subjects and authors of their choice while addressing issues treated in the course.

PQ: Prior or current registration in CMST 10100 required; CMLT 22400/32400 strongly recommended. The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History, An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

This course covers the classics in the field of marxist social theory (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Reich, Lukacs, Fanon) as well as key figures in the development of Marxist aesthetics (Adorno, Benjamin, Brecht, Marcuse, Williams) and recent developments in Marxist critiques of new media, post-colonial theory and other contemporary topics. It is suitable for graduate students in literature depts., art history and possibly history. It is not suitable for students in the social sciences.

May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20500/30500 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth: Molire, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended.

PQ: Consent of instructor, outside students will be accepted, with the class size limited to 15 students, as long as the majority of the students are ComLit Grad students and PhD students in English Language and Literature. Fulfills the core course requirement for CompLit students. A course on the methods and procedures of a few poet-critics of the 19th and 20th centuries: Matthew Arnold, R. W. Emerson, Paul Valery, T. S. Eliot, William Empson, Charles Bernstein. To what extent is the history of criticism a record of the work of poet-critics? Are these writers models for contemporary critics? Insofar as they are, how? Insofar as they are not, why not? This course will focus to some extent on the essay form and on prose style.

A close reading of Michel Foucault's Surveller et punir. Naissance de la prison . Some attention will also be given to the debates provoked by this book, and to the political activities of the groupe d'information sur les prisons. Reading knowledge of French is required.

This seminar examines the Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem's work as a prime example of the diasporic imagination in modern Jewish literature. Key texts (e.g., Tevye the Dairyman , the Railroad Stories , Menakhem Mendel ) are discussed in the context of Russian Jewry's crisis and transformation at the turn of the twentieth century. Sholem-Aleichem's encounter with America during his visit in 1905-06 and his immigration in 1914 are discussed in connection with his play writing for the Yiddish stage and cinema. We examine Sholem-Aleichem's unique literary universe and style as the pivotal expression of classic Yiddish fiction.

The last decade has seen a dramatic shift away from nation-based approaches to literary studies and a desire to move towards more transnational approaches. But how and more importantly why should we do so? What is to be gained? This course will explore these conceptual questions as we read primary texts from late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Spanish America and the U.S..