This course will address the concept of creaturely life as a dimension that places the human in intimate proximity to the animal without collapsing the human-animal distinction. Readings will include texts by Rilke, Kafka, Benjamin, Heidegger, Agamben, Coetzee, Sebald, Cixous, Derrida.
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.
During the early modern age, writing had a strong visual component. Poets and playwrights utilized the sense of sight since it was the highest of the Platonic senses and a mnemonic key to lead spectators to remember vividly what they had read or heard, long before spectacle plays were in fashion. One important technique for visualization was ekphrasis, the description of an art work within a text. For this purpose, playwrights often turned to the mythological canvases of the Italian Renaissance along with the portraits of great rulers and images of battle. Thus, early modern theater could rely on ekphrasis to help the audience visualize a heroic figure, the mysteries love, or an epic conflict. And, noblewomen, in order to acquire agency, would take on the guise of a goddess as portrayed in Italian canvases. Their rule would be most often portrayed in comic plays. We will read plays by Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina and Caldern as well as ancient, early modern French and Italian plays. Numerous Italian Renaissance paintings will be discussed.
PQ: Knowledge of ancient Greek, Latin, or French, or permission of the instructor. French students work must be in French, including the final paper, for French credit. A close comparative reading of Euripides' Hippolytus, Seneca's Phaedra, and Racine's Phedre. There will be one seminar meeting each week for the whole class and one additional session to discuss the texts in the original language with those students who can read it. This course is a two-quarter course and will meet for the first five weeks of the winter term and the last five weeks of the spring term. There will be one grade report at the end of spring quarter. Students are mandated to register for both quarters.
This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful . The aim of this course is to introduce what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We also discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking.
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 students are ComLit Grad students and PhD students in English Language and Literature. Fulfills the core course requirement for CompLit students. This course introduces graduate students to some of the fundamental conceptual issues raised by novels: how are novels formally unified (if they are)? What are the ideological presuppositions inherent in a novelistic view? What ethical practices do novels encourage? Readings include Sterne, Tristram Shandy; Austen, Emma; Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Yong Man; critics covered include Lukacs, Bakhtin, Watt, Jameson, and others.
This seminar examines the implications of modern theories of multiculturalism and world systems for the study of classical literatures. It asks students to historically and theoretically explore the relation of classical literatures and ancient cultures to area studies, national and comparative literature departments, as well as to disciplines such as anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. How does scholarship on ancient cosmopolitanism, tracing ever more extensive networks of material and linguistic exchange, compel us both to reread ancient texts and to rethink their relation to the present? Who determines to whom a text or cultural artifact belongs? The class is primarily organized around theoretical readings relating to a set of problems (e.g. notions of cultural property, translation, writing systems, race, Silk Road Studies), but will also include readings of classical texts (primarily Chinese and Greek) available in translation. Authors will include Appiah, Bernal, Derrida, Engels, Frank, Kuper, Plato, Sima Qian, Spivak.
PQ: Reading knowledge of German is required. This course will focus largely on the relation of lyric poetry to extreme historical experience, to the Shoah in particular. We will focus on Celan's poems for seven weeks, and then on Plath's late work for three weeks.
This course will examine postmodern notions of the subject, subjectivity, and the gendering of these. Readings will include texts by Butler, Foucault, Derrida, C. Taylor, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, Certeau and Irigary. We will also be reading from a variety of other contemporary theorists. Open to graduate students only. Requirements include one seminar paper and presentation.
