Graduate

We will read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Some topics to be discussed are (alphabetically) animals, children, conversation, intention, justice and fairness, meaning of a word, malapropism, manners, pastoral, pictures, poems. Discussions will sometimes be accompanied by additional texts, which only occasionally count as secondary bibliography. Among these, we may read texts by Austin, Davidson, Empson, Oakeshott, Pitcher, Rawls, Russell, Wittgenstein and others.

In this course, we ask whether there is such a thing as a Balkan type of magic realism and think about the differences between the genres of magic realism and the fantastic, while reading some of the most interesting writing to have come out of the Balkans. We also look at the similarities of the works from different countries (e.g., lyricism of expression, eroticism, nostalgia) and argue for and against considering such similarities constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility.

The course will consider Soviet montage cinema of the twenties in the context of coeval aesthetic projects in other arts. How did Eisenstein's theory and practice of intellectual cinema connect to Fernand Leger and Vladimir Tatlin? What did Meyerkhold's biomechanics mean for film makers? Among other figures and issues, we will address Dziga Vertov and Constructivism, German Expressionism and Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Formalist poetics and FEKS directors. The course will be film-intensive (up to three hours of out-of-class viewings per week).

This seminar will look at the history of editing from early attempts at multi-shot sequencing to self-conscious experiments in intellectual montage; at editing techniques ranging from cross-cutting to CGI sequences; and at the variety of montage theories from Eisenstein and Pudovkin to Bazin. We will test Eisenstein's hypothesis about biological foundations of temporality in art; connect dynamic patterns of film editing to Daniel Stern's study The Present Moment; link temporal contours of cutting to theories of gendered narratology.

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920's to the political learning plays to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Mller, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Ngugi, and various South African practitioners). We will consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht's own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard to African film makers. PQ: Juniors, seniors and/or graduate students with at least one of the following: Intro to Cinema, History and Theory of drama, or their equivalents. Working knowledge of German and/or French would be helpful but is not required.

A study of classical epic in the Renaissance or Early Modern period. Emphasis will be both on texts and on classical epic theory. We will read Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered , Cames' Lusiads , and Milton's Paradise Lost . A paper will be required and perhaps an examination.

A reading of some central texts of Freud (both early and late) in the context of a study of the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary European philosophy. Other authors to be read may include Foucault, Deleuze and Guatteri, Marcuse, and Derrida.

In this course, we will examine the works of major writers from former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine how their works grapple with the issues of national identity and their countries' place in the Balkans and in Europe, with the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, with socialism and its demise, with emigration, as well as simply with the modern experience of being. We will compare the conceptual and mythic categories through which these works make sense of the world and argue for and against considering such categories constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility. The readings will include works by Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andri, Norman Manea, Mesa Selimovi, Danilo Kis, Miroslav Krle a, Ismail Kadare and others.

The course will examine the novels of arguably the two most important Jewish novelists of the twentieth century. Isaac Bashevis Singer's debut Satan in Goray (1933) was followed by many novels in various sub-genres: family chronicle, historical, and autobiographical. Singer's novels were initially serialized in the Yiddish press in Poland and after 1935 in the US, and then adapted in English translation. Saul Bellow's main contribution was his novels from his debut Dangling Man (1944) to Ravelstein (2000). Using current methodological approaches to the novel as presented in Franco Moretti's The Novel (2006), we will discuss how Bellow and Singer renewed novelistic forms and styles. The course will discuss the main features of the Jewish novel in the twentieth century (Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and Shmuel Agnon) that influenced Bellow and Singer.

The past few decades have seen an explosion of debates over the question of who should own cultural goods. The particular goods in question -- the Elgin marbles, artworks looted by the Nazis, the skeletal remains of Kennewick Man, shared files – are as various as the stakeholders (individual victims, nation-states, museums, musicians, etc.). This course explores the philosophical bases for claims to own artifacts, sounds, words, and ideas, and the policy conundrums posed by these claims (restitution, cultural rights, assertions of national control over cultural patrimony, copyright). We will also look at the ways in which some of these issues have entered the popular imaginary via fiction and film.