2021-2022

The concept of ecstasy is often associated with an extraordinary experience of the philosophical, sexual, and religious varieties, but in what way is ecstasy also bound to rituals of the ordinary? In this course we will explore numerous ways that ecstasy and synonymous terms like “orgasm,” “bliss,” and “jouissance” have been conceptualized in philosophical, theological, and literary texts from late antiquity to the present. What does the figural relationship between ecstasy and orgasm suggest about the broader relationship between philosophy, theology, sexuality, and desire? What role do pleasure and pain play in philosophical and theological reflection? How has ecstasy been deployed both as a form of political resistance and as complicit in the perpetuation of histories of violence? Focusing on the Christian tradition and its impact on queer theory, our readings may include, but are not limited to, texts by Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Margaret Ebner, Hadewijch, Margery Kempe, Teresa of Ávila, Lacan, Glück, Edelman, and Muñoz.

The AIDS pandemic had a major impact on cultural production of the 1980s and the 1990s. But its effects did not end with the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1995. This course will examine the AIDS archive in its broadest sense—including art, literature, and theory produced in direct and indirect response to the pandemic from the 1980s to the present. What was the role of cultural production in political activism? What kinds of narratives did the allegorization of AIDS make possible and normalize? How has the AIDS pandemic been remembered and memorialized in more contemporary art and literature? Drawing from U.S., Latin American, and European texts, we will explore how AIDS has impacted sociopolitical issues related to sexuality, gender, class, and race.

This seminar will engage major texts by these three writers. Fanon was a strong  influence on Sartre and Beauvoir, and all three wrote about the oppressed and political power struggles In varying contexts. The issues we will be considering are decolonization, racism (including anti-Semitism), sexism/misogyny, and the Palestinian situation that ultimately created a rift between Fanon and Sartre, Questions will include Fanon’s support of violence, Sartre’s problematic positioning in the wake of Fanon’s ideas, and Beauvoir’s “feminist” stance in relation to issues of power.

This course introduces students to the field of Translation Studies and its key concepts, including fidelity, equivalence, and untranslatability, as well as the ethics and politics of translation. We will investigate the metaphors and models that have been used to think about translation and will consider translation as a transnational practice, exploring how “world histories” may be hidden within “word histories,” as Emily Apter puts it. In the process, we will assess theories of translation and poetry from classical antiquity to the present; compare multiple translations of the same text; and examine notable recent translations. Students will carry out translation exercises and create a final translation project of their own.

The role of space in everyday life has acquired a newfound prominence in light of recent events, as exemplified in the emergence of terms like “social distancing” and “quarantine” as common parlance. Approaching the implications of this from a different angle through an examination of how spatial imaginings travel across time and medium, we will explore questions of space as they are bound up with problems of gender, exile, aesthetics, and performance. How is space imagined and evoked across different media? How might attention to this question lead us to rethink the way that space mediates our experiences of our surroundings? While Japan will be our primary geographic topos, we will interrogate an understanding of these spatialities as ‘Japanese’ by surveying the role they come to play in discourses of both ‘Japanese-ness’ and Western modernism. We will pay special attention to performance (namely, nō dance-drama); however, we will also take up short stories, novels, film and more. Centering our investigations on modern and contemporary cultural production, our travels will also take us through premodern terrain to trace the multiple axes along which our diverse array of objects circulate. Figures considered include: Murata Sayaka, Gaston Bachelard, Hori Tatsuo, Doreen Massey, Mishima Yukio, Ōe Kenzaburō, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. All readings will be in English.  

For decades, human rights activists and lawmakers in the United States have been fighting for a person’s right to speak their native language before the law, implying that language justice could be achieved through the use of interpreters. At the same time, a new generation of poets and fiction writers has been exercising alternative approaches to language justice, shifting the focus from speakers to listeners, and from the legal to the personal. This course brings these seemingly separate discourses into conversation in an attempt to trace the assumptions that undergird different formulations of language justice in the late 20th century and 21st century. Drawing on Edward Said’s The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals, we will examine NGO statements and immigration court hearings side by side with poetry and fiction by Monica de la Torre, Antonio Ruiz Camacho, Irena Klepfisz, Joseph Brodsky and others. As we analyze theories of identity, desire, language and responsibility and engage with thinkers such as Andrea Long Chu, Hannah Arendt and Aamir Mufti, we will consider the potential implications of bringing literature and law into conversation with one another.