CMLT

Laughter is universal but its causes are culturally determined. A joke in one culture can be a shaggy dog story in another.  The figure of the trickster occurs in many places and times and under many guises. Stereotypes can be revelatory about those who deploy them. At the same time, humor can be both an outlet and a danger. There is a special word in Russian for those sentenced to prison for telling political jokes.  This course focuses on Balkan humor, which, like the Balkans itself, is located in a space where "Western Europe", "Eastern Europe" "Central Europe" "The Mediterranean", "The Levant", and the "Near/Middle East" intersect in various ways (linguistically and culturally), compete for dominance or resist domination, and ultimately create a unique--albeit fuzzily bounded--subject of study.In this course, we examine the poetics of laughter in the Balkans. In order to do so, we introduce humor as both cultural and transnational. We unpack the multiple layers of cultural meaning in the logic of “Balkan humor.” We also examine the functions and mechanisms of laughter, both in terms of cultural specificity and general practice and theories of humor. Thus, the study of Balkan humor will help us elucidate the “Balkan” and the “World,” and will provide insight not only into cultural mores and social relations, but into the very notion of “funny.” Our own laughter in class will be the best measure of our success – both cultural and intellectual.

A close reading of Tolstoy's great novel, with attention to theoretical approaches to be found in the large critical apparatus devoted to the novel.

Theories of the Novel: This course explores some of the fundamental conceptual issues raised by novels: in what way do plot, character, and authorial intention function in the novel, as opposed to other genres? How are novels formally unified (if they are)? What special problems are associated with beginnings and endings of novels? How do such basic features as titles and chapter divisions contribute to novelistic meanings? What are the ideological presuppositions – about gender, race, class, but also about the nature of social reality, of historicity, and of modernity -- inherent in a novelistic view? What ethical practices and structures of affect do novels encourage?

As classical statues emerged from the ground as if they were corpses revived by ancient necromancers, delight and curiosity concerning these artistic findings spread from Renaissance Italy to the rest of Europe. Even so, there was one aspect that was missing. The great paintings of antiquity were mostly lost due to their fragility. Only some of the wall paintings of later periods remained. Thus, the names and works of famous Greek painters came to be known mainly through Pliny´s Natural History. This course will focus on three of these painters whose works, although destroyed, are preserved in writing and ekphrasis: Apelles, Timanthes and Zeuxis. We will investigate how they come to be painted and described anew in the art and literature of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, from Vasari to Rubens; and from Boscán and Tirso de Molina to Cervantes and Montaigne. Although the course is taught in English, students need to have a reading knowledge of Spanish.

The affinities between literary and judicial practice seem as old as literature itself. Countless literary works take the form of a trial, revolve around a case or trial scene, or negotiate competing ways of seeing and talking. What is the relationship between judgment and poetic form? Can "trial" be understood as a distinct form of discourse? What role can the literary play in the legal process? Is there a privileged relationship between the trial and the dramatic genre? Can literature be a training for judgment? Are there specifically poetic forms of justice? Readings include Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Kleist, Kafka, Arendt, Weiss, Derrida, Coetzee.

This course will undertake a close reading (in French) of seminal texts (essays and translation as well as poems) by Mallarmé. We will also read older critical interpretations (Mauron, Sartre, H. Friedrich, Robert Greer Cohn, Scherer, J-P Richard, Poulet, eg) and more contemporary theorists (Derrida, Blanchot, De Man, Jameson, Johnson, Kristeva, Rancière, bersani, Zizek). Finally, we will read him in conjunction with some other, more or less overtly philosophical texts (Heidegger, Badiou, Nietzsche, Meschonnic, e.g.). Reading knowledge of French is REQUIRED, though the course will be conducted in English.

This class serves as an introduction to critical approaches to narrative, story-telling, and discourse analysis. While the emphasis will be on the Formalist-Structuralist tradition (Shklovsky, Propp, Tomashevsky, Jakobson, Benveniste, Barthes, Genette), we will also discuss works by Plato, Aristotle, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Auerbach, Pavel, Banfield, Silverstein, and others. Part of our task will be to test these approaches against narratives produced in different genres and historical periods (authors will include Pindar, Apuleius, Pushkin, Leskov, and Nabokov). Students will have the option of either writing a research paper or doing a final exam. Required books for this class are: V. Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale (Austin: U. of Texas Press); G. Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca: Cornell UP); R. Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang).

In this advanced seminar we will undertake an in-depth study of different aspects of the surviving corpus of Aeschylus (including meter, dialect, narrative, thematics, plot-construction, and ritual context), while placing it in a comparative context of early forms of drama and varieties of choral performance attested across the world. In addition to discussing all of Aeschylus’s surviving works in English translation, we will read at least two of his plays in Greek (most likely, Agamemnon and Seven Against Thebes). We will also read important scholarship on Aeschylus. Advanced knowledge of Greek is a prerequisite.

This course will explore the construct of hybridity through the development of anticolonial and postcolonial theory. In nuancing the distinction between these intellectual traditions and their respective formations in the contexts of decolonization, the Cold War and the US Academy, we will consider the work of Fanon, Césaire, C.L.R. James, Said, Spivak, Young, Bhabha, Glissant, Khatibi and others.

The Bakhtin Circle was an informal alliance of several young thinkers, formed amid the tumult of the Russian revolution, swiftly forced into silence after a brief efflorescence in the 1920s, and rediscovered with aplomb in the 1960s. Despite their broad influence in recent decades, basic issues of authorship, originality and coherence continue to dominate scholarship on Bakhtin and his colleagues. We will survey the corpus of texts originating in the Bakhtin Circle, not only those published under the name of Mikhail Bakhtin, but also the explicitly Marxist texts published under the names of Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Voloshinov but frequently attributed to Bakhtin. At issue in the course is not only the historiography and interpretation of the Bakhtin corpus, but also the origins of critical theory, the dynamics of theoretical collaboration, and methods of attribution. We will also be interested in the potential that these writings hold for constructing a viable theory of literary forms today. Our first task will be to establish the sources, contexts and development of Bakhtin's early work, including "Toward a Philosophy of the Act," "Art and Answerability" and Problems of Dostoevsky's Art. We will then examine the works published by Medvedev and Voloshinov, using the mystery of their authorship to frame questions concerning the organization of intellectual activity (including authorship) in a revolutionary situation and the role of the Bakhtin Circle in the development of critical theory in the West (especially via the mediation of Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson). We will then proceed to an examination of major concepts in Bakhtin's later work, including chronotope and carnival. Students will collaborate on the creation of a web-based glossary of major terms of the Bakhtin Circle, as the germ of a larger project. All texts are available in English translation.