|
91487 |
LIT 3017 The Threshold of Modernity in European
Jewish Literature |
Jonathan Brent |
. . W . . |
4:30 -6:50 pm |
Olin 101 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Jewish Studies, Russian & Eurasian
Studies This
course will explore the meaning of modernity in the works of 6 of the
greatest Jewish writers of the late 19th and 20th centuries: Sholem
Aleichem, I.L Peretz, Franz Kafka, S. Ansky, Isaac Babel, and Bruno
Schulz. We will read significant selections from each writer's work
against the background of the radical changes in Jewish life at the end
of the 19th century across eastern Europe in response to the rise of
Fascism and Communism and the spread of avant-garde artistic
theories. Works will include "The Dybbuk"; "The Diary of
Isaac Babel"; the stories and essays of Bruno Schulz; the
autobiography of I.L. Peretz; the diaries of Franz Kafka; and "The
Letters of Menachem Mendel and Sheyne Sheyndel," by Sholem Aleichem.
|
91607 |
LIT 3038 Sympathy & Its Discontents |
Cole Heinowitz |
M . . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin L. C. 210 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Human Rights In 1759, Adam Smith argued that sympathizing
with the pain of others is both beneficial to society and pleasurable for the
individual. Advocates of liberal reform in the late eighteenth century claimed that
sympathy was the primary spur to benevolent, humanitarian action. Poems,
novels, and essays detailing cruelty and misery flooded the European book
market, encouraging readers to partake of the improving and edifying effects of
sympathy. But what if the pleasure we take in the suffering of others does not
lead to moral action? What if, as the Marquis de Sade suggested, we would
rather increase than alleviate the pain of others to augment our own pleasure?
Or what if, as Marx would later argue, humanitarianism merely served to
disguise exploitation? This course will explore eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Europe’s conflicted obsession with sympathy and trace its
literary and political implications into the twentieth century. Readings will
include works by Smith, Goethe, de Sade, Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Disraeli,
Freud, Marx, Artaud, Celan, and Acker.
|
91331 |
LIT 3090 Black Mountain College &
The Invention of Contemporary American
Art and Poetry |
Ann Lauterbach |
. . W . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin L. C. 210 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Art History Started in 1933 in Asheville, North
Carolina, Black Mountain College was founded on John Dewey’s notion of
“progressive” education, where the relation between thinking and doing, idea and
practice, was understood as a seamless continuum, and the arts as central to
democratic ideals. A partial list of faculty includes: Willem and Elaine
deKooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Merce
Cunningham, Charles Olson, Robert Creely.
We will examine the premise of this utopian experiment and explore the
historical platform, both European and American, that allowed radical modernist
idioms in poetics and the visual arts to flourish, and which continue to
influence our understanding of the nature of the contemporary.
|
91494 |
HR 315 War of Heroes – War of Machines: Atrocity, Total War and the Epic Imagination |
Mark Danner |
. T . . . |
1:30 – 3:50 pm |
RKC 122 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Classical Studies, Literature We
live in an age of war by machine, of laser-guided bombs and robotic drones and
improvised explosive devices. For nearly two centuries war has been
predominantly industrial, mechanical, impersonal. Yet our ideas of war - the
ethical and aesthetic penumbra that has always surrounded warfare - are rooted
in glory. They descend from the epic imagination, centered as it is on the hero
testing his power and his life against his nemesis and against fate. In this
seminar we will trace the roots of the heroic imagination back to its
beginnings in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, follow its development and its
questioning in classical Greece and Rome and its critique in the bastard epics
of the Middle Ages, and examine its deterioration and rejection in the modern
age of war by machine. Our lodestar throughout will be the rise of total war
and its accompanying ideas of mercy, human rights and group violence bounded by
law - and the clash of these ideas with our lingering notion of war as the
ultimate realm of heroic deeds. Readings will be drawn from the The Battle
of Megiddo, Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Atra-Hasis, The
Illiad, Aeschylus and Euripides, the Mahabarata, Arrian and Plutarch, The Aeneid, and The Song of
Roland, as well as Graves, Remarque, Lindqvist and Filkins.
|
91104 |
LIT 3191 Islam & Modernity: Tahar Ben Jelloun and
Nuruddin Farah |
Norman Manea |
. T . . . |
1:30 –3:50 pm |
OLIN 101 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Human Rights Bard students
have the great opportunity in the Contemporary Masters class to meet two
outstanding writers from the far- away "third world". Tahar Ben
Jelloun is a Great French writer of Moroccan origin (Prix Goncourt, The Cross
of Grand Officer of Legion d'Honneur) whose poetry, prose and essays are based
on a brilliant, profound and polemical approach to the Muslim world, its
social, political, cultural issues and its connection to Europe. The Somali
writer Nuruddin Farah is considered one of the greatest writers of today,
author of a rich and complex literary work focused on colonial and postcolonial
practices, women's liberation, human rights, national independence. The class
will debate the political view of these two great writers, their artistic
vision, the originality and importance of their work in the context of the
modern era and our global environment.
|
91326 |
LIT 3206 Evidence |
Thomas Keenan |
. T . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin 309 |
HUM |
Cross-listed: Human Rights What does literature teach us about evidence? Of
what can it be evidence? Evidence,
etymologically, is what we see, what is exposed or obvious to the eye, and to
the extent that something is evident it should help us make decisions, form
conclusions, or reach judgments. Hence
its legal meanings. On the basis of
these traces of what has happened —whether in the form of statistics, images,
or testimony—we decide, and so their ethical and theoretical stakes are
high. Sometimes what we see and read
seems to compel action, while at other times it appears to immobilize us. As more and more of our world is exposed to
view, what becomes of the would-be foundational character of evidence? What is it to ignore evidence? This seminar will explore the theory and practice
of evidence, with special attention paid to (a) accounts in the mass media of,
and (b) testimonies and forensic evidence about, the most extreme cases
(genocide, atrocity, terror, human rights violations). We will examine this literature and imagery,
including much documentary material from the media, and read it all alongside
contemporary literary and political theory, in order to pose some basic and
complex questions about decision, bearing witness, and responsibility. Readings and screenings from Gilles Peress,
Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison, Jean-Luc Nancy, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Luc
Boltanski, and others.
|
91255 |
LIT 3208 Faulkner: Race, Text, and Southern History |
Donna Grover |
. T . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin 306 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
American Studies, Africana Studies One
of America’s greatest novelists, William Faulkner was deeply rooted in the
American South. Unlike other writers of his generation who viewed America from
distant shores, Faulkner remained at home and explored his own region. From
this intensely intimate vantage point, he was able to portray the south and all
of its glory and shame. Within Faulkner’s narratives slavery and its aftermath
remain the disaster at the heart of American history. In this course we will
read Faulkner’s major novels, poetry, short stories as well as film scripts. We
will also read biographical material and examine the breath of current Faulkner
literary criticism.
|
91007 |
LIT 331 Translation Workshop |
Peter Filkins |
. . . Th . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin 302 |
FLLC |
The workshop is intended for students interested in
exploring both the process of translation and ways in which meaning is created and
shaped through words. Class time will be divided between a consideration of
various approaches to the translation of poetry and prose, comparisons of
various solutions arrived at by different translators, and the students' own
translations into English of poetry and prose from any language or text of
their own choosing. Prerequisite: One year of language study or
permission of the instructor.
|
91276 |
LIT 333 New Directions in Contemporary Fiction |
Bradford Morrow |
M . . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
Olin 205 |
ELIT |
This seminar is devoted to close readings of novels and collections of short stories by innovative contemporary fiction writers published over the last quarter century, with an eye toward exploring both the great diversity of voices and styles employed in these narratives as well as the cultural, historical, and social issues they chronicle. Particular emphasis will be placed on analysis of fiction by some of the more pioneering practictioners of the form, including Cormac McCarthy, William Gaddis, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Michael Ondaatje, Ian McEwan, Jamaica Kincaid, along with two or three authors who will visit class to discuss their books and read from recent work.
|
91330 |
LIT 3410 Hawthorne, Melville, and Literary Friendship |
Geoffrey Sanborn |
. T . Th . |
10:10 - 11:30 am |
Olin 309 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: American Studies During a mountain picnic in the summer of 1850,
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville struck up a private conversation. That
champagne-fueled talk issued into an intense, maddening, and relatively brief
friendship, a friendship that was mediated by writing, that was given
expression in writing, and that can only be approached by way of writing. What
was it like? The aim of this course is to get as close as we can to answering
that question - or, more precisely, to learn how to keep falling short of the
answer. After acquainting ourselves with the shape of their careers before
1850, we will read everything they wrote between the summer of 1850 and the
fall of 1852, the period of their intimacy. That will mean reading, in addition
to The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Moby-Dick,
and Pierre, all of their letters, journals, and marginalia, plus a
children’s book and a campaign biography. Early in the semester we will visit
Melville’s house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Upper College students.
|
91258 |
LIT 3431 Satire |
Terence Dewsnap |
M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
HEG 200 |
ELIT |
The
origins of satire in folk culture and in classical writings (Aristophanes,
Horace, Juvenal, Petronius); medieval, renaissance and eighteenth century
examples; and twentieth-century revival of satiric traditions
in Waugh, Auden, Huxley and others.
|
91103 |
LIT 358
Exile and Estrangement |
Norman Manea |
M . . . . |
1:30 –3:50 pm |
OLIN 101 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Human Rights Reading and discussion of selected fiction by
such writers as Mann, Kafka, Nabokov, Camus, Singer, Kundera, Naipaul, etc.
examining the work for its literary value and as a reflection of the issue of
exile – estrangement as a fact of biography and a way of life. The complex
topics of foreignness and identity, (ethnic, political, sexual) of rejection
and loss, of estrangement and challenge, and also of protean mutability, are
discussed in connection to relevant social-historical situations (war, expulsion, migration) and as major
literary themes. Preference given to students moderated in Language and
Literature.
|
91543 |
LIT 3640 Memorable 19th Century
Continental Novels |
Justus Rosenberg |
. . . . F |
10:10 -12:30 pm |
OLIN 301 |
ELIT |
This
course offers an in-depth examination of continental novels that are part of
the literary canon, such as Dostoyevsky’s Brothers
Karamazov, Tolstoy’s War and Peace,
Stendhal’s The Red and the Black,
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Balzac’s Cousin Bette and Thomas Mann’s The Buddenbrooks, which collectively
provide a realistic picture of the major artistic, social, political, and
philosophical trends and developments in 19th century Europe. We explore these writers’ portrayals of the
rising middle class, the corrosion of religious beliefs and romantic notions,
the position of women in society, the birth of radical ideologies, the debate
between materialism and idealism as philosophical concepts, and analyze the
diversity of their narrative strategies.
Our readings are enhanced by selected screen adaptations of some novels.
|
91243 |
LIT 3741 Virginia Woolf |
Deirdre d'Albertis |
. . . . F |
10:10 – 12:30 pm |
Olin L. C. 206 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies In this seminar we will study Woolf's
novels, from The Voyage Out (1915) to Between the Acts (1941), in
the context of two distinct periods of innovation and conflict in
twentieth-century literary culture. The first period, beginning "on or
about December 1910" as Woolf memorably suggested, was the formation of
the Bloomsbury circle, in particular, and English modernism, in general. What
makes Woolf a modernist? How did her interactions with other members of the
literary avant-garde (Forster, Eliot, even Joyce and Mansfield), as well as
artists and thinkers associated with Bloomsbury, shape her experiments in
fiction? The second period, following the women's movement in England and
America of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, was the introduction into the academy
of feminist literary criticism. Why did Woolf's novels and essays, especially
"A Room of One's Own," become canonical texts of late
twentieth-century feminism? In examining the historical reception of Woolf's
writings we will struggle to come to grips with that larger-than-life figure
critic Brenda Silver recently referred to as "Virginia Woolf, Icon."
Has Woolf’s literary reputation fared well in the wake of “post-feminism”? How are early 21st century
readers coming to terms with her difficult-to-categorize literary
imagination?