Participants in this seminar pool their ideas about text and context. Recent Joyce criticism will be emphasized. Prior knowledge of Joyce and his early writings, notably Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is required.

Many defenses of or objections to literature revolve around a notion of its apparently unbridled liberty of expression, what the French Revolution called the "right to say anything." In this sense, an experience of literature inhabits the core of democracy, and the exercise of what are called human rights can reach its extremes ("anything") in the literary text. Contemporary thinkers have often radicalized this, seeing in literary language at once a virtually unlimited autonomy and a destabilizing power that can call everything into question, even the definition of the human. But without that, what is left of democracy and rights? What are the rights and powers of expression? The seminar will examine various answers to these questions, across a wide range of theoretical writings, from de Sade and the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, through some advanced texts in post-structuralism (Blanchot, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Levinas, Balibar, Lyotard, Cixous, Lefort) to contemporary debates about literature and freedom, censorship and hate speech (Rushdie, Spivak, Butler, Fish, Zizek).

The first three decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of many international multimedia movements. Two of the most prominent - Symbolism and Futurism - have a particularly rich history in Russia. This course will examine their competing efforts to artistically reshape the world through words and images. We will trace the evolution from Symbolist mysticism and theories of inter-artistic correspondences to Futurist political radicalism and forays into trans-rational" language. A central concern will be the interdependence of verbal, visual and aural modes of expression and the relationship of literary Symbolism and Futurism to concurrent trends in the visual arts such as Constructivism. We will read manifestoes, poems, and selected prose by Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Velimir Khlebnikov (in translation) as well as view photographs and paintings by Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitsky and others. Along the way students will learn to read the Cyrillic alphabet and to pronounce Russian words in order to engage more immediately the original sights and sounds of the Russian avant-garde. A concurrent tutorial with readings in the original Russian will be offered to Russian language students.

Literary style is more than decoration; it not only affects content by can often determine it. This course will approach writing as an activity analogous to playing music. The instrument is the American language, with its very particular rhythms, colors, and sonorities. Each week we will read one or more essay - or chapter-length selections, sometimes out loud, and learn what drives them, the principal means of study being imitation. It is only by knowing how styles are constructed that we can invent our own style. Readings will include selections from Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Ring Lardner, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Beer, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Zora Neale Hurston, H. L. Mencken, Flannery O'Connor, A. J. Liebling, Vladimir Nabokov, James Agee, Chester Himes, Manny Farber, Joan Didion, and Don de Lillo. There will be writing assignments every week.

According to Raymond Queneau's famous definition "an Oulipian author is a rat who himself builds the maze from which he sets out to escape." The OULIPO (OPLEPO in its Italian version) was one of the most creative and provocative literary group of the century. Oulipian authors have managed to offer a profound reflection on the very nature of literariness, but, what is most remarkable, they had lots of fun in the process. With a particular emphasis on Italo Calvino's most reknown Oulipian works, in this course we will also explore the literary mazes created by R. Queneau, G. Perec, H. Mathews and others. We will create our own new textual labyrinths and explore old ones.

Requirements: attendance, participation in class discussions, two papers or other kinds of written work, previously agreed upon with the instructor. All texts are in their English translation.

This course will examine ways in which literary and medical texts represented hysteria in the second half of nineteenth-century France. The class will read closely from medical documents - Pinel, Janet, Charcot, Esquirol - and from literary texts - Balzac's Mémoires de deux jeunes maries, Louise Colet's Correspondence with Flaubert, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Zola's Le Docteur Pascal. The friction between literary and medical representations of hysteria brings to the fore fundamental questions about nineteenth-century Realism. How can the dream of mimetic omniscience, of objectivity (i.e., Flaubert) be reconciled with the fluid, vaporous, and ever changing face of the so-called hysteric subject? Could it not be argued that the very nature of literature, with its silences and its dealings with the unsayable, cautions against any single definition of a condition? Concurrent with these literary tensions, the texts of the first aliénistes are also fraught with "unscientific" ambiguities. It would seem that their desire to control their patients with secure medical labels often went astray, leading them into narratives they could no longer control. This course will explore the unintentional slips within these texts, slips that demonstrate the remarkable and unexpected degree in which the medical and literary are bridged. Taught in English with special research projects for French speakers.

Ferrara in the Renaissance was four times the size of Rome and, it is often said, the most brilliant court in Italy whose poetry and music, pastoral plays, palaces and paintings captured the imagination of Europe. Ferrara is a prime example of the city-state principality in the Renaissance and a microcosm of Renaissance concerns. Its ruling family, the d'Este, was at the center of Italian political affairs which had ramifications throughout Europe, and in keeping with Renaissance "magnificence" Ferrara became a center of learning and the arts, including music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and literature. Some names to reckon with are the humanist Vttorino Guarini; in literature, Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso), and Gian-Battista Guarini; in painting, Dosso Dossi, Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de' Roberti, Giacopo Bellini ("The Feast of the Gods"), Correggio; in music, Jacquesde Wert, Orazio Vecchi (L'Amphiparnaso, a "commedia harmonica"), Luzzasco Luzzaidi, Carlo Gesualdo, Frescobaldi; its buildings, the Palazzo Schifanoia, the Palazzo dei Diamante, the Vila d'Este in Tivoli; its women, strong, intellectual, and famous, Lucrezia Borgia, Isabella d'Este, and her sister, Beatrice d'Este. The purpose of the seminar is to attempt to see Ferrara whole. This is a collaborative seminar; students work with one another, while at the same time individuals are encouraged to follow particular interests. As a base for the work of the seminar, the class will consider pertinent Renaissance texts (Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, Alberti's, On Painting), and then the work itself will be to construct (together and individually) a sense of social and economic structures as they can be related to the intellectual culture, in short to seek the relation between the politics of everyday life and the patronage of learning and the arts. From the beginning the group will create a web-page to house the work of the seminar, to present it to the "wide world" of the WWW, and to invite responses to it. (Those curious should see the "Mantova" web-page created by an earlier seminar under "Special Projects" on "Inside Bard.") Students from all disciplines are encouraged to participate; it will be possible to focus on literature, music, theatre, art history, architecture, sociology, urban planning, political science, gender studies, history of science, even hydraulic engineering, and probably other disciplines. This seminar is not appropriate for First Year Students or for Second Semester Seniors (students in these categories who are interested nevertheless should contact Mr. Wilson as soon as possible: 758-4503). Computer expertise not required.

Mr. Wilson will not be available for Course Consultation on

Registration Day. He will be in his office, Aspinwall 102, on Thursday, November 30, and Friday, December 1; or he may be called at 758-4503 any time before Registration Week.

In this course students will write/compose/design/make poetry with the form of the book in mind. We will do this in conjunction with a review of the history of poetry in relation to the book and vice versa. We will also explore the fluid zone between language as communicative sign and resonant graphic presence, both in its typographies and its active dialogue with the space of the page. The story goes that poetry began as song and oral recitation. Its graphic presence on the page came relatively late in its development. The roles of voice, sound, musical elements in poetry carry on the connection with its oral origins. What poetic elements are specific to its written and printed forms? Here we will explore what the fact of the

poem as visually composed, printed text - as well as the book as object - add to poetic possibility. We will work on concrete and other visual poetries and engage in poetic projects that are quite literally bound to the book as form. Students will create four books over the course of the semester. They will be encouraged to explore the material location of meaning in which words are simultaneously semantic unit, graphic representation and visual image.

This course is an introduction to Chinese film(s) from the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Although necessary cultural and historical background of cinemas in the three regions will be introduced, this course does not intend to use the third-world movies as a "window" through which "knowledge" and "truth" about the exotic culture can be acquired. In fact, the critical awareness this course tries to convey is precisely against the way in which "China" or the "Other" is perceived as the object for ethnographic investigations and spectacles. This critical awareness is part and parcel of postcolonial criticism, which is more of a critical stance than of certain "schools" of theory. Postcolonial critics, as Edward Said sees it, are "oppositional critics, not only in their work about the past, but also in the conclusions their work pulls into the present." Each week we will discuss one movie, produced by such filmmakers/directors as mainland's Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yuan, Hong Kong's Wang Kat-wai, Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien, and America's Ang Lee. Based on reading assignments and film screening, each week we will discuss a critical issue. Topics include "Disneylization and Globalization," "Homosexuality, Femininity, and East Asian Marginality," "The Primitive and The Modern," "Memory and History," "The Everyday Spectacle," and so on. We will read and discuss works by Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Rey Chow, Gayatri Spivak, Slovaj Zizek, among others. The fundamental question is: How can we think of ourselves differently by looking at the Other in this increasingly globalized world? All movies have English subtitles, and all readings are in English. Knowledge of Chinese is therefore not required. Students interested in Asian Studies, Comparative Literature and Film Studies are encouraged to take this course. Required essays and a term paper.

The diversity of voices, styles, and forms employed by innovative contemporary prose fiction writers is matched only by the range of cultural and political issues chronicled in their works. In this course we will closely examine novels and collections of short fiction from the last quarter century in order to begin to define the state of the art for this historical period. Particular emphasis will be placed on analysis of work by some of the more pioneering practitioners of the form. Authors whose work we will read include Cormac McCarthy, Angela Carter, Thomas Bernhard, Don DeLillo, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, William Gaddis, Michael Ondaatje, and others. One or two writers are scheduled to visit class to discuss their books and read from recent work.

What springs to your mind when you hear the word AFRICA? How much of your response derives from knowledge and how much from rumor; how much from fact and how much from fiction; how much from past history and how much from today's media? What role has `serious' literature played in all this? Does the attitude of individual authors make a difference or is everyone of them merely a product of his/her times? The central text of the course will be Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. It will be supported by two other depictions of Africa by visitors: Joyce Cary's MISTER JOHNSON and V.S. Naipaul's A BEND IN THE RIVER. An African perspective will be provided by three texts: an epic from antiquity, GASSIRER'S LUTE, Olauda Equiano's eighteenth century autobiography and a modern West African novel, AMBIGUOUS ADVENTURE, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane.

This course will be devoted to a close reading of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the work which tells of Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise and which constitutes, for the High Middle Ages, the literary equivalent of a cathedral or a scholastic summa. Because of the encyclopedic nature of this poem, students will be exposed, not only to the literary context, both Latin and vernacular, within which Dante situated his work, but also to the philosophy, theology, and history of the Middle Ages which play such important roles in the Comedy. We will consider, for example, not only Dante's relationship to classical literature, the troubadours and the dolce stil nuovo, but his relationship to university thought, to conflicts between the Church and the Empire, and to Florentine politics. The course is meant to provide both a firm appreciation of Dante as an individual author and of medieval culture, as seen through Dante's lens.

2 credits A two-credit module devoted to close study of a few of Austen's major novels: Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. We will examine each work in relation to a rich critical tradition surrounding it, charting the waxing and waning of Austen's reputation as successive generations of readers rediscover and attempt to explain her subtle art. Note: This course ends at mid-semester. Students with compelling interests may elect to extend their research beyond the module's end with an independent study project on Austen.

Since 1980, when Salman Rushdie's masterpiece Midnight's Children was published, it has been increasingly clear that Indian Anglophone writers have been producing some of the best fiction in the world, rivaling the most brilliant novelists in England, the U.S., Latin America, and Africa. This explosion of talent has occurred over the past fifty years, following the birth of modern India. Colonial rule lasted more than 150 years, and to this day, as a consequence, the most successful Indian novelists write in English. Even before independence, the collision of East and West inspired a number if English writers - most notably Rudyard Kipling, and E.M. Forster - and several Indian writers, have re-imagined that collision from a modern post-colonial perspective. The contradiction of writing about Indian life in the language of the departed British Raj has created a cultural hybridity which some of these novelists turn to advantage. In addition to Rushdie we will read works by R.K. Narayan, who wrote about village life; V.S. Naipaul, whose greatest work ahs been about the Indian diaspora in Trinidad and his own "arrival" in England; and Anita Desai, whose novels are mainly about Indian urban life. Among the most impressive younger writers we will probably read Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, Amit Chaudhuri's Freedom Song, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Pankaj Mishra's The Romantics, and a selection of short stories.

A study of various approaches to the nature of language, from the Greeks to Nietzsche. We will begin with Plato, supplementing our reading with a study of Plato's Pharmacy by Jacques Derrida. Similarly, our examination of Rousseau's Origin of Language will be coupled with the relevant sections of Derrida's Of Grammatology. Topics dealt with by these and other authors (the Sophists, Vico, Locke, Diderot) include: the relation between language and thought; the origin of language; writing and culture; and the rule of metaphor.

Intended for the serious writer interested in engaging the theory that reading is a primary function of creating fiction, this seminar will explore, through particularized reading and responsive writing, the ways a literary narrative best finds its expression, its formal voice. Students will study contemporary fiction by Jamaica Kincaid, Richard Powers, Angela Carter, Rick Moody, Lydia Davis, John Edgar Wideman, Robert Coover, and others. Class discussions will focus on the variety of technical means by which the author discloses her or his story, and on intensive workshop discussion of student writing. Expect to write one full-length critical essay about, and two original works of fiction patterned on books read in the course. Candidates must submit samples of their work before registration with optional cover letter via campus mail, or to Prof. Morrow's office (Fairbairn 207).