FIRST YEAR SEMINAR - SPRING 2001

THE FIRST YEAR SEMINAR REQUIREMENT

All first year students are required to take two seminars, one in the fall, the other in the spring semester. The seminars are courses in which the student is introduced to the literary, philosophical, and artistic legacies of several interrelated cultures. Works are chosen to represent a wide range of intellectual discourse, from poetry, drama, and fiction, to history, philosophy, and polemic.

INTENSITIES - ENCOUNTERS WITH THE WORK

In the spring semester each section of the Seminar focuses on a single work of demonstrated historical importance. A work may be interpreted as, for example, a symphony, a painting, a scientific treatise, a city plan, a dramatic performance, a novel, an ethnography, a case study, or a political tract. Faculty will devote the semester to an in-depth study of the particular work they have chosen, students will engage with this work by writing frequent analytical papers.

CRN

12481

   

Course No.

FSEM II CB

Title

Fragments and Waking Dreams: "Kubla Khan," "Christabel," and "The Pains of Sleep"

Professor

Celia Bland

Schedule

Tu 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 307

Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 301

In the Spring of 1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a slim volume of poetry with the help of his new-found admirer, the wildly popular young poet, Lord Byron. Two of these poems - "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel" -- had remained unfinished for over a decade, but they were well-known among England's intellectual circles. Both had been recited as after-dinner entertainments, and had even inspired imitations and parodies. Their reception by the public at large, however, was mixed to say the least. Byron had praised the poetry's "wild and original genius," but Byron had suddenly fled England amid a flurry of scandalous rumors, and Coleridge was left behind to face accusations of foisting nonsensical fragments on an ingenuous public. Much of the critical outcry was prompted by the poet's notorious preface to "Kubla Khan," in which he describes the poem's conception during an opium dream -- a dream interrupted by a "person on business from Porlock" who knocked at the door. The author of one of the most savage reviews was Coleridge's former protégé, the essayist William Hazlitt, who declared the poetry "dim, obscure, and visionary." "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel" have proved to be two of the most influential poems in the English language, in spite of, or perhaps because of their visionary, obscure, and fragmentary states.

CRN

12288

   

Course No.

FSEM II EB

Title

The Torah

Professor

Ethan Bloch

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm -2:50 pm LC 210

The Torah (literally, the Law, in Hebrew) consists of the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books form the beginning of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, and are at the foundation of the Jewish and Christian traditions. The Torah is also the source of many myths, concepts and moral principles that have become a part of the fabric of all Western civilization. The Torah has been studied as a work of literature, as a cultural artifact, as an inspiration for moral behavior, as a source of religious beliefs and as a divinely written work. We will read large parts of the Torah, examining how it can be interpreted in these different ways. Readings from the Torah will be supplemented by a variety of commentators, both ancient and modern, from Jewish, Christian and academic approaches.

CRN

12484

   

Course No.

FSEM II LB

Title

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Professor

Leon Botstein

Schedule

Mon Th 11:30 am - 1250 pm ASP 302

A close reading of the entire text, focusing on the problems it presented for Nietzsche in his time, and still presents for us today. Weekly papers. Students with a reading knowledge of German or expectations to acquire one are welcome.

CRN

12362

   

Course No.

FSEM II MC

Title

Flaubert:Sentimental Education

Professor

Mark Cohen

Schedule

Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 310

At the heart of the bourgeois revolution that began in the eighteenth century was a promise of absolute freedom towards which humankind was thought to be steadily progressing. The nineteenth century would be the proving ground of that promise, one in which virtually all of its great thinkers and writers placed their most fervent hope. One novel of the nineteenth century, however set out to prove that not only could the dream not be realized but thjat both history and desire were ultimately incoherent and revolution itself therefore impossible: Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, first published in 1869. Its characters comprise the privileged, listless, fetishist protagonist Frederic Moreau and his friends: an assortment of women, students, entrepreneurs, artists and social climbers (otherwise known as "Bohemia"). Flaubert carefully designed the novel to show the ultimate pointlessness of all of their various beliefs and projects. More broadly, the diffuse manner in which Flaubert has structured his narrative of the 1848 revolution and the characters' passage through it which forms the central event of the novel acts to drain history, desire and perhaps even literature itself of their significance. To show how Flaubert carried out his counter-history of the nineteenth century we will examine the novel itself in detail, the historical context in which it was written and other relevant texts from the period (Flaubert's other works, Stendhal, Balzac, Marx, Michelet, Baudelaire, Darwin, Hugo). L'Education's brilliant formal innovations and its revelation that literary realism might find its apotheosis not in science but in pure irony make this one of the founding novels of modernism (and indeed postmodernism) but also point forward to our own current ideological impasse.

CRN

12301

   

Course No.

FSEM II PG

Title

Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

Professor

Peter Gadsby

Schedule

Mon Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 307

Considered by Coleridge to have one of the three great plots of all literature, Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) has long been regarded as one of the first and most influential of English novels. Fielding's hapless but loveable hero careers through the pages of this generous, worldly, supremely comic tale, extending the tradition of the picaro through his travels across eighteenth-century England. We will consider this rich text in relation to the development of the novel, changing social and economic conditions, and the author's ongoing inquiry into the moral life of man.

CRN

12219

   

Course No.

FSEM II FG

Title

The Communist Manifesto

Professor

Frederic Grab

Schedule

Tu Th 8:30 am -9:50 am OLIN 304

Arguably the most influential secular text ever written, the Communist Manifesto recently celebrated its 150th birthday in an orgy of denunciations and nostalgia. We will explore the reasons for both reactions through a detailed examination of this seminal text. In addition to a few other works by Marx and Engels, we will read several novels dealing with social conditions in England in the mid-19th century (e.g. Dicken's Hard Times), and view Charlie Chaplin's classic film, Modern Times.

CRN

12286

   

Course No.

FSEM II DFG

Title

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Professor

Donna Ford Grover

Schedule

Mon Wed 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 304

"So you're the little lady who started the war," Abraham Lincoln allegedly said to Harriet Beecher Stowe about her abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Despite its controversy and often poor reviews (even Charles Dickens attacked it for being overly sentimental) in the 19th century it sold more copies than the Bible and has never gone out of print. In our close reading of this text we will examine Stowe's use of sentimentality and romance within her highly politicized text. We will discuss and analyze how the archetypes of race and gender that Stowe created managed to become fixtures within American culture. In our discussion of the text we cannot ignore the broad scope of literary criticism that this novel has generated from the mid-nineteenth century until now.

CRN

12482

   

Course No.

FSEM II LK

Title

John Cassavetes

Professor

Lisa Katzman

Schedule

Mon 4:00 pm - 5:20 pm LC 120

Tu 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 303

Considered the godfather of American independent narrative cinema, Cassavetes occupies a singular niche in film culture. His unique body of work bridges avant garde and Hollywood traditions, while mapping uncharted dramatic and cinematic terrain. We will examine Cassavetes' films within these cinematic contexts, and in relation to Greek tragedy. The course will focus closely on the following films: Husbands, A Woman under the Influence, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Opening Night, and Love Streams.

CRN

12296

Course No.

FSEM II / LIT 108

Title

William Wordsworth: The Prelude

Professor

Thomas Keenan

Schedule

Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 202

The seminar will examine closely William Wordsworth's autobiographical poem, "The Prelude." The focus of our reading will be the rhetoric of self-presentation, the status of the speaker or the self in poetry and particularly in autobiography, and the relation between the self and others (history, nature, politics) as it happens in language. Along the way we will consult some related texts by Wordsworth and other English Romantic poets, and examine some of the literary, philosophical, and historical events (especially the French Revolution and Enlightenment, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, German Romanticism) which inform the poem. Primary texts will be supplemented by reading in contemporary criticism and theory on Wordsworth (de Man, Hartman, and others), autobiography, and Romanticism.

CRN

12297

   

Course No.

FSEM II MK

Title

The Brothers Karamazov

Professor

Marina Kostalevsky

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 203

An exploration of the novel which stands as one of the greatest achievements in world literature. Through close reading of Dostoevsky's last work, students will be introduced to the analysis of principal aspects in fiction. Primary attention will be given to relations of theme, form, and context. Discussions will be followed by regular papers. This seminar is meant to provide both an approach to Dostoevsky's art and to the nineteenth-century European novel.

CRN

12001

   

Course No.

FSEM II BLF

Title

War and Peace

Professor

Benjamin La Farge

Schedule

Tu Th 8:30 am -9:50 am OLIN 309

Among the world's greatest novels, Tolstoy's War and Peace is an unparalleled achievement, as it cannot be reduced to a single genre. It is not history, although its focus is historical. It is not epic, though epic in scope; nor is it like any other novel previously written, although its method and its interest in life are novelistic. Yet its importance as a philosophical treatise on the question of chance and agency in warfare and on the interdependence of the public and the private in political affairs is indisputable. In demonstrating the role of the "will of the people" as an historical force, it anticipates later developments in Russian and world history. Perhaps the ultimate source of its power is that it reflects Tolstoy's inner struggle between a rational, positivistic view of history and a spiritual, nationalistic view of Russia, but it is the famous characters themselves, ranging from Pierre, Andrew, and Natasha to general Kutuzov and Napoleon, who give this struggle a larger dimension and make it so memorable. We will also read a number of Tolstoy's masterful short stories and novellas. Frequent short papers.

CRN

12309

   

Course No.

FSEM II MM

Title

1001 Nights

Professor

M Mark

Schedule

Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 am LC 120

Arabian night after night after night, the king asked, "Then what happened?" And Scheherazade saved her own life by telling tales that led to tales that are still being told. These are stories about story-telling, of course; but they're also about love and rage and sex and shopping and survival. Since they were first recorded in Persia and India twelve hundred years ago, the narratives have defied death in another way as well, inspiring generation after generation, east and west, to write their own tales of Arabian nights. This course will investigate literary and historical explanations for the tales' undiminished imaginative power. In addition to The Thousand and One Nights, students will read elaboration, analysis, and homage by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Poe, Proust, Said, Mahfouz, Rushdie, Barth, Borges, Calvino, and Millhauser. Frequent analytical essays; one tale in the manner of Scheherazade.

CRN

12480

   

Course No.

FSEM II GM

Title

Jean Toomer's Cane

Professor

Gabriel Mendes

Schedule

Mon Th 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 204

What is so important about this one book? Cane is perhaps the most important literary work of what has been called the Harlem or New Negro Renaissance. Through a close reading of Toomer's Cane we may come to understand many aspects of Afro-American cultural history. Our examination of secondary materials, namely historiography, photography, plastic art, film, and music, will complement our reading of Cane, by providing us with a substantive understanding of the cultural milieu out of which Toomer's writings arise. The course will pay particular attention to the meanings of race, gender, class, and culture in the works we encounter within the course,

as well as within the larger society.

CRN

12291

   

Course No.

FSEM II EM

Title

Absalom, Absalom!

Professor

Elizabeth Moore

Schedule

Tu Th 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 205

William Faulkner has been defined variously by literary historians as, among other things, a Modernist, a Southern Gothic, and a Regionalist author. Through a close reading of his 1936 novel Absalom, Absalom!, this seminar will reflect upon his myriad categorizations and will seek to address the complex philosophical, literary, and cultural questions raised by this text. We will examine the influence of authors ranging from Shakespeare and Aeschylus, to Sherwood Anderson on Faulkner's work and will review some of the vast body of literary criticism that has been produced in response to the novel. A significant portion of the seminar will be spent considering how the novel is historically informed and the ways in which Faulkner approaches issues of race, sex, gender roles, and Southern ideologies in the novel. Finally, we will situate the novel within the development of Faulkner's larger oeuvre and his biography.

CRN

12382

   

Course No.

FSEM II BAO

Title

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

Professor

Barbara Olsen

Schedule

Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm LC 118

In the entire history of the world, few people have ever exercised as much power as Rome's early Emperors. Perhaps best know to us for their famed scandals, figures like Nero, Tiberius, and Caligula still fascinate us nearly 2000 years later by their complex mix of lurid excess and supreme military and political power. The reason these names and those of Augustus and Claudius are so familiar to us is largely due to the power of their characterizations in the historian Tacitus' masterful work The Annals of Imperial Rome. In the Annals, Tacitus chronicles Rome first Imperial dynasty, beginning with the death of Augustus, the first Emperor, in CE 14, down to the death of Nero in 68, covering in-between the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius. Throughout, Tacitus approaches history as the juncture of fact, rhetoric, psychology, and art, providing vivid character studies of Rome's first Emperors, their families, and their entourages. As he records accounts of familiar in-fighting, treason, political intriques, and not a few accusations of incest and murder, Tacitus offers a powerful critique of the dangers of autocracy stemming from his sense that Rome, even at the height of its power, is doomed. At times vicious and biting, at times straightforward and thoughtful, Tacitus' Annals is powerful both as a work of art and as a history. Throughout the course, we will be addressing such themes as imperialism, Rome's responses to 1st century Judaism and Christianity, and social differences within the Empire based on lines of race, class, and gender. We will also be supplementing the Annals with both ancient and modern texts, including screenings of I, Claudius and Gladiator. 4 6-page papers required.

NOTE time change:

CRN

12324

   

Course No.

FSEM II VP1

Title

Through the Lines: Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies

Professor

Valerie Paradiz

Schedule

Mon Wed 4:30 pm - 5:50 pm OLIN 310

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions of Angels? And even if one of them suddenly held me against his heart, I would fade in the grip of that completer existence--a beauty we can barely endure, because it is nothing but terror's herald; and we worship it so because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every Angel is Awesome. These are the opening lines of Rainer Maria Rilke's famous cycle of poems, The Duino Elegies, in which the poet praises the angels, yet shows them the beloved attributes of his human world of objects and rich symbols. Rilke began writing the Elegies in 1912, completing them ten years later in a "storm of inspiration" which he "could hardly endure physically. It was that immense and unrelenting." Not only had he finished the long project of the ten Elegies in this auspicious moment of his life as a poet, but he also found himself thrust into a new and unexpected cycle, The Sonnets to Orpheus, which became a crucial companion to the Elegies. This seminar is devoted to a close study of The Duino Elegies. We cultivate a reading of Rilke "through the lines." In other words, we attempt to get as close as we can to not only the original German poems (in translation), but to the process of the poet himself. We do this by looking at Rilke's works of poetry and fiction which precede the Elegies, at his biography and his autobiographical writings, at The Sonnets to Orpheus, and finally at the phenomenally numerous English translations of The Duino Elegies. We will also view German director Wim Wenders' film, Wings of Desire (screenplay by Peter Handke), which was inspired by Rilke's Elegies. No knowledge of German is required, though readers of German are most welcome for they can enrich the dynamic of seminar discussions.

NOTE time change:

CRN

12399

   

Course No.

FSEM II VP2

Title

Ingeborg Bachmann's The Good God of Manhattan

Professor

Valerie Paradiz

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 306

This seminar is devoted to the close study and production of Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann's radio play, "The Good God of Manhattan." During the opening weeks of the semester, students will become familiar with Bachmann as a poet, a fiction writer, and an essayist. We will also study the genre of the radio drama, with some inquiry into its particular manifestations in post World War II Europe and the United States. In the remaining segment of the semester, seminar participants will produce and record the "Good God." There are responsibilities for everyone, including actors (for a large cast), director, sound effects specialists, and musical composers. Students will also participate in a one-day radio drama workshop at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City and attend a live performance of a radio play by Stage Shadows. Bachmann published the "Good God" in 1958, three years after her first visit to the United States. Set in New York City, the play features an unusual array of characters, including a murderous "Good God" who attempts to kill off any sign of love in this urban landscape and his wickedly playful "thugs," the squirrels, who carry out his orders for assassinations. The language of "The Good God of Manhattan" is dense, lyric, and highly allusive. Performing the play is a challenge and a reward, for it is many things: a parody of the popular radio murder mystery of the 1950s, an uncomfortable exploration of gender roles, a critique of rising commercialization, and a compelling work of absurd theater.

CRN

12538

   

Course No.

FSEM II JRM

Title

The Histories of Herodotus

Professor

James Romm

Schedule

Mon 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 107

Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm OLIN 205

"History" was the word the Greek author Herodotus chose to describe his text, but in his time this word meant simply inquiry." Herodotus frames his work as a record of the wars between Greeks and Persians, ending about 480 B.C., but his "inquiry" goes far beyond that framework and into the realms of geography, anthropology, biology, religion, morality, and political science. His subject matter, in other words, is as vast as humanity itself and the earth that contains it, not to mention the gods above. In this course we shall explore many of the diverse paths that lead through his work, paying particular attention to one of the most central: His effort to understand Greek cultural identity in contrast to that of the "barbarian" world.

CRN

12011

   

Course No.

FSEM II JR

Title

The Human Condition

Professor

Justus Rosenberg

Schedule

Wed 9:00 am - 10:20 am OLIN 305 Mon 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 305

The object of our study, Andre Malraux's novel loosely translated as man's fate, is among the first of a genre that deals predominantly with the great collective adventures of the 20th century rather than with the trails and tribulations of an individual. Unfolding during the unsuccessful 1927-28 revolutionary attempt in China, it brings up questions that are still being asked today, such as man's search for the absolute, his faith and trust in political solutions, the depth of his commitment to an ideology. The work makes us reflect, by raising these issues, on the nature of love, on violence and kindness, pride and modesty, courage and fear, human fraternity in the face of universal nonsense. The innovative stylistic devices used by the author are also being examined. To gain a fuller understanding of the various intellectual strand imbedded in the novel we read texts about the political, cultural and philosophical beliefs and attitudes in Europe during the first half of the 20th century and those that deal with the Chinese and Russian revolutions. Frequent short papers.

CRN

12445

   

Course No.

FSEM II LS1 - Section I

Title

The New American Poetry 1945-1960

Professor

Leonard Schwartz

Schedule

Mon 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 205

Th 1:30 pm -2:50 pm OLIN 107

This work, edited by Donald Allen, was the seminal anthology that launched many of the most important breakthroughs in contemporary avant-garde American poetry. The seminar will study both the works of the poets in this book and the implications of this work for literary language itself. Poetry to be considered includes The New York School (Ashbery, O'Hara, Guest): the Black Mountain Poets (Duncan, Creeley) and the Beats(Ginsberg and others). Other readings(for example David Lehman's The Last Avant-Garde and Marjorie Perloff''s The Poetics of Indeterminacy will provide historical and theoretical perspectives on the anthology and the poets it brought to the fore.

NOTE! Second section added:

CRN

12446

   

Course No.

FSEM II LS2 - Section II

Title

The New American Poetry 1945-1960

Professor

Leonard Schwartz

Schedule

Mon 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 309

Th 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 201

See description above.

CRN

12510

   

Course No.

FSEM II HT

Title

Mumonkan

Professor

Hap Tivey

Schedule

Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN 107

A collection of Buddhist anecdotes, poetry and commentary, this brief and enigmatic text has served as the foundation of the Rinzai Zen tradition of monastic "koan" study (master - student examination) for over a thousand years. Its influence extends into the social and spiritual fabric of China, Japan, Korea and America. This course will first explore some of the historical roots of Zen Buddhism beginning with the Diamond and Heart Sutras, and some basic Indian Mahayana traditions. It will proceed through Bodhidharma's transmission of Buddhist teaching into China and go on to Hui-Neng's Platform Sutra and the establishment of the Zen tradition. This study of Zen's origins will be based on corresponding koans from the Mumonkan and followed by discussions of the remaining koans as teaching devices and as literary forms. The majority of the class will involve careful reading, discussion and written analysis based on the text of the Mumonkan. (Shibayama edition) The class will examine the book's influence on zazen meditation, tanka and haiku poetry, cha-do, sumiye painting, chanting and modern physics. Attention will be given to the social, political and philosophical affects of the codification of the ideology expressed by the koans. These popular interpretations will be then be distinguished from the koans' intended function within the Zen monastic tradition. Principal Text: The Gateless Gate: Zen Comments on the Mumonkan.