CRN |
14461 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 301 |
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Title |
Reading
for Writers |
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Professor |
Mary Caponegro |
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Schedule |
By arrangement |
A major conference for moderated writing majors. See Prof. Caponegro at registration for details.
CRN |
14080 |
Distribution |
A/B |
Course
No. |
PHIL / THEO 301 |
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Title |
Working Theologies: Søren Kierkegaard
|
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Professor |
Daniel Berthold / Nancy Leonard |
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Schedule |
Wed 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
310 |
This seminar will explore some of the main paths
taken by the Danish Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard towards
theology. The seminar, limited to
fifteen, is planned for students concentrating
in theology as well as moderated philosophy majors and others interested in the
subject. While Kierkegaard rejected the title of “theologian,” and called
himself “essentially a poet” (or sometimes a “humorist”), his poetic
experimentation -- even in the most apparently non-theological “aesthetic”
works of many of his pseudonyms, and even in the many tracts written in the
last five years of his authorship which together make up his Attack Upon Christendom -- was, in his
words, “from first to last in the service of God.” We will commit ourselves to
interrogating just what this service amounted to -- a commitment requiring our
willingness to enter the labyrinth, since whatever else it was, Kierkegaard’s
service to God was exquisitely complicated by his commitment to the authorial
strategy of “indirect communication,” a mode of discourse marked by disguise,
hidden intentions, the proliferation of competing voices, and what he called
“the disappearance of the author.” Readings will be drawn from such
pseudonymous works as Either / Or (Victor Eremita), Repetition (Constantine Constantius), Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Johann Climacus), Training in Christianity and The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus),
as well as some of the sermons or “Edifying Discourses” written under
Kierkegaard’s own name. We will also read a variety of writers who have engaged
Kierkegaard’s authorship in ways central to the several projects of modernity
and postmodernity, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel
Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Sylviane Agacinski (and other feminist commentators).
CRN |
14239 |
Distribution |
B/F |
Course
No. |
LIT 3113 |
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Title |
Poethical
Wagers |
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Professor |
Joan Retallack |
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Schedule |
Wed 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
308 |
The writing and reading of poetry has always been
an enactment of forms of life with identifiable values and consequences. Whether
these lie in the way the forms work or more explicitly in statements made,
every poet is—in her or his poetics—choosing a specific kind of public role. In
particularly troubled times like our own, poets tend to make more conscious
decisions about the politics of their forms. Historically, these decisions have
resulted in familiar categories like futurist, constructivist, marxist and
feminist poetries, or, more generally, poetries of witness. Currently
developing genres explore the idea of responsibility to community via documentary
and collaborative modes and the possibility of an ecopoetics. There are
also poetries whose engagement with their contemporary moment is less obvious
in terms of political message, more about developing formal and material
principles within the poem that act counter to, say, consumerism, patriarchy,
empire. In this seminar we will look at poetries from the American Civil War
and turn-of-the-(19th) century Europe as well as 20th
century world poetries of witness, work from the American sixties and the
post-modern period in America and Europe. Our driving question will be, What do
these works tell us about poetics of courage and commitment in the face of the
most destructive habits of our species?
This is a practice-based seminar.
You will have the opportunity to write numerous essays, research an area of
social concern that is of particular interest to you, and engage in a poetic
project of your own.
CRN |
14233 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 3119 |
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Title |
Gender
and Romanticism |
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Professor |
Fiona Wilson |
||
Schedule |
Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
304 |
Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights
It has been said that at the end of the eighteenth century,
British men and women resembled two opposing tribes—each utterly ignorant of
the other’s customs, dialects, and sacred beliefs. The social changes that swept Europe in the 1790s, however, also
affected traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity. Just as Tom Paine’s “Rights of Man” provoked
Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” the spirit of the
age stimulated literary discourses about dandies and bluestockings, natural
mothers and men of feeling, military heroes, amazons, and cockney poets. This seminar seeks to engage advanced
students in a discussion about the significance—and long-term effects, if
any—of these discourses. How effective
was Wollstonecraft’s call for “a revolution in female manners”? How did Byron model masculinity? How did gender impinge upon notions of
class, nationalism, and imperial expansion? Works by, among others,
Wollstonecraft, Blake, Hemans, Smith, Keats, Byron, the Shelleys, Scott, and
Owenson. Class size limited.
Pre-requisite: English
Literature III, Comparative Literature
III or a course in Romanticism.
CRN |
14455 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 3126 |
||
Title |
An
Exalted Plainness: The Art of Nonfiction Prose |
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Professor |
Verlyn Klinkenborg |
||
Schedule |
Wed 3:00 pm – 5:20 pm OLIN 301 |
It’s always tempting to pretend that nonfiction
prose is simply the echo of today – a formalized version of the speaking voice.
But it has deep antecedents in literary history, often more expansive in form, emotional
content, and the power of the sentence itself than what we see today. This
course cuts across generic boundaries and historical periods – from Elizabethan
England forward and from the essay outward – in search of useful literary
examples of nonfiction prose. Above all this is a practical seminar, intended
to amplify and extend the imaginative tools and the grammar a student already
possesses. Don’t fear the word “grammar”! It is just the name of the language
we speak about sentences.
CRN |
14260 |
Distribution |
C |
Course
No. |
LIT 3206 |
||
Title |
Evidence |
||
Professor |
Thomas Keenan |
||
Schedule |
Tu 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
305 |
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.
CRN |
14024 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 3306 |
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Title |
Scholasticism
vs. Humanism |
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Professor |
Karen Sullivan |
||
Schedule |
Fr 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm LC
118 |
Cross-listed: Human Rights, Medieval Studies, Theology
Throughout the Middle Ages, intellectual life was
dominated by scholastics, who sought to integrate reason and faith, logic and revelation,
classical philosophy and the Christian Gospels. For many of these thinkers, the
City of Man, in which we now live, should ideally mirror the City of God, in
which we hope one day to reside: both are single, unified, exquisitely ordered
and hierarchical structures, in which the individual part is harmoniously
integrated into the greater whole.
During the Renaissance, however, intellectual discourse was taken over
by humanists, who stressed empiricism over abstraction, rhetoric over
dialectic, and Plato over Aristotle as the means of access to truth. With
experience now privileged over logic, the personal, subjective perception
expressed in literature became prized over the impersonal, seemingly objective
cosmos of philosophy. In this seminar,
we will be exploring the tension between scholastic and humanist thought
against the background of the rise of the university, the shift from Gothic to
Renaissance architecture, the discovery of the New World, and the eruption of
the Protestant Reformation, as well as within the context of more recent
historical eras. Authors to be read
include Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Erasmus, Rabelais,
Montaigne, and Descartes.
CRN |
14419 |
Distribution |
A/B |
Course
No. |
LIT 333 |
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Title |
Innovative
Contemporary Fiction |
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Professor |
Bradford Morrow |
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Schedule |
Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
101 |
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
Russell Banks, Cormac McCarthy, Angela Carter, Thomas Bernhard, Jeanette
Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, William Gaddis, Michael Ondaatjie, Jamaica Kincaid,
and others. One or two writers, among
them, Russell Banks, are scheduled to visit class to discuss their books and
read from recent work.
CRN |
14431 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 3362 |
||
Title |
The
Essay |
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Professor |
Luc Sante |
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Schedule |
Th 1:30 pm – 3:50 pm OLIN 304 |
This course will involve reading and
writing in equal amounts. Every week we will read one or more significant essays,
across the history of the form: Montaigne, Robert Burton, Hazlitt, Macauley,
Thoreau, Mark Twain, Mencken, and on to the present day. Every week we will
also write an essay, trying out various modes: personal, polemical, critical,
historical, and so on. We will concentrate on style, literary
architecture, rhetoric, persuasiveness, consistency, logic, measure, and
audacity. Mere personal expression will not suffice. Judgment will be severe.
CRN |
14014 |
Distribution |
B/C |
Course
No. |
LIT 342 |
||
Title |
Literature
of the Double |
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Professor |
Terence Dewsnap |
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Schedule |
Wed 10:30 am - 12:50 pm PRE 101 |
Cross-listed: Victorian Studies
The concept and consequences of liberating a second
self. The majority of readings are late nineteenth-century: Dostoyevsky,
Browning, LeFanu, Wilde, Stevenson, Stoker. Also considered are the origins of
doubleness in folklore and romantic storytelling, some psychological commentary
by Robert Burton, Freud, and Otto Rank, and the use of the theme of the double
in twentieth-century autobiographical fiction.
CRN |
14228 |
Distribution |
B/C |
Course
No. |
LIT 3501 |
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Title |
19th
Century Continental Novels |
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Professor |
Justus Rosenberg |
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Schedule |
Tu 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 101 |
Cross-listed:
French Studies
The aim of this course is to acquaint students with
representative examples of novels by distinguished French, Russian, German and
Central European authors. Their works
are analyzed for style, themes, ideological commitment, and social and
political setting. Taken together they
should provide an accurate account of the major artistic, philosophical,
intellectual and political trends and developments on the Continent during the
19th Century. Readings include:
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment;
Stendhal’s The Red and the Black;
Tolstoy’s War and Peace; Balzac’s Cousin Bette; Fontane’s Effi Briest. A tutorial will be offered to those interested in reading the
original French text. Some film
versions of the novels are viewed and critically evaluated as to their fidelity
to the original.
CRN |
14067 |
Distribution |
B |
Course
No. |
LIT 3801 |
||
Title |
Indian
Fiction |
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Professor |
Benjamin La Farge |
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Schedule |
Mon Wed 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 309 |
Cross-listed: SRE
Since 1980, when Salman Rushdie's masterpiece Midnight's Children was published, it
has become increasingly clear that Indian Anglophone writers have been
producing some of the best fiction in the world, rivaling the most brilliant
novelists in England, Africa, the U.S. and Latin America. This explosion of talent has occurred over
the past fifty years, following the birth of modern India. Colonial rule had 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 of 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 writes about village life; V.S. Naipaul,
whose greatest work has been about the Indian diaspora in Trinidad and his own
"arrival" in England; and Anita Desai, whose most recent novel
contrasts Indian and American family life.
Among the most impressive younger writers we will read Rohinton Mistry's
A Fine Balance and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, both of which are concerned with the caste
problem of the "Untouchables", plus a selection of short stories.
CRN |
14418 |
Distribution |
B/F |
Course
No. |
LIT 425 |
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Title |
Narrative
Strategies |
||
Professor |
Bradford Morrow |
||
Schedule |
Mon 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 107 |
With special emphasis on post-genre fabulism and
the New Gothic, this workshop is intended for the writer interested in engaging
the theory that reading is a primary function of creating fiction. We will explore, through selected readings
and responsive writing, the ways a literary narrative best finds its
expression, its voice. Students will study contemporary fiction by David Foster
Wallace, Jamaica Kincaid, Angela Carter, Rick Moody, Russell Banks, John
Crowley, Kelly Link, and others. Class
discussion will focus on the variety of technical means by which the author
develops a story, and on intensive workshop discussion of student writing. Expect to write one critical essay about the style and technique
of the writers we are reading, as well as two original works of fiction
patterned on texts in the course, and a third story of independent work in
progress. Candidates must submit samples of their work before registration with
cover letter, via campus mail to Prof. Morrow by December 2nd.