|
12519 |
LIT 3029 Sentimental
Politics of American Culture |
Charles
Walls |
M . . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLIN 304 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: American Studies In this course we will examine
“sentimentalism” as a literary and philosophical concept that is less about
welling tears and fickle emotions than about the role emotion plays in how we
organize our political, economic, and cultural lives. Drawing on literature,
philosophy, film, and art, we will explore the intersections of gender, race,
class, urbanism, nationalism and internationalism to explore the key concept
underlying sentimentalism: sympathy. Ultimately we will ask: What are the
limits of sympathy as a basis for moral behavior? In what ways do visual
and literary cultures attempt to shape the sympathetic responses of their
audiences? What types of sentimental interventions in American politics
have occurred and what have been their strengths and weakness? Likely works
include those by Adam Smith, David Hume, William Hill Brown, Mary Rowlandson,
Stowe, Douglass, Twain, Chesnutt, Crane, Kara Walker, Agee, Wright, Morrison,
Sontag, Spielberg, and John M. Stahl. We will also engage theories that
elaborate the “politics of affect,” as well as secondary works that situate our
readings both historically and in terms of current literary scholarship. Class
size: 15
|
12137 |
LIT 3035 The
Frankfurt School |
Florian Becker |
M . . . . |
4:40 -7:00 pm |
ASP 302 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Human Rights This seminar
examines the concept of ideology in its relation to literature, art, and the
task of their critique. What, if anything, makes a work of literature or art
ideological? How, if at all, can a work of art resist or critique ideology?
What is ideology? How, and from what vantage point, can one distinguish between
ideological and non-ideological forms of consciousness? Should literary
criticism and aesthetic theory dispense altogether with the concept of
ideology? In attempting to answer these questions, we will follow a central
strand in German aesthetic thought that runs from Hegel to the “Frankfurt
School.” Core readings include Marx, Lukács, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse,
Benjamin, Wittgenstein, Habermas, R. Geuss, and B. Williams. Of interest to
students in literature, philosophy, art history, and social science.
Prerequisite: Seniors and Juniors only; please see
instructor after online pre-registration. A tutorial will be offered for students
who wish to read selections from the core texts in the original German. Conducted in English. Class size: 15
|
12191 |
LIT 304 20th
Century Long Poems |
Ann Lauterbach |
. . W . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 101 |
ELIT |
Despite
Edgar Allen Poe's 1846 injunction, “I hold that a long poem does not exist,”
many modern and contemporary poets have undertaken to contradict him. We will examine
the necessity to invent structures of narrative form that would at once
accommodate a new sense of the fractured nature of history, the need for
clarity, and an increasingly vexed relation of the poet's “I” to the linguistic
event. We will look at some early moderns (Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams,
H.D.) but focus primarily on writers of the postwar era, including Allen
Ginsberg, Charles Olson, George Oppen, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Susan Howe, Anne Carson, Derek
Walcott, Leslie Scalapino and Harryette
Mullen. Application letter required to [email protected] Class size: 15
|
12535 |
LIT 3072 Writing the
Modern City |
Teju Cole |
. T . Th . |
3:10 -4:30 pm |
OLIN 303 |
ELIT |
This
course centers on aspects of contemporary urban reportage, through a
close-reading of five recent works of creative non-fiction: Haruki
Murakami’s Underground, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, Ivan Vladisavić’s
Portrait with Keys, Suketu Mehta’s Maximum
City, and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts’s Harlem is Nowhere. Topics include
alienation, crowds, nostalgia, infrastructure, the role of the observer, and
literary technique. Class size: 15
|
12193 |
LIT / THTR 310 A Survey of Drama: The Birth of Tragedy and The Death of Tragedy |
Thomas Bartscherer |
. . W . . |
10:10 - 12:30
pm |
FISHER PAC |
AART |
Cross-listed:
Classical Studies, Theater Two pivotal works
in the history of the interpretation of tragic drama—The Birth of Tragedy
by Friedrich Nietzsche and The Death of Tragedy by George Steiner—will
set the agenda for our inquiry into the origins of western theater in the
dramas of classical antiquity and the fate of tragedy as an art form in the
modern world. In addition to assiduous study of Nietzsche and Steiner, we shall
be reading a broad selection of the tragedies these authors discuss, including
plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Racine, Büchner, and Beckett. We shall also watch film adaptations
of selected tragedies and, schedule permitting, attend a staged performance.
The course will integrate close reading, literary and philosophical analysis,
and practical scene work. All readings will be in English. Class
size: 15
|
12161 |
LIT 3218 Hobbyism
& Professionalism |
Joseph O'Neill |
M . . . . |
11:50 -2:10
pm |
OLIN 305 |
PART |
This
course investigates the hobbyistic impulse in
writing—the impulse to write for private pleasure—and considers the importance
of unprofitable conscientiousness, idiosyncrasy, and self-regulation in the
making of fiction and nonfiction.
Writing directed by obsessions and internal priorities will be
contrasted with writing pressured, in part, by professional demands. Our reading will include unclassifiable work
by Michel de Montaigne, Hubert Butler, David Foster Wallace, Charles Fort,
Fernando Pessoa, Nicholson Baker; sermons by John Donne; fiction by Franz
Kafka, C.S. Lewis; the diaries of Victor Klemperer, Facebook
pages, and other ostensibly commodified and uncommodified texts.
Class size: 15
|
12473 |
LIT 3262 Culture and
Breeding, and the Rise of the English Novel |
Lianne Habinek |
. . . Th . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
HEG 300 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Science, Technology and Society What is
culture? This is the first question we will ask in this course – and the
one we will strive to answer throughout as we make our way through some of the
seminal literary and philosophical texts of the eighteenth century. We will
consider, as we do, what the notion of breeding had to do with culture, and how
the idea of culture involved proto-biology, exploration, education, and even
discrimination. As such, this course seeks to intertwine philosophical
and scientific work with its contemporary literature; thus, alongside each main
text we will consider eighteenth-century theoretical research. We begin
with David Garrick's remarkably “altered” version of The Winter's Tale,
turning then to Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, a
selection of Rousseau, Tristram Shandy, and The Expedition of Humphry
Clinker, ending with Emma. Class size: 15
|
12525 |
LIT 328 Politics
& Ideology in Modern Literature |
Justus Rosenberg |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30
pm |
ALBEE 106 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Jewish Studies; Political Studies
We examine how political issues and beliefs, be
they of the left, right, or center, are dramatically realized in
literature. Works by Dostoyevsky, Ibsen,
T.S. Eliot, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Malraux, Gordimer,
Kundera, Neruda, and others are analyzed for their
ideological content, depth of conviction, method of presentation, and the
artistry with which these writers synthetize politics
and literature into a permanent aesthetic experience. We also try to determine what constitutes the
borderline between art and propaganda and address the question of whether it is
possible to genuinely enjoy a work of literature whose political thrust and
orientation is at odds with our own convictions. The discussions are supplemented by examples
drawn from other art forms such as music, painting, and film. Class
size: 15
|
12077 |
LIT 3308 Reading and Writing the Hudson |
Susan Rogers |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 11:30
am |
OLIN 201 |
ELIT |
|
|
|
|
. . . Th . |
8:30 - 11:30
am |
Field Station |
|
Cross-listed: Environmental
& Urban Studies “To those who know it, the Hudson
River is the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored, and surprising
piece of water on the face of the earth,” writes Robert Boyle in The
Hudson: A Natural and Unnatural History. In this course students will get to know the
Hudson in all of its complexity through reading a range of works and through
writing personal essays of place.
Readings will range from history to natural history, literature to
environmental policy. In addition, each
student will be required to undertake independent research into some aspect of
the river from the brick or whaling industry to gardens or villas of the
valley. This research, combined with
personal experience of the valley, will be used to develop extended creative
nonfiction essays. These personal essays
will be read and critiqued in a workshop format. This course is open to all students
interested in creative nonfiction writing from a researched, inter-disciplinary
perspective. Students will be required to take a swim test and a canoe course
in order to participate in the canoe/kayak outings. Class
size: 15
|
12032 |
LIT 3313 The San
Francisco Renaissance |
Cole Heinowitz |
. T . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 310 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: American
Studies The end of World
War II saw the migration of a diverse group of poets to the San Francisco Bay
Area. Although their aesthetics and politics often differed wildly, these
writers were united by a resistance to a poetic mainstream they felt had
abandoned the experimental inheritances of prewar writing and by the desire to
recreate a radical literary bohemia that seemed to have been lost. In their
search, they drew inspiration from everything from the western landscape
itself, to Romanticism, Modernism, Surrealism, and Eastern religions and
literature. This course will chart the development of these writers and their
communities, closely examining the works of (among others) Kenneth Rexroth,
Helen Adam, Jack Spicer, Michael McClure, Diane DiPrima,
Jack Kerouac, Joanne Kyger, and Philip Whalen. Class size: 15
|
12186 |
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
practitioners 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. Class size: 15
|
12122 |
LIT 3691 Junior
Seminar: the Brontes |
Deirdre d'Albertis
Writing Lab: |
. . . Th . . T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30
pm 2:00 -3:00 pm |
OLIN 306 OLIN 306 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Gender & Sexuality Studies, Victorian Studies For better or
worse, the inhabitants of Haworth parsonage have long been considered as a
single entity known as "The Brontes." Devoted to study of the most famous family of
women writers in nineteenth-century England, this seminar will examine selected
writings of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Bronte. Our aim will be to connect close
reading practices to contextual analysis. Reception of the Brontes
has varied enormously over the years; we will discuss the impact of shifts in
canon formation on the status of texts such as Wuthering Heights (1847), Jane
Eyre (1847), and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848),
as well as the influence of theoretical, historical, and biographical accounts
(for instance, Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte) in shaping Brontean "myths of power" and desire. Film makers from Luis Bunuel to Cary Fukunaga have imagined these novels anew: how does
cinematic adaptation inform our understanding of the original texts? Junior Seminars are designed especially for Juniors who are preparing to write a Senior Project in the
Literature program. In this
writing-intensive course, research methods and the process of revision are foregrounded to produce a 20-25 page critical argument by
the end of term. Class size: 15
|
12510 |
LIT 382 Joyce and
Beckett |
Terence Dewsnap |
M . . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
RKC 200 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Irish Studies We will study Irish experimental writing, including Joyce’s Ulysses, and several Beckett stories and plays. Class
size: 15
|
12185 |
LIT 431 Post-Genre
Fabulism and the New Gothic |
Bradford Morrow |
M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30
pm |
OLIN 101 |
ELIT |
Over the past several decades the critical
boundaries between literary and genre fiction have become—as the result of
ambitious work by a number of innovative, pioneering writers—increasingly
ambiguous. The earliest gothicists
framed their tales within the metaphoric scapes of
ruined abbeys and diabolic grottoes, chthonic settings populated by
protagonists whose inverted psyches led them to test the edges of propriety and
sanity. Postmodern masters such as
Angela Carter, William Gaddis, and John Hawkes, while
embracing a similarly dark artistic vision, have radically reinvented and contemporized
tropes, settings, and narrative arcs to create a new phase in this historic
tradition. This movement, identified as
the New Gothic, appears to have risen in tandem with a parallel literary
phenomenon known as postfantasy or New Wave Fabulism, whose achievement is to have taken the genre of
fantasy/horror in a similar revolutionary direction. While not breaking allegiance with the
fundamental spirit that animates their genre counterparts, writers such as Kelly
Link, Elizabeth Hand, and Jonathan Lethem are creating a body of serious
literary fiction. Among others we will
read are Valerie Martin, Karen Russell, John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, and Peter
Straub. One or two authors will attend
class to discuss their work. Class size: 15