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Junior Seminars
The
Junior Seminars in criticism are intended especially for moderated junior
literature majors. The seminars will introduce students to exciting current
thinking in the field, emphasizing how particular methods and ideas can be
employed in linking literary texts to their contexts. Intended too is a deep
exploration of writing about literature at some length, in the form of a 20-25
pp. paper, developed over the course of most of the semester. Junior Seminar
courses are writing intensive. The general goals of the writing component of
the courses are to improve the development, composition, organization, and
revision of analytic prose; the use of evidence to support an argument;
strategies of interpretation and analysis of texts; and the mechanics of
grammar and documentation. Regular short writing assignments will be required.
11714 |
LIT 3367 In
Absentia: the Death of the Narrator in Modern Fiction |
Stephen
Graham Writing Lab: |
. . W . . M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm 3:10 - 4:10 pm |
HEG 200 HEG 200 |
ELIT |
“And
you, holding this book with one white hand, sunk in your cushy armchair . .
.”—thus did the narrators of nineteenth-century novels once address, instruct,
and occasionally scold their readers. But within a few decades, these
confident, infinitely wise speakers were banished from literary fiction by Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and their modernist
successors. The resultant questions—Who is telling
this story? Why should I listen, or believe?—will be the focus of this course.
Reading select works of Flaubert, James, Conrad, Ford, and Joyce, we will focus
on the mental transaction between the reader and the writer’s mysterious
“second self” that tells the story, as the classic omniscient narrator of
European fiction vanishes, multiplies, dons strange masks, and sometimes
misrepresents. Our journey leads to the innovations of Joyce, for whom ''the
artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above
his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.''Class size: 15
11558 |
LIT 3741 Virginia
Woolf |
Deirdre
d'Albertis Writing Lab: |
. . W . . M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm 2:00 – 3:00 pm |
BITO 210 RKC 200 |
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? Class size: 15
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Other 300-level literature
courses
11602 |
LIT 3023 Poetry and
Society |
Joan
Retallack |
. T . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLINLC 208 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed: Human
Rights What, if anything,
does poetry contribute to the most significant conversations of humankind?
Conversations about our commonalities and differences—matters of race, class,
gender, war and other forms of violence; cultural and political power; social
values; responsibilities to fellow human beings as well as to other forms of
life on the planet. Does poetry resonate with knowledge and intuition necessary
for thinking about such matters but unavailable by other means? Can it be a
potent form of agency? These are complex questions we will be examining via
specific texts and writing explorations of our own in both essay and poetic
forms. We’ll look at the role of poetics in human rights and environmental (ecopoetic) discourses, investigative poetics, ethical
thought experiments and more. Texts by Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein, Wallace
Stevens, Etel Adnan, Mahmoud Darwish, Raul Zurita, Nourbese Philip, Rachel Zolf, Jonathan Skinner, Juliana Spahr,
and Jena Osman, among others are likely to be
included. This is a practice-based seminar. You will have the opportunity to
experiment with poetic forms, write short essays, and conduct collaborative
research in areas of contemporary social concern that interest you. The final
assignment will be a combined essay and poetic project. The class is required
to attend poetry readings and other events (e.g., Human Rights, and
Environmental Policy programming) related to the course during the
semester. Admission by
permission of professor. Class
size: 15
11866 |
LIT 3042 Nobel
Laureates |
Norman
Manea |
. T . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLIN 305 |
ELIT |
The class will discuss some important books of
modern and contemporary literature by authors who received the Nobel Prize for
Literature (Albert Camus, Th. Mann, J.P. Sartre, Saul Bellow, Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk,
Elfriede Jelinek, Czeslaw Milosz, Imre Kertesz, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Boris Pasternak), for
their topic and vision, for their innovative way of writing. We'll take in
account some special cases (J.P. Sartre, Soljenitsin,
Pasternak, Jelinek) for
their political and/or moral impact in the public arena. The class will also
examine the procedure and value of granting prizes, big and small, deserved and
not well deserved, in a time when even the cultural field is dominated by the
market. We will also debate the absence
in the Nobel list of some great literary names (Tolstoi,
Dostoievski, Joyce, Kafka, Borges etc). Class size: 15
11532 |
LIT 3044 World
Literature and the CIA |
Elizabeth
Holt |
M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
OLIN 107 |
FLLC/DIFF |
Cross-listed: Africana Studies; Middle Eastern Studies As part of American Cold War
cultural propaganda in the 1950s and 1960s, the Congress for Cultural Freedom
(CCF) funded Arabic and African literary journals including Lotus, Black
Orpheus, Hiwar and Transition. Covertly
created by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CCF and its journals will be
read in this course to consider how the fields of African and Arabic literature
were constructed in the context of American empire and the emergence of area
studies. Authors to be read include
Edward Said, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Tayeb Salih,
Layla Baalbaki, Salah Abd al-Subur, Ghadah al-Samman and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. This is a World Literature offering. Class
size: 15
11784 |
LIT 3045 Irish
Writing and the Nationality of Literature |
Joseph
O'Neill |
M . . . . |
11:50 -2:10 pm |
HEG 200 |
ELIT/DIFF |
Cross-listed: Irish and Celtic Studies In this
course, students will read so-called Irish writing as a means of investigating
the general notion that literary texts may possess the attribute of
nationality. How is 'Irishness' to be located in a text? What is the function
of the term 'Irish' when applied to a piece of writing? In what ways does the
idea of 'nationality' (or 'ethnicity,' or 'community') connect the literary,
juridical, and political realms? What does artistic discourse have to do with
political ethics? What might a post-national literature involve? Students will read artistic work by (inter
alia) Jonathan Swift, Maria Edgeworth, Oscar Wilde, Somerville & Ross, J.M.
Synge, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Francis Stuart, Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett,
and Seamus Heaney. Theoretical work by (inter alia) Rudolf Rocker, John Rawls,
Noam Chomsky, and Benedict Anderson will be touched on. This is a World Literature offering. Class
size: 15
11580 |
LIT 3090 Black
Mountain College & The
Invention of Contemporary American Arts and Poetry |
Ann
Lauterbach |
. . . Th . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLINLC 120 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Art History Started in 1933 in
Asheville, North Carolina by a disaffected academic idealist, Black Mountain College
was founded on John Dewey's notion of a Progressive education, where the
relations between thinking and doing, idea and practice, were understood as in
a seamless continuum, one that was necessary to an enlightened politics of
engagement. 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, performance, and the visual arts to flourish in
the midst of a depression at home and chaos abroad. Faculty included: John
Cage, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg,
Charles Olson, among many. Class size: 15
11582 |
LIT 3134 Thomas
Pynchon and the Postmodern |
Nancy
Leonard |
. . W . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 310 |
ELIT |
Like Conceptual Art and the Gorilla Girls, Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and V. seemed a specific response to the
cultural moment of the sixties in America.
Artistic form responded to the pressures of urgent social and political issues,
and it could seem difficult to distinguish between comedy and despair. But
examining The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow (his signature work)
and Bleeding Edge (his just-published
novel), students will perceive a longer line of influence in American
literature on postmodern novelists . This seminar will place Pynchon within the
tradition of narrative experiment begun by Edgar Allen Poe, continued with the
“paranoid “ novel of Frank Norris, McTeague,
Nathanael West’s The Day of the
Locust, a story by Flannery O’Connor, and a detective novel by Raymond
Chandler. While our focus will remain on
the work of Thomas Pynchon, our study should show us postmodern achievement at
its best, the compelling mix of high/low culture and complexity of narrative point
of view that make up the postmodern. Upper College standing is assumed. Class size: 15
11546 |
LIT 3143 Women on
the Edge |
Mary
Caponegro |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
OLIN 107 |
ELIT/DIFF |
Cross-listed: Gender
and Sexuality Studies In this
class, we will study numerous experimental female authors and their
predecessors, concentrating on those who might be least familiar. Emphasis will
be on the intersection of formal innovation with preoccupations of sexuality
and gender. Authors read will be among the following: Dorothy Richardson,
Nathalie Sarraute, Anna Kavan, Ann Quin, Clarice Lispector, Marguerite Young,
Kathy Acker, Annie Ernaux, Helen DeWitt, Elfriede Jelinek, Angela Carter, Rikki
Ducornet , Jeanette Winterson, Giannina Braschi, Jaimy Gordon, Elena Ferrante.
Some familiarity with Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein will be assumed but is
not a prerequisite. Class
size: 15
11541 |
LIT 3148 Writing Cultures: Literature and Ethnography |
Alexandre
Benson |
. T . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLIN 309 |
ELIT/DIFF |
Cross-listed:
Anthropology; American Studies This course explores the
anthropological imagination in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature,
with an emphasis on works written in North America. We will read novels,
folktales, local color stories, dialect poems, and ethnographic narratives.
How, we will ask, have authors been influenced by, and in turn helped to shape,
theories of cultural difference? What does the literary depiction of race a
century ago have to do with how we talk about "multiculturalism"
today? We will also consider relationships between texts and other media (film,
photography, painting, and popular music), seeking both to understand and to
complicate the now-commonplace idea that what unites ethnography and literature
is above all their reliance on the written word. Authors likely to include
Sherwood Anderson, Franz Boas, Kate Chopin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Clifford Geertz,
Zora Neale Hurston, Tim Ingold, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alan Lomax, Herman Melville,
Leslie Marmon Silko, and Jean Toomer. Class
size: 15
11807 |
LIT 3206 Evidence |
Thomas
Keenan |
. T . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
CCS |
HUM |
Cross-listed: Human
Rights What can literature and the arts teach us about
evidence? Evidence would seem to be a matter of facts, far from literary or
artistic invention. But, whether fact or fiction, we are regularly confronted
by all sorts of signs, and we need to learn how to read the traces of things
left behind at this or that scene, of a crime for instance. 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, objects, images, or testimony—we
have to decide. 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 the different forms evidence can take and the disputes to
which it can give rise, especially when violations of, and claims for, human
rights are at stake. Readings from Weschler,
Felman, Krog, Ondatjie, Latour, Tamen, Azoulay, Didi-Huberman, Morrison, along with a lot of visual
material. Class size: 12
11599 |
LIT 3244 Major
Currents in American Thought |
Matthew
Mutter |
M . . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
OLIN 301 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
American Studies This course focuses on the
trajectory of three strains in American thought and culture: Emersonianism, the
Protestant tradition, and the conceptualization of American pluralism. We will begin by identifying impulses in
Emerson’s writing (individualism, self-creation, pragmatism, languages of
movement and becoming, aesthetic religion) and examine their development in thinkers
like William James, John Dewey, F.S. Fitzgerald, Richard Rorty, and Stanley
Cavell, as well as critiques from George Santayana, Joan Scott, and
others. Jonathan Edwards will be the
point of departure for the Protestant tradition, and we will trace its concerns
(original sin and the tragic sense, the transcendence of justice, the
imperatives of ethical reform) through the writings of Jane Addams, William
Faulkner, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King, Jr. We will consider the criticism of this tradition
in writers like H.L. Menken, and examine the transference of moral and
emotional authority from American Protestantism to the domains of
psychoanalysis and social science (Philip Rieff, Norman O. Brown, Margaret
Mead). Finally, beginning with Walt
Whitman, we will investigate conceptualizations and critiques of American
pluralism and egalitarianism as they develop through the writings of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Randolph Bourne, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Harold Cruse,
Betty Friedan, Nancy Chodorow, and others.
Class size: 15
11955 |
THTR 326 Brecht and
his Legacy |
Miriam
Felton-Dansky |
. . W . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
FISHER PAC CONF ROOM |
AART |
Cross-listed: Literature, German, and Experimental
Humanities. Few modern theater artists
have been as path-breaking in their own time—or as influential for future
generations—as German playwright, poet, director, and theorist Bertolt Brecht. This seminar will explore Brecht’s writings
for the theater and his theatrical legacy: after grounding our study in a
survey of Brecht’s plays and theory, we will take stock of his influence on
dramatic literature from postwar Germany to Brazil, South Africa, and the New
York avant-garde. We will locate Brechtian aesthetics
in arenas such as feminist and queer performance texts, documentary and
political drama, postcolonial drama, and contemporary critiques of capitalism.
Other writers and artists under investigation will include Heiner
Müller, Peter Weiss, Caryl
Churchill, Augusto Boal, and more. Students will
prepare an analytical essay examining a Brecht play in relation to his theory,
poetry, or production history, and a research paper treating the relationship
between Brecht's aesthetics and those of one or more of his artistic heirs. As
a class, we will also create a digital scholarship project, mapping Brecht's
legacy across time and space.
Class size: 15
11606 |
LIT 330 Innovative
Novellas and Short
Stories |
Justus
Rosenberg |
. T . . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
OLIN 306 |
ELIT |
An
in-depth study of the difference between the short story, built on figurative
techniques closely allied to those employed in poetry which allows the writer
to achieve remarkable intimacy and depth of meaning in the space of a few
pages, and the novella that demands the economy and exactness of a short work
while at the same time allowing a fuller concentration and development of both
character and plot. We explore the range and scale of the artistic
accomplishments of such masters in these genres as Voltaire, de Maupassant, Leo
Tolstoy, Chekhov, Sholem Aleichem, Thomas Mann, Isaac
Babel, A. France, Camus, Kafka, Colette, Borges. In
addition to writing several analytical papers, students are asked to present a
short story or novella of their own by the end of the semester. Class size: 15
11560 |
LIT 331 Translation
Workshop |
Peter
Filkins |
. . . Th . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 303 |
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. Class size: 12
11585 |
LIT 3314 The
Invention of Celebrity |
Marisa
Libbon |
. . W . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
HEG 300 |
ELIT |
Cross-listed:
Medieval Studies; Experimental Humanities Today’s new media has given
rise to a particular set of questions: what counts as fame? What distinguishes
fame from infamy? What is earned celebrity? How can one protect, manage, and
disseminate individual and collective reputation? These were also the preoccupations of “olde”
media and its makers, of medieval and early-modern writers grappling with
notoriously unstable manuscript culture and the innovation of the printing
press. In this course, we’ll engage the
concepts of fame, reputation, and celebrity in some of their original contexts,
through examining how early writers confronted the problem of canonicity, as
well as how they devised and managed their own reputations, while alternately
burnishing and revising the reputations of their predecessors. Exactly how early literature was produced,
transmitted, and preserved is intimately related to the project of literary
longevity, and so we’ll also study how early writers mobilized their
contemporary media, such as manuscripts (books copied by hand), early print
technology, and rumor and hearsay. In
addition to considering the “anonymous” author (a category once again
ubiquitous in the “Internet Age”), our texts will include works by, among
others, Virgil, Chaucer, and Chaucer’s devotees John Lydgate and Thomas
Hoccleve, as well as Margery Kempe, and works produced by William Caxton,
England’s first professional printer. Class
size: 15
11596 |
LIT 333 New
Directions in Contemporary Fiction |
Bradford Morrow |
M . . . . |
1:30 -3:50 pm |
OLIN 101 |
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. We will explore both the great diversity of voices, styles, and forms
employed in these narratives as well as the cultural, historical, political,
and philosophical issues they chronicle. Particular emphasis will be placed on
analysis of fiction by some of the groundbreaking practitioners of the form,
including Cormac McCarthy, William Gaddis, Angela
Carter, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, David
Foster Wallace, Robert Coover, Ian McEwan, and Jamaica Kincaid, along with prominent writers,
Amy Hempel, Michael Cunningham, and David Foster Wallace’s
biographer, D. T. Max, who will visit class to talk with us about their books
and writing process, and read from recent work.
Class size: 15
11590 |
LIT 3366 Love
without Sex (and other Mysteries of the Italian Novel) |
Joseph
Luzzi |
. . W . . |
10:10 - 12:30 pm |
OLIN 301 |
FLLC |
Cross-listed: Italian Studies In a modern
world where images of sexuality proliferate, how did the “first” Italian novel,
Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, create a fascinating portrait of
love devoid of all erotic elements? What motivated Gabriele D’Annunzio to go in
the opposite direction only a half-century later with his highly sensual
writing? Who are the women writers that redefined (and are redefining) the
predominantly “male” history of the Italian novel? We will explore these
questions and more as we learn how a uniquely “Italian” version of the novel
has emerged in European aesthetics. Books include Lampedusa’sThe
Leopard, Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno. All readings will be in
English; option of course work in Italian and an
Italian section for qualified students. Class size: 14
11865 |
LIT 358 Exile &
Estrangement Fiction |
Norman
Manea |
M . . . . |
3:10 -5:30 pm |
OLIN 107 |
ELIT/DIFF |
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. Class
size: 15
11557 |
LIT 405 Senior
Seminar II: Literature |
Deirdre
d'Albertis |
M . . . . |
4:45 -6:00 pm |
ASP 302 |
|
Literature
Majors writing a project are required to enroll in the year-long Senior
Colloquium. Senior Colloquium is an
integral part of the 8 credits earned for Senior Project. An opportunity to share working methods,
knowledge, skills and resources among students, the colloquium explicitly
addresses challenges arising from research and writing on this scale, and
presentation of works in progress. A
pragmatic focus on the nuts and bolts of the project will be complemented with
life-after-Bard skills workshops, along with a review of internship and
grant-writing opportunities in the discipline. Senior Colloquium is designed to
create a productive network of association for student scholars and critics:
small working groups foster intellectual community, providing individual
writers with a wide range of support throughout this culminating year of
undergraduate study in the major. Class size: 25