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Fall 2002 Course Offerings: 1A and 1BCL 1A:1, #17206, Stephanie Green, MWF 9-10, 123 DwinelleLove, Honor, and FriendshipLove: human, divine, life-giving, death-leading, purifying, bewitching, unifying, wrenching... The literature on love is as varied as love¹s experience. In this course we will explore the complexities of love in love¹s encounter with jealousy, imagination, adultery, faith, violence, time, sacrifice, political ambition, and established social codes. Discussions of love, honor and friendship in literature will allow us to explore issues around gender, the body, the interpenetration of cultures, and personal and social transformation. Required Texts
A Course Reader will include the following:
CL 1A:2, #17209, Natasha Tinsley & Chloe Dillon, MWF 10-11, 242 Dwinelle"Written in the Margins: Narrating Histories through Literature""In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."
From the commentary provided by Gettysburg tour guides, to elementary school reenactments of the First Thanksgiving, to "That 70s Show": North Americans create national community not only through shared history, but through sharing stories of that history. Yet in choosing the stories that we share, which other narratives get pushed to the margins or left out altogether? How and where is it possible to reclaim and reassemble these alternative accounts? This course aims to provide students with an introduction to critical reading and writing while considering a series of texts which present unexpected angles on "key" events in North American history. These events include the discovery of the "New World", the colonial period and the Salem witch trials, the abolitionist movement and the Civil War, and transcontinental migration and the Wild West; and they are represented by authors not only from the United States but from England, Spain, France, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, and Mexico. Reading comparatively, we will try to piece together strategies for thinking and rethinking both historical moments we have read about, and those we have experienced: exploring the possibility of reading them as collections of overlapping and contradictory stories rather than as a single narrative. Reading list
CL 1A:4, #17215, Tyson Hausdoerffer, TT 8-9:30, 223 Wheeler"Man is but an ass": Transfiguration and Transformation in Film and LiteratureIn Shakespeare’s comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the character Bottom is suddenly transfigured by the magical substitution of an ass’s head for his own, much to his initial dismay and later delight. Whether, ultimately, Bottom’s external transfiguration has any transformative effects on his inner character or whether the removal of his transfiguration forestalls any inner transformation is a matter open to debate. What is certain is that this hilarious transfiguration functions as a kind of allegory for other kinds of transformations which take place in the course of the play. In other words, the play is about transformations, and this thematic concern is symbolized in the literal transfiguration of Bottom. In this course, we will examine the structural relation between literal transfigurations and symbolic transformations as it occurs in a range of works, including both texts and films. Not all of the transfigurations will be from man to ass (though many are), nor will they all be intended as humorous; however, asinine humor will be a central feature of this course. Since this is a 1A reading and composition course, the emphasis of our work will be on writing short interpretive essays about the texts we read and the films we watch. Students should expect to write 6-8 short papers (3-4 pages in length), and expect to rewrite and expand one of those papers as a mid-semester paper and another one as the final paper. All papers will count toward the final grade for the course, but the mid-semester and the final papers naturally will be more heavily-weighted. There will be no exams, but students should expect frequent pass/fail reading-comprehension quizzes. Required Texts:
Films:
CL1A:6, # 17221, José Alaniz, TT 9:30-11, 123 DwinelleDeath, Dissolution, RepresentationDeath, Schopenhauer’s "muse of philosophy," fills the literary canon. This course explores how authors since antiquity have dealt with anxieties regarding personal mortality in their work, and the specific strategies they use to represent this most unrepresentable yet inevitable of human phenomena. A course of this scope (from Gilgamesh to very recent stories, films and the internet) can only hit some of the highlights in the vast literature of death, but we will manage to trace certain patterns across the ages, through Greek tragedy, medieval morality plays, the modernist novel and postmodernist cinema. As we proceed, we will shed light on the ways our own age disguises and denies death, and how this behavior has been shaped by particular historical circumstances. As a unifyinf concern throughout the course, we will examine the problem of representing death across several media - written, aural and visual, fictive and non-fictive. Dealing with a theme universal to all living things, the course is designed for serious, mature students from any academic discipline, but in the past I have found our discussions especially enhanced by the active participation of pre-med and pre-nursing students, as we will be examining death and disability not only as “literary” tropes or textual phenomena but as concrete biological facts which people and societies must deal with every day. This being a 1A course, the emphasis will rest on composition, with frequent writing assignments for the encouragement of students to explore their own feelings about the topic as well as their expressive powers - as honed by grammatically sound, rhetorically persuasive language. Reading/Viewing ListNovels
Films
Plays
A course reader will include selections from the disciplines of psychology, literary criticism, memoir, journalism, poetry and the essay. In addition to the required film screenings above, the student will have the opportunity to attend several optional screenings for extra credit. I will expect you to keep an informal, bi-weekly journal throughout the semester. CL 1A:7, #17224, Maya Fisher & Mary Brown, TT 11-12:30, 20 WheelerMadness in LiteratureHow do different cultures define and represent madness, and how do these different conceptions of madness intersect with love, religion, sexuality, writing, gender, and other literary themes? This course will explore madness as both a tool and object of representation in literature. Texts
Course Reader, including selections from Don Quixote; Isak Dinesen, “The Immortal Story;” E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman;” Edgar Allen Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher;” and selected poetry by Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickenson, Baudelaire, and Guillame IX CL 1A:8, #17227, Jaime Humberto Cruz, TT 11-12:30, 123 DwinelleTravel and IdentityA person’s concept of self, according to many theories, is formed through the encounter with others. Along these lines, the trope of travel in literature is usually associated with the development of some sense of identity for the character undergoing the travel. In this course, we will look at texts from a wide range of time periods where travel is an integral part of the main character(s)’ process of identity formation. We will consider how the encounter with the other, new lands, different cultures and languages produces a subject. More specifically, we will consider what kind of subject is produced. At the same time, we will be careful to question this primary assumption as we encounter some texts that suggest that a person brings as much to an experience of contact with the other as he or she takes from it. Thus, we might counter our original question by asking to what extent the commonplace of travel as a changing and formative experience is a fallacy? Furthermore, our investigation will move between canonical texts that represent a primarily white Western male perspective and non-canonical texts that voice the experience of gender, sexual, and racial minorities to try and discern how this trope of travel works differently for different subjects. Required Texts
CL 1A:9, #17229, David Luis-Brown, TT 11:00-12:30, 205 DwinelleCL 1A:10, #17229, David Luis-Brown, TT 8:00-9:30, 205 DwinelleCL H1A, #17203, Karen Zumhagen, TT 9:30-11:00, 223 Wheeler“Babble”In this course, we will examine a series of literary and filmic texts which deal in a variety of ways with speech, chatter, communication, rhetoric voices, sound, and also with silence and the inarticulate. Required texts will include:
Films:
A course reader will include essays by Sigmund Freud, Stanley Cavell, J.L. Austin, Judith Butler, and Barbara Johnson. Henry Louis Gates Jr, and short selections from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Beckett’s The Unnamable. Students will be required to read assigned works carefully, participate in class discussions, offer one oral presentation, produce a series of informal response papers, as well as 3 papers of increasing length, each of which will be subjected to extensive revisions. CL1B:1, #17230, Amy Moore, MWF 9:00-10:00, 222 Wheeler“When in Rome…": Assimilation and its discontentsAmerica has a long and proud history of assimilating her immigrants. To many immigrants, successful assimilation into America represented the only path to success. At the same time, their stories often lament the loss of their own unique culture and history. Their accounts chronicle the pressure they experience to erase the marks that differentiate them from the dominant culture while maintaining their sense of self and ethnicity. Today, assimilation isn’t as highly regarded, and the importance of maintaining one’s cultural heritage is widely recognized. Nonetheless, pressures to assimilate surface today, sometimes presented as the process of a gentle assimilation that respects cultural and ethnic heritage, such as “Americanization”. In our readings crossing historical and cultural boundaries, we will consider issues such as alienation, assimilation, linguistic and cultural displacement, identity formation, multiculturalism and “the American Dream”. We will consider different cultural and historical treatments of assimilation as we discuss its social and political significance, the personal repercussions, and the roles of race, gender and economic class. Our readings will include immigrant narratives, fiction on immigrant experience, memoirs and journalism. Students will be required to read assigned works carefully, attend classes and participate in class discussions, produce approximately 30 pages of thoughtful prose (in the form of 1 diagnostic paper and 3 formal papers of increasing length, each of which will be subject to extensive revisions), as well as several informal writing assignments and one oral presentation. Required texts
A Course Reader with a selection of short stories, essays and critical pieces Films:
CL 1B:3, #17236, Cynthia Gralla & Polina Dimova, MWF 11:00-12:00, 205 DwinelleStripteaseUnder an alluring paper-thin veil, the narrative beckons the reader, winking knowingly, full of secrets and half-hidden revelations. This course will take up the striptease acted out by texts and performances when they deliberately stage themselves provocatively. As the gauzy layers are peeled back, we may find that a narrator or artist has let more slip than (s)he intended, or that the naked shape pinned in the spotlight exposes our own desires as readers/viewers. At other times, we may discover that a carefully controlled act of seduction has turned suddenly into a performance of protest and violence, in which we are forced to view far more than we ever expected. By interacting with novels, short stories, plays, poems, critical writings, films, visual art, performance art, and dance, we will examine both veiled characters and defiantly intimate authors/artists in order to conduct our own analyses. How can we strip down the narrative/performance itself? Authors/artists to be (un)covered include Atwood, Balzac, Barthes, Betsuyaku, Boccaccio, Collins, de Castiglione, Djebar, Egoyan, Greene, Ono, Sherman, Tosches, and Wilde. Required Books
CL 1B:4, #17239, Louise Hornby, TT 8:00-9:30, 222 WheelerThe Unreal City: urban representations in fiction and filmThis course is an examination of the representation of urban locations in literature and film. We will consider how it is that the city is depicted in the fictional imagination and how the fictional version of a city might relate to its referent. How is the city used as a backdrop for experience? What cities are familiar to us from their repeated representation in the media? How does the city become a site of not only of ruin, remnants and garbage, but also of artistic and cultural production? What are the traditional ways of seeing and writing a city, and how might they be challenged? We will look at the story of the destruction of Troy given to us in the Iliad as a foil for studying primarily twentieth-century and contemporary depictions of cities. Students will be required to undertake original research in this class, as well as write a number of papers of increasing length throughout the semester. Texts
Films
CL1B:5, #17242, Paul Springer, TT 8:00-9:30, 123 DwinelleFallibility and Choice: The History of “Doh!” from Homer to HypertextToday’s Sherlock Homes is tomorrow’s Homer Simpson. It goes way back-the person who invented the wheel probably got run over by it. Our species has a remarkable talent for ruining a good thing, from the Garden of Eden to the ozone layer. It’s often said that those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it, but even the utterers of this sentiment usually attribute it incorrectly. More importantly, even the most educated cultures, the ones that recall their past obsessively, are also doomed to repeat it-witness the Roman Empire, Great Britain, and any number of contemporary examples. In this course we will examine individual and archetypal models of error. We will start with an artifact of pre-literate composition, Homer’s Odyssey, and work our way up to what may be the paperless future of textual communication-on-line “hypermediated” installations like Grammatron. Evolution-or Edsel? The goal of this course is to hone critical abilities in speech and in writing. Students will have an in-class or take-home writing assignment almost every week, and everyone will participate in individual and group presentations. All parties are expected to arise early and attend class conscientiously at the appointed hour (8:00 a.m.). Empirical evidence shows that 1A-1B students whose attendance decreases over the semester risk failing the class. But those who make a responsible effort will be rewarded with stimulating readings, frank and open discussions, and a forward-looking approach to writing. Texts
CL 1B:6, #17245, Jenny L. White & Ben Tran, TT 9:30-11:00, 123 WheelerCon Artists, and otherwise generally unreliable narratorsThe readings for this course center on narrators who manipulate words and stories, particularly to get out of a tight spot. We’ll start with Odysseus, the glib wanderer, in several versions: Homer, the original; the recent Coen brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which recasts Odysseus as an escaped convict in the 30’s; and Louise Gluck’s volume of poetry. We may include selections of James Joyce’s version, but we won’t attempt it in its entirety. Other texts, variously focusing on (and focused by) the prime suspect in a police lineup (The Usual Suspects); the least spectacular of a family of specially-bred circus freaks (Geek Love); a caustic and compulsive storyteller, fleeing the debacle of the dynasty of Indian-by-way-of-Portuguese spice merchants and crime lords of which he is the last (The Moor’s Last Sigh); and the founder of a blasphemous religion who follows a blind street preacher and is followed by a boy with vision (Wise Blood), all highlight the manipulation of both story and audience. Through all of these narratives are interwoven the compelling and conflicting themes of family and exile, crime and religion. We will also discuss selected love sonnets from Shakespeare and Sidney, which draw attention to the poet’s wit even as they extol the beloved’s beauty; and contemporary Slam contests, in which both poetry and performance are key. We will focus not only on the craftiness of the narrative voice, but also on the craft of composition: the course will stress close readings as a method of textual analysis, and revision and peer editing as part of an intensive focus on writing skills. Course requirements include regular participation in class discussions, a weekly interactive (online) reading journal, and 6 papers (one of which will be a comparative analysis, one of which will include a research component, and one of which will be a substantial revision). Texts will include:
(* Course Reader) CL 1B: 8, #17251, Ute Rupp & Armando Manalo, TT 11:00-12:30, 205 DwinelleAliens/Others--Some Takes On Alterity‘Alterity’ has rather a clinical, bureaucratic ring to it, and ‘the other’ may sound a bit evasive, or even pompous; but the word ‘alien’ still feels freshly creepy and compelling. It’s used in various discourses - e.g., science fiction, immigration law - and maybe has a bit more ‘body’ to it than the two others. Since all three words are closely related - via more or less direct etymology - it seems possible to address them all by using the ‘alien’ as our primary addressee. This class, then, while teaching how to read and write academic papers, will do so by exploring some constructions of others and aliens or, more basically, to read up on a few attempts to produce blueprints for such alternate creatures, and/or com/positions. We will read both literary and theoretical texts which - like tourist guides or also repair manuals - may help us approach and discuss what such others may ‘be,’ how they ‘function,’ whether they ‘exist,’ and what they are good - or bad - for. Our readings (and viewings - we shall see a couple of movies, shown at night, in addition to regular class time) will focus on rather classical Others - such as the woman, the monster, the savage, the abnormal, the degenerate, the animal, the body, language, the symbolic, the real, gods - by way of engaging with pertinent themes such as the double, paranoia, abjection, artifice, reproduction, hybridization, invasion, possession. There is no way of getting around ‘the Other’ in any contemporary debate; privileging the more or less fantastic ‘alien’ may help us approach as an institution what all too often is imagined to lurk beyond the institution. Books:
Reader:
Movies:
CL 1B:9, #17254, Jacqueline Fulmer, TT 11:00-12:30, 125 DwinelleReporting from Ground Zero: Passing On Trauma in Literature, Film and the MediaThis course will examine why it is so difficult to pass on stories of trauma. To what extent are stories of trauma passed on (narrated), and to what extent are they passed on (overlooked)? What makes it possible for them to be narrated, and what limits this possibility? We will consider the role of language (via oral tradition), the psyche (via psychoanalytic criticism), the silencing effects of shame, and pleasure (especially humor) in answering these questions. Secondly, we will examine how the passing on of trauma shapes the identities of survivors, bystanders, and more broadly, ethnicity, race and gender. We will play close attention to the ways in which identity can both be torn asunder in the wake of trauma, and, also, paradoxically, how it can be constructed through the “wakefulness” of trauma. We will also look at how people and societies survive “to tell the tale,” and how that tale itself may survive, through the possibilities of oral tradition and humor. These questions will be pursued through a broad range of literature and film. We will consider how these questions are addressed from the positions of survivors, bystanders and perpetrators and the instability between these boundaries which often occurs. Comparative Literature 1B fulfills part of the university’s reading and composition course requirement. As such, this course offers practice in basic argumentative skills necessary to good writing. Texts:
CL 1B:10, #17257, Thaddeus Lisowski, MWF 9:00-10:00, 121 WheelerNarrative and IdentityWhat structures each of the three pairs of texts below is a set of relationships between narrative, the telling of the story of the past, and identity, the building of a self. Students’ work toward improving their expository writing skills in this course will build on the skills and techniques learned in the 1A course (or equivalent coursework) and will be shaped by these three pairs of texts. Moving through an ordered sequence of paper assignments of increasing length, students will develop further their skills with thesis formation, argumentation, and the related skills of drafting and revision. As the course moves from the first pair of texts, in which the relationship between narrative and specific violent memories is relatively clear, to the second and third pairs, in which the relationship between narrative and self-constitution grows more complex, so too will the arguments and papers which make up a student’s body of work be expected also to develop and become increasingly complex, culminating in a comprehensive final paper. I: Narratives of Violence
II: Narratives of Discovery, Narrative and Discovery
III: Narrative and Self-Constitution
Required Texts:
Recommended Text:
CL 1B:12, #17263, Robert Adler-Peckerar & Naomi Brenner, MWF 11:00-12:00, 20 WheelerSelf-Portraits: Constructing the self through narrativeThis course will focus on how works of literature construct identities. Looking predominately at first-person narratives which thematize the process of coming-of-age or telling/writing one¹s own story, we will investigate the various strategies that authors use in forging their characters. Using stylistic analysis as a starting point, we will pay close attention to how the manipulation of language succeeds (or sometimes fails) in building story-telling characters with complex psyches and identities. Closely reading novels, short stories, case histories, poems, as well as stand-up monologues, we will see how history and ideology simultaneously reflect and form characters¹ identities and how texts continue to operate in dialogue with other major texts. We shall see how competing identities (gender, "ethnic," "racial," and sexual) are negotiated and find their voice in narrative. In the process of examining the creation of selves through literary exposition, we will apply our insights into our own work as writers. How do we show who we are through our production of scholarly and creative writing? Major Texts:
Films:
CL 1B:13, #17265, Jacqueline Fulmer, TT 8:00-9:30, 287 DwinelleReporting from Ground Zero: Passing On Trauma in Literature, Film and the MediaThis course will examine why it is so difficult to pass on stories of trauma. To what extent are stories of trauma passed on (narrated), and to what extent are they passed on (overlooked)? What makes it possible for them to be narrated, and what limits this possibility? We will consider the role of language (via oral tradition), the psyche (via psychoanalytic criticism), the silencing effects of shame, and pleasure (especially humor) in answering these questions. Secondly, we will examine how the passing on of trauma shapes the identities of survivors, bystanders, and more broadly, ethnicity, race and gender. We will play close attention to the ways in which identity can both be torn asunder in the wake of trauma, and, also, paradoxically, how it can be constructed through the “wakefulness” of trauma. We will also look at how people and societies survive “to tell the tale,” and how that tale itself may survive, through the possibilities of oral tradition and humor. These questions will be pursued through a broad range of literature and film. We will consider how these questions are addressed from the positions of survivors, bystanders and perpetrators and the instability between these boundaries which often occurs. Comparative Literature 1B fulfills part of the university’s reading and composition course requirement. As such, this course offers practice in basic argumentative skills necessary to good writing. Texts:
CL 1B:14, # 17485, Robert Fallon, Tu Th 8:00-9:30The Aesthetic of Wonder in the Age of AnxietyArtists have frequently voiced their displeasure with the loss of innocence in our modern western culture of anxiety by evoking a feeling of wonder. As an antidote for a hyper-rationalized society, they turned to wonder to suspend a form of logical reasoning that had been overvalued. Our task in this course will be to distinguish various concepts of wonder from fear, awe, fantasy, and stupefaction, while relating it to desire, fascination, and joy. We will consider the historical background against which artists attempt to recreate the enchantment with the world, discover aesthetic strategies that evoke wonder successfully, and propose reasons for the need for wonder in the modern world. Four areas of inquiry into wonder will structure the course: science, religion, nature, and psychology. Critical essays will provide tools for analysis of our poetry, novels, fairy tales, histories, and music, all written between 1875 and 1975. Student papers will undergo structured revision and peer editing and students will present their research in class. Required Books
Reader: Providing critical tools to examine the principal texts, we will read theoretical essays on wonder by Bachelard, Bennett, Fisher, Todorov, Tolkien, and Weber. Also included are poems by Auden, cummings, and Hopkins, as well as two fairy tales by d'Aulnoy. Music: Leonard Bernstein, Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety"; Benjamin Britten, "God's Grandeur"; Sophia Gubaidulina, Hommage à T. S. Eliot; Olivier Messiaen, Turangalîla-Symphonie; Pierre Boulez, Cummings ist der Dichter; Ralph Vaughn Williams, Symphonies 1; Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach; Maurice Ravel, Mother Goose Suite. N.B. All music will be available on the Musilan stations at the Music Library. Films: The Time Machine CL R2A, #17266 -- CANCELLED |