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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 283
LITERATURE AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Domination, Equality, and Justice
Instructor: Marcel Hénaff
We all know Aristotle’s definition of man as a “political animal”--zoon
politikon--which is often translated as “social animal”; actually,
both aspects are included in the Greek conception. We generally
emphasize the adjective, “social.” But Aristotle did not use the term
“animal” in a merely metaphorical way. He understood it in a broad
sense, as living being. Humans are not the sole social animals; but it
may be that they are the only really ‘political’ ones. Researches in
ethology [i.e. the study of living beings in their natural environments]
show that primates such as great apes are hierarchical. This is probably
also the case of humans, but the latter are also unique in their denying
this ‘natural’ condition. From this starting point this seminar will
propose a reflection on these 3 concepts: domination, equality, and
justice.
- The first approach will focus on the meaning of the notion of
domination, based on M. Weber’s definition found in Economy and Society
and Ph. Pettit’s discussion in Republicanism about the difference
between non-interference and non-domination. The question will be, can
domination be identified with power? Domination is tied to the idea of
mastering [dominus, dominium]. What does political power mean in this
regard?
The second approach will deal with anthropological data and the
concepts of a. Hierarchy and b. Sacred monarchies; the former will be
exemplified by Indian castes [our reference will be L. Dumont’s Homo hierarchicus] and the latter by African kingdoms [Rwanda and Swaziland],
based on various ethnographic inquiries [A. Adler, M. Izard, and L. De
Heush]. The question will be whether this type of social organization
(such as castes) and figures (shuch as sacred kings) has a political
nature. We must therefore specify what we mean when we use the word,
“political”.
The third approach will extend this type of questions to Ancient
Greece and Rome. From the royal system--basileus, arkhe, kratos--of
Homeric times to the birth of the democratic organization, the shaping
of public space and equality–isonomia--and courts of justice, using
primary sources such as texts by Herodotes, Aeschyleus, Thucydides, and
Aristotle, and studies such as those by J.P. Vernant, M. Detienne, and
M. Finley. – We will ask similar questions about Rome and the emergence
of such concepts as, potestas, auctoritas, populus, majestas in Tacitus,
Livy, and Cicero, and of the opposition between servus and civis, and of
course between dominium and imperium.
This will lead us to some major Modern texts about power, democracy,
and equality: we will discuss somes aspects of Rousseau’s Discourse on
the Origins of Inequality and of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
Finally, we will return to Weber and, based on the reflection
developed on our path, we will consider how an original tradition
dealing with these questions of domination, equality and justice has
developed among Anglo-American philosophers such as J. Rawls, M. Walzer,
R. Nozick, M. Sandel, A. Sen.
| Notes: |
1. Most of the readings assigned during the quarter will be
provided in a reader. |
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2. Reading the texts assigned in the original language (other than
English) can
also be validated fulfill the 2nd language requirement. See the
instructor. |
CULTURAL STUDIES 201
THEORIES AND METHODS OF ANALYSIS IN
CULTURE STUDIES
American Studies Archives:
Labor, Memory and the Boundaries of Print Culture, 1865-1919
Instructor: Shelley Streeby
This seminar is a methods course as well as an alternate cultural
history of the 1865-1919 period in the US. We will read work from the
field of American Studies, broadly conceived, that raises questions
about labor and memory from the Civil War through World War I and the
Mexican and Russian Revolutions. We will start with W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America, a counter-history of the
post-emancipation years. Next, we will focus on radical US print
cultures, reading speeches, pamphlets, poetry, and newspaper and
magazine articles by Lucy Parsons, Ida B. Wells, Alexander Berkman,
Covington Hall, Emma Goldman, Ernesto and Enrique Flores Magón,
Voltairine de Cleyre, John Kenneth Turner, Eugene V. Debs, Cyril Briggs,
and others. We will read many of these pieces in their original
contexts, as part of publications that were linked to the social
movements of the era. We will also read important work in American
Studies that helps us to understand these movements, including work by
Angela Davis, Robin D. G. Kelley, David Roediger, Sandra Gunning, Emma
Perez, and others. Finally, we will analyze, through course readings and
student presentations, forms of culture that were connected to the world
of print but also extended beyond its boundaries: the music, visual
culture, and other cultural forms of the labor and social movements of
the 1865-1919 era. Students will be asked to do one presentation on an
American Studies archive for this period as well as one on an American
Studies essay or book that engages the topic we are considering that
week; write weekly 1-2 responses to the reading; and turn in a 10-15
page final paper on a topic of their choice.
CULTURAL STUDIES 210
HISTORY AND CULTURE
Instructor: Roddey Reid
Please see the Literature Graduate Office, room 3139 for a copy of the
course description for this course.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 214
MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE
Medieval Romance: Myth, Race, Nation
Instructor: Lisa Lampert
This course will focus on the medieval genre of romance, examining the
ways in which this form figured in the development of the idea of
English identity and the English nation. Among the texts we will read
are Geoffrey of Monmouth’s seminal History of the Kings of Britain and
Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. We will also examine the development of the
legend of the Grail in England, examining the ways in which the
depiction of the Grail as a Christian relic threatened by Muslim and
Jews figures into notions of English origin. We will also expand the
notion of the romance genre to include Mandeville’s Travels, comparing
this early travel narrative’s presentation of foreign worlds to the
fantastic landscapes and peoples of romance.
Although our primary texts will be medieval, this course is intended to
engage the interests of those working in later periods and to encourage
a deeper historical understanding of the concepts of race and nation in
the English and Western European traditions. It should be of interest
not only to students of the English medieval and early modern periods,
but to those interested in the development of English nationalism and
imperialism, in which the mythology of the Arthurian tradition played a
significant role.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 231
RESTORATION AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH
LITERATURE
The Canon, the Anthology, and the 21st-Century Classroom
Instructor: Kathryn Shevelow
This seminar in 18th-century British literature is designed to cover
some of the major literature of the period in the context of
undergraduate teaching, specifically our lower-division survey of
British literature, LTEN 22--The Literature of the British Isles,
1660-1832. The course has been devised in collaboration with several
graduate students who are working in this period, but it is open to
others who might be interested in its content and/or approach.
The chronological period covered by the seminar will be shortened to
extend from the Restoration (1660) to the 1790s. Our framework will be
provided by The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edition,
Vol. 1 (1C for those using the divided version) and the syllabus from my LTEN 22 courses.
Each individual seminar will be organized by a topic or a genre that
will follow a roughly chronological sequence: e.g. Restoration Drama;
Exploration, Travel, and Colonization; 18th-Century Poetry; 1790s
Radicalism. The primary text(s) you read will be of your own choosing
from lists that I shall provide: the idea is that everybody will be
reading different ones. In most weeks, everyone will be asked also to
research and read one relevant secondary source that could be useful for
the classroom. Also assigned most weeks will be one or more additional
readings on eighteenth-century literature, culture, history, and/or
pedagogy that everyone will read in common: these will include
selections from The Norton Anthology.
Seminars will move from accounts of individual texts to general
discussion of their contexts and pedagogical possibilities. We will also
be discussing the problems and issues involved in introductory survey
courses, the pros and cons of anthologies such as the Norton, and ways
of working with an anthology’s canonical orientation to address
non-canonical texts and/or approaches to the period.
Every week, each member of the seminar will be expected to prepare a
1-page summary of your primary text(s) plus an additional paragraph
about your secondary source, and an assessment of their possibilities
for use in the undergraduate classroom. You will also be asked to
provide copies of your summaries for everyone in the class.
Besides the weekly summaries, everyone will be expected to produce at
the end of the quarter two undergraduate syllabi, one for a
lower-division survey course, the other a thematically or historically
based upper-division course, along with an explanation and justification
for your course designs.
By the end of this seminar, those of you who intend to pursue eighteenth
century studies further will have expanded your reading in the period,
explored classroom issues and strategies, and acquired potentially
valuable course materials for use in your job searches and future
teaching. Those who do not intend to do more work in this field will
still have greatly expanded your knowledge of the period and accumulated
material potentially adaptable to your own areas of study--especially
for those of you working in other periods of British literature, who
might find yourselves teaching just such a survey course someday.
Many thanks to Professor Nicole Tonkovich, whose seminars in
19th-century American Literature have served as a model for this course.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 256
POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSES
Europe in postcolonial fiction
Instructor: Rosemary George
In this seminar postcolonial literary representations of Europe will be
studied as part of a complex and variegated discourse that cannot be
fully understood through the simple assessment that such engagement is a
forum through which “the empire writes back.” Framed by Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks, Dipesh
Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe and other theoretical texts, we
will examine the uses that Europe is put to in postcolonial literary
circuits. We will closely examine some or all of the following fictional
texts: The Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris, Season of Migration
to the North by Tayeb Salih, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro,
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, A Bend in the River by V.S.
Naipaul, Apocalypse Now, Dir. F. Coppola, Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata
Aidoo and Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. Please read (or reread) Heart of
Darkness before the first class meeting. Assignments: oral
presentation(s) and a final research paper.
LITERATURES IN SPANISH 258
SPANISH-AMERICAN PROSE
La novela negra del neoliberalismo
Instructor: Misha Kokotovic
En años recientes ha ocurrido una especie de boom latinoamericano de la
novela negra o policiaca. La hipótesis de este seminario es que la
creciente producción de este tipo de novelas, desde mediados de los años
1980s, tiene algo que ver con la caída de las utopías de la izquierda y
la reestructuración neoliberal de las economías y sociedades
latinomericanas por la misma época. De hecho, la novela negra o
policiaca está emergiendo como una de las principales formas literarias
contemporáneas de crítica social. Los efectos de las políticas
neoliberales—el crecimiento notable de la pobreza, la desigualdad, la
corrupción, el crimen y la violencia—son temas comunes en estas novelas,
que frecuentemente plantean preguntas como las siguientes: ¿Qué es el
crimen cuando el sistema mismo es criminal? ¿Quién mantiene el orden
público cuando el estado ni está en orden ni pertenece al público? ¿Quién
está libre y qué significa la libertad en una economía de libre mercado?
Sin embargo, no vamos a limitarnos a un análisis del contenido de estas
obras, sino que vamos a examinar también qué aspectos formales de la
novela negra o policiaca se prestan a la crítica del neoliberalismo,
tanto como a la representación de los espacios urbanos de las
megalópolis latinomericanas. Además, vamos a explorar algunos de los
límites de la novela negra, que a pesar de su crítica al neoliberalismo,
generalmente no logra plantear alternativas al libre mercado. Es también
un género literario sumamente masculino, cuya representación del género
sexual tiende a afirmar, en vez de criticar, las relaciones de poder
tradicionales en este campo. Las lecturas incluirán novelas de Paco
Ignacio Taibo II, Ramón Díaz Eterovic, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Mario
Mendoza, y Franz Galich, entre otros.
LITERATURES IN SPANISH 272
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY STUDIES
La política de la memoria en la literatura mexicana reciente
Instructor: Max Parra
¿Cuál es el lugar que deben ocupar en el imaginario cultural y político
del México actual las luchas sociales del pasado inmediato, como el
movimiento estudiantil de 1968, la guerrilla urbana de los años setenta,
los movimientos urbanos una década más tarde? ¿Cómo debe recordarse este
pasado en el contexto de un proyecto neoliberal de nación que cobra
impulso a partir de 1990? En este seminario estudiaremos las respuestas
que se han dado a estas interrogantes desde el terreno de la literatura
especialmente, pero también del cine. Estas respuestas, complejas,
diversas, encontradas, serán examinadas en tanto que posicionamientos
culturales de una lucha de poder en el que se debate, a través de la
recuperación y evaluación del pasado, la viabilidad, legitimidad o falta
de legitimidad tanto del neoliberalismo oficial como de los movimientos
sociales que lo impugnan y resisten. En el seminario se prestará
especial atención al modo como se plasman estas respuestas, es decir, al
problema de la textualización de la memoria histórica, la nueva
literatura urbana y la reconceptualización de las identidades colectivas.
Entre los autores a leer: Elena Poniatowska, Héctor Aguilar Camín, Jorge
Volpi, y Taibo II/Subcomandante Marcos. Películas: El bulto y Amores
perros.
Otras lecturas, de corte histórico (L. Meyer), sociológico (S. Zermeño),
asi como de antropología urbana (N. García Canclini et al.) y sobre la
memoria (S.
Stewart, E. Jelin) servirán de marco de referencia para la discusión de
las obras.
LITERATURE THEORY 200B
PROBLEMS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERARY
THEORY
Instructor: Fatima El-Tayeb
The focus is feminist literary/cultural theories and their relations
with major contemporary theoretical discourses (e.g., psychoanalysis,
poststructuralism, and various forms of historicism).
Prerequisite: registered doctoral student in literature.
LITERATURE WRITING 282
WRITING STATES
“Genre and Cross Genre Hybrids”
Instructor: Anna Joy Springer
This writing class is sort of a cross between a fine arts and literature
course. In it, we will make literary art, or art that is primarily
written. These texts can take any form – they can be typed on paper,
recorded on CDs, or sculpted in ice. Ideas of genre (kind) will provide
a rusty fence around our field of inquiry. Looking at 2 interrelated
categories of genre, which I’m calling “Form” and “Appeal,” will help us
navigate our assumptions about different kinds of writing and will also
help us see the ways genre has informed our literacies (or text-decoding
strategies). Our work will blend formal genres like “poetry” and
“critical essay” as well as genres of appeal like “horror” and “cowboy”
to create hybrid texts. Ultimately, we’ll use generic codes and formulas
against themselves. We’ll learn about audience expectations only to
guide our readers more stealthily down uncharted, even dangerous
literary paths.
Reading List: Complete Plays by Sarah Kane, Birth of a Nation by Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker,
Grapefruit by Yoko Ono, House
of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson,
with additional critical essays and shorter literary works.
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