COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 274
GENRE STUDIES
Travel Literature, Theory and Practice
Instructor: Oumelbanine Zhiri
Travel Literature, in western as well as other traditions, is an immense
field of texts, of practices and theories-broad enough to encompass the
discourses of the pilgrim, the ambassador, the merchant, the botanist,
the artist, the anthropologist, the tourist, among many others. It can
provide data for scientific enquiry, intelligence for political and
military action, exotic thrills for many readers. It also allows
travelers to present themselves as dispassionate observers, heroic
explorers, Romantic discoverers of foreign landscapes, or intrepid
reporters investigating dangerous places.
The aim of this course is to think about travel literature, its
functions in the cultures that produce and consume it, its role in
defining the type of subjectivity that a given society constructs for
itself in contrast to others. We will look at four moments in the
history of travel literature, Early Modern, Romanticism, Modernism, and
Post-Modernism. However, the goal is not to study a history of travel
literature, but, by looking at different periods, to think about some
specific ways in which writers, and readers, situate themselves in their
relationship to theirs and others’ culture.
Students are invited to choose a theme, or an author, and help the class
expand the horizon of reflection on the subject. The course will
alternate lectures by the instructor and presentations by the students,
both followed by discussions.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 283
LITERATURE AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Passions, Politics, and Subjectivity
Instructor: Marcel Hénaff
The democratic project as it has been stated since the time of the
Enlightenment has above all meant to be an expression of collective
organization as rational or at least reasonable order. This expectation
still remains unchanged in the latest approaches, whether they derive
from the Utilitarian tradition or aim at moving beyond it. Both of these
approaches demonstrate a normative attitude that exiles totalitarian
(Nazi, Stalinist, etc.) and terrorist (anarchist, nationalist, far-left,
or religious) phenomena to the “black hole” of irrationality. Yet this
exclusion makes it impossible to understand phenomena involving
collective passion for a just cause, attachment to a respected leader,
or national pride in the struggle for independence. In short, the
emotional dimension of public life cannot be identified to violence or
blindness. It is probably impossible to separate reasons for acting from
the desire to act. This introduces the essential dimension of
subjectivity into every action accomplished in common. How can a
coherent political theory articulate the rational statement of norms
with the emotional expression of choices? This is a highly complex
question. In order to attempt to answer it the seminar will present a
three-stage approach:
- The Lessons of Anthropology. Our working hypothesis will be that
traditional societies confronted—and solved at a pragmatic level--the
reason/passion dilemma in their collective modes of organization through
the values associated with positions in kinship systems, the symbolic
integration of the environment with the social order, and the rituals
associated with forms of collective life. We will approach these
questions through writings by E. Durkheim, M. Mauss, M. Weber, C.
Lévi-Strauss, C. Geertz, R. Needham, M. Mead, G. Bateson. L. Dumont, and
a few others.
- Passions and Politics in Early Modern Times. Our inquiry will follow
A. Hirschman’s seminal book, The Passions and the Interests [1977],
which showed how political theorists from the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment attempted to solve the reason/passion dilemma primarily by
realistically proposing to understand the latter as a pure force of
human nature to be integrated to a “physics” of power (Machiavelli,
Hobbes, Spinoza), and later, more efficiently, as capable of being
subjected to the self-interest associated with the natural selfishness
of all individuals (A. Smith and the Economists); this would become the
basic position not only of the theorists of classical and neo-classical
economics but also the theorists of spontaneous order as theory of
rational choice, in short the Utilitarian tradition.
- Social bond, Emotional Bond, and Political Order. The results
provided by the first two approaches should make it possible to redefine
the issue. But we can no longer hope for the synthesis (in terms of
symbols) found in traditional societies or be satisfied with the Early
Modern modeling (expressed in terms of forces). We will first have to problematize the dual dimension of the human being as both emotional and
rational being, and to understand the implications of this dual
dimension regarding the formation of communities, the organization of
public life (social bond, representations, conflicts, institutions), and
more generally the modalities of political action. This dual dimension
emerges at the point of articulation between subjective and collective
experiences, local ways of life and general norms of action; it emerges
particularly along with requirements (such as respect) and expectations
(such as trust); both of which are typically moral sentiments
based on
mutual recognition that lies at the very core of conventions (readings
by S. Freud, H. Arendt, E. Lévinas, A. Giddens, A. Honneth, J. Habermas,
M.Nussbaum).
Notes:
- Most of the readings assigned during the quarter will be
provided in a reader.
Students are also encouraged to acquire A. Hirschman, The Passions
and the
Interests.
- Personal reading of some texts in the original language (other
than English)
can also be validated to fulfill the 2nd language requirement. See
the
instructor.
- The 2nd section of the seminar could also be considered as
covering the Period requirement.
CULTURAL STUDIES 225
INTERDISCIPLINARY AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL TEXTS
Comparative American Slavery
Instructor: Sara Johnson
This seminar explores the complex system of relations between the
transatlantic slave trade, the consequent rise and fall of the
plantation complex in the extended Americas, and the development of
modern capitalism. Focusing on the Age of Revolution, a tumultuous
epoch marked by epistemic ideological shifts in Europe and her
overseas colonies, the course examines the migration of ideas,
tracing how revolutionary rhetoric flew back and forth across oceans
and was tailored to met specific historic, social and economic
circumstances. For example, just as French revolutionaries were
inspired by the United States' declaration of independence, so too
were Caribbean colonial elites and slaves both influencing and
responding to shifting metropolitan realities in complicated,
violent negotiations for their own freedom and autonomy. The
fundamental conundrum: how could revolutionaries fighting in the
name of liberty and equality justify the institution of chattel
slavery and its mandate that men/women constitute the property of
another? Was it economically feasible to dismantle a system whose
profits financed global institutions? Of equal importance, what
measures were taken by slaves and free people of color not content
to wait for others to decide their fates?
Close attention is paid to questions of genre and rhetorical
strategies as we trace the rise of the novel, the culture of
political decrees (e.g. the Code Noir), polemical essays and the
strident periodical press that polarized both proslavery and
anti-slavery agendas. Primary source material form the late
eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries is complemented by
contemporary fictional musings concerning how to "make sense" of
events that have left a profound impact on the social and aesthetic
landscape of the present. Influential historical and economic
studies, in addition to visual images and film, provide secondary
context. Primary emphasis is placed on the Caribbean, although texts
from both North and South America are included as well. Authors
include C.L.R. James, William Wells Brown, Thomas Jefferson, Cirilo
Villaverde, Mary Prince, Herman Melville, Alejo Carpentier, Edouard
Glissant and Toni Morrison.
CULTURAL STUDIES 250
TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Places and Spaces in Latino/a Narratives
Instructor: Rosaura Sánchez
Location. Location. Location. Whether geographical, social or cultural,
issues of space are central to contemporary Latino/a narratives and the
articulation of national origin identity or Latinidad. In this seminar
we will examine the work of several contemporary Latina/o writers, like
Angie Cruz, Ernesto Quiñónez, Loida Maritza Pérez, Helena Maria
Viramontes, Francisco Goldman, Salvador Plascencia, Julia Alvarez,
Hector Tobar, Sandro Meallet, and others, as well as works of criticism
on Latino/a cultural production and social space theory.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 243
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Indians on Stage
Instructor: Nicole Tonkovich
In this seminar we will examine various instances of Native peoples
performing in public spaces of the lecture hall, the theater, and the
legislative chamber.
We will begin our investigations with accounts of Native diplomatic
visitors to Britain in 1710. Our readings will include several masques
and ritual dramas written and performed in the period of conquest. We
will then turn our attention to legislative arguments made by Elias
Boudinot and other itinerant lecturers relating to the issue of Cherokee
removal. With this base established, our subsequent investigations will
focus on how these initial instances of oratory and performance are
re-inscribed or re-performed by mid-nineteenth century orators and
performers including William Apess, a Pequot orator; Edmund Forrest (a
white actor in red-face) in the early drama, Metamora, or the Last of
the Wampanoags; and later by Sarah Winnemucca and members of her family
who performed tribal dramas in early San Francisco. These instances will
inform our readings of end-of-the-century performances ranging from the
high-cultural (Zitkala-Sa's opera, Sun Dance) to the popular spaces of
the Wild West shows. Our theoretical bases will be recent studies in
performance, oratorical culture and cultural theory (Joseph Roach, Elin
Diamond, and Sandra Gustafson, among others), enriched by recent models
of cultural studies investigations in performance culture (among them
work by Rosemarie Bank, Phil Deloria, and Alan Trachtenberg). We will
seek to enrich our cultural investigations by establishing a specific
tribal historical context for each instance or set of instances (the
politics of treaty-making, removal, reservation policy, and allotment).
This course fulfills the historical breadth requirement of the
Literature Department Ph.D. program.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 252
TOPICS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Keywords in American Studies
Instructor: Meg Wesling
This course will investigate the field-formation of American Studies as
understood through the development of some of its central concepts.
Borrowing from the methodology introduced in Raymond Williams’ 1976
Keywords, we start with nine foundational terms (nation, space, empire,
race, femininity, labor, queer, literature, and American Studies). We
will consider the historical emergence of each term, its changing
meanings, and way each term indexes specific and shifting cultural and
political values with its changing contexts of iteration. Our study will
necessarily be limited and suggestive; while the course is designed to
take one term as its central focus each week, the goal of the our study
will not be to isolate each term from its popular, cultural, and
historical use, nor to exclude from our conversations other critical
concepts essential to the development of the field. Rather, our focus
will be on the necessary interdependence of each keyword with other
critical categories, as well as on each term’s changing historical
significations. Rather than a search for definitions, then, we will be
engaged in tracing the evolution of and contestation over a broad
spectrum of cultural and political values, particularly as such values
inhere in the collective attribution of meaning.
Students will write a final “keyword” entry of their own (8-10 pp),
focusing on a term of their choosing. Each student will also offer one
presentation (individual or collaborative) during the quarter.
LITERATURES IN SPANISH 272
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY STUDIES
Literatura y nación en el siglo XIX mexicano.
Instructor: Max Parra
Curso de introducción a la literatura mexicana del siglo XIX. Más que
una revisión general de la producción literaria de este siglo, nos
enfocaremos en las ideas de “pueblo” y “nación” que se desprenden de
textos selectos producidos en los tres momentos históricos claves del
XIX: la independencia, la Reforma, y el Porfiriato. A partir del estudio
de la representación de personajes y tramas populares, generalmente
marginales o proscritos –indígenas, negros, bandidos, judíos, etc.-
discutiremos cómo se concibe la literatura en cada período y su función
en tanto que vehículo de difusión o resistencia a las formas de
sociabilidad modernas y al proceso de formación del Estado mexicano.
Asimismo, examinaremos su importancia en la elaboración de una
conciencia cultural nacional. Las lecturas literarias serán muy diversas,
pero la literatura de bandidos (novelas, corridos) será el referente
estructurador del curso.
Entre los autores leídos: J.J. Pesado, I.M. Altamirano, J.M. Roa Bárcena,
R. Barragán de Toscano, Rafael Delgado. Entre las lecturas de crítica y
teoría incluiremos a S. Hall, D. Sommer, G. Spivak, R. Guha, C.
Monsiváis, L. González y González, F. X. Guerra, el al.
Trabajo escrito de fin de curso y una o dos presentaciones orales.
LITERATURE THEORY 200C
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES AND CULTURAL CRITICISM
Instructor: Lisa Lowe
In this third quarter of the introductory sequence, we examine the
global contexts that are the conditions for modernity, and yet often
occluded by modernist notions of text, author, period, and audience. In
the mid-20th century, the disciplines of English and Comparative
Literature tended to conceive literature and national aesthetic cultures
as originating in metropolitan Europe, extending out towards the
Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We begin with a critical
analysis of the nationalist aesthetics within western modernity on which
this model of comparative literature relied, and examine a range of
approaches that reverse, displace, or simply conceive differently, this
dominant itinerary of literary, aesthetic, and cultural origin and
progress.
Considering the study of colonialism, postcolonial theory, and subaltern
studies; critical cosmopolitanisms; theories of historical trauma and
memory; various diaspora studies; racial formation and ideas of
aboriginality, mestizaje, and borderlands – we will explore
alternative models for understanding literature and culture within the
global conditions their emergence. We will read work by Edward Said,
Ania Loomba, Naoki Sakai, Talal Asad, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Stuart Hall,
Walter Mignolo, Enseng Ho, Achille Mbembe, Giorgio Agamben, Lisa
Yoneyama, Ann Stoler, Robin D. G. Kelley, Saidiya Hartman, Rosa-Linda
Fregoso, David Eng, and others.
Our aim is to devise a study of culture that would both situate national
and comparative literature study and attend to the remainders of
encounter, entanglements, conflicts and convergences that may be lost
through modern comparative procedures.
LITERATURE THEORY 220
THEORIES OF LITERARY CRITICISM
Literature and Social Change.
Instructor: Don E. Wayne
The phrases “literature and society” and “sociology of literature” have
often been the principal rubrics under which relations between literary
production or reception and social formations are understood. (The
second of these phrases still characterizes one of the divisions under
which the MLA organizes its membership and its annual conference--
“Sociological Approaches to Literature.”) But “literature and society”
is symptomatic of static conceptions of both cultural and social
phenomena. And “sociology of literature” registers the subordination of
the literary to the status of epiphenomenon: a reflection or expression
of an already existing social condition re-presented in literary
characters, situations, themes; or a reflection of social conditions
that can be described by reference to the respective sites of production
(authors) or reception (readers). In such static models, when the
categories of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation are
invoked they too have a static and non-relational quality, each category
given solemn and independent status in a rather desultory and dull
representation of what are otherwise dynamic social and cultural
processes in which all of these categories are complexly interrelated.
In this course we will study the works of literary theorists who view
the relation between literature and social formation as a dynamic one,
in which the literary text is understood as a medium not only of social
representation but of social transformation. Crucial to this approach
will be the discussion of relations between history and form;
and this will entail the vexed issues of how we characterize
“modernity,” and how we define such aesthetic categories as “realism,”
“modernism,” the “avant garde,” and “postmodernism.” We’ll also consider
representations of the literary text as a form of work and as a form of
play. We will begin by reading selected texts in enlightenment
aesthetics (Kant, Schiller, Hegel), followed by selections from Marx,
Lukács, Sartre, Adorno, Marcuse, Brecht, Barthes, Jameson, Eagleton, and
others. We may read some examples of other kinds of relevant literary
theory or cultural theory and criticism, depending on student interest.
We will also read at least one novel and some shorter works of fiction
in this seminar. Graduate students interested in this course are invited
to propose readings that exemplify an approach that treats literature
(or culture in other forms) as performing a kind of work or a kind of
play that mediates or helps to generate processes of social change. You
will also be encouraged to develop a paper project related to your own
primary areas of interest. The paper should involve an attempt to
interpret a literary text, a film, or any cultural object, employing the
kind of approach to the historicity of form that we will be studying in
this course.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience if you are interested in
taking this course. If possible, I would like to have a meeting this
quarter of interested students to discuss the course and the syllabus.
LITERATURE WRITING 271
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COLLEGE WRITING INSTRUCTION
Instructor: Linda Brodkey
The readings in this seminar survey literature in the field of
composition published since the mid-sixties in light of the
institutional arrangements under which writing has been taught and
studied in U. S. colleges and universities since the mid-nineteenth
century. Special attention will be given to language theories used to
warrant writing research and pedagogy, namely, what the theories set out
to explain and what part those explanations then play in establishing
research and pedagogical agendas for the field of composition. For the
most part, we concentrate on structural and poststructural theories, and
the research methods (protocols, case studies, historiographies,
discourse analyses, ethnographies) that support and are also supported
by them. Participants compile a bibliographical essay and design a
first-year writing course as their primary writing for the seminar.
This seminar can also be applied as a Cultural Studies course
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: The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Birth
of a Nation by Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin and Kyle Baker,
Grapefruit by Yoko Ono, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski,
and Incubation: A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil, with
additional critical essays and shorter literary works.
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