Fall 2007 Graduate Course Descriptions

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 285
LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS
Futurism: Imagining Modernity
Instructor: Amelia Glaser

How was the future viewed at the dawn of the twenty-first century? How did writers and artists envision changes in technology, travel, politics and fashion? This course will explore the transnational literary and artistic futurist movement from its 1909 inception with the Italian "Futurist Manifesto," authored by Tommaso Marinetti, to the movement's popularity among Russian and East European writers and artists, including Vladimir Mayakovsky, Roman Jakobson and Kazimir Malevich. We will look closely at how the futurists engaged with other European and American avant-garde movements, such as surrealism, cubism and Dada. We will examine the intersection of varied genres, including manifestos, visual art, poetry, film, and advertising. Among other theoretical themes, we will consider the relationship between politics and art, visual art and poetic form, and the aesthetic fluidity between Soviet Communism and Italian Fascism. All readings will be available in English. Students who speak Italian, Russian, French or Ukrainian will be encouraged to read some of the course assignments in the original

CULTURAL STUDIES 250
TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
The Politics of Migration in World Cinema
Instructor: Winifred Woodhull

This seminar will examine cinematic figurations of voluntary and involuntary migrations driven by colonial and neocolonial labor markets, political and social struggles, cultural conflicts and/or affiliations, and various combinations thereof in films from around the world dealing with various historical periods and geopolitical locations. We will be particularly concerned with the intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and class as they relate to transcolonial, transregional, transnational, and transglobal migrations figured in the films.

Examples of migrations to be studied as they are represented in film: the 18th and 19th-century colonial transatlantic trade in slaves and indentured servants; trans-African movements of laborers, intellectuals, and refugees; trans-European movements (east to west and south to north); and Asian, African, and Middle-Eastern (mainly Arab/Muslim) diasporas in Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. There will be a mix of films by well-known directors (Wong Kar-Wai, Happy Together, Hong Kong/Argentina 1997) and lesser-known ones (Greg Zglinski, A Long Dark Winter, 2005, on Kosovar refugees in Switzerland; Rachid Bouchareb, Little Senegal, France 2001; Jan Dunn, Gypo, 2006, on a Romany Czech lesbian in the UK). As well, we will look at a number of different film genres and styles (realist narrative films, including historical dramas; melodramas or “women’s films”; documentaries; and experimental films.

Although the seminar assumes no prior experience in film study, students will need to familiarize themselves with basic principles of film analysis (a textbook will be suggested) and will read extensively in relevant areas of film theory and film/cultural criticism. In addition to readings, there will naturally be required screenings outside of class each week. Students will be asked to do a 15-20 minute presentation on one of the readings/films as well as a 12 to 15-page film analysis that draws on the seminar readings and other relevant criticism.

LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 256
POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSES
Introduction to Post-colonial Literary Theory
Instructor: Rosemary George

This course will introduce seminar participants to the major themes of literary postcolonial studies as constituted as a field of study in western academia. The term “postcolonial” has been differently invoked by different practitioners. In this course, this term is understood to refer to a critical framework in which literary and other cultural texts can be read against the grain of the hegemonic discourse in a colonial or neocolonial context: this framework insists on recognizing, and resisting the strictures and structures of colonial and post-independence relations of power. We will study works now considered canonical in a field of study which has, in turn, shaken the very foundations of the western literary canon over the course of the last three decades. Readings to include work by: Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Charkavorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, Jamaica Kincaid, Benedict Anderson, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mahasweta Devi, Salman Rushdie, Ania Loomba, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Ranajit Guha and others.

Seminar participants who want to read in advance of class meetings could read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie over the summer. For the first class meeting on Friday September 28th, 2007, participants should have read the introduction and first chapter of Orientalism by Edward Said and the introduction and first chapter of Culture and Imperialism, also by Edward Said.

LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 272
CULTURAL TRADITIONS IN ENGLISH
Questions of Race in Early English Literature
Instructor: Lisa Lampert-Weissig

It is axiomatic among many scholars that the term “race” does not apply to pre-modern texts and contexts. There are undeniable historical reasons for such a view. Race is certainly not an easily definable or static concept even today and making any simple equations between understandings of human difference across decades, much less centuries, can lead to distorting anachronism. As Hannah Arendt suggested in 1951, such long views can serve to naturalize forms of hatred, implying that they are eternal and therefore inevitable. These are clearly intellectual and ethical pitfalls to be avoided—some might say at any cost. In this course, however, it is precisely the costs of periodization to understandings of the history of the concept of race that we will investigate. We will examine the ways in which the traditional periodization that separates “the medieval” from “the modern,” re-inscribed as a division between “theological” and “biological” ideas of human difference, lead to a discounting of early ideological formations. This elision can result not only in historical inaccuracies, but in theoretical oversimplifications that obscure the significant cultural and religious components present in the concept of race and in contemporary racisms.

Special emphasis will be placed on articulations of these issues through post-colonial theory and the ways not only that we can use modern theory to illuminate early texts, but, more significantly, how early texts and contexts have shaped modern approaches.

We will pursue this question through a range of literary, theoretical, and primary and secondary historical texts including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and selections from Middle English Romance. Course assignments, which include a bibliography and literature review will be designed to teach research skills in conjunction with furthering background in primary and secondary literatures.

LITERATURES IN SPANISH 224
GOLDEN AGE STUDIES
The Culture of Cervantes
Instructor: Jorge Mariscal

A close reading of selections from the two volumes of Don Quixote as well as brief examples from Cervantes' short stories and plays. We will spend a great deal of time mapping the ideological context that Cervantes attempted to negotiate as he reinvented several traditional literary forms. Of special interest will be notions of blood purity, the rise of Catholic humanism, and Spanish relations with Islam. We will also look at scenes from modern cinematic renderings of Don Quixote. Participation in discussions and one final paper required.

LITERATURE THEORY 200A
TEXT/CULTURE/CRITICAL PRACTICE
Instructor: Rosaura Sánchez

This seminar is the first in the introductory theory sequence for incoming Ph.D. students and will begin by exploring a number of theories central to the field of literary studies. The objective of the seminar is to provide students with an opportunity to review a number of theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks as well as key categories for the study of cultural texts within a cultural/aesthetic and historical context. Readings for the seminar will cover some of the fundamental tenets of Marxist Literary Theory, Post-structuralism, New Historicism, Feminist Literary Theories, Social Space Theory, Discourse Theory, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonialist Theories and Cultural Studies Theories. In discussing these approaches, issues of textuality, narrativity and history in relation to modernity, globalization, and imperialism/empire will be highlighted.

LITERATURE WRITING 272
RESEARCH IN COMPOSING AND WRITING DISCOURSE
Theory and Research on Composing and Written Discourse
Instructor: Linda Brodkey

The readings (several books and a variety of journal articles) in this seminar survey literature on composition published since the early 1970s in light of the institutional arrangements under which writing has been taught and studied in U. S. colleges and universities since the late nineteenth century. Special attention will be given to language theories used to warrant writing, 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 language and discourse theories, and the research methods (protocols, case studies, historiographies, discourse analyses, ethnographies) that support and are also supported by them. Participants will compile summaries and a bibliographical essay on a research topic of their choice as their primary writing for the seminar, and they will discuss their work-in-progress periodically with the class. This seminar is appropriate for graduate students who anticipate teaching college writing courses as well as those in the field of composition.