COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 282
LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY
Bergman. A Cinema of Self/Other Conflict
Instructor: Alain J.-J. Cohen
This seminar will explore the dark side of renowned Swedish film
director Ingmar Bergman who died this past summer. In contrast to his
better known films (which will be studied in a parallel undergraduate
course this winter quarter), Bergman’s films specifically addressed in
this seminar will focus on the director’s repeated mise-en-scenes of
self-conflict and self/other conflict, often backgrounded by war or
situations of solitude, with representations of trauma, crisis, sexual
identity, anxiety, alienation and depression, and attempts at the
mastery thereof.
In-class clips from the mid- and late- Bergman films (Through a Glass
Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence, Persona, The Hour of the Wolf, Shame,
The Passion of Anna, The Serpent’s Egg), will be used to assay
Bergman’s philosophy and film philosophy – as well as his affinity with
the psychoanalytic realm in his deep exploration of the psyche (both his
characters’ psyche and his own).
Seminar participants will view on their own the films on which they wish
to concentrate. Film theory and methods of film analysis will be
featured as well as readings in the æsthetics of cinema, philosophy and
psychoanalysis. At the end of this seminar, students should be able to
define Bergman’s style, to debate the influence of Bergman on
contemporary issues and to situate the director within the history of
international cinema.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 283
LITERATURE AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Politics of Fear, Terror and Democracy
Instructor: Marcel Hénaff
It has often been said that the question of fear entered the field of
political philosophy with Hobbes. This is not inaccurate but it is not
sufficient. The fear Leviathan discussed was not the fear of a tyrant
but the fear members of society inflict upon each other. This is a
healthy kind of fear that leads to bringing hostilities to an end, to
establishing a social pact with one another and to entrusting the
Sovereign with responsibility for preserving peace. Machiavelli, on the
other hand, referred to a more radical and tyrannical kind of fear or
terror, such as that exercised by Cesare Borgia who had let one of his
subordinates violently repress a region before subjecting him to public
execution in order to appease the population. And yet a question arises:
can this terror exercised by tyrants, of which classical history
provides numerous examples taken from many different cultures, be
compared to the Terror organized and publicly proclaimed by the French
and Russian Revolutions, and carried out in the name of liberty ? Can
these regimes of terror be placed in the same category as Nazi and
fascist regimes? Can they be equated to the violent actions carried out
by resistance groups opposing repression and occupation by violent
means? What is viewed as resistance by some is called terrorism by
others. This is the central question: do sound criteria exist that would
make it possible to differentiate regimes of terror from terrorism and
terrorism from legitimate violence? We will see that these criteria do
exist. We will have to establish them in a rigorous manner. This will
make it possible to assess the novel character of the terrorist action
conducted on September 11, 2001 and to estimate its religious—or
supposedly religious--element. But we must above all analyze the type of
response to which this event gave rise in American society and
elsewhere--a cynical and in a certain way boundless instrumentalization
of fear. One may wonder about the purpose of this response. Who benefits
from this strategy of intimidation and fear-mongering? Is this a new
phenomenon--on this scale at least--in human societies? This will
necessarily lead us to questioning the role of the media and to
confronting the most fundamental question facing modern democracies: how
is public opinion manufactured? Who has the means required to do so? Who
controls public opinion? What could be the meaning of a resistance?
The seminar will examine four directions:
- Fear, terror, and tyranny: Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, La
Boétie, Sorel, Leo Strauss.
- Regimes of terror and modernity; French and Russian
Revolutions; Nazism, Stalinism, and Fascism.: Saint Just,
Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, R. Antelme, Primo Levi, V. Chalamov, V.
Grossman, A. Solzhenitsyn
- Terrorist violence vs. legitimate violence; the question
of war; the question of reprisal. Clausevitz, Bakunin, C. Schmitt,
A. Camus, Sartre,M. Merleau-Ponty, M. Foucault, N. Chomsky, M.
Walzer
- Politics of fear and media: the construction of public
opinion.
Notes: 1. Readings will be available at no cost through Library
internet service.
2. Reading the documents assigned in the original language (other
than English)
can also be validated toward fulfilling the 2nd language
requirement. See
instructor.
CULTURAL STUDIES 255
CULTURAL STUDIES, COLONIALISM AND DECOLONIALISM
Paradoxes of Colonial Christianity
Instructor: John Blanco
Between the Spanish Conquest of the Americas and the rise of Christian
fundamentalisms in the contemporary world, the reception, and cultural
adoption and adaptation of Western Christianity and notions of
Christendom to the non-European context have solicited intense debate
and controversy. How does one evaluate the role of Christianity in
projects of colonization and conquest? What forms of resistance or
defiance to colonial rule does Christianity foment? What is the
correspondence (or disjunct) between the official Christianity of the
Vatican and the Christianities of fascist as well as national liberation
movements in the Americas, Asia, and Africa? This course will explore
the paradoxes of Christian religiosity in the colonial context along
several lines of thought: the shifting overlap between the terms
“Christianity,” “Christendom,” and “(European) civilization” in the
early modern period; the paradoxes of the Christian “economy” (oikonomia)
of representation; the transplantation and transformation of Christian
baroque culture in the Americas; the ambiguities of natural law as a
basis for both colonialism and antislavery / anti-colonial movements;
the culture or cultures of Christian apocalypse.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 246
VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Victorian Poetry: Victorian Poetic Debates
Instructor: Margaret Loose
We “commend this volume to feeling hearts and imaginative tempers, not
to the stupid readers;” “All poetry is of the nature of
soliloquy;” What is needed for great poetry “are great actions
[not expressions];” “Nobody in their senses would describe Gray’s Elegy
as the delineation of a ‘great action;’” “The fleshly gentlemen
[Pre-Raphaelites] . . . aver that poetic expression is greater than
poetic thought, . . . sound superior to sense . . . and that the
poet . . . must be an intellectual hermaphrodite. [. . . .] It is
simply nasty . . . [and the] poems are made up of trash.”
As these excerpts from Victorian critics make clear, the poetry of the
era was no tame or settled affair. Whether it should aim at elite or
middling readers, speak to an interior self or to some audience,
comprise great actions or beautiful expressions, aspire to musicality or
realism, or articulate blurred or clear dichotomies of gender
expression, were all serious questions both in theory and practice. This
seminar will frame such debates by reading both the poetry and the
poetic theory of Britain 1832-1901. Also prominent in our discussions
will be issues of form ranging from prosody to stanzaic choices, with
significant time spent on sonnets, songs and lyrics, and that Victorian
invention: the dramatic monologue. So the seminar will serve both as an
introduction to the history of some poetic forms and as a survey of
themes and authors, including women and working-class poets.
Participants will be asked to present (perhaps collaboratively) and lead
discussion on selected secondary materials and also to write a final
(10-12 page) essay. Books will be available at Groundwork Books.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 252
STUDIES IN MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
American Realism and Naturalism
Instructor: Michael Davidson
This seminar will provide an overview of American Realism and its roots
in postbellum modernity. Although Realism is usually thought of as a
nineteenth-century phenomenon, whose origins can be found in the
European novel, it was a key moment in American modernism, its impact
manifested in many literary works from Gertrude Stein and Ernest
Hemingway to Richard Wright and the Objectivists. We will study Realism
(and its scientific doppelganger, Naturalism) in relation to the rise of
commodity culture, comparative anatomy, U.S. imperialism, suffragism,
urbanism, and western expansion. We will read key documents in Realist
aesthetics, both European (Flaubert, Turgenev, Lukacs) and American
(Howells, James), and we will study aesthetic movements (painting,
photography) which deployed these theories beyond the novel. We will
read novels or short stories by Henry James, William Dean Howells, Edith
Wharton, Charles Chestnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Frank
Norris. Students will be asked to present oral reports on critical
essays in the field and will be asked to submit a conference length
paper at the end of the seminar.
LITERATURES IN ENGLISH 281
(Section A)
PRACTICUM IN LITERARY RESEARCH AND CRITICISM
Early Modern Studies
Instructor: Louis A. Montrose
This practicum is designed and intended for doctoral students working in
early modern studies who are currently writing their dissertations or
qualifying exam papers. Although our focus will be on framing,
organizing, and drafting these writing projects, with each participant
presenting work-in-progress for detailed group analysis and critique, we
will also analyze issues of method, style, and argument in
representative critical essays in the field; explore bibliographical and
research resources; and discuss issues related to scholarly publication
and the academic profession.
LITERATURES IN
ENGLISH 281 (Section B)
PRACTICUM IN LITERARY RESEARCH AND CRITICISM
Projects in American Studies/Cultural Studies
Instructor: Shelley Streeby
This seminar is designed to help students work on writing projects
situated at the intersections of American Studies and Cultural Studies.
Students at all levels are welcome in this class. Possible projects
include conference papers, seminar papers, qualifying papers, the
prospectus, and dissertation chapters, although others are possible.
Each student should enter the class with a project or projects they hope
to revise and expand, and as we read clusters of common texts each
student will write weekly one-page responses addressing how the
assignments are relevant to her/his particular project. We will begin by
reading some recent critical work on intersections of American Studies
and Cultural Studies, including short essays by Bruce Burgett, Glenn
Hendler, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Mary Pat Brady, David Kazanjian, Moon-Ho
Jung, Fred Moten, Brent Edwards, Rosemary George, Judith Halberstam,
Lisa Lowe, Robert Warrior, Nikhil Pal Singh, Vijay Prashad, Roderick
Ferguson, and others. We will also read work by George Lipsitz and
others on the historical relationships between British cultural studies
and American Studies. Next, we will consider American Studies in
international and transnational contexts. We will also think about
digital resources for doing American Studies projects. We will spend
some time reading essays from American Quarterly in order to talk about
the state of the field and requirements for publishing in journals. And
we will look at the last few calls for papers and conference programs
for the American Studies Association in order to think about how to
write conference abstracts and conference papers. During the quarter or
at the end, each student will present their work to the class, and at
the end of the quarter will turn in a revised and expanded version of
their project.
LITERATURES IN SPANISH 275
LATIN AMERICAN(IST) LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORIES SINCE THE 1960S
Instructor: Milos Kokotovic
In this seminar we will read works by Latin Americanist literary and
cultural critics who have theorized the relationship of Latin American
literature and popular culture to their socio-historical contexts. We
will begin in the 1960s with the so-called “Boom” in the Latin American
novel and work our way up to the more contemporary topics of Latin
American cultural and subaltern studies. Our concern throughout will be
to situate theories and theorists in their socio-historical contexts by
examining some key terms and concepts in relation to the historical
moment in which they were developed and the problems they addressed.
That is, we will be interested in theory not as an abstract and
universally applicable interpretive tool, but rather as a product of and
response to social conflicts and struggles. Literary and cultural
critics’ locations in Latin America and the North American (as well as
British) academy, and the power relationships implicit in the often
lopsided North-South theoretical dialogue, will also be a key concern.
In short, the seminar will be dedicated to questions of political
economy and periodization, cultural heterogeneity and transculturation,
gender and sexuality, relationships between literary, popular, and mass
cultures, and the production and circulation of theory.
LITERATURE THEORY 200B
PROBLEMS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY
Instructor: Stephanie Jed
In this seminar, we will look at how feminist and/or gendered
perspectives provide an opportunity to rethink traditional categories
such as nation/state, genre, fact, library, archive, narrative, and
theory. Areas of focus will include: post-colonial theory, political
theory, historiography, Marxism (and Hegelian thinkers), psychoanalysis,
immigration and diaspora.
We will include texts by: Kumari Jayawardena, Marguerite Waller
and Silvia Marcos, Jacqui Alexander,
Chela Sandoval, Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich, Marta Sánchez, Joan Scott,
Irene Silverblatt, Nancy Fraser, Maxine Molyneux, and Kimberle Crenshaw.
LITERATURE WRITING 282
WRITING STATES
Fabulism
Instructor: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
New wave fabulism, slipstream, magic realism, speculative fiction: this
writing class is devoted to reading and creating work that incorporates
elements of the fantastic in provocative and pleasurable ways. Every
week we’ll be generating brief fictions (reinvented fairy tales,
Borgesian encyclopedia entries, dystopian allegories) and discussing
them in a workshop format. We will also be reading widely from across
the genre, with particular focus on the possibilities that fabulism
offers for cultural critique and subversion. Ultimately each member of
the class will produce at least 25 pages of fantastical writing. Reading
may include works by: Angela Carter, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino,
Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Amos Tutuola, Rikki Ducornet,
Bhanu Kapil, Lucy Corin, Nalo Hopkinson, Yasunari Kawabata, Kelly Link,
Shelly Jackson, Kevin Brockmeier, and Mary Caponegro, with additional
critical essays.
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