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ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Classics in Modern Philosophy
Zlatan Damnjanovic
TTh, 8:00-9:20
A close reading of several important works in seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. Emphasis on the cultural context of these works as well as on their philosophical content. The readings include Decartes, Meditations on First Philosophy; Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding (selections); Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Principles of Nature and Grace; Berkeley, Principles on Human Knowledge; Hume, An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding; Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The One Act Play In World Drama
Moshe Lazar
MW, 8:00-9:20
The objective of this course is to acquaint the student with a series of short plays, representing a great variety of genres, dramatic styles and techniques, and a broad range of historical periods and cultures. The plays and authors are discussed in their historical and ideological contexts. The analysis of the plays in the classroom will be applied by the students in their essays on a comparative topic. The readings will include Rutebeuf, The Miracle of Theophilus; Anonymous, Everyman; H. Sachs, The Wandering Scholar; Beolco, Ruzzante Returns from Wars; Molière, The Flying Doctor; Strindberg, Miss Julie: The Stronger; O'Neill, Before Breakfast; Ghelderode, Escurial; Hasenclever, Humanity; Goll, Methusalem; Cocteau, Wedding at the Eiffel Tower; O'Casey, Bedtime Story; Thornton Wilder, The Long Christmas Dinner; Brecht, The Jewish Wife; Arrabal, Picnic on the Battlefield; Ionesco, The Bald Soprano; Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Pinter, The Dumb Waiter; and Albee, Zoo Story.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Reading and Writing Nature
Ronald Gottesman
MWF, 10:00-10:50
In this course we will read several books by some of America's best-known "nature writers." As author of Nature Writing: The Pastoral Impulse in America, Don Scheese observes: the "typical form of nature writing is a first-person, nonfiction account of an exploration, both physical (outward) and mental (inward) of a predominantly nonhuman environment. . . " Thus, our texts will be autobiographical and each will tell us a good deal about a self responding to particular place (a creek, the desert Southwest, the Sierras, the rural Midwest, the Grand Canyon, the plains, the oceans, the Ozarks, etc.) It should be said, however, that not all of the events detailed in these explorations are pleasurable any more than all of your experiences in the thinly populated out-of-doors have been. It is likely that for each of you literally or figuratively a misjudged wave may have turned potential exhilaration into a near-death experience. The deliciousness of isolation in the back country may suddenly turn into what Emily Dickinson calls "zero at the bone." Each of the books we will read has directly and indirectly a good deal to say about environmental issues and their political implications. This aspect of nature and nature writing will also generate thought, discussion and writing. The readings will include texts by Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Peter Matthiessen, Cormac McCarthy, John McFee, John Muir, Gary Snyder, Henry David Thoreau and others.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
City of Myth
Kirill Postoutenko
MWF, 11:00-11:50
This course will explore St. Petersburg as an extraordinary cultural phenomenon: not just the social and economic phenomenon that is a city, but a "text" in its own right. It served (or one should again say "serves") as a text in two respects. Unlike other Russian cities that had arisen more or less organically in the middle ages, it was the willful creation of Peter I, his "window opening onto Europe" which was also intended in its function and design to mirror that Europe. But the representation of Peter's city in Russian culture (primarily literature but other arts as well) contributed to the creation of a "myth of St. Petersburg" that was in turn projected onto and influenced the city's "reality," if it can be called that. As Dostoevsky's narrator put it in Notes from Underground, this was "the most abstract and premeditated city in the world." In pursuit of St. Petersburg's cultural identity this course will examine several major works of Russian fiction, but in doing so it will also illustrate those works' close connection with their urban setting, with Russian political power (the presence of the tsar's court), and with Russian geopolitics (the city was a window on Europe, but also a paradoxical capital poised at the edge of its empire). St. Petersberg will be compared with the most fabulous European cities: Rome and Nuremberg. Almost three thousand-year-old Rome, the former capital of the magnificent Roman empire and a birthplace of Catholicism, remains the most powerful symbol of history in the modern world. Nuremberg, a lair of medieval European mystery and horror, becomes in the 20th century its real embodiment: first as a projected capital of Fascist state, then as the site of the final execution of Fascism--the Nuremberg trial. The reading list includes Petronius, Satiricon, Pushkin, "The Bronze Horseman" and Eugene Onegin; Gogol, "Nevsky Avenue," "The Nose," and "The Overcoat"; Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground and several short stories; Bely, Petersburg; Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, Ginzburg, Blockade Diary, and Brodsky, A Guide to a Renamed City. In addition, selected paintings (Raphael), engravings (Duhrer), as well as movies (Eisenstein, October, Fellini, Rome, Riefenstal, The Triumph of Will) and operas (Wagner, The Nuremberg Meistersingers) will be used.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Literature, Science and Science Fiction
Robert Dilligan
MWF, 11:00-11:50
Literature, Science and Science Fiction is a multidisciplinary course that explores the interactions between literature and science. Course material will deal with some of the major developments in Physics and Biology during this century. The primary texts for the course include scientist's accounts of scientific discovery, such as James Watson's The Double Helix; biographies of scientists such as William Poundstone's biography of John von Neumann, Prisoner's Dilemma; works that address the ethical and cultural dimensions of scientific discovery, such as Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth; novels by and about science, such as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; and science fiction novels, such as Benford's Timescape; Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven; LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness; Shelley, Frankenstein; Snow, The Two Cultures; Stoker, Dracula; Stirling, The Stone Dogs; Turner, Brain Child; and Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. The course will make extensive use of the World Wide Web, E-mail and computer multimedia.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Religious Experience and the Making of Western Culture Sheila Briggs
MWF, 11:00-11:50
This course looks at how the cultural identity and attitudes of modern Westerners have been shaped by a distinctive religious past. We will concentrate on those texts that modern Westerners have designated as religious classics. We will also be looking at religious music and art, especially at the ways in which these have interacted with written traditions. The reading list includes The Epic of Gilgamesh; Euripides, Bacchae; Apuleius, The Golden Ass; Augustine, Confessions; The Rule of Benedict; Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love; John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Friedrich Schleiermacher, Speeches on Religion; William James, Varieties of Religious Experience; selections which look at the construction of "minority" religious experiences in modernity (Jewish writers such as Martin Buber, African-American spirituals); and "Fall and Redemption Narratives" (selections from Genesis, Milton's Paradise Lost, J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the TV series Babylon 5). Music sources will include selections from Gregorian Chant, J.S. Bach and other composers/compositions which illustrate the broader socio-cultural context of musical production. Visual material will include published sources (e.g. the architecture and sculpture of Chartes Cathedral) as well as visits to the Getty and Norton Simon museums. I may also show short video clips beyond the selection from Babylon 5.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Innocents Abroad
Jerold Frakes
MW, 2:00-3:20
The genre of travelogue -whether conceived as fact or fiction, whether as history, epic, chronicle, fantasy, report, letter or novel -functions in a variety of socially significant ways: to characterize the Self and his/her culture, to represent the Other and his/her culture, to compare and contrast the two, to prepare potential future travelers for the road mentally and emotionally, to prepare for military intervention, colonization, tourism. Surviving travelogues (taken in a broad sense), from the earliest periods of literature up through the "discoveries" and conquests of recent centuries, provide a fascinating window on cultures in contact, not always in conflict. The texts may include: Lucian, A True Story; Homer, The Odyssey; Herodotus, The Histories; "Alexander's Letter to Aristotle"; Adamnan and Arculf, On the Holy Places; Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Book 1-2; The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America; Fadlan, "Vikings on the Volga"; Polo, The Travels; Mandeville, The Travels; Colon, The Four Voyages; Cabeza de Vaca, Relation; Swift, Gulliver's Travels; Ibn Battutuh, Rihlah; Verne, Around the World in 80 Days; and Dougherty, Travels in Arabia Deserta. The films will include: "Cabeza de Vaca," "Mountains of the Moon," "Aguirre, Wrath of God," and "Apocalypse Now."
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Classics of Greek Philosophy and Literature
Kevin Robb
TTh, 2:00-3:20
This course introduces the student to a selection of the best of Greek literature and philosophy with an emphasis on reading a text as very much a product of a place, time and society, but also one with enduring interest for thoughtful persons for the present time. The intent is to keep to acknowledged "classics," the best works of a literature already selected in antiquity as a canon and the best philosophical writing, but which also have proven interest for modern readers. Readings from Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Cleanthes.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
On Beauty
Daniel Tiffany
MWF, 1:00-1:50
Beauty is a touchy subject these days--in part, some would say, because beauty has disappeared, or been pushed, from the horizon of serious discussion. Just to talk about beauty as an idea today, we usually have to historicize it (relegate it to the past), or approach it ironically (to speak as if something were beautiful). What would it mean, however, to take seriously the pleasures, the anxieties, and the power we associate with beauty? Would it be necessary to recover a sense of the relation between philosophy and beauty, or between art and beauty? To begin to answer these many questions about beauty, we will read widely in the history of aesthetics (the philosophy of art), but also analyze essays of art and literary criticism, by authors ranging from Edmund Burke to Arthur Danto to Roland Barthes. We will consider the enormous impact of popular culture on contemporary notions of beauty, moving from Vogue magazine to fractal diagrams to hip hop. In addition, to complicate our sense of beauty--and to discover its partial nature--we will read back and forth between poetry and philosophy, as if we might fashion, through dialogue, a kaleidoscopic sense of beauty. These imaginary conversations between (for example) Plato and Baudelaire, Lessing and Emily Dickinson, or Plotinus and John Ashbery, will form the backbone of our analytic project, and they will also supply us with a conceptual and imaginative vocabulary adequate to probing the mystery of beauty.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Shakespeare Our Contemporary
Steve Moore
MWF, 2:00-2:50
This course attempts to account for the continued popularity of Shakespeare in academic courses, theatrical performance, and (in particular) recent films. Close reading and analysis of at least eight plays (Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest) and screenings of selected films will be required.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
War and Memory in Korean Literature
Jinhee Kim
MW, 2:00-3:20
This course will examine autobiographical and fictional accounts depicting wars in the twentieth century, with special reference to Korea. We will examine works written during and after the Second World War and the Korean War. We will explore the special links between collective and individual experiences, and the centrality of memories as a means to construct the past.
Students will also investigate the historical and political realities at the root of imperialism and aggression. Works by Korean authors (Ahn, Cho, and Pak) will be closely examined along with recent publications by Korean-American writers (Nora Keller, Helie Lee, and Therese Park). Students will be encouraged to think about the complex interactions between human lives and the social, political, and economic conditions in which they emerge, especially during times of conflict and war. The required texts include: Ahn, Silver Stallion; Cho, Playing With Fire; Pak, "Winter Outing"; Nora Keller, Comfort Woman; Kim, Lost Names; and Lee, Still Life With Rice. All readings are in English. No knowledge of Korean language, literature, or culture is required.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Women in Ancient Literature
Tamara Eskenazi
MW, 2:00-3:20
As heroes or helpmates, prophets or sages, victims or warriors, women make striking appearances in the Bible and other ancient Jewish literature. This course will examine these female representations, as well as their interpretations in later traditions. In addition to discovering the wide variety of women in the Bible and other ancient writings, our purpose will be to cultivate critical skills in assessing meanings derived from such texts. We will ask: What can we learn about beliefs concerning women? What do these reveal about the lives of actual women? What influence did these stories have on subsequent perceptions of gender issues? How do these stories find expression in today's world? We will concentrate on several critical approaches, including literary and historical. The books for the course include The Oxford Study Bible; Bellis, Helpmates, Harlots, Heroes: Women's Stories in the Hebrew Bible; Darr, Far More Precious than Jewels: Pespectives on Biblical Women; Meyer, Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Woman in Context; Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality; and Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Imagination and Revolution in Modern Russian Literature
MWF, 10:00-10:50
Jenifer Presto
In this course, we will examine the fascinating period in Russian literature beginning with the Revolution of 1917 and ending with the fall of the Soviet empire. This period was met by radical transformations in the political, social, and economic spheres which had a profound impact on the cultural scene. The literature produced in this period was not only charged with political ideas, but was also extremely innovative and experimental. In this course, we will devote ourselves to an analysis of the forms that the literary imagination took: we will read works that reflected the dreams and ideals of the Soviet state, as well as texts that expressed disillusionment with the regime, paying particular attention to the relationship between political and revolutionary ideas and artistic form in these works. One of the goals of the course will be to destroy the perception common among students that literature written in Russia after 1917 pales in comparison to the literature of the pre-revolutionary period. The reading list for this course includes Akhmatova, Requiem; Babel, Collected Stories; Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog and Master and Margarita; Chukovskaya, Sophia Petrovna; Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Life; Gladkov, Cement; Mayakovksy, The Bedbug; Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; Terts, The Trial Begins; and Zamiatin, We.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Border and Spirit, Land and Nation: The "Heart" Land in Literature and Film
Teresa McKenna
TTh, 2:00-3:20
This course is designed to draw the student's attention to the underlying structures of signification that both structure texts and produce them. By using the metaphor of the border to indicate the encounter between cultures, races and genders, the student will come to understand the complexities of representation and production of cultural forms. The Border, as Gloria Anzaldua has famously indicated, is not a comfortable place, it is "a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition." (Borderlands/la frontera, p.3) The United States has been created out of struggles between nations and peoples, for land and for control over self-determination. The connections between real and metaphoric borders and identity, between land and spirit are central to uncovering the impulse to establish place and nation, as well as to produce lasting reminders of these struggles in art. Students will read a selection of literary texts and will view several films in which these issues are key. They will also read supporting critical essays to guide them in their critical reading and viewing. The course bibliography includes Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres; Helen Marie Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus; Willa Cather, O Pioneers; Katerine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas; Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima; Tomas Rivera, Y no se lo trago la tierra, And the Earth did not Devour Him; N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn; Ana Castillo, So Far From God; Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart; Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time; Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don; Louise Erdrich, Tracks; and Toni Morrison, Sula. The films include Lone Star (John Sayles), The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (Moctesuma Esparaza) and Tierra (Paul Espinosa).
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Music and the Modern Imagination
Bryan Simms
TTh, 2:00-3:20
This class will be devoted to a close study of music from the 20th century that expresses important characteristics of the modern imagination--including social and scientific phenomena, political and racial ideologies, and ideas from the other fine arts and letters of the century. To learn how music intersects the modern world, we will read critical essays, scientific writings, polemics, and works of literature and assess in detail their influence upon selected musical compositions and the outlook of major composers. No reading knowledge of music is necessary, although repeated listening to the assigned music is required. The class sessions will contain lectures, student presentations, and guided discussions. All of the assigned listening is found on cassette tapes on reserve for this class in the Music Library, and the assigned reading is collected in an anthology that may be purchased at the bookstore.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Literature of Resistance
TTh, 2:00-3:20
Yaffa Weisman
How does a culture react to oppression? What literary products are created in the process? Can literature be an act of resistance? What modes of resistance are suggested in such literature? This course will explore literary expressions of resistance in a variety of societies and groups that experience(d) oppression deriving from their cultural, religious, gender, and national affiliations. Students in the class will read texts written from antiquity to modernity, reflecting instances of spiritual, political, military and cultural resistance to subjugation and oppression. The course will introduce students to various genres of writing including biblical texts, fiction, poetry, sermons, diaries, historical documents and political manifestos. With lecture-discussion providing the context for such literature, class discussions and various assignments will enable the students to develop critical reading skills and analytical thinking. The reading list includes, Book of Judges, Hebrew Scripture; Book of Job, Hebrew Scripture; Book of Judith, Apocrypha; War Scroll, The Dead Sea Scrolls; Paul's letters; Shiite literature; excerpts from the writings of Martin Luther, Spinoza, Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama, and Karl Marx; poetry and prose from African, South American, Mediterranean authors; and historical documents: French and American Declarations of Independence and Ghetto Diaries. Other resources include: various web sites of anti-establishment groups and the films, Z, Fahrenheit 451 and Hair.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Landscape and Poetry
Lynn Matteson
TTh, 2:00 - 3:20
This course considers the role of "Nature" in the arts of the West from about 1450 to the middle of the 20th century. The primary vehicle is landscape painting, especially that of England in the 19th century (Constable, Turner) and its relationship with nature poetry (Wordsworth) and the rise of the landscape garden. We will, however, explore other countries and arts, specifically music, where we will listen to the works of Vivaldi, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, and Delius, as well as the art of the Impressionists (Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Gaugin).
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Culture, Conformity, Revolt
David Rollo
TTh, 12:30-1:50
The course will consider the themes of revolt and conformity in literary works written between the Middle Ages and the present and in late twentieth-century popular culture. We shall ask certain fundamental questions: what social or political forces lead people to rebel? When is rebellion simply a type of conformism or a pretext for personal gain, glory and glamour? During which particular periods of history have significant social changes taken place? What rebellious role is played by clothes, accessories, cosmetics and shoes? The ambiguous revolutions under analysis may be sensual (Kate Chopin, The Awakening, Mme. de LaFayette, The Princess of Cleves), sexual (Honoré de Balzac, The Girl with the Golden Eyes, André Gide, The Immoralist), political (Marguerite de Navarre, excerpts from The Heptameron, Geoffrey Chaucer, excerpts from The Canterberry Tales), educational (The Quest of the Holy Grail) or philosophic (Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head, Albert Camus, The Stranger). Some attention will also be devoted to the manipulation of revolt in the pursuit of money and self-glorification (products by Madonna, music and film featuring The Sex Pistols and Doris Day).
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Varieties of Love and Literary Form
Joseph Boone
MWF, 1:00-1:50
This course will focus on the way in which changing concepts of love and romantic union shaped some of western culture's most important literary works. The class will explore the ways in which various forms of literary expression have served to mirror evolving social norms of love, as well as the ways in which literature has sometimes not just articulated but helped create new expressions of desire or ideal relationship. Reading will begin with the classicus locus of love-doctrine in western philosophy, Plato's Symposium, which we will compare to an example of Greek tragedy, Euripides's Medea, and an example of pastoral romance, Longus's Daphnis and Chloe. We then measure the gulf between the medieval idealization of adulterous courtly love found in troubadour love poetry and the English Renaissance's consolidation of love, courtship, and marriage in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. What happens to "happy endings" in the modern period will be investigated in a range of texts and genres, including Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Decoding Medieval Visual Culture
Carolyn Malone
TTh, 12:30-1:50
This introductory course investigates the meaning and use of art, architecture, and other products of visual culture during the Middle Ages. Each work will be interpreted within its specific historical context to discover not only how it reflects its culture but how it interacted with that culture at the moment of production. For example, comparison of the Bayeux Tapestry with other original documents reveals that it represents the point of view of its producers, a position different from some written accounts of the Norman Conquest in 1066. In other cases, such as the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, we can decipher in the narrative of the mosaics several layers of hidden meanings, theological and political. A limited number of significant works, such as these, will be studied chronologically and in depth to allow critical discussion and to provide an overview of the Middle Ages for the beginning student. Within the continuity of the medieval tradition, works of art that reveal changing social attitudes and political strategies will be emphasized. Initial discussions will include questions such as: How can the meaning of the work of art as an historical artifact be decoded, and how is historical investigation different from scientific method? Various theories and methods, including psychoanalytic theory, will be used to interpret the work of art. Specific works to be examined will include: the paintings of the Priscilla Catacomb; the architecture of Hagia Sophia; the Ruthwell Cross, the Plan of St. Gall, Beatus Apocalypse, the sculpture of Beaulieu and Vezelay, the sculpture, stained glass, and architecture of Saint Denis and Chartes.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The African-American Literary Heritage
Robert Grant
TTh, 12:30-1:50
This course will analyze the nature and history of Black American "writerly" strategies, from slavery (Douglass, Jacobs, Washington), through turn-of-the-century and Harlem Renaissance eras (Chesnutt, Dunsbar, DuBois, Hughes, Hurston), to mid-century and contemporary periods (Ellison, Baldwin, Hansberry, Morrison). The course will have a firm "aesthetics" base as well as a politico-cultural orientation.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Muslim Literature
Adam Rubin
MWF, 9:00-9:50
This course will introduce the student to the image of Jerusalem as a holy city in Jewish, Christian and Muslim literature. The literature of the three religious communities played a central role in transmitting the image of Jerusalem as birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, and holy city for Islam as well. Goal of pilgrimage and cause of Crusade, themes such as "Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem," and "Jerusalem as the Center of the World" infused many aspects of Western Culture, far beyond the borders of the Land of Israel. Assigned readings from biblical and later non-biblical texts will be examined from a critical perspective to provide the student with humanistic, scholarly, and intellectual tools to understand the background of the tensions between the image and the reality of life in Jerusalem from Antiquity through the Middle Ages and into the Modern Period. The texts for the course will include: Peters, Jerusalem: the Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times; The Oxford Study Bible; Josephus, The Jewish Wars; Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane; Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Investigation into Economic and Social Conditions during the New Testament Period; Purvis, Jerusalem, the Holy City: a Bibliography; and Rosovsky, City of the Great King: Jerusalem from David to the Present.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Masterpieces of the Short Story
Alexander Zholkovsky
TTh, 9:30 - 10:50
This course is intended to be an introduction to Russian literature by way of its best short fiction, during which students will also be introduced to the basic principles of textual interpretation. Students will read, mostly in chronological order, and analyze some of the best short stories written by Russian authors over the two-hundred year existence of modern Russian prose, from Karamzin to the present day. Key emphases will fall on historical background (the reading list provides a cross-section of an entire culture and the changes it has undergone in the modern era); narrative structure (of which students are usually ignorant, but a critical awareness of which will prepare them for more advanced literary, and other kinds of, analysis); and intertextuality (the lively dialog that turns out to be taking place among these texts and often enough between them and non-Russian works). Among other topics that will be addressed are, on the historical side, the civic tenor of Russian literature and its role as surrogate opposition in Russian society, including the peculiar pressures of the Soviet era; and on the literary side, the ways in which these texts often simultaneously adopt and subvert the exemplars that precede them. The reading list includes the following: Karamzin, "Poor Liza"; Pushkin, "Station Master", "The Shot"; Gogol, "The Overcoat", "The Nose"; Lermontov, "Taman"; Dostoevsky, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", "The Gentle Spirit"; Leskov, "The Sentry"; Tolstoy, "After the Ball"; Chekhov, "The Darling", "Anna on the Neck"; Bunin, "Light Breathing"; Kuprin, "The Garnet Bracelet"; Gorky, "Twenty Six and a Girl"; Babel, "Guy de Maupassant", "Answer to Inquiry"; Romanov, "Without Cherry Blossom"; Zoshchenko, "Aristocrat", "Receipt", "An Evening of Culture"; Nabokov, "Spring in Fialta"; Platonov, "Fro"; Iskander, "On a Summer Day"; Aksenov, "Victory"; Solzhenitsyn, "An Incident at Krechetovka"; and Siniavsky, "Pkhentz."
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Reality and Its Others
Peter Starr
TTh, 9:30-10:50
This course examines the tendency of modern culture both to construct recognizable visions of the real and to call such constructions into question. Beginning with a series of classical philosophical positions on the question of what constitutes reality (among them those of Plato, Descartes, Locke and Kant), we will move to readings of several canonical works in the realist and fantastic modes (Balzac's Old Goriot and Dickens' Oliver Twist; short fiction by Gogol, Hoffmann, James and Kafka). After a few sessions devoted to stories in the magical realist vein (by Bombal, Cortazar, Lispector, Borges, and García Màrquez), we will turn our attention to the depiction of alternative realities in novels by Thomas Pynchon and Philip K. Dick. The semester then concludes with a brief segment on virtual reality, anchored by a reading of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Tales of Witches, Rogues, and Madmen In Early Modern Spain
Bruce R. Burningham
TTh, 9:30-10:50
Between 1492 and 1681, two crucial events occurred in Spain which helped to define "modern" civilization: 1) the creation of the world's first modern, bureaucratic state, designed to ensure the smooth functioning of a global empire larger, wealthier and more internationally entangled than had ever before existed; and 2) the rise of the "novel" as the preeminent literary genre of the last four hundred years. Through a close reading of several works of fiction whose main characters are witches, rogues, and madmen--and who thus operate largely on the margins of this imperial society--this course will examine the following issues (among others); the representation of "deviancy" and its role in undermining many of the social, cultural, and religious foundations of the Hapsburg empire; the representation of an "urban" environment in which deviant behavior is often portrayed (not un-problematically) as an asset rather than a detriment to social ascendancy; the development of an abrasive, "picaresque" aesthetic in stark contrast to the more idyllic literary forms of the period; the creation of an anti-heroic protagonist who stands in opposition to the archetypal hero of earlier literary genres; and the playful fabrication of implied "narrators," "documents," and "readers" in the evolution of our "modern" approach to literature. Readings will include Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499); the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes (1554); Francisco de Quevedo's The Swindler (1626); two of Miguel de Cervantes's Exemplary Stories, "Rinconete and Cortadillo" and "The Dogs Colloquy"(1613); and Cervantes's masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605;1615).
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Art and Text in Imperial Rome
Anthony J. Boyle
TTh, 12:30-1:50
A detailed critical and analytic study of selected works of literature and of visual art (architecture, sculpture, painting) from early imperial Rome. The focus will be on intense reading and intellectual analysis of the works themselves, of their relationship to each other and to the culture(s) which produced them. The course will focus on two periods: the Rome of Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE) and that of Nero (54-68 CE). The art for the course includes the following: Augustan Period: Augustan monuments, esp. the Forum Augusti; official sculpture, esp. the Altar of Peace and the Prima Porta; and Roman imperial painting, esp. the 'ornamental style' and sacro-idyllic; and Neronian Period: Architecture, esp. the Palaces; Sperlonga sculptures and the Laocoon; Roman imperial painting, esp. the 'theatrical style.' The texts for the course will include: Virgil, Aeneid; Ovid, Fasti; Petronius, Satyricon; Seneca, Troades ('Trojan Women'); and Tacitus, Annals.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Girlhood: Twentieth Century Perspectives
Alice Gambrell
MWF, 10:00-10:50
When the word "girl"disappeared from polite usage nearly twenty-five years ago, widespread cultural interest in the vicissitudes of girlhood seemed to disappear along with it. Since the early 1990's, however, a range of literary writers, sociologists, filmmakers, psychologists, and cultural critics have once again turned their attention, this time with some urgency, toward the phases of female childhood and adolescence. In this course, we will examine this contemporary resurgence of interest in the figure of the "girl" emphasizing the difficulty of locating suitable literary forms through which to articulate the complexities of girlhood. We will begin by examining a series of well-known older depictions of female children, ranging from the classic (Alcott's Little Women) to the highly controversial (Freud's Dora; Nabokov's Lolita). We will then turn to the contemporary moment, paying special attention to the narrative innovations of Toni Morrison's 1974 novel Sula, a text that served as inspiration and as point of departure for dozens of depictions of girlhood published in the years since. Finally, after reading a range of contemporary novels (by Sandra Cisneros, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jayne Anne Phillips), we will look at writing by young feminists who are currently working to reclaim the importance and to redefine the significance of the "girl."
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Narrative Forms in Literature and Film
William H. Brown
TTh, 2:00 - 4:30
This course will be an introductory study of narrative strategies in film and literature. Our emphasis will be on interpreting structural and thematic conventions--those that help define the tragedy of classical Greece, the tragedy and romance of Renaissance England, and the social realism of the late nineteenth century on the one hand, the western and detective genres of modern film on the other. Our juxtaposing of literary works with films will enable us to analyze recurring principles of narrative development in these two forms, even though the forms come from distinctly different historical and aesthetic contexts. We will examine broad issues like parallel plots and the development of character, as well as more narrow concerns such as the establishment of self image and of one's role within society, the bonding within groups, the quest for justice, the failure of communication between the sexes, and the limitations of idealism. Literary texts will include Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Antigone, Euripides' Medea and Orestes, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale, and Ibsen's A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, and An Enemy of the People. Films will include The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, High Noon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Chinatown, Witness for the Prosecution, and Vertigo.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The Nation and Its Others in American Literature and Film
Viet Nguyen
MW, 3:30-4:50
This course examines the development of American national identity. We will start historically at the origins of American society, in the nexus of cultural confrontation between the English settlers, native Americans, and African slaves. Although these initial confrontations seem to be explicitly about race, we will also see the complex interplay between class, gender, sexuality and cultural self-imagination. This complex interplay has shaped the early foundation of American identity and exclusion from that identity. We will continue to explore the legacy of this early identity as it has evolved into the 19th and 20th centuries, and we will examine how our contemporary notions of cultural difference concerning other issues besides race--feminism, homosexuality, foreigners (legal and undocumented), and the poor--find some of their origins in this legacy. Ultimately we will make inquiries about the present state of American national identity: is it singular and unified or multiple and in negotiation? The tensions between different groups, resulting from struggles for cultural and economic dominance, have long been a primary concern for American artists. It is through the work of writers and filmmakers that we will explore these tensions, both as the content with which they are concerned, and as the formal limits of their work that they wrestle with. Ultimately, what we are concerned with is the function of literature and film as part of America's cultural self-expression; literature and film both expose and embody the tensions and contradictions of American character. Film screenings outside of class, from 5-7 PM on at least a half-dozen evenings, are mandatory. Students should also expect to deal with controversial issues that may be construed as "offensive" or "difficult." Texts may include: Douglass, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave; Erdrich, Love Medicine; Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!; Franklin, Autobiography; Melville, Benito Cereno; Morrison, Beloved; Selby, Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn. Films may include: Ford, The Searchers; Griffith, The Birth of a Nation; Scorsese, Taxi Driver; Welles, Citizen Kane; and lesser known independent films.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Literature, Songs and Opera
Cornelius Schnauber
MW, 3:30-4:50
Many of the world's most famous operas, song cycles, oratorios and symphonic works are based on works of known literature. This course gives an introduction into literary works of German and other European authors which have been used most often for music or have inspired some of the most well- known musical masterpieces. It will include Goethe's Werther, Egmont and Faust, Schiller's Don Carlos and William Tell, Shakespeare's Othello, Wild's Salome, tales of E.T. A. Hoffmann, plays and stories by French authors and poems by Goethe, Heine and other Romantic German poets which have been used for some of the greatest songs and song cycles. In this course students will also learn how to analyze the content and style of the chosen literary works and will be introduced into how these works were put to music in different styles by different composers from different countries, such as German composers Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Brahms, Humperdinck, R. Strauss, Austrian composers Mozart(Salzburg), Schubert, Wolf, Mahler, French composers Berlioz, Bizet, Gounod, Massenet, Italian composers Rossini, Verdi, Busoni, Russian composers Mussorsky, Tschaikovsky, German-French composer Offenbach, Hungarian-Austrian-German composer Liszt, and British composer Britten. In the case of opera and songs, students will also analyze how musical phrasing and intonation relate to spoken intonation and prosodics of written text. While the focus of the course will remain on the literary text, the introduction into musical style will be equally important.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Mythology and Contemporary Poetry
Susan McCabe
MWF, 12:00-12:50
This course will introduce students to the use and presence of Greco-Roman myth in modern and contemporary poetry. By reading Ovid's Metamorphosis and excerpts from Homer, the class will foster an understanding of the continuing vitality of myth in literary tradition as well as its relevance to modern issues, such as sexual harassment, rape, incest, seduction, pollution, sex-change, suicide, hetero-and homosexual love, torture, war, depression and intoxication. We will read diverse poets of the 20th century as they reinterpret, reflect upon or reimagine mythological characters. Students will not only study "the ancients" in relation to modern culture, but will also become familiar with the process of explication, the close analysis of a poem. In addition, we will be devoting at least a section of the class to the particular uses women poets have made of myth. Writing for the class will include analytic as well as creative assignments.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Comparative Conceptions of the Self
Edward Slingerland
MWF, 12:0012:50
This course is intended to introduce students to the various ways in which the "self" has been portrayed (implicitly and explicitly) in both Eastern and Western religious traditions, as well as how these differing conceptions of the self have resulted in quite disparate manners of understanding ethics, the relation of the self to society, the valuation of particular human abilities, and similar issues. A main focus will be the history of the construction of the modern Western, liberal conception of self, and some of the problems endemic to this conception. The idea is to help the student see: 1) that he or she has a conception of him-/herself, whether he or she was previously aware of it or not; 2) where this conception of the self came from, and what some of its tensions are; 3) how any conception of the self is inextricably tied up with theories about human nature and some sort of (usually religious) worldview; and 4) how other conceptions of the self (ancient Greek, Taoist, Confucian) differ from the most dominant in the modern West. Thinkers to be treated include Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Kierkegaard, Mencius, Xunzi (Hsün-tzu) and Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu). The required texts include Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; Descartes, Mediations on First Philosophy; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents; Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death; Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil; Taylor, Sources of the Self: the Making of Modern Identity; Van Norden and Ivanhoe (eds.) Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy and a course reader.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The Language of Poetry
Donald Freeman
MWF, 12:00-12:50
This course will explore the close reading of poetry, using the new analytical approaches made possible by contemporary research in metaphor and the grammar of poetry. We'll develop a theoretical background by analyzing some major poems of the three big Renaissance sonneteers, Sir Phillip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare; then we'll examine the challenging language of John Milton's Paradise Lost. We will conclude with some of Ben Jonson's non-dramatic poetry and selections from the rich but difficult poetry of Emily Dickinson. Required texts: Abrams, et al, (eds.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume I (rev. ed.); Lakoff and Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (1989); Burto (ed.), William Shakespeare: The Sonnets (Signet Classic, 1988); Johnson (ed.), Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The Illustrated Book:Text and Image in Blake and the Photo Documentary
Margaret Russett
TTh, 11:00-12:20
This class considers two complicated examples of an apparently simple idea, the picture-book. What happens to meaning when images are added to words, or words to images? Through extended investigation of this question, the course is intended to develop critical skills in both literary and visual analysis. Our first case in point will be the works of poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake; our second will be the famous "documentaries" produced by teams of writers and photographers during the Great Depression. Both Blake and the later photo-journalists considered the visual content of their books to be equally important as the verbal text; their messages consisted in the interaction between the two. To understand these works--and, by extension, to understand any work of art that (like film or video) combines more than one form of communication--we will need to develop methods for analyzing text and image both separately and together. Therefore, this class will be interdisciplinary in approach, combining aspects of art history, social history, and the history of book production with techniques of literary interpretation and close reading. The first half of the semester will be devoted to examining the career of Blake in the context of the various revolutions--political, industrial, and artistic--in which he participated. Our primary texts will be his handmade, "illuminated" books, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy. As well as examining these works in book form, we will see slides of Blake's paintings and illustrations of other authors. In addition, we will use visual resources available on the Web to understand how Blake's method of printmaking contributed to the meaning of his works. During the second half of the semester, we will apply "Blakean" techniques of analysis to the works of some writers and photographers who shared Blake's social ideals and artistic vision. This part of the class will focus on two books--You Have Seen Their Faces, by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans--that attempted to document the impact of the Depression on farmworkers in the American South. Deeply committed to representation, these books make us wonder: is a picture really worth a thousand words? Can words do things that pictures cannot do? If we do not answer these questions, we will at least find some different ways of asking them.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
The Quest
Anthony Kemp
TTh, 11:00-12:20
The quest is a journey through space and time in search of some object, place, or state that we lack in the present. Its most basic premise is a dissatisfaction with what is. Why should we not simply rest content with what and where we are? What absence drives us on? What do we seek? What will happen to us if we find it? Through what landscape are we travelling? In this course we will look at examples of the quest from widely divergent cultural situations, at quests heroic, philosophical, chivalric, romantic, postmodern. We will look at the ways in which this persistent literary form reveals the most deeply-held ideas and values of a culture and of authors who both embody and oppose those ideals. Readings: Anon., The Quest for the Holy Grail; Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Shakespeare, The Tempest; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Kate Chopin, The Awakening; Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head; A.S. Byatt, Possession; and Hanif Kureshi, The Buddha of Suburbia. Questers only should embark for this voyage as no guarantees of intellectual safety can be given; the complacent will fall by the wayside or be cast overboard.
ARTS AND LETTERS 100g
Women in Literature and Art
Gloria Orenstein
TTh, 11:00-12:20
This course is intended to present and examine the issues and feminist analyses surrounding discussions about women and creativity, both in literature and the visual arts in the western tradition. It should serve as an introduction to the feminist paradigms and problematics involved in a gendered analysis of creation in other arts, as well. In order to enlarge the scope of our understanding of the patriarchal and feminist diversities, we will also consider an alternative creative system -- that of the pre-patriarchal era and of the Goddess civilization. The readings will include books from the following list: Simone de Beauvior, The Second Sex; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own; The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women; Grandmothers of the Light, Ed. by Paula Gunn Allen; Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet; Judy Chicago, Through the Flower; Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess; The Power of Feminist Art Ed. by Boude and Garrard; The Guerilla Girls Bedside Companion of Art History; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; and Art and Sexual Politics, Ed. T. Hess, essay by Linda Nochlin.
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Renaissance Drama |
This course is designed to teach techniques of close-reading, to stimulate students' thinking on some key questions raised in fictional form by masters of the short story and novella: the artist and society; the artistic temperament; class conflicts; realism and economics; Romantic Rousseauism vs. miserablism (proletarian art); race relations and conflict in American Southern literature; illusion and reality; fiction into film. At all times there will be implicit instruction in techniques of interpretation of various symbolic systems of expression.
ARTS AND LETTERS 101g
Los Angeles: The Fiction
Thomas Gustafson
MWF, 12:00-12:50
Los Angeles has always been a place full of hype. Let me add some to it. No city in the United States has a more significant fiction and popular culture associated with it since the 1930s than Hollywood and Los Angeles. As much of the political posturing in the 1990s about sex and violence in films reminds us, throughout the twentieth century Los Angeles/Hollywood has been a primary staging ground--or projection screen--for our political and cultural conflicts, particularly for our debate about the place and influence of popular culture and for our concerns arising from confronting one of America's fundamental contradictions. Opposed to the stories (or songs) of California and the West as a free and open space for escape, renewal and an easy attainment of the good life is the fact of the West as a territory of conquest and oppression. Indeed, the West in general and Los Angeles in particular is not the place where we have escaped from each other. It is where we--Native Americans, Latinos, Blacks, Anglos, Asians, Easterners, Midwesterners, Southerners, immigrants from all over the globe, Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Protestants, etc.--all met, and will continue to meet. This course offers an opportunity to study Los Angeles and Southern California as a political and cultural borderland: a space of collaboration, friction, conflict and fusion among peoples of various cultures and regions.
Any study of Los Angeles must include Hollywood, and this course will give attention to the Hollywood novel, a genre of literature that was, in the words of one critic, "the great literary invention of the Thirties." But along with using fiction to draw aside the curtain for an inside look at Hollywood, the course hopes to provide students, whether they be natives or newcomers to L.A., with a deeper, richer sense of place. Authors to be read include Joan Didion, Budd Schulberg, Nathanael West, James Cain, Yxta Maya Murray, Luis Valdez, Anna Deavere Smith, Sandra Loh, Karen Yamashita, and Chester Himes.
ARTS AND LETTERS 101g
Renaissance Drama
Charles Berryman
MWF, 10-10:50
An introduction to Renaissance Drama with special attention to the methods of interpretation -- language, history, character, and imagination -- ways to understand and enjoy dramatic literature created for the Renaissance stage. We shall consider plays by Shakespeare and at least two of his contemporaries (Marlowe and Webster) to see how social, political, and religious concerns are defined and challenged by the action and poetry on the Renaissance stage. The class will read six or seven plays, consider historical information, discuss interpretations, possibly direct and/or act a few scenes, and explore ways to respond with short essays and exams. The reading list includes; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet and The Tempest; Marlowe, Dr. Faustus; and Webster, The White Devil.
