CLT 510
— “History of Literary Theory, I”
Prof. Krin Gabbard
A survey of the most important documents on which our modern notion of the "theory" of literature is built. Each text from the pre-modern era will be read alongside appropriate literary works. For example, Aristotle's Poetics will be paired with a play of Sophocles, Horace's Art of Poetry with sections from the Aeneid, Dante's "Letter to Can Grande" with cantos from The Divine Comedy, etc. As often as possible, we will read contemporary critical essays that shed additional light on the canonical theoretical writings. So, after our discussion of Plato, we will read Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy," his critique of Platonic idealism. Because of Plato's centrality to so much of the theoretical tradition, we will consider his Phaedrus in connection with Nietzsche's critique of Socrates' role in the history of Greek tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy. This will lead us to a discussion of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, which weaves the Phaedrus and The Birth of Tragedy into a complex narrative. The goal of the course is to introduce the student to fundamental works of Western literature and thought that are essential to advanced literary study.
Monday
— 3:30-6:30 p.m. — E 4305 Melville Library
CLT 602 — “Postmodernisms”
Prof. Hugh Silverman
What does it mean to be postmodern? What are the differences between the modern and the postmodern? What is the relation between postmodernism and post-modernity? How have those differences been articulated by various contemporary literary, philosophical, and art theorists? In what sense are there many different postmodernisms?
The purpose of this seminar
is to articulate what is meant by the postmodern and postmodernism, to read a
number of contemporary theorists who have addressed this issue directly or
indirectly, and to explore how these terms are appropriate for the reading of
literary, art, architectural, and theoretical texts. The seminar will develop
what is meant by the postmodern sublime, postmodern textuality, and postmodern
politics.
Readings will address
specifically debates around deconstruction, postmodern hermeneutics, and
postmodernism in the arts and in political
theory.
Texts will include selections from the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze & Guattari, Vattimo, and Perniola.
Monday — 7:00-10:00 p.m. — E
4305 Melville Library
CLT 609 “Cinema and Public Memory”
Prof. Robert Chi
Comparative study of relations among cinema, memory, and the idea of a public, with special attention to distinctions between history and memory, to film form and genre, to aesthetics and spectatorship, and to the historiography of cinema. Specific films drawn from Asian, African, European, American, and Latin American cinemas.
Note: Please contact Professor Chi in advance for first week's readings.
Tuesday
— 5:20-9:20 p.m. — N 5004 Melville Library
CLT 597 Directed Readings, M.A.
CLT 599 Independent Study
CLT 690 Directed Readings
CLT 698 Practicum in Teaching
Also of interest (electives)...
EGL 606/WST 610 — “Victorian
Sexualities/Victorian Genders”
Prof. Adrienne Munich
To assert that the
Victorians enforced distinctive kinds of femininity and masculinity and
invented homosexuality as a sexual orientation would only slightly exaggerate
their heightened attention to sexuality and its boundaries in the period known
as Victorian. Through the reading of
different kinds of nineteenth-century texts--anthropological, literary,
medical, scientific, pornographic, sexological--and contemporary theories and
criticism, this seminar will examine how the topic of sex and its gendered
behaviors, infuse, even infiltrate Victorian culture. Such English Victorian familiar authors as Charles Darwin,
Havelock Ellis, William Acton, John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, George
Eliot will be read in conjunction with writers on race, forgotten medical
writers and anonymous erotic ones. An
extensive select bibliography will be provided that includes recent work on
nineteenth-century femininity and masculinity, queer studies, and theories of
race, ethnography, and gender.
Students will give a few short presentations and will produce about
twenty pages of scholarly work, growing from the presentations when
appropriate, in either one long seminar paper or two shorter papers.
Wednesday — 3:50-6:50 p.m. —
Life Sciences L-3
HIS 622 — “Migration,
Diaspora and Transnationalism”
Prof. Iona Man-Cheong
Migration, Diaspora and
Transnationalism are increasingly topical in historical research for many areas
of the world. Crossing boundaries by
definition, their study raises particular sets of issues conceptually and
empirically, and implicates the question of interdisciplinary work. This course examines some of these problems
and establishes some common ground for discussion based on a selection of
theoretical readings. In addition to
this reading, students are asked to contribute reading suggestions for the
class based on monographs or articles considered important in their particular
areas of investigation and to submit regular research reports and a final
research paper.
Thursday — 4:30-7:30 p.m. —
Social Behavioral Science S 309
MUS 555 — “Music,
Technology, and Digital Culture”
Prof. Joseph Auner
Studies of the interactions
between music, technology, and culture in popular and concert music since
WWI. Issues of production,
distribution, and reception, involving such topics as the impact of radio on
composition in the 1920s and 30s, recording technologies and ideas of authenticity,
early synthesizers and the rise of electronic music, digital sampling and DJ
culture, turntablism and scratching, the MP3 phenomenon, cross-cultural
borrowings, technology as "global underground," gender and
technology, the internet, interactivity, and new models of consumption.
Students will do homework
assignments including "hands-on" projects and commentaries on
selected readings, and prepare a fifteen- to twenty-page seminar paper on a
topic of their choice (with instructor's approval), that will serve as the
basis for a thirty minute presentation.
A 250-word, conference-style prospectus and preliminary bibliography for
the paper are due in class week 10. Grades will be based on the paper (65%) and
presentation (10%), and class participation and assignments (25%).
Wednesday — 2:00-5:00 p.m. —
Music Library Seminar Room (Melville Library)
SPN 612 — “The Gypsy in European Culture”
Prof. Lou Charnon-Deutsch
A multidisciplinary exploration of the gypsy icon across European literature, cinema, art and history. The course will be given in conjunction with a lecture series, Europe and the Gypsies, co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Hispanic Languages and Literature department and programmed to take place during regular class sessions on Wednesday evenings. Featured speakers include noted anthropologists, cultural anthropologists and historians, ethnomusicologists, and specialists in film and media studies. All readings and course lectures and discussions will be in English.
THR 535 — “Theories of
Theatre”
Prof. John Lutterbie
This course will look at
contemporary approaches to theatre and performance with particular emphasis on
the relationship between the theory of theatre and the cultural context in
which it was developed -- both as a response to that time and its potential
value in developing a cultural critique in the present. We will begin by looking at conflicting
thoughts about theatre in Plato and Aristotle, then Nietzsche and Diderot. We then look at opposing approaches to
creating theatre in Stanislavski/Meyerhold, Brecht/Artaud, Grotowski/Mnouchkine
and Barba/Boal. The course will come
to focus on theatre and everyday life and on forms of theatre that create forums
that give voice to underrepresented populations and/or serve to encourage
political resistance. Critical readings
(esp. on what constitutes a community) may well include Alphonso Lingis (The Community of Those Who Have Nothing In
Common), Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport (The
Trouble with Community), Hedicke and Neilhous (Performing Democracy) and others.
Wednesday — 9:30-12:30 p.m.
— Fine Art 3018