Graduate Courses in Comparative Literature, Spring 2000
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CLT 511 - History of Literary Theory: Part 2 - Ban Wang

This course will provide readings of major literary and cultural theories after the Enlightenment. In addition we will pursue the themes that may have a direct bearing on students' areas of interest: the crisis of authority and tradition, the critique of the experience of modernity, the disintegration of consciousness and shrinking of humanism, the increasing importance of aesthetics in literary studies and everyday life, cultural memory in the anti-historical, reified environment of commodity and consumption, and finally the place of literature in the postmodern and global context.

Theorists to be studied more intensely than others may include Mathew Arnold, Nietzsche, T. S. Eliot, Marx, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Lukács, Foucault, Kristeva, Eagleton, Said, and Jameson.

Primary texts may be by Baudelaire, Woolf, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Kafka, and the Chinese modernist writer Lu Xun.

Wednesday3:30 - 6:30 p.m. Library E 4305

CLT 602 - Postmodernism - Hugh J. 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 and postmodern textuality. Readings will address specifically debates around deconstruction, postmodern hermeneutics, and postmodernism in the arts.

Texts will include selections from the writings of Foucault, Kristeva, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze & Guattari, Vattimo, and Perniola.

Readings: Foucault, The Order of Things (sel) Vintage/Pantheon
Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (sel) Columbia
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition Minnesota
Lyotard, The Inhuman (sel) Stanford
Deleuze & Guattari A Thousand Plateaus (sel) Minnesota
Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation Michigan
Vattimo, The End of Modernity Johns Hopkins
Perniola, Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Society and Art Verso
and selected readings from:
Natoli (ed), A Postmodern Reader SUNY Press
Silverman (ed), Questioning Foundations: Truth/Subjectivity/Culture Routledge
Silverman (ed), Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the Signifier Routledge

Monday 7:00-10:00 p.m. Library E 4305

CLT 607/SPN 612 - European Realism - Lou Deutsch

Readings of selected novels of the realist and naturalist corpus with discussions centered on literary representations of race, class, nation, gender and other intersecting constructs of European subjectivity.

In this course we will examine contrasting realist traditions especially as they relate to modes of representation of race, nation, class, gender, and sexuality in nineteenth-century canonical novels. The primary focus will be on texts produced in Europe from the mid- to late nineteenth century, beginning with one of the first anti-slavery novels, Sab, by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. In the first group of novels, including Sab and Jane Eyre, we will look at the intersection of gender and race in the context of British and Spanish colonialism.

Following we will discuss the revolution in modes of production and consumption of consumer goods in the urban environment in Zola's The Ladies' Paradise and Galdós' That Bringas Woman. The discussion will focus on class and gender excess, as well as the economic links between northern and Southern Europe.

In the third part of the course we will assess representations of fallenness and adultery as they pertain to bourgeois family ideology in Spain (Alas' La Regenta), France (Flaubert's Madame Bovary), Russia (Tolstoy's Anna Karenina) and possibly Germany (Fontane's Effie Briest).

Critical readings will include articles/chapters by R. Williams, G. Lukács, T. Tanner, P. Smith. C Prendergast, and others. All texts (including all critical readings in the course pack) will be available in English. However, students with relevant language competency are urged to read the novels to be discussed in the original. Final papers may be submitted in French, Spanish or English.

Wednesday 7:00-10:00 p.m. Library E 4305

CLT 609/EGL 608 - Introduction to Cultural Studies: Theory/Practice - Ira Livingston

This course aims to equip students with some basic critical concepts, theories, and methods in Cultural Studies. Concepts (such as performativity, hegemony, resistance, class, imagined community, racialization, etc.) will be explored through theoretical writings as well as through case studies in a sampling of areas and topics.

The course is designed for students in the humanities and social sciences who want to incorporate Cultural Studies elements or frameworks into their studies of literature, philosophy, history, or art history, as well as for those intending to continue in Cultural Studies as such.

A final project or paper, in the student's area of choice, will be required; collaborative work will be strongly encouraged.

Tuesday 4:00-7:00 p.m. Library E 4305

CLT 630 - Individualism & Collectivism - Mark Setton

In this course we explore influential concepts of individuality and of the relationship between individual and society, both East and West. In particular we focus on the sharply contrasting perspectives of Confucianism and Taoism as reflected in the Confucian classics, the "Analects" and "Mencius" on the one hand, and the Taoist classics, the "Tao Te Ching" and "Chuang Tzu", on the other. How do these perspectives compare with analogous tendencies in early Greek thought, including the social organicism of Plato and the various strands of individualism championed by the Sophists and Epicureans that had a formidable impact on later generations of Western thinkers, including proponents of the European enlightenment and American democracy? What do these East Asian classics and Western thinkers have to say about the tenuous balance between "individual rights" and "interpersonal responsibilities", "moral autonomy" and loyalty to traditional values?

Monday 3:30-6:30 p.m. Library E 4305

Independent Courses and Dissertation Research

CLT 520 Problems in Translation
CLT 597 Directed Readings, M.A.
CLT 599 Independent Study
CLT 690 Thesis Research
CLT 698 Practicum in Teaching
CLT 699 Directed Readings: Ph.D. Candidacy

Also of Interest

DLL 570 Introduction of Media for Language Learning and Teaching

Mike Ledgerwood Tues. & Thurs. 3:50-5:10pm

EGL 611 Post-Colonial Theory

Visting Professor Thursday 1:00-4:00pm

EGL 606.0 Representing Slavery

Alexander Weheliye

This course considers some contemporary Afro-diasporic literary texts and films engaging with the historical and cultural significance of slavery. Although we will also look at some historical and theoretical accounts about the history and writing of slavery, the course requires at least a basic knowledge of the slave narrative as literary genre if students have not read any slave narratives, they should do so before the beginning of the semester. We will also look at several films (Beloved, Mandingo, and Sankofa), in order to discuss the problem of visualizing slavery. These are central questions of the class: why have fictional and fictionalized writings on slavery proliferated in recent years? Are the authors writing about slavery as a self-contained historical phenomenon or do they seek to relate slavery to the current period? What are the effects achieved by writing within the genre of the novel as opposed to historiography of first person accounts? How do gender, geography, and nationality shape the texts' articulation of slavery?

Readings might include: Octavia Butler, Wild Seed; Maryse Condé, I. Tituba, the Black Witch of Salem; Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory; Charles Johnson, The Middle Passage and the Oxherding Tale; Gayl Jones, Corregidora; Deborah McDowell and Arnold Rampersad, eds. Slavery and the Literary Imagination; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada; Ashraf Rushdie, The Neo-Slave Narrative; William Van Deburg, Slavery and Race in American Popular Culture; Hayden White, The Content of the Form; Shirley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose.

Tuesday 1:00-4:00pm

HIS 525 History and Theory

Kathleen Wilson

This core graduate history course address the ways theoretical concepts inform contemporary historical writing. It trains students to read and evaluate the growing body of theoretically informed writing in all historical fields. It also guides them in finding and reading theorists important for their own research. The spring 2000 class will explore the variegated impacts of Marxism, post-structuralism, feminist and gender theory, anthropology and post-colonial theory on recent historical writing.

Requirements include class discussion, oral reports and a substantial paper addressing the relevance of critical problems raised in the course for research in specific fields.

Wednesday 4:30-7:30pm SBS N318

HIS 616 Research Seminar: The Politics of Famine

Mike Davis

The half century from 1875-1925 was a dark age of famine in China and India. The great hunger of 1876-78 -- often characterized as "the worst famine in world history" -- was followed by catastrophes of similar magnitudes in 1896-1901 and 1918-1921. In each case, famine followed epic droughts that were strongly correlated to powerful, worldwide El Nino events. Despite dramatic differences in political stability, transport infrastructure and market integration, the death tolls were comparable under the Raj and the Qing. Why?

This seminar uses both environmental and economic history to re-examine the worst mortality crisis since the 17th century. One 25pp. research paper.

Monday 6:00-9:00pm SBS N318

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