*Literature 97a. Tutorial — Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 2776
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 97a is required of all concentrators in their sophomore year.
*Literature 97b. Tutorial — Sophomore Year
Catalog Number: 4595
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 97b is required of all concentrators in their sophomore year.
*Literature 98a. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 3119
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 98a is required of all concentrators in their junior year.
*Literature 98b. Tutorial — Junior Year
Catalog Number: 1528
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 98b is required of all concentrators in their junior year.
*Literature 99a. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 4857
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 99a is required of all concentrators in their senior year.
*Literature 99b. Tutorial — Senior Year
Catalog Number: 1290
Sandra Naddaff and members of the Committee and Tutorial Board
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Note: Successful completion of one semester of Literature 99b is required of all concentrators in their senior year.
Literature 105. Introduction to the Theory of Sexuality
Catalog Number: 8139
Heather K. Love
Half course (spring term). Tu., Th., at 1., and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 15
An introduction to several key concepts in the history and theory of sexuality. The course will be interdisciplinary in approach, with readings in queer theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, the social sciences, literature and the visual arts. We will also consider contemporary queer cultural production (film, zines, performance, etc.). Special attention to the relation between gender and sexuality; queer historiography; global sexualities; gay pride and gay shame; and transgender studies.
Literature 107. Introduction to the Study of Film
Catalog Number: 4249
Despina Kakoudaki
Half course (spring term). M., W., at 12 and a weekly film screening, Tu., 3-5. EXAM GROUP: 5
This class explores films that aim to assault or alter human vision through the self-conscious representation of spectacular moments. We will focus on film as a medium for astonishment, formulate a theoretical approach to understanding techniques of spectacle, trace relevant historical developments, and discuss contemporary theories of film art, genre and spectatorship. Films by D. W. Griffith, Luis Buñuel, Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, and others.
[*Literature 109. On Translation]
Catalog Number: 0594 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Sandra Naddaff
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Examination of theories of translation from various periods (Dryden, Schopenhauer, Benjamin, Borges, Asad, among others). Also looks closely at specific translated texts (e.g., various translations of Homer’s Odyssey, Burton’s Thousand Nights and a Night), and considers such topics as the notion of “unequal languages,” the problem of cultural translation, untranslatability, and translation as imitation and re-creation.
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.
Prerequisite: Reading knowledge of one foreign language.
Literature 110. Furor Poeticus: Madness, Inspiration, Genius
Catalog Number: 7758
John T. Hamilton
Half course (fall term). Th., 3–5. EXAM GROUP: 17, 18
The course begins with the classical conception of mania as a divine source of prophecy, ecstasy, poetic creation and erotic desire; then traces its manifestations and elaboration in select literary, theoretical and critical works of the Western tradition. Readings from: Sophocles, Plato, Seneca, Ficino, Shaftesbury, Diderot, Goethe, Büchner, Hölderlin, Nerval, Lautréamont, Freud, Breton, Artaud, Foucault, Kristeva, and C. Wolf.
[*Literature 122. Literature and Music]
Catalog Number: 2360 Enrollment: Limited to 20. Preference given to Literature concentrators.
Sandra Naddaff
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Explores the intersection of literary texts and genres with musical forms and themes in a number of different contexts. Topics include such issues as the adaptation of text into music; the thematization of music in narrative; the Broadway musical; and the musicality of poetry. Works include Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, The Kreuzer Sonata, Ulysses, Jazz, and others.
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.
[*Literature 124. Space and Place in Postmodern Culture]
Catalog Number: 8228 Enrollment: Limited to 20. Preference given to Literature concentrators.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (fall term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on the renewed awareness of space in contemporary literature, film and theory. Examines the reinvention of space and the loss of place in an era of simulation with the advent of teletechnologies and globalism. Studies space and place through fictional and theoretical texts (Augé, Baudrillard, de Certeau, Deleuze, Perec, Virilio) and film (Akerman, Godard, Scott, Wenders).
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.
*Literature 125. Literature, Technology, and the Body
Catalog Number: 5958 Enrollment: Limited to 20. Preference given to Literature concentrators.
Verena A. Conley
Half course (fall term). Th., 1–3. EXAM GROUP: 15, 16
Focuses on the relation between literature, technology and the body. How does the evolution of technologies, seen as liberation or threat, alter representations of the body? How does it affect notions of gender? How does it rewrite the limit between humans and the machine? Questions will be addressed by means of literature (James, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Woolfe, Cixous, Burroughs, Powers, Gibson), film (Potter, Scott, the Wachowski Brothers) and some theoretical texts (Heidegger, Haraway, Plant).
[*Literature 128. Performing Texts]
Catalog Number: 3404 Enrollment: Limited to 20.
Julie A. Buckler
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
What is the relationship between dramatic text and work? How do plays create audiences? What does the ubiquitous dramatic site of “home” (domestic interiors, family estates) contribute to the performance of “authentic” identities? This course enlists performance theory in the illumination of the dramatic texts and theatrical contexts of Pushkin, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Ibsen, Wilde, Bulgakov, Shaw, Kharms, Beckett, Sartre, O’Neill, Williams, Miller, and Petrushevskaya. Particular attention to restagings (19th-century dramas revisioned by Meyerhold and Stanislavsky), cross-cultural appropriations (Western stagings of Chekhov), theories of drama and culture (Nietzsche, Wagner, Shaw, Brecht, Ivanov, Evreinov).
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.
[*Literature 129. Reading the 18th Century Through 20th-Century Eyes]
Catalog Number: 5600 Enrollment: Limited to 15.
Christie McDonald
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Why do we read texts from the French Enlightenment today and how? Analysis of works from the 18th century as well as novels, plays, media events, and films of the 20th century that revisit key questions: what is the present in its relationship to the past? what constitutes change? what is the relationship of the individual to the family, the state, and society? Topics of discussion will include textual rewritings of novels and confessions; re-publication of works by women and the question of the canon; the controversy around pornography and reproduction; imagining what might have been in rewriting history through literature, the media and opera. Readings include works by 1) Beaumarchais, Charrière, Graffigny, Diderot, Franklin, Kant, Rousseau, Sade; 2) Beauvoir, Blanchot, Boyd, Foucault, Klossowski, Kundera, Shine, Hoffman, Corigliano, Weiss.
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.
*Literature 130. Reconfiguring the City
Catalog Number: 1034 Enrollment: Limited to 20. Preference given to Literature concentrators
Verena A. Conley
Half course (spring term). Th., 2–4. EXAM GROUP: 16, 17
Examines the city as concept, representation and simulation through literature, film and theory. Focuses on some regimes of the city rather than a particular city. Investigates how the city becomes a manifestation of a general urban condition; how it is reconfigured through the media and digital networks and how notions of “third culture” relate to a culture of disappearance. Works studied include literature (Baudelaire, Calvino, Perec), film (Godard, Wenders, Koo), theory (Baudrillard, Benjamin, Jameson, Koolhaus, Latour).
Literature 131. Twentieth-Century Fictions of Sexuality
Catalog Number: 1674
Heather K. Love
Half course (fall term). M., W., (F.), at 12 and a weekly section to be arranged. EXAM GROUP: 5
This course explores the intersection between narrative form and representations of sexuality in twentieth-century texts. We will consider a range of aesthetic responses to the “invention of the homosexual” with special attention to questions of authenticity and artifice and to narrative techniques of indirection, secrecy, and suggestion. Readings and films by Freud, James, Wilde, Stein, Cather, Mann, Larsen, Hall, Barnes, Yourcenar, Baldwin, Moraga, Hollinghurst, Barthes, Sedgwick, Butler, Akerman, Wong Kar-Wai, and others.
[Literature 140. Colonial and Post-Colonial Spaces: France and North Africa]
Catalog Number: 9366
Verena A. Conley
Half course (spring term). Hours to be arranged.
Focuses on transformations of colonial and postcolonial spaces in North Africa that include Morocco, Tunisia, and, especially, Algeria. Special attention will be given to shifting notions of cultural terrain, language, violence, revolution, in relation to community and identity. We will also examine the emergence of new cultural spaces in connection with urban immigration in France and Europe. Works studied include literature (Begag, Boudjedra, Charef, Djebar, Kateb Yacine, Khatibi, Memmi) film (Djebar, Isaac Julien, Kassovitz) and theory (de Certeau, Fanon, Said).
Note: Expected to be given in 2002–03.