2007-2008 Courses
Fall 2007
Graduate
30103. Seminar: Modern European Poetics. (=ENGL 47210) PQ: Reading knowledge of one modern European language is required; Consent of instructor, outside students will be accepted, with the class size limited to 15 students, as long as the majority of the students are CompLit Grad students and PhD students in English Language and Literature. Fulfills the core course requirement for CompLit students. This course, intended for M.A. and Ph.D. students, focuses on theories of poetry proposed by European writers of the 20th century. We will read essays by Mallarme, Valery, Benn, Eliot, Pound, Breton, Ponge, Heidegger, Celan, Bonnefoy, Oulipo writers, Kristeva, and others. Students will give one or two oral reports and write one essay on a poet of their choosing. Robert von Hallberg
30500. History and Theory of Drama I. (=ANST 21200, CLAS 31200, CLCV 21200, CMLT 20500, ENGL 13800/31000, ISHU 24200/34200) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20600/30600 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, and Dryden. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. David Bevington
32400. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era. (=ARTH 28500/38500, ARTV 26500, CMLT 22400, CMST 28500/48500, ENGL 29300/47800, MAPH 33600) This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We also discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. James Lastra
33001. Sex and Gender in Russian Culture, 1830-Present. (=CMLT 23001, RUSS 24402/34402) This course traces the history of Russian debates about gender and sexuality from the 19th through the 21st centuries as registered in literary, visual, political, and material culture. Course topics include: the emergence of Russian women as writers in the 1830s; gender roles and radical politics in the 1860s and 1870s; decadent art and homoeroticism in the 1890s and 1900s; utopian social goals and revolutionary sexualities in the 1920s; shifting Soviet and post-Soviet constructions of gender and sexuality; Russian feminisms and nascent queer movements. Primary texts will include fiction, memoir, poetry, drama, political manifestos, fashion design, posters, paintings, popular song, and cinema. Short secondary readings will provide both theoretical and historical contexts. Discussions will be conducted in English. All texts will be available in both English and Russian. Susan Larsen
33101. Twentieth Century Literature from the Balkans. (=CMLT 23101, SOSL 26500/36500) In this course, we will examine the works of major writers from former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine how their works grapple with the issues of national identity and their countries’ place in the Balkans and in Europe, with the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, with socialism and its demise, with emigration, as well as simply with the modern experience of being. We will compare the conceptual and mythic categories through which these works make sense of the world and argue for and against considering such categories constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility. The readings will include works by Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andri, Norman Manea, Mesa Selimovi, Danilo Kis, Miroslav Krle a, Ismail Kadare and others. Angelina Ilieva
33201. Returning the Gaze: The Balkans and Western Europe. (=CMLT 23201, SOSL 27200/37200) This course will investigate the complex relationship between South East European self-representations and the imagined Western gaze for whose benefit the nations stage their quest for identity and their aspirations for recognition. We will focus on the problems of Orientalism, Balkanism and nesting orientalisms, as well as on self-mythologization and self-exoticization. We will also think about differing models of masculinity, and of the figure of the gypsy as a metaphor for the national self in relation to the West. The course will conclude by considering the role that the imperative to belong to Western Europe played in the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s. Angelina Ilieva
47100. Nietzsche on Art and Literature. (=GRMN 47100, SCTH 47000) This seminar will undertake a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s aesthetic theory and critical practice as developed across his entire oeuvre, from the Geburt der Tragödie to Der Fall Wagner. Although canonical interpretations of Nietzsche’s views (e.g., Simmel, Heidegger, Deleuze, Danto) as well as recent commentary (e.g., Figl, Gerhardt, Nehamus) will be considered as frameworks of interpretation, the primary concern of the seminar will be the close reading of Nietzsche’s texts themselves. A particular concern will be the elaboration of Nietzsche’s views (much discussed in recent scholarship) on rhetoric and on the relation of philosophical and literary language. (Graduate students only. Reading knowledge of German is required. Limit 20 students.) David Wellbery
47700. African American and Caribbean Poetry. (=ENGL 47902) [This course will follow a seminar format: students will give reports to orient and initiate discussion of individual poets. In our discussion of poems—and the classes will focus on single poems—the role of musicality, oratory, and vernacular speech will figure prominently. We will be concerned to identify the distinctive features of these poets one by one: Edouard Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott; Jay Wright, Nathaniel Mackey, Carl Phillips, Thylias Moss, and Elizabeth Alexander. Students will give a formal report on a poet of their choosing, and will write an essay at the end of the quarter.] Robert von Hallberg
50600. French Philosophy. (=PHIL 58500) Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Reading knowledge of French required. A close reading in French of Emmanuel Lévinas’s Totalité et Infini. Some supplementary texts will be considered, but primarily as a way of situating Totalité et Infini within the corpus of Lévinas’s work and within the history of 20th century European philosophy. Arnold Davidson
Undergraduate
20500. History and Theory of Drama I. (=ANST 21200, CLAS 31200, CLCV 21200, CMLT 30500, ENGL 13800/31000, ISHU 24200/34200) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20600/30600 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, medieval religious drama, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, along with some consideration of dramatic theory by Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, and Dryden. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. David Bevington
22400. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era. (=ARTH 28500/38500, ARTV 26500, CMLT 32400, CMST 28500/48500, ENGL 29300/47800, MAPH 33600) This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We also discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. James Lastra
22701. Beyond “Cinema Novo”: New Cinema from Brazil, Portugal and Lusophone Africa. (=PORT 21701) We will explore new tendencies in the cinema of Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries such as Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. Under analysis will be recent productions in a variety of formats and genres such as fiction and documentary, publicity, and TV series. We will assess the contributions of these cinematic objects to contemporary socio-political discourse focusing both on the Portuguese-speaking world and beyond. Course conducted in English. Pedro Pereira
23001. Sex and Gender in Russian Culture, 1830-Present. (=CMLT 33001, RUSS 24402/34402) This course traces the history of Russian debates about gender and sexuality from the 19th through the 21st centuries as registered in literary, visual, political, and material culture. Course topics include: the emergence of Russian women as writers in the 1830s; gender roles and radical politics in the 1860s and 1870s; decadent art and homoeroticism in the 1890s and 1900s; utopian social goals and revolutionary sexualities in the 1920s; shifting Soviet and post-Soviet constructions of gender and sexuality; Russian feminisms and nascent queer movements. Primary texts will include fiction, memoir, poetry, drama, political manifestos, fashion design, posters, paintings, popular song, and cinema. Short secondary readings will provide both theoretical and historical contexts. Discussions will be conducted in English. All texts will be available in both English and Russian. Susan Larsen
23101. Twentieth Century Literature from the Balkans. (=CMLT 33101, SOSL 26500/36500) In this course, we will examine the works of major writers from former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, Rumania, Greece, and Turkey from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will examine how their works grapple with the issues of national identity and their countries’ place in the Balkans and in Europe, with the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, with socialism and its demise, with emigration, as well as simply with the modern experience of being. We will compare the conceptual and mythic categories through which these works make sense of the world and argue for and against considering such categories constitutive of an overall Balkan sensibility. The readings will include works by Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andri, Norman Manea, Mesa Selimovi, Danilo Kis, Miroslav Krlea, Ismail Kadare and others. Angelina Ilieva
23201. Returning the Gaze: The Balkans and Western Europe. (=CMLT 33201, SOSL 27200/37200) This course will investigate the complex relationship between South East European self-representations and the imagined Western gaze for whose benefit the nations stage their quest for identity and their aspirations for recognition. We will focus on the problems of Orientalism, Balkanism and nesting orientalisms, as well as on self-mythologization and self-exoticization. We will also think about differing models of masculinity, and of the figure of the gypsy as a metaphor for the national self in relation to the West. The course will conclude by considering the role that the imperative to belong to Western Europe played in the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s. Angelina Ilieva
25001. Foucault and the History of Sexuality. (=GNDR 23100, HIPS 24300, PHIL 24800) Open only to college students. PQ: Prior philosophy course or consent of instructor. This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed. Arnold Davidson
25201. Contemporary Hebrew Poetry. (=JWSC 21800, NEHC 20463) This course examines the works (in the original) of major contemporary Hebrew poets such as Yehuda Amichai, Nathan Zach, David Avidan, Dalia Rabikovitch,Yona Wollach, Maya Bejerano, and Yitzhak Laor. These works will be read against the background of the poetry of previous literary generations of writers such as H.N Bialik, Avraham Shlonsky, Natan Alterman and Shaul Tchernihovsky, in an attempt to uncover changes in style, themes and aesthetic. Through close reading of the poems, the course traces the unique style and aesthetic of each poet, and aims at presenting a wide picture of contemporary Hebrew poetry. Neta Stahl
25800. The Representation of Jesus in Modern Jewish Literature. (=JWSC 24800, NEHC 20457, RLST 26601) This course examines the Jewish literary world's relation to the figure of Jesus from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. We study the transformations of Jesus through close readings of major works, both prose fiction and poetry, by Yiddish and Hebrew writers (e.g., Uri Zvi Greenberg, H. Leivick, Jacob Glatstein, S. Y. Agnon, Avraham Shlonsky, Natan Bistritzki, A. A. Kabak, Haim Hazaz, Zalman Shneior, Yigal Mosenzon, Avot Yeshurun, Nathan Zach, Yona Wallach, Yoel Hoffmann). Classes conducted in English, but students with knowledge of Hebrew are encouraged to read texts in the original. Neta Stahl
28700. Major Works of Modernism. (=GRMN 29000) This course is centered on several canonical works of classical modernism: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ein Brief; Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten; Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig; Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung; Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else; Bertolt Brecht’s Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder; poetry by Stefan George, Hofmannsthal, Gottfried Benn, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Georg Trakl; essays by Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Musil. On the basis of the works studied we shall endeavor to develop a concept of modernism sufficiently capacious to embrace radically opposed literary and cultural agendas. Readings and discussion in German. David Wellbery
Winter 2008
Graduate
30202. Seminar: Mimesis. (=CLAS 39200, EALC 30100) Consent of instructor, outside students will be accepted, with the class size limited to 15 students, as long as the majority of students are CompLit Grad students and PhD students in East Asian Language and Civilization and Classics. Fulfills the core course requirement for CompLit students. This course will introduce the concept of mimesis, from early formulations by Plato and Aristotle through reformulations in recent literary theory, especially in relation to non-western aesthetic traditions. Other readings will include Auerbach, Derrida, Saussy, and Taussig. Students are encouraged to write final papers on their own research projects while engaging with issues discussed through the course. Tamara Chin
30600. History and Theory of Drama II. (=CMLT 20600, ENGL 13900/31100, ISHU 24300/34300) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20500/30500 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth: Molière, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. David Bevington
32500. History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960. (=ARTH 28600/38600, ARTV 26600, CMLT 22500, CMST 28600/48600, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700) PQ: Prior or current registration in CMST 10100 required; CMLT 22400/32400 strongly recommended. The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History, An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir. Tom Gunning
33301. Balkan Folklore. (=CMLT 23301, SOSL 26800/36800) This course will give an overview of Balkan folklore from ethnographic, anthropological, historical/political, and performative perspectives. We will become acquainted with folk tales, lyric and epic songs, music, and dance. The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who developed their theory of oral composition through work among epic singers in the Balkans, will help us understand folk tradition as a dynamic process. We will also consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. The historical/political part will survey the emergence of folklore studies as a discipline as well as the ways it has served in the formation and propagation of the nation in the Balkans. The class will also experience this living tradition first hand through our visit to the classes and rehearsals of the Chicago based ensemble Balkanske igre. The 43rd Annual Balkan Folklore Spring Festival will be held on March 28-30, 2008 at the International House. Angelina Ilieva
33401. The Burden of History: A Nation and Its Lost Paradise. (=CMLT 23401, SOSL 27300/37300) We will look at the narrative of loss and redemption through which Balkan countries retell the Ottoman past. With the help of Freud‚s analysis of masochistic desire and Zizek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma, we will contemplate the national fixation on the trauma of loss and the dynamic between victimhood and sublimity. The figure of the Janissary will highlight the significance of the other in the definition of the self. Some possible texts are Petar Njego’‚ Mountain Wreath, Ismail Kadare’s The Castle, and Anton Donchev’s Time of Parting. Angelina Ilieva
35101. History, Philosophy and the Politics of Psychoanalysis. (=CMLT 25101, PHIL 25401/35401) A reading of some central texts of Freud (both early and late) in the context of a study of the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary European philosophy. Other authors to be read may include Foucault, Deleuze and Guatteri, Marcuse, and Derrida. Arnold Davidson
36500. Renaissance Romance. (=ENGL 36302, RLIT 52100) Selections from the following trio of texts are studied: Ovid’s Metamorphoses (as the recognized classical model), Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (which set the norms for Renaissance romance), and Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Michael Murrin
38101. Cervantes’s Don Quijote. (=CMLT 28101, FNDL 21211, RLLT 34202, SPAN 24202) This course is a close reading of Cervantes’s Don Quijote that discuss its links with Renaissance art and Early Modern narrative genres. On the one hand, Don Quijote can be viewed in terms of prose fiction, from the ancient Hellenistic romances to the spectacular vigor of the books of knight errants and the French pastoral and heroic romances. On the other hand, Don Quijote exhibits a desire for Italy through the utilization of Renaissance art. Beneath the dusty roads of La Mancha and within Don Quijote's chivalric fantasies, students come to appreciate glimpses of images with Italian designs. Classes conducted in English; Spanish majors do all work in Spanish. Frederick de Armas, Thomas Pavel
38801. The Individual, Form, and the Novel. (=CMLT 28801, ENGL 28906/48906, ISHU 28103, SLAV 25100/35100) PQ: Advanced standing. This course is an exploration and comparison of several different strategies used by European novelists to represent an autonomous individual, all of which give rise to specific novelistic forms (e.g., autobiography, Bildungsroman, novel of manners, psychological novel). The primary bibliography for this course includes works by Rousseau, Goethe, Stendhal, and Tolstoy. We also read critical works by Georg Lukacs, Franco Moretti, Clement Lugowski, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lidia Ginzburg, and Alex Woloch. Texts in English and the original; discussion and papers in English. Lina Steiner
42900. Cinema in Africa. (=AFAM 21900, CMLT 22900, CMST 24201/34201, ENGL 27600/48601, ISHU 27702) PQ: At least one college-level course either in African or in film studies, and advanced standing. This course examines cinema in Africa as well as films produced in Africa. It places cinema in Sub-Saharan Africa in its social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts—ranging from neocolonial to postcolonial, Western to Southern Africa, documentary to fiction, art cinema to TV. We begin with La Noire de... (1966), a groundbreaking film by the “father” of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, contrasted with a South African film, The Magic Garden (1960), which more closely resembles African-American musical film. We then continue with anti-colonial and anti-apartheid films, from Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back Africa (1959) to Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga, Ousmane Sembene’s Camp de Thiaroye (1984), and Jean Marie Teno’s Afrique, Je te Plumerai (1995). Lastly we examine cinematic representations of tensions (between urban
and rural life; between traditional and modern life) and the different implications of these tensions (for men and women; for Western and Southern Africa; in fiction, documentary, and ethnographic film). Loren Kruger
43600. Nation Building. (=ENGL 42402) This course explores the literature of nation-building. Readings include the Aeneid; Kipling's White Man's Burden and The Man Who Would Be King; Conrad's Lord Jim; T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom; and various contemporary writings on Iraq. Larry Rothfield
47400. Heinrich von Kleist: Skepticism, Contingency, Intensity. (=GRMN 47300) In this seminar we will interpret Kleist’s writing (letters, essays, stories, plays, journalism) from three distinct but complimentary points of view: as an elaboration of the skeptical imaginary (including skepticism about knowledge, meaning and other minds); as a play with contingency (metaphysical, narratological, semiotic); as an experiment in modes of intensity (energetic, affective, aesthetic). A major task of the seminar will be to elaborate a unified conception of Kleist’s literary project that accounts for its historical and structural specificity. Students will be expected to engage critically with major contributions to the secondary literature. (Graduate students only. Readings and discussion in German.) David Wellbery
50700. South Africa in the Global Imaginary: Textual and Visual Culture. (=ENGL 59302) PQ: This seminar is for graduate students (MA and PhD) who have taken courses in either African/ post colonial literature or in film studies. Those uncertain of their qualifications should consult the instructor at the end of *autumn* quarter. This course will address the theoretical and methodological problems posed by the thoroughly Northern metropolitan category of the ‘postcolonial’ and its imposition of supposedly global categories on to distinctly local cultural forms and contents in South Africa. In addition to building knowledge of South African materials, seminar participants will thus develop tools for critiquing northern especially North American assumptions about ‘postcolonial’ generalities in form and content, which can be profitably used in other contexts that make up the global South. We will begin by interrogating the persistent power of Alan Paton’s Cry Thy Beloved Country (novel and film) in the American imagination, from its initial publication in New York (1947) to it adoption in Oprah’s Book Club (2001), as against local tastes in the same period from Nadine Gordimer’s fiction to films like Come Back Africa and continue to examine local responses and challenges to metropolitan norms of literary form, especially in fiction and drama, as well as film. We will consider the impact of apartheid and anti apartheid writing (1960s to 1980s) on metropolitan as well as local audiences and also examine post apartheid local/global configurations that run south/south rather than south/north, including emergent writing by ‘Indian’ and other ‘minority’ South Africans. Loren Kruger
Undergraduate
20600. History and Theory of Drama II. (=CMLT 30600, ENGL 13900/31100, ISHU 24300/34300) May be taken in sequence with CMLT 20500/30500 or individually. This course is a survey of major trends and theatrical accomplishments in Western drama from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth: Molière, Goldsmith, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Wilde, Shaw, Brecht, Beckett, and Stoppard. Attention is also paid to theorists of the drama, including Stanislavsky, Artaud, and Grotowski. The goal is not to develop acting skill but, rather, the goal is to discover what is at work in the scene and to write up that process in a somewhat informal report. Students have the option of writing essays or putting on short scenes in cooperation with some other members of the class. End-of-week workshops, in which individual scenes are read aloud dramatically and discussed, are optional but highly recommended. David Bevington
21800. Fantasy and Science Fiction. (=ENGL 20900) This course concentrates on works of the “classic” period (from the 1930s to the 1960s). It does, however, begin with representative authors from the nineteenth century (e.g., Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard), as well as some works from the early twentieth century (e.g., David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, H. P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness). Worth special attention are authors (e.g., C. S. Lewis and Ursula LeGuin) who worked in both genres at a time when they were often contrasted. The two major texts discussed include one from each genre (i.e., Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Herbert’s Dune). Most texts come from the Anglo-American tradition, with some significant exceptions (e.g., short works by Kafka and Borges). Michael Murrin
22500. History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960. (=ARTH 28600/38600, ARTV 26600, CMLT 32500, CMST 28600/48600, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700) PQ: Prior or current registration in CMST 10100 required; CMLT 22400/32400 strongly recommended. The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History, An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir. Tom Gunning
22900. Cinema in Africa. (=AFAM 21900, CMLT 42900, CMST 24201/34201, ENGL 27600/48601, ISHU 27702) PQ: At least one college-level course either in African or in film studies, and advanced standing. This course examines cinema in Africa as well as films produced in Africa. It places cinema in Sub-Saharan Africa in its social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts—ranging from neocolonial to postcolonial, Western to Southern Africa, documentary to fiction, art cinema to TV. We begin with La Noire de... (1966), a groundbreaking film by the “father” of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, contrasted with a South African film, The Magic Garden (1960), which more closely resembles African-American musical film. We then continue with anti-colonial and anti-apartheid films, from Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back Africa (1959) to Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga, Ousmane Sembene’s Camp de Thiaroye (1984), and Jean Marie Teno’s Afrique, Je te Plumerai (1995). Lastly we examine cinematic representations of tensions (between urban and rural life; between traditional and modern life) and the different implications of these tensions (for men and women; for Western and Southern Africa; in fiction, documentary, and ethnographic film). Loren Kruger
23301. Balkan Folklore. (=CMLT 33301, SOSL 26800/36800) This course will give an overview of Balkan folklore from ethnographic, anthropological, historical/political, and performative perspectives. We will become acquainted with folk tales, lyric and epic songs, music, and dance. The work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, who developed their theory of oral composition through work among epic singers in the Balkans, will help us understand folk tradition as a dynamic process. We will also consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. The historical/political part will survey the emergence of folklore studies as a discipline as well as the ways it has served in the formation and propagation of the nation in the Balkans. The class will also experience this living tradition first hand through our visit to the classes and rehearsals of the Chicago based ensemble Balkanske igre. The 43rd Annual Balkan Folklore Spring Festival will be held on March 28-30, 2008 at the International House. Angelina Ilieva
23401. The Burden of History: A Nation and Its Lost Paradise. (=CMLT 33401, SOSL 27300/37300) We will look at the narrative of loss and redemption through which Balkan countries retell the Ottoman past. With the help of Freud‚s analysis of masochistic desire and Zizek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma, we will contemplate the national fixation on the trauma of loss and the dynamic between victimhood and sublimity. The figure of the Janissary will highlight the significance of the other in the definition of the self. Some possible texts are Petar Njego’‚ Mountain Wreath, Ismail Kadare’s The Castle, and Anton Donchev’s Time of Parting. Angelina Ilieva
24800. Fiction and Freedom. (=GRMN 25900) This course examines a series of major twentieth-century works of fiction that explore the nature of human freedom. Our concern is not only to delineate the theme of freedom but also to attempt to understand the link between that theme and the fictional form the author chooses. A further concern is the position of the reader as it is figured in the texts examined. Authors considered include Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Maurice Blanchot, and Imre Kertész. David Wellbery
25101. History, Philosophy and the Politics of Psychoanalysis. (=CMLT 35101, PHIL 25401/35401) A reading of some central texts of Freud (both early and late) in the context of a study of the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary European philosophy. Other authors to be read may include Foucault, Deleuze and Guatteri, Marcuse, and Derrida. Arnold Davidson
28101. Cervantes’s Don Quijote. (=CMLT 38101, FNDL 21211, RLLT 34202, SPAN 24202) This course is a close reading of Cervantes’s Don Quijote that discuss its links with Renaissance art and Early Modern narrative genres. On the one hand, Don Quijote can be viewed in terms of prose fiction, from the ancient Hellenistic romances to the spectacular vigor of the books of knight errants and the French pastoral and heroic romances. On the other hand, Don Quijote exhibits a desire for Italy through the utilization of Renaissance art. Beneath the dusty roads of La Mancha and within Don Quijote's chivalric fantasies, students come to appreciate glimpses of images with Italian designs. Classes conducted in English; Spanish majors do all work in Spanish. Frederick de Armas, Thomas Pavel
28801. The Individual, Form, and the Novel. (=CMLT 38801, ENGL 28906/48906, ISHU 28103, SLAV 25100/35100) PQ: Advanced standing. This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in CMLT. This course is an exploration and comparison of several different strategies used by European novelists to represent an autonomous individual, all of which give rise to specific novelistic forms (e.g., autobiography, Bildungsroman, novel of manners, psychological novel). The primary bibliography for this course includes works by Rousseau, Goethe, Stendhal, and Tolstoy. We also read critical works by Georg Lukacs, Franco Moretti, Clement Lugowski, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lidia Ginzburg, and Alex Woloch. Texts in English and the original; discussion and papers in English. Lina Steiner
Spring 2008
Graduate
31600. Marxism & Modern Culture. (=ENGL 32300) This course covers the classics in the field of marxist social theory (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Reich, Lukacs, Fanon) as well as key figures in the development of Marxist aesthetics (Adorno, Benjamin, Brecht, Marcuse, Williams) and recent developments in Marxist critiques of new media, post-colonial theory and other contemporary topics. It is suitable for graduate students in literature depts., art history and possibly history. It is not suitable for students in the social sciences. Loren Kruger
34001. Things Poets Say. (=PORT 36501, SCTH 30640) Do poets know what they say? Do they know what they do? Can we talk about ‘poets’, in any general intelligible sense? Attempting to answer these questions, we will use as a basic corpus for seminar discussion seven interviews well-known poets gave to The Paris Review since 1953 (which will be made available in the first session). We will then discuss a classic statement of the theory according to which poets don’t know what they say or do: Plato’s Ion. Miguel Tamen
38001. Aeneids in Translation. (=CLAS 37200, CLCV 27200, CMLT 28001, FNDL 26611) We confront Virgil’s Aeneid in translation as a poem, as an artifact and representation of Greco-Roman culture, as a response to a millennial oral (Homeric) poetic tradition and a particular historical (Augustan) moment, as a reflection of ancient thought rich with significance for contemporary questions about human life, and as a central piece of world literature. Readings include comparative study of English poetic translations ranging from early modernity (Caxton, Douglas, Phayer, Surrey, and Dryden) to the twentieth century (Taylor, Lewis, Jackson Knight, Mandelbaum, and Fitzgerald) and beyond (Lombardo and Fagles). Students who are majoring in Comparative Literature compare versions of a book of the Aeneid in at least two languages. David Wray
38600. Aesthetics of French Classicism. (= ARTH 48301, FREN 37000) Though “aesthetic” philosophy first developed as an autonomous field in the mid-eighteenth century, it has important roots in earlier eighteenth- and seventeenth-century debates concerning literature and the arts. In the wake of Cartesian rationalism, could reasoned method be reconciled with non-rational creativity, or decorous order with the unruly “sublime”? Just what kind of “truth” was revealed by poetry or painting? Readings will include Boileau, Racine, Bouhours, Perrault, Du Bos, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot, as well as the French reception of British writings on the subject by Pope and Addison. Larry Norman
38701. Novels of Self-Discovery: Stendhal, Flaubert, and Fontane. (=CMLT 28701. FREN 26400/36400) PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing and consent of instructor. This course is a study of Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Fontane’s Effi Briest that emphasizes the search for self-identity and the erratic pursuit of happiness. Classes conducted in English. Students who are majoring or minoring in French read the French texts in the original and participate in a weekly French discussion group. Thomas Pavel
39002. Silk Road Narratives. (=EALC 37451, ENGL 36182) This graduate seminar introduces students to problems in cross-cultural comparative reading through the example of the Silk Road. We will explore ways of reading classic literary texts associated with the Silk Road (e.g. the Greek Alexander Romance, the epic Chinese novel The Journey to the West), particularly in their relation to multiple literary or aesthetic traditions. We will also address the modern conception of the ancient Silk Road, both as a cosmopolitan ideal spanning East and West and in its relation to the nineteenth century politics of Central Asia, through historical and theoretical debates on world systems, world literature, philology, and translation. Other primary readings will draw from Sima Qian, Herodotus, Marco Polo, Jamyang Norbu. Knowledge of classical Chinese or Greek is recommended but not required. Tamara Chin
39301. The Idea of Europe in Realist Prose. (=CMLT 29301. ENGL 28907/48907, ISHU 29303, SLAV 29800/39800) The idea of Europe as a shared cultural space, in which different national cultures and literatures can engage in a dialogue, emerges in the second half of the nineteenth century in the works of the Western-European authors and several outsiders who include Gogol, Turgenev, and Henry James. This course examines the connections between the development of realist fiction and the formation of the transnational cultural conception of Europe as a realist-age successor of Goethe’s conception of Weltliteratur. Our texts include fictional works, essays, and criticism by Goethe, Mme. de Stael Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Henry James. Texts in English and the original; discussion and papers in English. Lina Steiner
42300. The Romanticization of Greece: Friedrich Hölderlin & Ezra Pound. (=ENGL 47211) PQ: Reading knowledge of German. This course is a study in poetic idealization. Ancient Greece is unlike most other literary cultures: it stands for the actual historical realization of the highest artistic and broadly cultural values. No poet is so audacious as to suggest that Greece was somehow not quite good enough. Hölderlin and Pound, a century apart, imitated and translated Greek poetry. What did they see in that ancient poetry that fulfilled their own desires for the poems of their own times? Was Hölderlin's Sophocles the poet Pound translated into the 20th century? Why did Hölderlin admire and Pound despise the praise poems of Pindar? These are some of the questions we will engage in our reading of these poets. The course will be organized as a seminar. Each student will give one oral report and write one long essay. Robert von Hallberg
50500. The Politics of Taste. (=ENGL 42403, PPHA 37501) Taste has long been a concern of public policy. This course examines the history of efforts to define, monitor, control, and shape public tastes. Among the questions to be considered are: what constitutes a taste? What do tastes consist of? How can tastes be measured? What is hip, and how does fashion or faddishness affect tastes? What is the difference between good taste, distastefulness, and bad taste? How do these distinctions manifest themselves, and what ideological work do they do? What norms, principles, and interests underlie the distinction between good and bad taste, high-brow/middle-brow/lowbrow, the excellent and the merely popular? What tools are available for shaping tastes? We will discuss a few classic discussions of taste (Hume, Veblen, Adorno); more recent work on the subject by cultural critics, sociologists, and economists (Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Raymond Williams, Paul Dimaggio, Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Peterson, Gary Becker); and recent policy research and governmental initiatives designed to affect public tastes. We will also be looking at some cases where works of literature, art, dance, film, and antiquities-collecting generated conflicts about taste. Larry Rothfield
Undergraduate
21401. Latino/a Intellectual Thought. (=ENGL 22804, GNDR 22401, LACS 22804, SPAN 22801) This course traces the history of Latina/o intellectual work that helped shape contemporary Latina/o cultural studies. Our focus is on how Chicanas/os and Puerto Ricans have theorized the history, society, and culture of Latinas/os in the United States. Themes include folklore and anthropology, cultural nationalism, postcolonialism, literary and cultural studies, community activism, feminism, sexuality, and the emergence of a pan-Latino culture. Throughout, we pay attention to the convergences and divergences of Chicana/o and Puerto Rican studies, especially as contemporary practitioners have encouraged us to (re)think Latina/o studies in a comparative framework. Raúl Coronado
21601. Empire and Intimacy: Race and Sexual Fantasy in European Literature (=ENGL 18105, GNDR 21603, ISHU 21601). This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in Comparative Literature. This course critically examines European fascination with non-Western peoples, their bodies and sexual practices from the late Renaissance to the 20th century. Along with select incursions into visual art and film, the class will focus on English and French literature that imagines cross-cultural contact in its most shocking form: interracial sexuality. We will try to assess the political questions - race fetishism, the ethics of desire, economic exploitation, to name but a few - these representations provoke. In addition to this literary output, we will examine European proto-anthropology that detailed the sexual "aberrations" of subaltern peoples. We will consider the role both types of discourses had in stimulating interest in imperial exploration and how the logic of territorial capture dovetailed with the masculinist metaphor of sexual conquest. We will take recent contributions by postcolonial, feminist, queer and Marxist critics as a starting point for discussion and for formulating our own views on this problematic. All works will be available in English, but students with a reading knowledge of French will be encouraged to read French works in the original. Literature to be read includes works by Shakespeare, Behn, Diderot, Byron, C. Brontë, Haggard, Gide and Forster. Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud
24601. The Portrait of the President. (=ENGL 25916) This course enquires into the work of power that is done by the portrait of the powerful. We will interrogate the portraiture of the President of the United States (and of those who would be President) not simply for its systems of meaning, its legibility, nor only in the spirit of diagnostic criticism, but most crucially for the portraiture's efficacy. This last is the most treacherous question of all for image studies, and it is the one we will articulate and pursue: What is it that portraits, in and of themselves, are able to do? What is the power of the portrait of the President? We will thus consider what we mean by "power" and by "representation", and how the portrait tradition effects both. Louis Marin's The Portrait of the King will offer us a bundle of rich theoretical premises and analytical models. Other readings will include portrait theory, literature on US presidential portraiture, and a minor critical tradition linking the portrait of the monarchic bust to the portrait of the political ruler (Foucault on coins and caricatures; Barthes on election posters; Fresnault-Deruelle on French presidential portraiture). We will focus on four contemporary genres of representation of the President and of the "presidential": money; election posters; official presidential portraits; and television "talking heads".
All students will be enrolled in the two hour Monday class, in addition to which they will choose between one of two meeting times on Wednesdays. Students wishing to read in English only will need to attend the 9:30-10:30 session on Wednesdays. Students who are literate in French and who wish to take the course with a French language component will need to attend the 10:30-11:30 session on Wednesdays, where they will read the key set text in the French original (Louis Marin's Le Portrait du roi), along with a selection of other set texts in French (e.g. Barthes, Foucault). The choice of session on Wednesdays is workload neutral. Amanda Macdonald
26001. Realism and Anti-Realism in Post-Holocaust Hebrew Literature. (=JWSC 21900 NEHC 20467) This course seeks to trace the narrative dynamics and literary means of Post-Holocaust Hebrew Literature. The course focuses on works that break with the conventions of realism, and study the specific forms and means by which each work does so. In the center of the discussion will stand questions such as: what are the constraints of the literary discourse on the Holocaust, what is the role of anti-realist depiction of the Holocaust, and in what ways the fantastic threatens the collective memory. We will read works by writers such as: S.Y Agnon, Aharon Appelfeld, David Grossman, Itamar Levi, Yoel Hoffmann and Michal Govrin. Classes will be conducted in English, but students with knowledge of Hebrew are encouraged to read texts in the original. Neta Stahl
28001. Aeneids in Translation. (=CLAS 37200, CLCV 27200, CMLT 38001, FNDL 26611) We confront Virgil’s Aeneid in translation as a poem, as an artifact and representation of Greco-Roman culture, as a response to a millennial oral (Homeric) poetic tradition and a particular historical (Augustan) moment, as a reflection of ancient thought rich with significance for contemporary questions about human life, and as a central piece of world literature. Readings include comparative study of English poetic translations ranging from early modernity (Caxton, Douglas, Phayer, Surrey, and Dryden) to the twentieth century (Taylor, Lewis, Jackson Knight, Mandelbaum, and Fitzgerald) and beyond (Lombardo and Fagles). Students who are majoring in Comparative Literature compare versions of a book of the Aeneid in at least two languages. David Wray
28600. Literature and Madness. (=GRMN 26500) This course explores the curious proximity between literature and the discourse on madness in the modern era. Discussion topics include definitions of insanity and their evolution across time, insane or deviant characters and their function in drama and fiction, the topos of the poet as madman, and the poetics of madness. Authors discussed may include Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tieck, Hoffmann, Büchner, Poe, Gogol, James, Hauptmann, Döblin, Pirandello, Schnitzler, Kant, Pinel, Reil, Lombroso, Schreber, and Freud. Christiane Frey
28701. Novels of Self-Discovery: Stendhal, Flaubert, and Fontane. (=CMLT 38701, FREN 26400/36400) PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing and consent of instructor. This course is a study of Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Fontane’s Effi Briest that emphasizes the search for self-identity and the erratic pursuit of happiness. Classes conducted in English. Students who are majoring or minoring in French read the French texts in the original and participate in a weekly French discussion group. Thomas Pavel
29001. Silk Road Fictions. (=EALC 27450, ENGL 16181) This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in Comparative Literature. The Silk Road is a modern idealization of a pre-modern crossing of peoples, ideas, and cultural traditions across a Eurasian continent. The array of texts that falls under this rubric has historically grown from a few ancient Greek and Chinese narratives to embrace any number of works that exemplify or narrate cross-cultural encounters between a notional East and West. This course introduces students to some basic problems in cross-cultural comparative reading through the example of the Silk Road. We will look closely at a selection of Silk Road fictions and their relation to multiple literary or aesthetic traditions, and consider the ways in which writers have used, translated, and even forged ancient manuscripts in constructing cross-cultural history. We will also consider theories of world literature, cosmopolitanism, and bilingual and bicultural texts. Primary readings will include The Monkey and Monk (from the 16th century epic Chinese novel The Journey to the West), the Greek Alexander Romance, Jamyang Norbu's The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, and David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. Knowledge of classical Greek or Chinese is helpful but not required. Tamara Chin
29301. The Idea of Europe in Realist Prose. (=CMLT 39301, ENGL 28907/48907, ISHU 29303, SLAV 29800/39800) This course meets the critical/intellectual methods course requirement for students who are majoring in CMLT. The idea of Europe as a shared cultural space, in which different national cultures and literatures can engage in a dialogue, emerges in the second half of the nineteenth century in the works of the Western-European authors and several outsiders who include Gogol, Turgenev, and Henry James. This course examines the connections between the development of realist fiction and the formation of the transnational cultural conception of Europe as a realist-age successor of Goethe’s conception of Weltliteratur. Our texts include fictional works, essays, and criticism by Goethe, Mme. de Stael Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Henry James. Texts in English and the original; discussion and papers in English. Lina Steiner