See the FALL 2011 SCHEDULE OF CLASSES.
592A – Medieval Women Writers
Petroff , 413 Herter Hall
TuTh 1:00-2:15
A seminar on writing by and for medieval women in Europe, especially in England, the Low Countries, France and Italy. We’ll read both secular and religious texts as well as recent criticism, evaluate the study of medieval women writers in the last twenty years and speculate on new directions in the next decase. Texts will include Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature and Body and Soul. Knowledge of one modern European language or Latin is required.
691A –Literature and Music
Lachman, 326 Herter
Th 1:00-3:30
This course examines music and the 20th and 21st century novel. How does music influence narrative form? How do texts appropriate musical elements to create the illusion of orality and presence? What political and ideological assumptions often accompany music in literature? Readings from Proust, Kundera, Carpentier, Cortazar, Morrison, Chamoiseau, Coetzee, Djebar, Abani, Bakhtin, Said, Lacoue-Labarthes, and
Derrida.
691J – Advanced Topics in New Media Arts
Dienes, 405 Herter
M 3:30-6:00p.m.
Seminar/lecture/discussion.
The seminar will set several parallel goals:
A. to explore the new media arts and digital culture in general to familiarize students with the major artists and artworks emerging in this area of artistic and intellectual activity
B. to study and discuss the critical and theoretical issues raised by the digital medium in literature and the visual and performing arts
C. to learn to use some of the new digital tools
for scholarship (databases for research, production of electronic mss. for conference presentation and publication, "how to write a hyperpaper? and why?")
and for teaching (preparation of electronic, multimedia class materials, lectures, etc., on the web or for Spark, "how to present and teach information in the digital age?")
D. to collectively prepare to TA in, and work on, an existing undergraduate course on Digital Culture: students will be invited to comment on, alter, expand parts of this existing course, and focus on their special interests that they will have an opportunity to include and teach in this class (or in a future class of their own)
691V – Theory Across the Great Divide
Dumm
W 4:40-7:10
This seminar will focus on contemporary literary theory in France and the United States. The divide referred to here, is what Stanley Cavell has referred to as “the mutual shunning” of European and American critical/philosophical traditions. We will pair readings of stories, films and novels with alternative interpretive methods – deconstruction, genealogy, critical theory, and moral perfectionism – associated with the works of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, and Stanley Cavell.
695E – Performance
Gilpin
W 4:40-7:10
What is performance? What constitutes an event? How can we address a phenomenon that has disappeared the moment we apprehend it? How does memory operate in our critical perception of an event? How does a body make meaning? These are a few of the questions we will explore in this graduate seminar, as we discuss critical, theoretical, and compositional approaches in a broad range of multidisciplinary performance phenomena emerging from primarily European culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will focus on issues of performativity, composition, conceptualization, dramaturgy, identity construction, representation, space, gender, and dynamism.
791C – International Shakespeare
Gentzler, 19 Herter
Tu 4:00-7:00
The purpose of this course is to explore the translation and reception of various Shakespeare plays in different countries. The most widely translated texts in the world are books of the Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare. While much scholarship exists on Bible translations, surprisingly little exists on Shakespeare translations. Students will read several Shakespeare plays in English, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest and review the translation of the plays in different parts of the world, including Germany, France, Canada, the USA, and Latin America. In many instances, the translation of Shakespeare serves as a major event, legitimizing a national language and contributing to the formation of a national identity. Students learn how translators, directors, and critics “use” translation to participate not just in the development in literary culture, but also in the construction of a nation. Reading, critical engagement, and discussion of the texts will play an important part of the course. Each student will present a short assignment on one Shakespeare translation or production, a translation history paper, and a translation comparison, comparing a translation to the original, two translations, or a translation to a production. Finally, each student will also submit a research paper, either a comparative analysis of one translation/production or a series of translations/productions in one culture over a period of time. The class is intended to be interdisciplinary, open to students from Comparative Literature, English, and the various language and literature departments.
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