Emory | Comp Lit | Graduate Program

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings
Fall 2001

CPLT 550 Western and Russian Postmodernism

Epstein
Tu 4:00-7:00
[Crosslisted with ILA 790 002, RUSS 485 000]

Content: This course offers a comparative perspective on postmodernism in Western and nonwestern cultures (literature, art, and the humanities). We will discuss the general concept of postmodernism as shaped by American, French and Russian theorists and its application to 20th century cultures, with the emphasis on the newest post-totalitarian developments. The course will bring together various disciplinary perspectives on the questions of contemporary historical orientation and self-definition: How to characterize our cultural period and its relation to the legacy of modernity and modernism? How the traditional views on individuality, authorship, truth, and reality are reshaped in postmodern theories and practices? And finally: what comes after this "post"? The course will be taught in ENGLISH; knowledge of Russian is not required. Undergraduate students will need permission of the instructor.

Texts: Reading from Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, Fredric Jameson, Mikhail Bakhtin, llya Kabakov, and others.

Particulars: Class participation, oral presentations, term paper.

CPLT 551 Romanticism/Modernism in German Literature

Aue
Tu 10:00-12:20
CANCELED 8/28/01

CPLT 750 Theories of Comparative Literature

Caruth
Th 1:00-4:00

Content: This course introduces students to many areas of study in Comparative Literature including literary, philosophical and critical approaches. Various members of the Comparative Literature faculty present weekly lectures on their respective topics and research. Attendance and active participation in class discussion is required as well as one long paper. This course is required for all students in Comparative Literature and Comparative Literature Certificate Programs.

CPLT 751 000 Literature, Consciousness and Cognitive Science

Johnston
Tu 4-7
[Crosslisted with ENG 789R 001]

Content: In Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong demonstrates how "writing restructures consciousness." Although this theme could easily be explored according to historical periods --Homer to Plato, Chaucer to Shakespeare, the evolution of the modern novel, for example--this course will focus on ways in which modern technical media (re)structure consciousness. In the early 20th century consciousness was theorized (by William James and Henri Bergson) as flow, stream, and duration, and much scholarly work has articulated these theories with the cinema and stream of consciousness novel. Contemporary cognitive science tends to view consciousness in terms of the computer (i.e., hardware and software, the serial and parallel processing of information). The best example, Daniel Dennett's acclaimed and highly readable Consciousness Explained, understands consciousness as a virtual "Joycean machine" constantly revising "multiple drafts" of phenomenal data. In these terms the course will explore three specific triangulations among literary works, media theory and a theory of consciousness. First, we will read Julian Jayne's The Origin of Consciousness in relation to brief excerpts from Homer's epics and Plato's dialogues, as well as Ong's book. Second, we will read Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying in relation to excerpts from James, Bergson and Freud (on the "psychic apparatus"), as well as excerpts from Friedrich Kittler's book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Third (roughly the second half of the course), we will read Joseph McElroy's novel Plus and Richard Power's Galatea 2.2 in relation to Dennett's book. In all three instances we shall be attentive to a form of emergent self that arises at the changing and technologically mediated nexus of conscious/unconscious, reading and writing.

Texts: Required texts: listed above

Particulars: a seminar paper and oral report

CPLT 751 001 Literature, Politics, and the Women Writer: Contemporary Novelists

Brownley
Tu 4-7
[Crosslisted with ENG 789R00P, W30R 00P]

Content: A study of selected novels on political topics by contemporary writers. The focus will be on the kinds of integration between political and personal elements developed in these fictions, with their considerations of rein scriptions of past history, postcolonial African and Caribbean politics, utopias and dystopias, and the ramifications of political activism. The relationship between literary and polemical discourses will be a major concern, as will feminist theory relevant to the writers covered.

Texts: Specific works assigned will depend on what is available in paperback next semester, but the following writers will be covered: Doris Lessing; Paule Marshall; Margaret Atwood; Julia Alvarez; Nadine Gordimer; Christa Wolf; Maryse Condé; Margaret Drabble.

Particulars: short paper; two class facilitations; final paper.

CPLT 752 000 Catalan Literature

Solomon
M 1-4
[Crosslisted with SPAN 520]
CANCELED

CPLT 752 001 The Plantation Americas

Loichot
Tu 1 -4
[Crosslisted with Fren 775 000, ILA 790 006]

Content: This course will explore how the plantation machine produced repeating patterns in different parts of the Americas. We will look particularly at textual and cultural productions of the Caribbean and the Plantation South of the United States. Among the topics we will consider: family structures, including perversions of genealogy, inversions of naming process; challenged authorship of texts; boundless proliferating narratives; creolized language; predominance of the oral collective voice; exploded notions of space; hybrid forms of temporality.

Texts: Fictional and theoretical readings from Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Michael Dash, William Faulkner, Edouard Glissant, Toni Morrison, Saint-John Perse, among others.

Particulars: Course taught in English.

CPLT 752 002 Sex in the 19th Century

Marder
W 1-4
[Crosslisted with Fren 775 001]

Content: In this course, we shall examine representations of "non-normative" sexuality in several major nineteenth-century works. Many of these works are organized around explicit or implicit depictions of impotence, lesbianism, hysteria, and prostitution. By focusing on the importance of these figures, we shall explore how nineteenth century discussions of sexuality functions as a means to articulate changing conceptions of the relationship between language, history, gender and power.

Texts: Possible texts include: Armance (Stendhal), La Fille aux yeux d'or (Balzac), Mile de Maupin (Gautier), Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and selections from Baudelaire. We shall also discuss paintings from Delacroix, Manet and Courbet. Critical readings will include works by Foucault, Benjamin, Alain Corbin, Thomas Laqueur and others.

CPLT 752 003 The 18th Century Novel

Harari
Th 1-4
[Crosslisted with Fren 720 002]

Content: An examination of the social, political and philosophical questions that determined the development and evolution of the French eighteenth century novel.
Texts: Montesquieu, Prevost, Marvaux, Casanova, Laclos, Rousseau, and Sade.

CPLT 752 004 Husserl

Carr
T 1-4
[Crosslisted with PHIL 789 001]

Content: A detailed study of selected texts by Husserl, from his earliest to latest writings.

Texts: Logical Investigations, Ideas I and II, Cartesian Meditations, The Crisis of European Sciences

Particulars: Two brief class presentations and a final essay

CPLT 752 005 Foucault: Disputed Questions

Flynn
W 1-4
[Crosslisted with PHIL 789 002]

Content: This course will address several issues that have been disputed among commentators on Foucault's writings over the years. At least five such questions will be considered: subjectivity and authorship, power and governmentality, knowledge and truth, the mutual incompatbility of the being of language and the being of "man," and the nature and role of experience in Foucault's thought.

Texts: Essays, interviews, and prefaces taken from the three volumes of Michel Foucault: Essential Works, 1954-1984, ed. Paul Rabinow. Photocopies of selections from other Foucault books

Particulars: Since this is a seminar, each participant will be required to present in writing and defend orally and on Learnlink a discussion paper of no more than eight pages. The seminarists will submit questions to the presenter in advance of the oral defense and these questions and responses will count as a class participation for purposes of assessing performance in the course. Each person will submit a final paper of twenty pages (maximum) at the end of the term.

CPLT 752 006 Language in Modern French Thought

Bennington
F 1-4
[Crosslisted with PHIL 789 005, FREN 780 000]

Content: The course will examine some central modern French reflections on the question of language, from Saussure's seminal Cours de Linguistique generale, through selected texts by Benveniste, Barthes, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard and Derrida. Our guiding thread will be the concept of the sign as the apparent basis for thinking about language, and the possibility of more or less radical critiques of that concept after Saussure.

Texts: TBA

Particulars: 1 oral presentation, 1 term paper

CPLT 797R Directed Readings

By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information.

CPLT 799R Dissertation Research

By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information.






	graduate program handbook courses spring 2007 fall 2006 spring 2006 fall 2005 spring 2005 fall 2004 spring 2004 fall 2003 spring 2003 fall 2002 spring 2002 fall 2001 students admissions Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings Fall 2001 CPLT 550 Western and Russian Postmodernism Epstein Tu 4:00-7:00 [Crosslisted with ILA 790 002, RUSS 485 000] Content: This course offers a comparative perspective on postmodernism in Western and nonwestern cultures (literature, art, and the humanities). We will discuss the general concept of postmodernism as shaped by American, French and Russian theorists and its application to 20th century cultures, with the emphasis on the newest post-totalitarian developments. The course will bring together various disciplinary perspectives on the questions of contemporary historical orientation and self-definition: How to characterize our cultural period and its relation to the legacy of modernity and modernism? How the traditional views on individuality, authorship, truth, and reality are reshaped in postmodern theories and practices? And finally: what comes after this "post"? The course will be taught in ENGLISH; knowledge of Russian is not required. Undergraduate students will need permission of the instructor. Texts: Reading from Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, Fredric Jameson, Mikhail Bakhtin, llya Kabakov, and others. Particulars: Class participation, oral presentations, term paper. CPLT 551 Romanticism/Modernism in German Literature Aue Tu 10:00-12:20 CANCELED 8/28/01 CPLT 750 Theories of Comparative Literature Caruth Th 1:00-4:00 Content: This course introduces students to many areas of study in Comparative Literature including literary, philosophical and critical approaches. Various members of the Comparative Literature faculty present weekly lectures on their respective topics and research. Attendance and active participation in class discussion is required as well as one long paper. This course is required for all students in Comparative Literature and Comparative Literature Certificate Programs. CPLT 751 000 Literature, Consciousness and Cognitive Science Johnston Tu 4-7 [Crosslisted with ENG 789R 001] Content: In Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong demonstrates how "writing restructures consciousness." Although this theme could easily be explored according to historical periods --Homer to Plato, Chaucer to Shakespeare, the evolution of the modern novel, for example--this course will focus on ways in which modern technical media (re)structure consciousness. In the early 20th century consciousness was theorized (by William James and Henri Bergson) as flow, stream, and duration, and much scholarly work has articulated these theories with the cinema and stream of consciousness novel. Contemporary cognitive science tends to view consciousness in terms of the computer (i.e., hardware and software, the serial and parallel processing of information). The best example, Daniel Dennett's acclaimed and highly readable Consciousness Explained, understands consciousness as a virtual "Joycean machine" constantly revising "multiple drafts" of phenomenal data. In these terms the course will explore three specific triangulations among literary works, media theory and a theory of consciousness. First, we will read Julian Jayne's The Origin of Consciousness in relation to brief excerpts from Homer's epics and Plato's dialogues, as well as Ong's book. Second, we will read Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying in relation to excerpts from James, Bergson and Freud (on the "psychic apparatus"), as well as excerpts from Friedrich Kittler's book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Third (roughly the second half of the course), we will read Joseph McElroy's novel Plus and Richard Power's Galatea 2.2 in relation to Dennett's book. In all three instances we shall be attentive to a form of emergent self that arises at the changing and technologically mediated nexus of conscious/unconscious, reading and writing. Texts: Required texts: listed above Particulars: a seminar paper and oral report CPLT 751 001 Literature, Politics, and the Women Writer: Contemporary Novelists Brownley Tu 4-7 [Crosslisted with ENG 789R00P, W30R 00P] Content: A study of selected novels on political topics by contemporary writers. The focus will be on the kinds of integration between political and personal elements developed in these fictions, with their considerations of rein scriptions of past history, postcolonial African and Caribbean politics, utopias and dystopias, and the ramifications of political activism. The relationship between literary and polemical discourses will be a major concern, as will feminist theory relevant to the writers covered. Texts: Specific works assigned will depend on what is available in paperback next semester, but the following writers will be covered: Doris Lessing; Paule Marshall; Margaret Atwood; Julia Alvarez; Nadine Gordimer; Christa Wolf; Maryse Condé; Margaret Drabble. Particulars: short paper; two class facilitations; final paper. CPLT 752 000 Catalan Literature Solomon M 1-4 [Crosslisted with SPAN 520] CANCELED CPLT 752 001 The Plantation Americas Loichot Tu 1 -4 [Crosslisted with Fren 775 000, ILA 790 006] Content: This course will explore how the plantation machine produced repeating patterns in different parts of the Americas. We will look particularly at textual and cultural productions of the Caribbean and the Plantation South of the United States. Among the topics we will consider: family structures, including perversions of genealogy, inversions of naming process; challenged authorship of texts; boundless proliferating narratives; creolized language; predominance of the oral collective voice; exploded notions of space; hybrid forms of temporality. Texts: Fictional and theoretical readings from Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Michael Dash, William Faulkner, Edouard Glissant, Toni Morrison, Saint-John Perse, among others. Particulars: Course taught in English. CPLT 752 002 Sex in the 19th Century Marder W 1-4 [Crosslisted with Fren 775 001] Content: In this course, we shall examine representations of "non-normative" sexuality in several major nineteenth-century works. Many of these works are organized around explicit or implicit depictions of impotence, lesbianism, hysteria, and prostitution. By focusing on the importance of these figures, we shall explore how nineteenth century discussions of sexuality functions as a means to articulate changing conceptions of the relationship between language, history, gender and power. Texts: Possible texts include: Armance (Stendhal), La Fille aux yeux d'or (Balzac), Mile de Maupin (Gautier), Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and selections from Baudelaire. We shall also discuss paintings from Delacroix, Manet and Courbet. Critical readings will include works by Foucault, Benjamin, Alain Corbin, Thomas Laqueur and others. CPLT 752 003 The 18th Century Novel Harari Th 1-4 [Crosslisted with Fren 720 002] Content: An examination of the social, political and philosophical questions that determined the development and evolution of the French eighteenth century novel. Texts: Montesquieu, Prevost, Marvaux, Casanova, Laclos, Rousseau, and Sade. CPLT 752 004 Husserl Carr T 1-4 [Crosslisted with PHIL 789 001] Content: A detailed study of selected texts by Husserl, from his earliest to latest writings. Texts: Logical Investigations, Ideas I and II, Cartesian Meditations, The Crisis of European Sciences Particulars: Two brief class presentations and a final essay CPLT 752 005 Foucault: Disputed Questions Flynn W 1-4 [Crosslisted with PHIL 789 002] Content: This course will address several issues that have been disputed among commentators on Foucault's writings over the years. At least five such questions will be considered: subjectivity and authorship, power and governmentality, knowledge and truth, the mutual incompatbility of the being of language and the being of "man," and the nature and role of experience in Foucault's thought. Texts: Essays, interviews, and prefaces taken from the three volumes of Michel Foucault: Essential Works, 1954-1984, ed. Paul Rabinow. Photocopies of selections from other Foucault books Particulars: Since this is a seminar, each participant will be required to present in writing and defend orally and on Learnlink a discussion paper of no more than eight pages. The seminarists will submit questions to the presenter in advance of the oral defense and these questions and responses will count as a class participation for purposes of assessing performance in the course. Each person will submit a final paper of twenty pages (maximum) at the end of the term. CPLT 752 006 Language in Modern French Thought Bennington F 1-4 [Crosslisted with PHIL 789 005, FREN 780 000] Content: The course will examine some central modern French reflections on the question of language, from Saussure's seminal Cours de Linguistique generale, through selected texts by Benveniste, Barthes, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard and Derrida. Our guiding thread will be the concept of the sign as the apparent basis for thinking about language, and the possibility of more or less radical critiques of that concept after Saussure. Texts: TBA Particulars: 1 oral presentation, 1 term paper CPLT 797R Directed Readings By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information. CPLT 799R Dissertation Research By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information.

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings Fall 2001

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings
Fall 2001