Emory | Comp Lit | Graduate Program

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings
Spring 2009

CPLT 751R 000 Theories of Myth in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Laurie Patton
W 7:00-10:00PM
Max 4
[Cross-listed with RLAR 703M]

Content: Historian of religion Ivan Strenski has characterized the concept of "myth" as "an idiosyncratic oddity of cultural history." This course will take up Strenski's critique, and consider the treatment of myth in a number of intellectual contexts--literary, philosophical, and historical. We will examine, among others, the writings of philosophers Ernst Cassirer, Leszek Kolakowski, and Paul Ricoeur; literary critics Northrop Frye, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Marcel Detienne, and historians of religion Charles long, Ivan Strenski, Bruce Lincoln, Sam Gill, Wendy Doniger, and Robert Ellwood. Each section of the course will also involve essays from collections of essasy on myth published in the last decade, which attempt to break new ground in each of these areas. Special attention will be paid to the following themes: 1) myth as an ontological category; 2) myth as a function of religious experience; 3) the role of myth in the study of literature; 4) the relationships between mythical and historical narratives; and 5) myth as a political category of analysis. Previous work in the modern study of religion, the anthropology of religion, the philosophy of religion, or comparative literature is most helpful.

Texts: Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship Shlomo Biderman, ed. Myths and Fictions: Their Place in Philosophy and Religion Schillbrack, Ed. Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives Leszek Kolakwoski, The Presence of Myth Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the sacred : religion, narrative, and imagination William K. Doty, Mythographies Ivan Strenski, Four Theories of myth in the Twentieth Century Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth Roland Barthes, Mythologies Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Myth Sam Gill, Mother Earth Walter Benjamin, Selections from the Arcades Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth Ernst Cassirer, Myth and Language Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider.

Particulars: Requirements include regular attendance, vigorous Participation in class discussion, regular presentations and writing throughout class; one final research paper on a topic of the student's choosing.

CPLT 751R 001 Literature and Psychoanalysis: Primal Scenes

Elissa Marder
W 1:00-4:00PM
Max 15
[Cross-listed with FREN 770]

Content: How can literature and psychoanalysis be read with, through and against each other? In this course we will look at how, in founding psychoanalysis, Freud consistently turns to literature, literary language, and literary modes of reading in order to derive many of psychoanalysis’ basic concepts and at how literary texts often articulate, modify, and challenge psychoanalytic questions. By taking the Freudian concept of the ‘primal scene’ as a starting point, we will examine questions of temporality, repetition, dream-work, sexuality, desire, transference, writing, fetishism, the event, writing, and mourning. Texts may include: The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud); Freud’s case histories (including ‘Dora’, ‘The Wolf-Man’, ‘The Rat-Man,’) “Mourning and Melancholia,” Oedipus Rex, (Sophocles); Phèdre (Racine), selected prose poems by Baudelaire ; To the Lighthouse (Woolf) Le Ravissment de Lol V. Stein (Duras); Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage: scènes primitives (Cixous), as well as critical texts by Jean Laplanche, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François Lyotard.

Texts: The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud); Freud’s case histories (including ‘Dora’, ‘The Wolf-Man’, ‘The Rat-Man,’) “Mourning and Melancholia,” Oedipus Rex, (Sophocles); Phèdre (Racine), selected prose poems by Baudelaire ; To the Lighthouse (Woolf) Le Ravissment de Lol V. Stein (Duras); Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage: scènes primitives (Cixous), as well as critical texts by Jean Laplanche, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François Lyotard.

CPLT 751R 002 Simulation

John Johnston
TH 1:00-4:00PM
Max 10
[Cross-listed with ENG 789R]

Content: Beginning with a critical history of simulacra (Plato, Nietzsche, Deleuze), the course will examine several theories of simulation (Baudrillard, Langton, Grand, Casti), conceived of as both a strategy and a digital technology no longer determined by mimetic protocols (like those of representation). In this context we will examine shifts in the meaning of “code” and the relevance of game theory to the dynamic play of simulations that increasingly shape contemporary culture. Thus we will also be concerned with information warfare and the convergence of media simulation and military logistics. In short, we will test and problematize the military (Stricom’s) motto that “all but war is simulation.” While the primary readings will be drawn from theoretical sources, we will also read several literary texts focused on these themes and devote some class time to looking at actual computer simulations as well as documents, artifacts and websites from the military-entertainment complex

Texts: Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense
Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death
John L. Casti, Would-be Worlds
Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies
William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma
Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
Charles Stross, Halting State
Short texts by John von Neumann, Donna Haraway, Manuel De Landa, Chris Langton, Steve Grand, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler, Tim Lenoir, Evelyn Fox Keller, Bernadette Wegenstein and others to be announced.

Particulars: A class presentation and seminar paper.

CPLT 751R 003 Melodrama

José Quiroga
T 1:00-4:00PM
Max 4
[Cross-listed with SPAN 560 and ILA 790]

Content: TBA

Texts: TBA

Particulars: TBA

CPLT 751R 004 Bataille and the Sacred

Jill Robbins
M 1:00-4:00PM
Max 12

Content: In this seminar we will read closely those texts containing Georges Bataille’s major theoretical statements on the sacred. Beginning with Bataille’s writings from the 1930’s, including those from the College of Sociology (1937-1939), where a virulent, violently disruptive sacred is said to serve as the basis of social formations, we will trace the elaborations and modifications of this view in Theory of Religion (1948), The Accursed Share (1949), and “Hegel, Death and Sacrifice” (1955). As we follow out the threads of the ambiguity of the sacred, the gift, sacrifice, and community in Bataille’s work, we will consider carefully the writings of two of Bataille’s major influences, Alexander Kojeve and Marcel Mauss. We will attend especially to the strong readings of Bataille by Jaques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. Finally, we will look at Emmanuel Levinas’s account of individuation as a break with the sacred in Existence and Existents, and Bataille’s response to Levinas.

Texts: Hollier, ed. The College of Sociology; Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” Theory of Religion, The Accursed Share; Kojeve, “The Idea of Death in the Philosophy of Hegel”; Mauss, The Gift; Derrida, “From Restricted to General Economy;” Nancy, “The Unsacrificeable”; The Inoperative Community, selections; Levinas, Existence and Existents; Bataille, “From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy.”

CPLT 751R 005 Nietzsche and his Readers

Elizabeth Goodstein
TH 9:00-12:00PM
Max 4
[Cross-listed with ILA 790 and HIST 585]

Content: “I am not a human being; I am dynamite.” Friedrich Nietzsche, whose name indeed came to signify a shaking of the foundations of western civilization, lamented in 1888 that despite all his books he had gone unheard; that his work had been and would continue to be profoundly misunderstood. We will begin, therefore, by reading Nietzsche: by confronting the philosophical and literary complexity of an oeuvre that is by no means unambiguous. We will then go on to explore Nietzsche’s intellectual and cultural legacy in twentieth-century Europe through a cross-section of his most significant readers—philosophers, novelists, artists, cultural critics. In exploring the multifarious and often highly problematic history of effects of Nietzsche’s ideas, this course aims neither to defend nor to condemn him but rather to understand what makes it possible to appropriate “Nietzsche” in the name of extremely diverse philosophical and cultural projects. Today, with the turn to “life” that Nietzsche called for unfolding ever more unimagined and disturbing consequences, a return to his texts takes on a new urgency. What does Nietzsche mean for the twenty-first century?

Texts: Bataille, Blumenberg, Cacciari, Camus, Clement, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Heidegger, Hesse, Klages, Klossowski, Mann, Musil, Nordau, Simmel, Sorel, Spengler, Vattimo, Weber.

CPLT 751R Philip Roth and Psychoanalysis

Peter Rudnytsky
TH 9:00-12:00PM
Max
[Cross-listed with PSP 789R and ENG ]

Content:

Texts:

Particulars:

CPLT 752R 000 Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Geoffrey Bennington
T 1:00-4:00PM
Max 6
[Cross-listed with FREN 550]

Content: Plus qu’un autre, peut-être, c’est Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui aura signé le dix-huitième siècle français. Que ce soit en matière de philosophie politique, de théorie pédagogique, d’écriture littéraire ou autobiographique, tout change là où Rousseau écrit et signe de son nom. Nous essayerons, à travers la lecture de grands textes en tous genres, de mieux cerner la place et les enjeux de cette signature qui se veut unique, garant présumé d’une vérité qui se révélera de plus en plus fabuleuse.

Texts: Les Confessions ; Emile, ou de l’éducation ; Discours sur l’origine de l‘inégalité ; Du Contrat social ; Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire ; Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques.

Particulars: The course will be taught in French.

CPLT 752R 001 Maryse Conde/Edouard Glissant

Valerie Loichot
M 1:00-4:00PM
Max 6
[Cross-listed with FREN 785]

Content: Maryse Condé and Édouard Glissant, two literary powerhouses of the French Antilles, are often seen as diametrical opposites. The first is a woman from Guadeloupe, the other a man from Martinique; one rejects theory as a euro-centered curse, the other is arguably the most important contemporary Francophone postcolonial theorist; one privileges individual gendered voices, the other favors a gender-neutral collective; one identifies Africa as source, the other dwells in Whole-World and Antillanité. The course aims to debunk these apparent divisions and to show that Glissant and Condé are indeed closer than they seem. For instance, we will demonstrate that, in spite of herself, Condé is a major theorist, and that, shockingly perhaps, Glissant’s fiction can be read as feminist. Studied side by side, Condé and Glissant’s texts will provide us invaluable insight into an understanding of Caribbean gender and racial constructs, kinship, theories of origins, creolizations, and globalizations.

Texts: Maryse Condé: Heremakhonon, La Civilisation du Bossale, Traversée de la mangrove, Histoire de la femme cannibale. Édouard Glissant: Discours antillais, Poétique de la Relation, La Case du Commandeur, Traité du Tout-Monde.

Particulars: One research paper, one oral presentation, active class participation including leading discussion and short written responses. The seminar will be conducted in French but students from other departments who have a reading knowledge and good conversational skills in French are strongly encouraged to enroll. They will be able to contribute to class discussion, deliver their presentation and write their paper in English.

CPLT 752R 00P Histories/Sexualities

Jonathan Goldberg
T 10:00-1:00PM
Max 3
[Cross-listed with ENG 789R and WS 585]

Content: This course will focus on recent work in the history of sexuality. In the first half of the term, the emphasis will be on work around African American and other diasporic experiences, with literary readings including the novels of Nella Larsen and The Pagoda, a novel by Patricia Powell (the latter will be doing a reading in February 2009 sponsored by Studies in Sexualities). In the second half of the term, we will focus on work in the medieval and early modern period, probably including readings of female saint’s lives and poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

Texts: The course will work from recently published scholarship, including Once You Go Black by Robert Reid-Pharr (he will be coming to lecture and run a seminar with the sponsorship of Studies in Sexualities), essays by Nayan Shah (a historian of Asian diasporic experience, also thanks to Studies in Sexualities), chapters from books by Scott Herring, Virginia Burrus, Carla Freccero, Daniel Juan Gil, among other.

Particulars: Short paper; 2 class facilitations; final paper

CPLT 752R 002 Eruptive Histories: Story, Theory and Trauma in Psychoanalytic Writing

Cathy Caruth
T 9:45-11:15AM
Max 5
[Cross-listed with ENG 789R, ILA 790R and PSP 789R]

Content: TBA

Texts: TBA

Particulars: TBA

CPLT 753 00P Teaching of Literature

Deborah Elise White
W 10:00-1:00PM
Max 10

Content: A seminar in pedagogy that meets the requirement of the graduate School's TATTO program for graduate students in Comparative Literature, this course prepares graduate students to teach comparative literature to undergraduates, particularly in Emory's Literature 110, Literature 201 and Literature 202. This seminar will focus on practical aspects of teaching as well as offering some consideration of theoretical questions surrounding pedagogy and controversies that have influenced the academy in recent years. Our aim will be to achieve a balance between a pragmatic, ‘workshop’ approach and more philosophical reflection on what it means to teach. Topics covered may include: constructing a syllabus, technology in the classroom and the specific dynamics of teaching writing, poetry, literature in translation, novels, and literary theory.

Texts: Readings to be made available through electronic reserve and the Comparative Literature Department. They will be drawn from works by (among others) Showalter, Barthes, De Man, and Readings.

Particular: Students will have several writing assignments geared to specific demands of teaching: practice syllabi, paper topics, exam questions etc. Each student will also offer a short “class” to the rest of the seminar.

*** Permission of instructor required for enrollment

CPLT 797R 000 Love, blood and rhetoric

Bracht Branham
W 2:00-4:00PM
Max 9
[cross-listed with GRK 597]

Content: This course will be an experiment. Instead of reading a series of texts related to some topic, we will focus on one text and spend the whole year reading it intensively in the original: Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue on the erotics of rhetoric and one of Ur-texts of rhetoric and poetics in the West. Students will learn how to explicate Plato’s text both philologically and philosophically and we will also consider some of the most important responses it has inspired from Aristotle’s Rhetoric to contemporary readings by A. Nightengale, Derrida et al. The Phaedrus is available in bi-lingual editions but some knowledge of Attic Greek will be required. If you have any questions, you can email me at r.bracht.branham@emory.edu.

CPLT 797R 01P Directed Readings

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

CPLT 799R 000 Dissertation Research

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






	graduate program handbook courses spring 2009 fall 2008 spring 2008 fall 2007 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 Spring 2009 CPLT 751R 000 Theories of Myth in the 20th and 21st Centuries Laurie Patton W 7:00-10:00PM Max 4 [Cross-listed with RLAR 703M] Content: Historian of religion Ivan Strenski has characterized the concept of "myth" as "an idiosyncratic oddity of cultural history." This course will take up Strenski's critique, and consider the treatment of myth in a number of intellectual contexts--literary, philosophical, and historical. We will examine, among others, the writings of philosophers Ernst Cassirer, Leszek Kolakowski, and Paul Ricoeur; literary critics Northrop Frye, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Marcel Detienne, and historians of religion Charles long, Ivan Strenski, Bruce Lincoln, Sam Gill, Wendy Doniger, and Robert Ellwood. Each section of the course will also involve essays from collections of essasy on myth published in the last decade, which attempt to break new ground in each of these areas. Special attention will be paid to the following themes: 1) myth as an ontological category; 2) myth as a function of religious experience; 3) the role of myth in the study of literature; 4) the relationships between mythical and historical narratives; and 5) myth as a political category of analysis. Previous work in the modern study of religion, the anthropology of religion, the philosophy of religion, or comparative literature is most helpful. Texts: Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship Shlomo Biderman, ed. Myths and Fictions: Their Place in Philosophy and Religion Schillbrack, Ed. Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives Leszek Kolakwoski, The Presence of Myth Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the sacred : religion, narrative, and imagination William K. Doty, Mythographies Ivan Strenski, Four Theories of myth in the Twentieth Century Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth Roland Barthes, Mythologies Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Myth Sam Gill, Mother Earth Walter Benjamin, Selections from the Arcades Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth Ernst Cassirer, Myth and Language Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider. Particulars: Requirements include regular attendance, vigorous Participation in class discussion, regular presentations and writing throughout class; one final research paper on a topic of the student's choosing. CPLT 751R 001 Literature and Psychoanalysis: Primal Scenes Elissa Marder W 1:00-4:00PM Max 15 [Cross-listed with FREN 770] Content: How can literature and psychoanalysis be read with, through and against each other? In this course we will look at how, in founding psychoanalysis, Freud consistently turns to literature, literary language, and literary modes of reading in order to derive many of psychoanalysis’ basic concepts and at how literary texts often articulate, modify, and challenge psychoanalytic questions. By taking the Freudian concept of the ‘primal scene’ as a starting point, we will examine questions of temporality, repetition, dream-work, sexuality, desire, transference, writing, fetishism, the event, writing, and mourning. Texts may include: The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud); Freud’s case histories (including ‘Dora’, ‘The Wolf-Man’, ‘The Rat-Man,’) “Mourning and Melancholia,” Oedipus Rex, (Sophocles); Phèdre (Racine), selected prose poems by Baudelaire ; To the Lighthouse (Woolf) Le Ravissment de Lol V. Stein (Duras); Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage: scènes primitives (Cixous), as well as critical texts by Jean Laplanche, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François Lyotard. Texts: The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud); Freud’s case histories (including ‘Dora’, ‘The Wolf-Man’, ‘The Rat-Man,’) “Mourning and Melancholia,” Oedipus Rex, (Sophocles); Phèdre (Racine), selected prose poems by Baudelaire ; To the Lighthouse (Woolf) Le Ravissment de Lol V. Stein (Duras); Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage: scènes primitives (Cixous), as well as critical texts by Jean Laplanche, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-François Lyotard. CPLT 751R 002 Simulation John Johnston TH 1:00-4:00PM Max 10 [Cross-listed with ENG 789R] Content: Beginning with a critical history of simulacra (Plato, Nietzsche, Deleuze), the course will examine several theories of simulation (Baudrillard, Langton, Grand, Casti), conceived of as both a strategy and a digital technology no longer determined by mimetic protocols (like those of representation). In this context we will examine shifts in the meaning of “code” and the relevance of game theory to the dynamic play of simulations that increasingly shape contemporary culture. Thus we will also be concerned with information warfare and the convergence of media simulation and military logistics. In short, we will test and problematize the military (Stricom’s) motto that “all but war is simulation.” While the primary readings will be drawn from theoretical sources, we will also read several literary texts focused on these themes and devote some class time to looking at actual computer simulations as well as documents, artifacts and websites from the military-entertainment complex Texts: Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death John L. Casti, Would-be Worlds Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End Charles Stross, Halting State Short texts by John von Neumann, Donna Haraway, Manuel De Landa, Chris Langton, Steve Grand, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler, Tim Lenoir, Evelyn Fox Keller, Bernadette Wegenstein and others to be announced. Particulars: A class presentation and seminar paper. CPLT 751R 003 Melodrama José Quiroga T 1:00-4:00PM Max 4 [Cross-listed with SPAN 560 and ILA 790] Content: TBA Texts: TBA Particulars: TBA CPLT 751R 004 Bataille and the Sacred Jill Robbins M 1:00-4:00PM Max 12 Content: In this seminar we will read closely those texts containing Georges Bataille’s major theoretical statements on the sacred. Beginning with Bataille’s writings from the 1930’s, including those from the College of Sociology (1937-1939), where a virulent, violently disruptive sacred is said to serve as the basis of social formations, we will trace the elaborations and modifications of this view in Theory of Religion (1948), The Accursed Share (1949), and “Hegel, Death and Sacrifice” (1955). As we follow out the threads of the ambiguity of the sacred, the gift, sacrifice, and community in Bataille’s work, we will consider carefully the writings of two of Bataille’s major influences, Alexander Kojeve and Marcel Mauss. We will attend especially to the strong readings of Bataille by Jaques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. Finally, we will look at Emmanuel Levinas’s account of individuation as a break with the sacred in Existence and Existents, and Bataille’s response to Levinas. Texts: Hollier, ed. The College of Sociology; Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure,” Theory of Religion, The Accursed Share; Kojeve, “The Idea of Death in the Philosophy of Hegel”; Mauss, The Gift; Derrida, “From Restricted to General Economy;” Nancy, “The Unsacrificeable”; The Inoperative Community, selections; Levinas, Existence and Existents; Bataille, “From Existentialism to the Primacy of Economy.” CPLT 751R 005 Nietzsche and his Readers Elizabeth Goodstein TH 9:00-12:00PM Max 4 [Cross-listed with ILA 790 and HIST 585] Content: “I am not a human being; I am dynamite.” Friedrich Nietzsche, whose name indeed came to signify a shaking of the foundations of western civilization, lamented in 1888 that despite all his books he had gone unheard; that his work had been and would continue to be profoundly misunderstood. We will begin, therefore, by reading Nietzsche: by confronting the philosophical and literary complexity of an oeuvre that is by no means unambiguous. We will then go on to explore Nietzsche’s intellectual and cultural legacy in twentieth-century Europe through a cross-section of his most significant readers—philosophers, novelists, artists, cultural critics. In exploring the multifarious and often highly problematic history of effects of Nietzsche’s ideas, this course aims neither to defend nor to condemn him but rather to understand what makes it possible to appropriate “Nietzsche” in the name of extremely diverse philosophical and cultural projects. Today, with the turn to “life” that Nietzsche called for unfolding ever more unimagined and disturbing consequences, a return to his texts takes on a new urgency. What does Nietzsche mean for the twenty-first century? Texts: Bataille, Blumenberg, Cacciari, Camus, Clement, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Heidegger, Hesse, Klages, Klossowski, Mann, Musil, Nordau, Simmel, Sorel, Spengler, Vattimo, Weber. CPLT 751R Philip Roth and Psychoanalysis Peter Rudnytsky TH 9:00-12:00PM Max [Cross-listed with PSP 789R and ENG ] Content: Texts: Particulars: CPLT 752R 000 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Geoffrey Bennington T 1:00-4:00PM Max 6 [Cross-listed with FREN 550] Content: Plus qu’un autre, peut-être, c’est Jean-Jacques Rousseau qui aura signé le dix-huitième siècle français. Que ce soit en matière de philosophie politique, de théorie pédagogique, d’écriture littéraire ou autobiographique, tout change là où Rousseau écrit et signe de son nom. Nous essayerons, à travers la lecture de grands textes en tous genres, de mieux cerner la place et les enjeux de cette signature qui se veut unique, garant présumé d’une vérité qui se révélera de plus en plus fabuleuse. Texts: Les Confessions ; Emile, ou de l’éducation ; Discours sur l’origine de l‘inégalité ; Du Contrat social ; Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire ; Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques. Particulars: The course will be taught in French. CPLT 752R 001 Maryse Conde/Edouard Glissant Valerie Loichot M 1:00-4:00PM Max 6 [Cross-listed with FREN 785] Content: Maryse Condé and Édouard Glissant, two literary powerhouses of the French Antilles, are often seen as diametrical opposites. The first is a woman from Guadeloupe, the other a man from Martinique; one rejects theory as a euro-centered curse, the other is arguably the most important contemporary Francophone postcolonial theorist; one privileges individual gendered voices, the other favors a gender-neutral collective; one identifies Africa as source, the other dwells in Whole-World and Antillanité. The course aims to debunk these apparent divisions and to show that Glissant and Condé are indeed closer than they seem. For instance, we will demonstrate that, in spite of herself, Condé is a major theorist, and that, shockingly perhaps, Glissant’s fiction can be read as feminist. Studied side by side, Condé and Glissant’s texts will provide us invaluable insight into an understanding of Caribbean gender and racial constructs, kinship, theories of origins, creolizations, and globalizations. Texts: Maryse Condé: Heremakhonon, La Civilisation du Bossale, Traversée de la mangrove, Histoire de la femme cannibale. Édouard Glissant: Discours antillais, Poétique de la Relation, La Case du Commandeur, Traité du Tout-Monde. Particulars: One research paper, one oral presentation, active class participation including leading discussion and short written responses. The seminar will be conducted in French but students from other departments who have a reading knowledge and good conversational skills in French are strongly encouraged to enroll. They will be able to contribute to class discussion, deliver their presentation and write their paper in English. CPLT 752R 00P Histories/Sexualities Jonathan Goldberg T 10:00-1:00PM Max 3 [Cross-listed with ENG 789R and WS 585] Content: This course will focus on recent work in the history of sexuality. In the first half of the term, the emphasis will be on work around African American and other diasporic experiences, with literary readings including the novels of Nella Larsen and The Pagoda, a novel by Patricia Powell (the latter will be doing a reading in February 2009 sponsored by Studies in Sexualities). In the second half of the term, we will focus on work in the medieval and early modern period, probably including readings of female saint’s lives and poems by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Texts: The course will work from recently published scholarship, including Once You Go Black by Robert Reid-Pharr (he will be coming to lecture and run a seminar with the sponsorship of Studies in Sexualities), essays by Nayan Shah (a historian of Asian diasporic experience, also thanks to Studies in Sexualities), chapters from books by Scott Herring, Virginia Burrus, Carla Freccero, Daniel Juan Gil, among other. Particulars: Short paper; 2 class facilitations; final paper CPLT 752R 002 Eruptive Histories: Story, Theory and Trauma in Psychoanalytic Writing Cathy Caruth T 9:45-11:15AM Max 5 [Cross-listed with ENG 789R, ILA 790R and PSP 789R] Content: TBA Texts: TBA Particulars: TBA CPLT 753 00P Teaching of Literature Deborah Elise White W 10:00-1:00PM Max 10 Content: A seminar in pedagogy that meets the requirement of the graduate School's TATTO program for graduate students in Comparative Literature, this course prepares graduate students to teach comparative literature to undergraduates, particularly in Emory's Literature 110, Literature 201 and Literature 202. This seminar will focus on practical aspects of teaching as well as offering some consideration of theoretical questions surrounding pedagogy and controversies that have influenced the academy in recent years. Our aim will be to achieve a balance between a pragmatic, ‘workshop’ approach and more philosophical reflection on what it means to teach. Topics covered may include: constructing a syllabus, technology in the classroom and the specific dynamics of teaching writing, poetry, literature in translation, novels, and literary theory. Texts: Readings to be made available through electronic reserve and the Comparative Literature Department. They will be drawn from works by (among others) Showalter, Barthes, De Man, and Readings. Particular: Students will have several writing assignments geared to specific demands of teaching: practice syllabi, paper topics, exam questions etc. Each student will also offer a short “class” to the rest of the seminar. * Permission of instructor required for enrollment CPLT 797R 000 Love, blood and rhetoric Bracht Branham W 2:00-4:00PM Max 9 [cross-listed with GRK 597] Content:** This course will be an experiment. Instead of reading a series of texts related to some topic, we will focus on one text and spend the whole year reading it intensively in the original: Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue on the erotics of rhetoric and one of Ur-texts of rhetoric and poetics in the West. Students will learn how to explicate Plato’s text both philologically and philosophically and we will also consider some of the most important responses it has inspired from Aristotle’s Rhetoric to contemporary readings by A. Nightengale, Derrida et al. The Phaedrus is available in bi-lingual editions but some knowledge of Attic Greek will be required. If you have any questions, you can email me at r.bracht.branham@emory.edu. CPLT 797R 01P Directed Readings By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information. CPLT 799R 000 Dissertation Research By permission of the Director. Please contact the Program Office (N101 Callaway) for more information.

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings Spring 2009

Comparative Literature Graduate Course Offerings
Spring 2009