Course Descriptions

PIC 645A/PHIL 480F/649C/COLI 574C/ENG 673S/WOMN 480Y/ARTH 504A: VOLUPTUOUS: TRANSCOLONIAL RELATIONALITIES
[ALLEN M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Oscillations, loops and remixes among across between incommensurable sites, represented in recent transcolonial and feminist writing, theory, and artistic productions will be the focus of the course. Might a polymetrics of sites, experienced not necessarily as discrete points, but as strings of relational clusters, affect morphogenic approaches to 'post, 'neo', and a'anti' colonial geographies, logics, movements? Voluptuous, no longer understood exclusively as a response to post-Victorian containment, might, then, meander epistemic contours with its kinetics, time-delays, branching cycles, diffusion driven instabilities, with its flutter, filaments forming knots or unwinding, distorting, stretching, twisting to compound relations with multiple arms. Eyes that trace such motion, that are in/with motion, voluptuaries, may flourish while 'virtue' is in decline, is resisted, where 'virtue' never has figured. If a writing or theory cannot simply be transported from one site to another, for if it were, its languages would change, how might one, amidst barrier, backscattering, secondary backscattering [echo], angular momentum, unsteadfast spins, render voluminous pain, sorrow, hunger, nourishment, daily survival?
BOOKS: To be determined.
REQUIREMENTS: Active class participation, exercises, presentations, two projects [if written, ten pages each, but may include writing, artwork, etc.]

PIC 511/ENG 673M: PREMODERN TEXT: POSTMODERN CONTEXT
[DESMOND T 4:25-7:25]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will explore the theoretical implications of the "radical familiarity" of medieval texts in postmodern contexts. We will consider especially the significance of medieval cultures and medieval literary theories for cultural studies, with a special emphasis on feminist film theory and queer theory; we address as well the extent to which critical theories challenge the historicist assumptions of medieval studies. Primary medieval texts include The Romance of the Rose, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; medieval English drama.

PIC 622A/COLI 531S/WOMN 380Y/LA&C 380Y: U.S. LATINA LITERATURE
[LUGONES M 6:15-9:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course focuses on reading resistance in the works of contemporary U.S. Latinas. The context is emphatically marked by homophobia, racist sexism and sexist racism interlaced with colonialism, but the emphasis is on subversive remakings, transformations, in the process of making face, making memory, rebuilding old spaces through transgressive inhabitations, making connections, "interfacing": finding and inhabiting the place between the oppressive masks we are forced to wear. A story can do more than document resistance. A story has the potential to become a tool of resistance.

PIC 616A/COLI 574H/ AFST485G: CRITICAL RACE THEORY
[LUGONES/PRICE R 6:15-9:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Critical Race theorists have forged a set of tools, frameworks, to work against the racial state at the point of the law. Naming themselves variously as outsiders, possessive of multiple consciousness, alchemists, they theorize how to maneuver the contradictions of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. In this class we will study the praxis in which they engage, the jurisprudence they propose, the original prose style they employ. We will discuss their critiques of institutional racism, racial integration, the intersection of oppressive structures, privileging those outsiders perspectives.

PIC 636A/PHIL 480N/AFST 487B/SOC480J: PHILOSOPHY OF COLONIALISM
[NZEGWU: T 9:40-12:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century were periods of rapid European colonial expansionism. Between 1885 and 1908, some five to eight million fell victim to King Leopold of Belgium's personal rule over the Congo, under a barbarous system of forced labor and systematic terror. Meanwhile, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of the species, adventurers' travelogues and varied forms of anthropological "researches" played a dominant role in shaping the Victorian mind, and in promoting an imperial image of non-Europeans as beyond the bounds of humanity. Taking colonialism as a complex project with both intended and unintended consequences this course raises the following questions: Does the project of colonialism have a philosophy? What kind of philosophy is this? What sort of human and social vision does this philosophy embody? What does it say about the nature and character of reality? And what was the role of Western philosophy and philosophers during this tragic period? In short, this course will come to grips with the historical, metaphysical and epistemological implications of the philosophy of colonialism in Africa in particular, and the world in general.

PIC 609A/PHIL 480E/640K/COLI574F/ENG673S: SELF, WORLD, AND OTHER
[ROSS MW 1:10-3:20]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: An exploration of the self [a certain self, a certain kind of self], self identity, and subjectivity from within the critique of the autonomous individual and [Western] subject, including some of the following: self as agent, person, individual, human being, consciousness, ego, I [Locke, Kant, Hegel], body [Grosz], animal, cyborg [Haraway]; self in society, self in nature, self in culture; ecological self, economic self; the constitution of the self by: self-knowledge [Plato], care [Foucault], friendship [Aristotle], love [Irigaray], the other [Levinas], nothing, without qualities [Nietzsche], production [Spinoza, Marx, Deleuze & Guattari], materiality and corporeality [Spinoza, Marx], performativity [Butler], the curse [Bataille], shattering, sharing, singularity [Nancy], subjectivity [Kant, Hegel, Levinas], being-there, being-thrown [Heidegger, Nancy], being-here, responsibility [Levinas, Derrida], responsivity [Whitehead], language, exposition, expression, differance [Freud, Levinas, Lacan, Derrida], itself [Whitman], experience [Hume, Dewey, Kant], others [Levinas], disaster [Blanchot], death [Plato, Heidegger]; the gendered self [Freud, Irigaray, Griffin], self in world [Griffin, Heidegger, Spinoza]; shattered self [Nancy, Glass, Daniel], empty, selfless self [Buddhism], endless self [Hinduism], produced self [Marx], material self [Marx], worldly self [Spinoza, Deleuze & Guattari, Nancy, Griffin], nomadic self [Deleuze & Guattari], pragmatic self [Dewey, James], postmodern self [Nancy, Derrida], postcolonial self [Bhabha], nonWestern self [Japanese, African], hybrid self [African American, Asian American, EuroAsian], expressive, responsive self.
PRIMARY READINGS: Nietzsche, Dewey, Foucault, Heidegger, Irigaray, Levinas, Nancy; also readings in Buddhism.
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS: Aristotle, Bhabha, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, Descartes, Freud, Griffin, Grosz, Haraway, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Whitehead, Whitman, Wittig; also from Asia and Africa and ecofeminism.
FORMAT: Each week: one hour lecture each week to all students, graduate and undergraduate; one hour lecture discussion meeting with all students; one hour discussions with undergraduate and graduate students separately.
Students are responsible for 10-minute presentations initiating small group discussions, raising questions rather than supporting theses. At least one such presentation is required at each discussion. Students are also responsible for presenting ten-page papers at a class miniconference at the end of the semester.

PIC 615A/PHIL 488L/608J/COLI 574G: GLOBALIZATION, RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND FEMINIST THEORY
[BARON W 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Globalization has advanced so much that it must be taken into account when considering the possibility of radical democracy which has been conceived on a small scale, especially in the context of social change movements, including feminist movements. When feminists in movements began thinking about radical democracy they did so primarily on the micro-institutional level, thus, while considering the socio-political organization of feminist and other progressive oppositional groups. It has been primarily feminists in the academy, of which only some have been engaged in feminists or other progressive oppositional groups, who have taken on the macro-societal level, though usually with a focus on the socio-political organization of nation-states. In both cases, feminists, beginning with a concern for gender-justice, have worried about issues regarding decision-making and its implementation, or "governance," in connection with concerns about justice more generally and its relationship to human flourishing. Recently, the same constellation of concerns have begun to generate a feminist discussion of radical democratic theory in relation to globalization. In this course we will explore the formation of this uniquely feminist discourses about radical democracy with attention to the shifts in the domain they cover and the sites of theorization.

PIC 550C/COLI 574J: HEIDEGGER
[FYNSK W 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this seminar will be to undertake a sustained reading of Being and Time and to explore the philosophical project in which it was embedded through readings of seminars from the late 1920's and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Notions such as facticity, world, historicity, production, and finitude will be developed through careful textual analyses. This seminar should provide a substantial introduction to Heidegger s earlier work.

PIC 650B/COLI 574E: EXPOSURE
[HAVER Monday 3:00-6:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: What is most difficult in our current culture of political despair is to imagine the possibility of the political ["in itself" and "as such"0, to imagine the political as possibility [potentia]. This seminar is one attempt to imagine the political as an exposure without reserve that appears only in the fulguration of power as relation. The possibility of the political neither precedes nor survives the very happening of relation. To imagine the political, therefore, is to imagine what can never resolve itself into either image or concept; to imagine the political is therefore art's work.
FORMAT: Seminar: regular attendance, participation, and a substantial paper are required.
REQUIRED BOOKS: Debord, SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE; Agamben, MEANS WITHOUT ENDS; Nancy, BEING SINGULAR PLURAL; Durham, PHANTOM COMMUNITIES; Burke, A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL; Kant, CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT; Lyotard, LESSONS ON THE ANALYTIC OF THE SUBLIME; Lyotard, THE ASSASSINATION OF EXPERIENCE BY PAINTING--MONORY; Lyotard, THE DIFFEREND; Foucault, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH

PIC 615B/SOC610: ANTISYSTEMIC MOVEMENTS
[MARTIN T 1:00-4:00]

SOC693A: ADVANCED RESEARCH SEMINAR
[MARTIN W 4:00-7:00 p.m. every other week]

PIC 615C/SOC618: RETHINKING GLOBAL LABOR FORMATION; 16th-20th CENTURIES
[SANTIAGO-VALLES T 10:00-1:00]

SOC693D: ADVANCED RESEARCH SEMINAR
[SANTIAGO-VALLES F 4:00-7:00p.m. every other week]

PIC 655A/ENG 673D: THEORY
[SPANOS MW 2:45-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course we will examine several of the major strains of contemporary theory: Destruction (Heidegger), Deconstruction (Derrida), Neo-Marxism (Althusser, Jameson), Feminism (Irigaray), Genealogical Criticism (Foucault), Cultural Criticism (Raymond Williams), Black Criticism (Gilroy) and postcolonialism (Said, Bhabha) with the view to determining what postmodern theory is and how it has affected the the study of literature and other forms of cultural production. The purpose of this course is not simply to expose the student to the various critical "approaches" enabled by these theoretical initiatives. It is also, and primarily, to show what they have in common, how they collectively contribute to the idea of postmodernity. As such, they will be examined in a way that will disclose their revolutionary impact on traditional (premodern and modern) interpretations of being, language, culture, race, gender relations, politics, domestic and global. Throughout the course, our reading and thinking postmodern theory will be accompanied by examination of specific literary texts and films. (To be announced.)
Tentative List of Texts: Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings; Edward W. Said, Orientalism; Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy; Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism; Luce Irigaray, Je, Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference; Jacque Derrida, Writing and Difference; Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition; Michel Foucault, Foucault Reader; Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic; Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature; Negri and Hardt, Empire

PIC 550B/PHIL 404E/550J: KANT'S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT
[ZINKIN R 11:40-2:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will be a close reading of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Topics will include Kant's view of Freedom, Morality, History, Art and Telology. Supplementary texts will highlight the contemporary reception of Kant's Third Critique. Undergraduates are required to have taken Philosophy 202 and two other philosophy courses.

PIC 632A/ARTH 483A/530A/ENG 450Q/ENG 565P/MDVL 440A: ASPECTS OF THE MEDIEVAL CULT OF SAINTS
[BARBARA ABOU-EL-HAJ M 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar will examine the historically specific conditions that prompted individuals to be declared saints and their cults to be organized and circulated in the early Middle Ages and revived and dramatically expanded from the late tenth through the twelfth centuries. We will distinguish early forms of veneration from the mass audiences produced in the later Middle Ages; female from male saints; sponsors from audiences; locals from pilgrims; and spiritual practices from spectacles. We will take account of extravagant churches and their decoration, reliquary shrines, illustrated manuscripts, and elaborate ceremonies. Each student will research a cult of his or her choice, taking note of the historical circumstances that may have prompted intermittent clusters of activities, such as fierce competition among cult centers, volatile pilgrim audiences, civil strife and resistance tothese enterprises at premier shrines such as those of Mary Magdalen at Vezelay and Santiago de Compostela. Reciprocally, we will explore how contemporary circumstances may have been invoked in the art, architecture and ceremonies produced at each pilgrimage site.
FORMAT: Weekly readings and discussions using slides and photographs. Short research paper.

PIC 646A/ARTH 540G/441A: SEXING THE BODY
[BARZMAN W 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar looks at the mapping of sex onto bodies in Western culture, beginning with pre-modern paradigms of the body. We will examine various forms of representation employed in corporeal topographies, including text as well as visual imagery, and the larger discourses ["scientific," political, social] that frame these paradigms. We will focus on representational practices that secure[d] available categories of sex in addition to those that disrupt[ed] normative sexed identity, including projections or fantasies of the body and work directly on bodies themselves. Readings range from Aristotle, Galen, and Vesalius to Freud, Irigaray, and Foucault; images include "Old Master" works, film, video, performance art, and "the pornographic" in a variety of media.

PIC 606A/COLI 515B: JENA ROMANTICISM: PHILOSOPHY & LITERATURE
[BRINKER-GABLER T 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: A study of German Romanticism and its reception in twentieth-century literary criticism and theory. We will look into Jena Romanticism both as a philosophical movement and a model for an aesthetic practice. Our focus will be on language, reflection, and the fragment. We will read key texts by Fichte, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Brentano/Guenderrode, and Hoelderlin. Selections include essays, fragments, dialogues, letters, and poetry. Their work will be discussed in relation to 20th century criticism and theory, specifically Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man and Lacoue-Labarthe/Nancy.
FORMAT: Regular attendance and participation mandatory. Students will give two reports and write one research paper. Course structure: lectures, discussions and reports.
BOOKS: THEORY AS PRACTICE. A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY OF EARLY GERMAN ROMANTIC WRITINGS. Ed. and translated by Jochen Schulte-Sasse et.al. University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Friedrich Schlegel, PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS, LUCINDE, Novalis, POLLEN AND FRAGMENTS, HYMNS TO THE NIGHT, HENRY OF OFTERDINGEN, Bettina Brentano/Karoline Gunderrode, CORRESPONDENCE, Holderlin, Selections, Walter Benjamin, ROMANTICISM AND LITERARY CRITICISM, Paul de Man, ROMANTICISM AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM, and Lacoue-Labarthe/Nancy, THE LITERARY ABSOLUTE.

PIC 550A/PHIL 416/550F: MERLEAU-PONTY
[DILLON TR 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Survey of major works by the French existential phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Prerequisites. Three courses in philosophy, including at least two of the following: Phil 107-Existentialism & Phenomenology, Phil 116-Philosophy & Literature, Phil 201- Plato & Aristotle, Phil 202-Descartes, Hume, & Kant.
FORMAT: Lecture/discussion. Midterm exam [Phil 460E only] [1 hour], seminar presentation [Phil 550U only], final exam [2 hours], term paper [10-15 pages].

PIC 606B/COLI 535B/380B: BORGES
[LEVINSON W 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class will examine the works of Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the various Argentine writers who have followed in his path, including Piglia, Saer, Valenzuela, and Cortazar. The course will end with a reading of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, so as to study the influence of Borges on Garcia Marquez. We will focus upon nationalist, political, ideological, and aesthetic issues. At least 25% of grade to be based on two oral presentations, which will include feedback from the professor and other students. Listening as well as speaking skills will be tested.

PIC 606C/COLI 531R/380R: REVOLUTION AND LATIN AMERICAN NARRATIVE
[LEVINSON W 4:40-7:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class will examine various Latin American novels which address the theme of Revolution: revolution and the possible end of revolution. At least 25% of grade to be based on two oral presentations, which will include feedback from the professor and other students. Listening as well as speaking skills will be tested.

PIC 606D/AFST 483C/COLI 574T/ENG 440E/564U: COMPARATIVE EPIC POETRY
[OKPEWHO TR 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we shall read folk stories, from various cultures, that center around HEROES so as to see not only what such stories (generally called EPICS) have in common but also what they tell us about the societies they come from. We shall begin with texts from the better known traditions: THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH (Sumeria [in present-day Iraq]), the ILIAD (ancient Greece), and BEOWULF (Anglo-Saxon Britain). Then we shall conclude with two texts (SUNJATA and THE OZIDI SAGA) from African oral tradition that are gaining increasing attention in studies of world literature. After a few introductory lectures on the nature of ORAL EPIC and aspects of its performance, the texts will be shared out between students to lead the class in open discussion.
Open only to seniors and graduate students. A few juniors may be admitted by permission of instructor.

PIC 623A/HIST 536C: AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE COLONIAL AGE, 1877-1957
[PATTERSON M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course examines the struggle of African Americans for citizenship, social justice, economic parity, and cultural autonomy in a segregated society. This struggle was carried out in a world structured by colonial relationships, the emergence of the American "empire," and the movement of global capital. African Americans envisioned themselves as connected to all colonial peoples and their political philosophies reflected this global vision. They maintained an intense interest in global issues and participated in anti-colonial movements. Some looked to other colonial societies in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean to escape the racism and violence that permeated their lives in America. African American history is therefore both national and international and this course will examine these twin dimensions of the black experience.
FORMAT: Discussions, readings, and presentations. Course grades determined as follows: Participation, 50%; Paper 35%; Presentation, 15%.

PIC 650A/PHIL 456K/647D: THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
[PENSKY T 4:00-7:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Exploration of the "first generation" of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, focussing on texts by Horkheimer, Adorno, and Benjamin. Particular attention paid to the historical context of the genesis of critical theory, relation of Critical Theory to the work of Heidegger, the critique of mass culture and fascism, and the methodological and epistemological foundations of critical social science. Course concludes by examining the various influences of the first generation Frankfurt School on contemporary currents in critical race theory, cultural studies and postcolonial studies, and contemporary continental ethical theories.

PIC 612A/TRIP 580A/COLI 580A: TRANSLATION THEORY
[GADDIS ROSE M 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Diachronic presentation and assessment of major approaches in current translation studies. Designed for translators, although other students interested in translation as a practice and phenomenon are welcome. Format: Interactive seminar will include reviews of works published since spring 1999 and informal guest lectures.
Required-Translation Perspectives 11 ; Umberto Eco, The Experience of Translatin; Douglas Robinson, ed., Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche. Recommended-Mona Baker, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation

PIC 612B/TRIP 572/COLI 572: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Special training for students to translate literary works, usually from a foreign language to English.
FORMAT: Individual tutorials, group sessions as needed.

PIC 612C/TRIP 573/COLI 573: TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: NON-LITERARY
[GADDIS ROSE TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Special workshop training students to translate from fields dependent upon translation (e.g., cross-cultural scholarship, international affairs, world trade, etc.) Usually from a foreign language to English.
FORMAT: Semi-weekly 1+ hour sessions.

PIC 608A/PHIL 508:SOCIAL & POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
[TESSMAN M 3:00-6:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course critically examines themes that are central to contemporary political philosophy. We will attempt to carry out theoretical analyses that remain attentive to current political conditions, including increasing globalization, disparities in wealth, and continued racial and gender oppression. Topics include: liberalism and challenges/alternatives to the liberal paradigm; the tension between autonomy and community in a pluralist society; the importance of identity to politics; structures of oppression and modes of resistance. No enrollment limit for graduate students; not open to undergraduates.

Other Semester Offerings