Course Descriptions

PIC 640A/HIST 501: Explorations In Comparative History
[RIFA'AT ABOU-EL-HAJ M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The seminar aims at exploring the feasibility of comparative history for early modern and modern periods. This will be done through the study of theoretical works on the genius of the common woman/man, civil society, the formation of modern states, and modernity. Immediately following each of the readings several case histories will be comparatively examined.
BOOKS: To be determined.

PIC 645B/PHIL 480G/ENG 674Z/COLI574F/WOMN 480D: Frivolity: Transcolonial Meanderings
[JEFFNER ALLEN M 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The implosion of post-, neo-, and trans-colonial narratives, not into a collection of readily identifiable categories, but into slight movements of little weight or importance, will prompt our wandering among motley tangles, surfaces, glossy strands, and unstable dimensions.
May this unwrapping of predictable parameters elicit an insupportable lightness marked by unbecoming levity, unbearable frivolity and unease: A gravitational push, or pull, of borders, longings and luminous habitations, gelatinous matrices, may spin a chancy narrative of heavy delight: defiance strips. Angles, perhaps gratuitous, curve whimsical, luscious, unsaddled frivolity, seething, insatiable, uncanny. Amid incongruous linkages and the alluring ambiguities of unknown error does frivolity matter?
The class will emphasize recent transdisciplinary and mixed genre writing, artistic productions, and activist practices.
FORMAT: seminar
REQUIREMENTS: Active class participation, exercises, presentations, two projects

PIC 622B/COLI 574M/LA&C 576: Latin American Philosophy
[LUGONES T 2:50-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The seminar will consider some of the work of the Philosophy and Liberation movement started by Enrique Dussel, Augusto Salazar Bondy, Osvaldo Ardiles y otros. Characteristic of this movement is Dussel's claim that "Philosophy is a second act(ion); the praxis of liberation is the first action." Then we will discuss the intersection between the Philosophy of Liberation Movement and the development of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. There we will dwell on Mignolo's border epistemology and on the work on authors who have written from within that epistemology such as Guaman Poma de Ayala, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Jose Maria Arguedas, Rodolfo Kusch. Some of the readings are translated by the instructors.

PIC 647A/AFST 482B/ENG 593J/COLI 574C/SOC 690H: Ideologies of Black Creativity
[NZEGWU M 9:40-12:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course critically explores the different philosophies and systems of belief underlying creativity and creative expression in of some of the key art forms of the African Diaspora. Using biographies, testimonials, and critical commentaries we will engage the regional and international histories of the art forms, the social politics and creative philosophies of some of the major performance, visual, and music artists, namely-John Coltrane and Wynston Marsalis (jazz), Sam Gilliam and Monroe Bearden (visual artists), Spike Lee and Forest Whitaker (film), Judith Jamieson and Bill T. Jones (dance), Bob Marley and Peter Tosh (reggae), Mighty Sparrow (calypso), and Peter Minshall (carnival). We will identify and seek to understand the tensions between the creative objectives of these artists and the theoretical summation of theorists, especially those of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. Of critical importance will be the ways in which these artists and culture-producers transformed the prevalent social ideologies of the times to attain their goals.

PIC 550D/COLI 574K: Heidegger II
[FYNSK W 4:30-7:30]

PIC 647B/ENG 673C: Cultural Studies and James
[HAMES-GARCIA W 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will approach the writings of Trinidadian intellectual C.L.R. James from within the traditions of cultural materialism and anticolonial/postcolonial theory. Of interest will be James's view of culture as an essential aspect of material life, rather than a superstructure or abstract sign-system. We will read four of his major works, Beyond a Boundary, The Black Jacobins, The History of Pan-African Revolt, and Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, as well as shorter selections from some of his other works (American Civilization, At the Rendezvous of Victory, and On Dialectics). James will be considered alongside several other significant theoretical statements of twentieth-century cultural materialism (Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination, Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Davis's Women, Race, and Class, Williams's Marxism and Literature). In addition, we will look at projects that have built on the kind of approach to studying culture and history developed by James, although most do not refer to James directly; these will include Joy James's Resisting State Violence, Chatterjee's The Nation and Its Fragments, Mohanty's Literary Theory and the Claims of History, and Soja's Thirdspace. The odd silence about James, perhaps, the most prolific Black Marxist intellectual, within the materialist and postcolonial tradition(s) will be one of the topics considered throughout the semester. How can a recentering of James cause us to rethink these traditions and the vexed legacy of Marxist and socialist thought (what James called "dialectics")? Additionally, what can James's approach to the study of culture and history teach us in the wake of postmodernism's reification of culture and language as nonmaterial "practices of signification"?
Grades will be based on two short essays, two group presentations, and discussion participation.

PIC 550E/COLI 691G: Genet Mon Amour
[HAVER R 2:50-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: An attempt to approach the question of a relation (or the relation of non-relation) between the literary and the political through a reading of the heteroclite conjugation of pleasure, writing, and "politics" in the work of Jean Genet: how does pornographic writing (and perhaps reading) imagine, or expose, the political? We will read the five novels, with particular attention to Funeral Rites, as well as other texts.
FORMAT: Seminar; a major paper is required at end of term. BOOKS: Miracle of the Rose; A Thief's Journal; Our Lady of the Flowers; Funeral Rites; Querelle; Prisoner of Love, Treasures of the Night; What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet; Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet; Jacques Derrida, Glas; other texts TBA.

PIC 606H/ENG 650M: Melville, Adams, and Pynchon
[SPANOS TR 10:05-11:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In a letter dated 3 Feb 1911 to Edward H. Davis, a professor of economics at Purdue Henry Adams wrote: "I am really grateful for [your letter]. Because to that extent, it contradicts my contention that nobody really cares about the problem of our modern society. Five hundred years ago, I should have been burned, -- and justly, for such a book, which tends to destroy the confidence of society in itself, as well as in all truth and science; but I think I owe you, at least, to say that my object is, and has always been, merely my student's mind, not his conception of truth. When I went to Harvard College in 1870 to teach history, I started with the idea that my business was, not to teach history, but to exercise minds like bodies. I held that mediaeval notion that education was primarily dialectics. I hold it still. There can be no activity of mind, any more than of the stock-exchange, with a counter-party. The mind must have contradictions in order to act at all. My object had always been to supply the contradiction which should compel the mind to fight. The American mind to-day is altogether passive. It threatens to be atrophied. Only a tremendous shock can give it life."
In this course we will examine or rather think the major texts of these three affiliated American writers, Melville, Adams, and Pynchon, who span the history of American literature, in the light of Adams' despair at the atrophying of thinking in America, largely the result of the dominance of the Puritan ethic and the capitalism to which it gave rise. Since this kind of predatory thoughtless thinking could be called "graceless" (the Greek word for "grace" is "Haris"), an important aspect of this course will be to think the "meaning" of grace.
Format: Lectures and discussion.
Requirements: Attendance; a mid-term (possibly take-home examination) and a 15-25 page terminal scholarly essay that, in the writing, should be oriented towards publication.

PIC 608B/AFST 405/PLSC 405: International Politics Of The Third World
[THOMAS TR 4:25-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course has been designed to analyze the impact of the Third World on the development of the world order. Conversely, this course is also structured to examine the impact of the world order on the developments within the Third World. A critical element of the course is an examination and analysis of the changes in hegemonic power systems in the world system across space and time. We will analyze the degree to which stqte is in decline, retreat or experiencing fragmentation in the Post-Cold War era. Likewise, the course will focus on the divergent modes of Third World incorporation into the world system at critical junctures of systemic transformation. We will analyze the impact of globalization, transnational justice and human rights as well as conflict and conflict resolution within the Third World and the world politics.
FORMAT: Undergraduate students are required to write a comparative book review (approximately 5-7 pages) using two books as your point of departure. Topics and books for your comparative book review should be selected from the suggested reading sections of the syllabus. You are also required to write two term papers (approximately 5-7 pages each in length). Topic for your papers should be selected from the Discussion section located throughout the syllabus. You are also required to make oral presentations of each paper. You are required to write one collaborative paper and this paper will be chosen from the Discussion section of the syllabus (approximately 5-7 pages).
Graduate students are required to write a review essay using three books as your point of departure (approximately 12-15 pages). You are required to write one individual and one collaborative paper. Each paper is approximately 15 pages in length. Topics for your review essay and papers should be selected from the Discussion section of the syllabus.
BOOKS: TBA
GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENT: Global Interdependence and Writing

ARTH 483B/530B/ENG 571A/HIST 551D/MDVL 440B: Medieval Shrines and Modern Intentions: The Medieval Production and Modern Invention of Extraordinary Churches
[BARBARA ABOU-EL-HAJ T 3:30-6:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Extravagant and densely decorated churches were built, rebuilt, allowed to fall into ruin, and attacked over the centuries under distinct historical circumstances. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as part of the production of nation-states, national identities, and national patrimonies, ruined churches were rebuilt, sometimes with great creativity. In France, premiere churches such as V‚zelay, Saint-Denis, Notre Dame of Paris, Amiens, were partly or largely rebuilt in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 and in the midst of the revolutions and rebellions of 1830, 1848, 1871 and the Franco-Prussian War. A new, lavishly-funded governmental agency, the Monuments Historiques, together with the architect theorist Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, supervised the work as part of the post Revolutionary rescue of the Catholic Church, designed to recapture the pretended social harmony of medieval society. In Spain, the church has engaged in political struggles designed to preserve its authority against liberalizing pressures arising from the advance of Enlightenment politics. Regional rivalries played into ecclesiastic politics as well. Not surprisingly, churches such as Santiago de Compostela were revived as pilgrimage destinations by means that recapitulated medieval inventions. The European Union and its cultural agency, the Council of Europe, have more than equaled the clergy's efforts in their ideological transformations medieval society. This seminar will explore a small group of key churches in their medieval and modern apparitions. Each student will research an abbey or cathedral town of his or her choice, taking into consideration periods of building and decoration, and setting these into their various historical contexts.
FORMAT: Weekly readings and discussions with slides. One 10-page paper presented for discussion and revision.

PIC 604C/ARTH 500: Theory and Methods
[BARZMAN W 1:10-4:10]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The seminar aims at exploring the feasibility of comparative history for early modern and modern periods. This will be done through the study of theoretical works on the genius of the common woman/man, civil society, the formation of modern states, and modernity. Immediately following each of the readings several case histories will be comparatively examined.
BOOKS: To be determined.

PIC 550F/COLI 574B: Walter Benjamin
[BRINKER-GABLER M 4:30-7:30]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: The course explores Benjamin's actuality as literary critic and aestheticisn, engaging his method of redemptive critic and magical reading with specific focus on allegory, 'Now-Time' (Jetzt-Zeit), and the dialectical image. A major focus will be on Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama, a significant challenge to the story of modern self-consciousness. Benjamin's systematic differentiation of (Greek) tragedy and (modern) Trauerspiel, his rehabilitation of the Baroque as a cultural and stylistic phenomenon turns into a radical critique of Modernity. Furthermore, included will be essays on Brecht, Kafka, and Kraus, on language and translation, and on modern media and visual culture.
TEXTS: The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Illuminations, Selected Writings, Vol. 1-3.

PIC 650B/PHIL 451/650E: Continental Philosophy
[DILLON TR 2:50-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Survey of major writings of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau- Ponty, Derrida.
FORMAT: Seminar format. Requirements include midterm exam (PHIL 451 only), seminar presentation (PHIL 650E only), 15-page term paper, final exam.
BOOKS: (list subject to change) Husserl, Cartesian Meditations; Heidegger, Basic Writings; Sartre, Being and Nothingness; Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception; Derrida, Margins of Philosophy; Recommended: Dillon, Semiological Reductionism

PIC 604B/COLI 535M/THEA 586: The Environmental Politics of Hollywood Film
[KOHLER W 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the environmental politics and metaphysics of Hollywood film: that is, how popular American film represents the relationship between mankind and the natural world. Our explorations of mass market film will be complemented and accompanied by readings from contemporary environmental ethics, philosophy of science, and political philosophy. We examine a variety of film genres and periods, including Westerns, science fiction, crime drama, animal adventure, and films of war. Among others, we will speak about The Birds, Shane, The Searchers, Chinatown, Alien and Aliens, the Terminator films, Old Yeller, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line. Readings will range from contemporary figures such as Donna Haraway and Peter Singer to classical thinkers, including Aquinas, Aristotle, Darwin, Kant and Marx.

PIC 606E/AFST 373/COLI 517S/ENG 390N/655C: The African Novel
[OKPEWHO TR 11:40-1:05]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Course will explore development of the novel in Africa both historically and thematically. On one hand, we shall trace formal growth of genre, beginning with its emergence from oral narrative traditions of the continent, through its attachment to certain European trends and techniques, to its present achievement in blending various traditions (African and non-African) in articulation of key problems in contemporary African socio- political life. On the other hand, we shall examine some of the key concerns that have engaged one generation of writers after another: e.g., confrontation with European presence, critique of postcolonial leadership, Apartheid, and the place of women in African society.
FORMAT: This course will be based partly on teaching and partly on group presentations by students. Regular class attendance is mandatory and will count in the overall assessment. There will be one midterm and one final examination: each is a take-home paper of at least 10 pages in length. Graduate students taking this course will be expected to submit a substantial, well- researched final paper on a chosen issue from the course.

PIC 604A/AFST 385E/COLI 380J/531P/ENG390A/655A/HIST380E/532N/WOMN 380J: African American Heritage in Poetry and Jazz
[OKPEWHO TR 4:25-5:50]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course traces the parallel development of two art forms that enable us to explore African American history by way of its cultural achievements. Essentially, we shall read the poems, hear the songs and the music (in CDs and tapes), and watch the videos that trace the growth of black poetry and jazz through the key moments of black history. The aim of the course is to understand the intersection of artistic forms as they reflect the social and political climates around them. Special attention will be given to the contributions of African American women to these art forms as well as the growing phenomenon of "jazz poetry." In this seminar course, students will be encouraged to shape and articulate their individual as well as group responses to the poetry and the music. Graduate students taking the course should expect to do, as a final paper, a substantial and well-researched treatment of a key theme as revealed in the arts of a chosen era: e.g., through an exploration of the careers of at least one poet and one jazz musician.

PIC 606F/COLI 541S/ENG 650L: Beckett and Stein Rhetoric Redefined.
[GADDIS-ROSE M 1:15-4:00]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) increasingly exploited and eventually flouted audience expectations in genre. Both chose expatriation in France, away from their native English. Adroit polylinguals, Beckett became a virtuoso, claimed by both French and Anglo-Irish literatures, while Stein staged a cagey monolingualism. Their oeuvres in juxtaposition show two iconoclasts resolutely undermining the literary traditions they inherited as it obliquely reflected the history that engulfed them, the social mores they lived by, and the arts they espoused. The seminar will welcome any critical approach.

PIC612B/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 612D/TRIP 580C/COLI 580C: Computer Assisted Translation and Terminology
[GADDIS-ROSE AND MARIA CONSTANZA GUZMAN M 9-12]

TRIP 707: Foreign-Language Reading Proficiency

PIC 606G/ENG 555C: Asian American Literature
[YUN TR 1:15-2:40]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will focus on Asian-American literary and cultural productions. Special attention will be paid to war and globalization, and the "immigrant" as the site of national anxiety in American imagination. Studies will include narratives and theories relevant to present-day concerns regarding nationalism, state ideologies, global conflict, and discourses of "hate"; as well as an investigation of contemporary resistances in art, pop culture, youth culture, education, and forms of cultural hybridities.
*Seniors may sign up with special permission from the instructor.

PIC 608C/COLI 574R: Liminality, Split Affinities, and the Problem of Nationalism
[WILSON R 1:15-4:15]
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This seminar explores the "space" and concept of that which is seemingly non-designated or unaffiliated. It seeks to interrogate articulations of liminality in a variety of social realms including the racial, cultural, and sexual, especially as they intersect with manifestations of nationalism. The seminar employs literature to decipher how the idea of liminality has been addressed by major theorists. Theorists include Gloria Anzuldua, Freud, Derrida, Gilroy, Saldivar, Richard Rorty, Bhaba: literature includes works by Bataille, Cisneros, Charles Brockden Brown, Oludah Equiano, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf.
FORMAT: Weekly seminar requires student participation.
REQUIREMENTS: One presentation (including a 3-5 page write-up) and a term paper.

Other Semester Offerings