Comparative Literature Department :: University at Buffalo

COL 734: Heidegger's Antigone
COL 731: The Politics of Beauty
COL 729: Plato on Art
COL 703: Art, Technology, Globalization
COL 702: Introduction to Critical Theory: The Promise of Sovereignty
SPA 541: The Philosophy of lo mexicano
Other Courses

COL 734: HEIDEGGER'S ANTIGONE (top)

Professor Rodolphe Gasché
Tuesday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640
Registration Numbers: (A) 309739 (B) 421407

In this seminar on the relation between poetry, literature, and philosophy, more precisely, between Dichten and Denken (poetizing and thinking), we will read a number of texts by Martin Heidegger that touch on literary issues and poetic language, such as, for example, Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Rilke, Trakl, and Hölderlin. The center of the course will be made up by an extensive discussion of Heidegger's commentaries on Sophocles' tragedies, particularly, Antigone , in Introduction to Metaphysics and Hölderlin's Hymn ?The Ister' . Here we will elaborate on Heidegger's understanding of tragedy and the tragic, and seek to demarcate his understanding from the dominant conceptions of the nature of the tragic since Hegel. One other aspect of these commentaries that will interest us, is Heidegger use of the term ?the uncanny? to describe the tragic hero.

COL 731: THE POLITICS OF BEAUTY (top)

Professor Shaun Irlam
Thursday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640
Registration Numbers: (A) 088946 (B) 474795

"Beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear" (Rilke, Duino Elegies )

Since Antiquity, philosophers have struggled to draw the line between art and reality, between good and bad art, between signs and things. (Thus we ask: Is a sign a thing? Or the "picture" of a thing? Or, amphibiously, both at once?). By focusing specifically on the question the Beautiful, this course offers an introduction to some of the classical problems raised by critical theories as well as the emerging idea of the aesthetic from Antiquity to the beginning of the twentieth century.

Because there is obviously little agreement about the meaning of the aesthetic, we shall explore a variety of topics and issues, but we shall use as a focus for our discussion the narrower question: "What is Beauty?" This prompts a further set of questions: Is beauty only in the eye of the beholder? Who decides what is beautiful? What are the links between beauty and truth? Between beauty and morality? Between beauty and form? Between beauty and power? Between beauty and sexuality? How is beauty determined by gender? In what ways is Beauty conditioned by melancholy and nostalgia? Has Beauty had its day? What types of cultural work does beauty perform? Finally, how do cultures reproduce their ideas of ‘the Beautiful.'

In recent years, the poetics of the sublime has garnered a great deal of press as the defining aesthetic of postmodernity. It seems necessary once again to examine the question of the Beautiful. In this course we shall address some of the social, pedagogical, moral, anthropological, ideological and political functions of the beautiful as they have been articulated in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hogarth, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Heidegger and others.

Course Requirements:

Regular attendance is obviously a prerequisite for this class.

Active contribution to class discussions is expected from all participants and will influence the final assessment.

One short class presentation on one of the primary texts

One short assignment ( 5-7 pages) due in class before Thanksgiving

One final paper of 20 pages due in the last class .

COL 729: PLATO ON ART (top)

Professor Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
Wednesday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640
Registration Numbers: (A) 325342 (B) 303584

The seminar will focus on Plato's theories of art in the Ion , the Phaedrus , and parts of the Republic . Special attention will be given to the distinction between poetry and philosophy, and to the double definition of art as poesis (an act of divine inspiration), and art as techne (imitation). We will also read Agamben's The Man Without Content as a modern response to Plato's writings on art and politics.

Requirements: 10-12 page term paper

COL 703: ART, TECHNOLOGY, GLOBALIZATION (top)

Professor Krzysztof M. Ziarek
Monday, 12:30 - 3:30pm , Clemens Hall 640
Registration Numbers: (A) 201434 (B) 148110

The course will examine the relations between art, technology, and capital in the context of globalization. While discourses of globalization focus predominantly on social, economic, and political issues, we will try to understand the significance of art, literature, and aesthetics for thinking critically about globalization and technology. Globalization is a hotly contested term, producing a number of different theories and perspectives. Nevertheless, they all respond to the emergent phenomenon of "globality," to the nascent global network of economic, cultural, and political links, and its ambiguous transformative/destructive influence on everyday life. This class will analyze how globalization is, on the one hand, conditioned by developments in capital, and, on the other, dependent on the information and telecommunication technologies and the growing technicization of experience and relations. In this context, art and literature can be seen as increasingly responding to this phenomenon of a global technicization of experience. In his preface to the second edition of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche remarked that, though ostensibly writing a book about art, he ended up diagnosing the problem of science in modernity, thus disclosing a critical link between science and technology, on the one hand, and art, on the other. Pursuing this link between technology and aesthetics through the work of Adorno, Heidegger, Irigaray, and Nancy, the course will inquire into the relevance of avant-garde aesthetics for a critical understanding of technology and information in the context of globalization. The reading material will include texts by Adorno, Arrighi, Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Heidegger, Irigaray, Marx, Nancy, Nietzsche, Wodiczko. While discussion will focus on critical texts on art, technology, and globalization, we will also examine literary and artistic works, from Italian and Russian Futurism to contemporary Net and transgenic art.

COL 702: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY: THE PROMISE OF SOVEREIGNTY (top)

Professor David E. Johnson
Monday, 3:30 - 6:10pm , Clemens Hall 640
Registration Numbers: (A) 231203 (B) 369253

This seminar will be introductory in two senses. First, it will introduce us to the modern concept of sovereignty and the place of the promise within the formation of the state. Second, it will serve as the necessary introduction to readings that we will not do, but which we might anticipate, namely, the reading of major 20 th -century interpretations and critiques of sovereignty (Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, to name only four important, and in our case, sotto voce interlocutors). We will read, either in their entirety or selections from, Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty ; Thomas Hobbes, Man and Citizen ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract ; Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals ; and G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right . We will be concerned with the formation of property, the citizen, the institution of the state, finitude, the promise, the family, the possibility and guarantee of rights and ethics, justice, law.

SPA 541: THE PHILOSOPHY OF LO MEXICANO

Professor David E. Johnson

Wednesdays, 7:00-9:40, Clemens Hall 640

We will read in the archive of lo mexicano , the particular discursive formation of mexicanicity that arises at the dawn of the 20 th century in the work of Justo Sierra, Manuel Gamio, Julio Guerrero, and Martín Luis Guzmán. We will begin, however, with Antonio Caso's Discursos a la nación mexicana (1922), José Vasconcelos' La raza cósmica (1925) and Samuel Ramos' El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934) and read up through at least Roger Bartra's La jaula de la melancholia (1987). Along the way we'll engage Octavio Paz's seminal El laberinto de la soledad (1950/59) and some of Leopoldo Zea's important philosophical work. Time permitting we'll take up Carlos Fuentes' Tiempo mexicano (1971) and texts by Carlos Monsiváis and el subcomandante Marcos. In every case we will be concerned with questions of time and alterity, with the possibility of identity and the call for democracy. This course will be taught in Spanish and, although autonomous, provides some of the necessary philosophical and critical backstory for a course on Mexico 1968, which will be taught in spring 2007.

OTHER COURSES (top)

COL 600 Independent Study (1 thru 12 credit hours)
COL 650 Supervised Readings (1 thru 6 credit hours)
COL 700 Thesis Guidance (1 thru 16 credit hours)

Courses 600, 650, 700 first require approval from professors, then email COL Graduate Secretary, Mary Ann Carrick (mdcarr@buffalo.edu) to register through the department.

Registration numbers are instructor-specific, COL Graduate Faculty and Associate Faculty have individual course sections.

For University policies and procedures regarding registration dates and avoiding late fees, please check the University Student Response Center website: http://src.buffalo.edu


Home Graduate Undergraduate Faculty Apply Seminars Community
	:: Fall 2006 - Graduate Courses
Graduate Undergraduate Course Archive	COL 734: Heidegger's Antigone COL 731: The Politics of Beauty COL 729: Plato on Art COL 703: Art, Technology, Globalization COL 702: Introduction to Critical Theory: The Promise of Sovereignty SPA 541: The Philosophy of lo mexicano Other Courses COL 734: HEIDEGGER'S ANTIGONE (top) Professor Rodolphe Gasché Tuesday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: (A) 309739 (B) 421407 In this seminar on the relation between poetry, literature, and philosophy, more precisely, between Dichten and Denken (poetizing and thinking), we will read a number of texts by Martin Heidegger that touch on literary issues and poetic language, such as, for example, Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Rilke, Trakl, and Hölderlin. The center of the course will be made up by an extensive discussion of Heidegger's commentaries on Sophocles' tragedies, particularly, Antigone , in Introduction to Metaphysics and Hölderlin's Hymn ?The Ister' . Here we will elaborate on Heidegger's understanding of tragedy and the tragic, and seek to demarcate his understanding from the dominant conceptions of the nature of the tragic since Hegel. One other aspect of these commentaries that will interest us, is Heidegger use of the term ?the uncanny? to describe the tragic hero. COL 731: THE POLITICS OF BEAUTY (top) Professor Shaun Irlam Thursday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: (A) 088946 (B) 474795 "Beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear" (Rilke, Duino Elegies ) Since Antiquity, philosophers have struggled to draw the line between art and reality, between good and bad art, between signs and things. (Thus we ask: Is a sign a thing? Or the "picture" of a thing? Or, amphibiously, both at once?). By focusing specifically on the question the Beautiful, this course offers an *introduction* to some of the classical problems raised by critical theories as well as the emerging idea of the aesthetic from Antiquity to the beginning of the twentieth century. Because there is obviously little agreement about the meaning of the aesthetic, we shall explore a variety of topics and issues, but we shall use as a focus for our discussion the narrower question: "What is Beauty?" This prompts a further set of questions: Is beauty only in the eye of the beholder? Who decides what is beautiful? What are the links between beauty and truth? Between beauty and morality? Between beauty and form? Between beauty and power? Between beauty and sexuality? How is beauty determined by gender? In what ways is Beauty conditioned by melancholy and nostalgia? Has Beauty had its day? What types of cultural work does beauty perform? Finally, how do cultures reproduce their ideas of ‘the Beautiful.' In recent years, the poetics of the sublime has garnered a great deal of press as the defining aesthetic of postmodernity. It seems necessary once again to examine the question of the Beautiful. In this course we shall address some of the social, pedagogical, moral, anthropological, ideological and political functions of the beautiful as they have been articulated in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hogarth, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Heidegger and others. Course Requirements: Regular attendance is obviously a prerequisite for this class. Active contribution to class discussions is expected from all participants and will influence the final assessment. One short class presentation on one of the primary texts One short assignment ( 5-7 pages) due in class before Thanksgiving One final paper of 20 pages due in the last class . COL 729: PLATO ON ART (top) Professor Kalliopi Nikolopoulou Wednesday, 12:30 - 3:10pm , Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: (A) 325342 (B) 303584 The seminar will focus on Plato's theories of art in the Ion , the Phaedrus , and parts of the Republic . Special attention will be given to the distinction between poetry and philosophy, and to the double definition of art as poesis (an act of divine inspiration), and art as techne (imitation). We will also read Agamben's The Man Without Content as a modern response to Plato's writings on art and politics. Requirements: 10-12 page term paper COL 703: ART, TECHNOLOGY, GLOBALIZATION (top) Professor Krzysztof M. Ziarek Monday, 12:30 - 3:30pm , Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: (A) 201434 (B) 148110 The course will examine the relations between art, technology, and capital in the context of globalization. While discourses of globalization focus predominantly on social, economic, and political issues, we will try to understand the significance of art, literature, and aesthetics for thinking critically about globalization and technology. Globalization is a hotly contested term, producing a number of different theories and perspectives. Nevertheless, they all respond to the emergent phenomenon of "globality," to the nascent global network of economic, cultural, and political links, and its ambiguous transformative/destructive influence on everyday life. This class will analyze how globalization is, on the one hand, conditioned by developments in capital, and, on the other, dependent on the information and telecommunication technologies and the growing technicization of experience and relations. In this context, art and literature can be seen as increasingly responding to this phenomenon of a global technicization of experience. In his preface to the second edition of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche remarked that, though ostensibly writing a book about art, he ended up diagnosing the problem of science in modernity, thus disclosing a critical link between science and technology, on the one hand, and art, on the other. Pursuing this link between technology and aesthetics through the work of Adorno, Heidegger, Irigaray, and Nancy, the course will inquire into the relevance of avant-garde aesthetics for a critical understanding of technology and information in the context of globalization. The reading material will include texts by Adorno, Arrighi, Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Heidegger, Irigaray, Marx, Nancy, Nietzsche, Wodiczko. While discussion will focus on critical texts on art, technology, and globalization, we will also examine literary and artistic works, from Italian and Russian Futurism to contemporary Net and transgenic art. COL 702: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORY: THE PROMISE OF SOVEREIGNTY (top) Professor David E. Johnson Monday, 3:30 - 6:10pm , Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: (A) 231203 (B) 369253 This seminar will be introductory in two senses. First, it will introduce us to the modern concept of sovereignty and the place of the promise within the formation of the state. Second, it will serve as the necessary introduction to readings that we will not do, but which we might anticipate, namely, the reading of major 20 th -century interpretations and critiques of sovereignty (Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, to name only four important, and in our case, sotto voce interlocutors). We will read, either in their entirety or selections from, Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty ; Thomas Hobbes, Man and Citizen ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract ; Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals ; and G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right . We will be concerned with the formation of property, the citizen, the institution of the state, finitude, the promise, the family, the possibility and guarantee of rights and ethics, justice, law. SPA 541: THE PHILOSOPHY OF LO MEXICANO Professor David E. Johnson Wednesdays, 7:00-9:40, Clemens Hall 640 We will read in the archive of lo mexicano , the particular discursive formation of mexicanicity that arises at the dawn of the 20 th century in the work of Justo Sierra, Manuel Gamio, Julio Guerrero, and Martín Luis Guzmán. We will begin, however, with Antonio Caso's Discursos a la nación mexicana (1922), José Vasconcelos' La raza cósmica (1925) and Samuel Ramos' El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934) and read up through at least Roger Bartra's La jaula de la melancholia (1987). Along the way we'll engage Octavio Paz's seminal El laberinto de la soledad (1950/59) and some of Leopoldo Zea's important philosophical work. Time permitting we'll take up Carlos Fuentes' Tiempo mexicano (1971) and texts by Carlos Monsiváis and el subcomandante Marcos. In every case we will be concerned with questions of time and alterity, with the possibility of identity and the call for democracy. This course will be taught in Spanish and, although autonomous, provides some of the necessary philosophical and critical backstory for a course on Mexico 1968, which will be taught in spring 2007. OTHER COURSES (top) COL 600 Independent Study (1 thru 12 credit hours) COL 650 Supervised Readings (1 thru 6 credit hours) COL 700 Thesis Guidance (1 thru 16 credit hours) Courses 600, 650, 700 first require approval from professors, then email COL Graduate Secretary, Mary Ann Carrick (mdcarr@buffalo.edu) to register through the department. Registration numbers are instructor-specific, COL Graduate Faculty and Associate Faculty have individual course sections. For University policies and procedures regarding registration dates and avoiding late fees, please check the University Student Response Center website: http://src.buffalo.edu
	Contact Us Apply
	Department of Comparative Literature \| 638 Clemens Hall \| Buffalo, NY 14260-4610 Telephone: 716.645.2066 \| Fax: 716.645.5979 \| Email: complit@buffalo.edu © College of Arts and Sciences 2005. All rights reserved. This website is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences web team. Inquiries or comments about this website should be directed to the College of Arts and Sciences webmaster.