Comparative Literature Department :: University at Buffalo

COL 203 - Literary Thinking and History: The Double
COL 315 - Signs and Representation
COL 328 - Bodies and Modern Japan
COL 330 - Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Revising Colonialism
COL 443 - Literature and War
COL 470 - European Women Film Directors

COL 203: LITERARY THINKING AND HISTORY: THE DOUBLE (top)

Professor Lisa Countryman
Mon/Wed/Fri, 11:00-11:50am
Room: 640 Clemens
Registration Number: 082973

The image of the twins from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is among the most memorable of the film, but what is it that makes it so creepy? Certainly there is nothing explicit in the image to produce this feeling of dread, so where does it come from? While in the 20th C the image of the double, or doubling, has been a popular trope in films (especially in horror films) which treat material which Todorov has called "the fantastic," it seems to have emerged in the literature of the 19th C. It is striking that in the historical moment of secularization, we suddenly get a literature which imagines a radical destabilization of the natural and the supernatural (or the real and the fantastic). How can we account for the sudden emergence of the double? Why did it appear on such a broad scale at this particular moment in history? Why is it such a source of dread?

Keeping these questions in the foreground, we shall explore the various manifestations of the double through several key texts of the 19th C, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dostoevsky's The Double, Kafka's The Castle, Nabokov's Despair, Freud's "The Uncanny"; selections from Otto Rank's The Double, from Kristeva's Powers of Horror and from Todorov's The Fantastic; as well as several short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Anderson, Nikolai Gogol, and Edgar Allen Poe. We shall supplement these readings with screenings of Alexander Alexeieff's pinscreen animation of Gogol's "The Nose", Fassbinder's 1977 version of Nabokov's Despair, and several others.

Requirements: thoughtful class participation, two short papers, a proposal for the final paper and, of course, a final paper.

COL 315 - SIGNS AND REPRESENTATION (top)

Professor Andrea Spain
Tues/Thurs, 11:00-12:20
Room: 640 Clemens
Registration Number: 076759

This course is designed to introduce students to many of the major theories and issues arising in contemporary critical theory, from the pioneering work of the founders of structuralism - Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Pierce and Claude Lévi-Strauss - to the recent critiques of structuralism developed by post-structuralists like Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. It aims to present an overview of leading figures within twentieth century critical theory, and also a discussion of the major issues raised in their work: according to what models and criteria can one adequately analyze cultural and social life? Should theories of culture and society aspire to the ideals of the natural sciences (as sociology and psychology have tended to do) or should they emulate the models given by the social sciences, most notably linguistics (as anthropology, and some literary theory is inclined towards)? Or, are these models and criteria necessary? If, for example, linguistics is taken to provide a model for cultural production, how adequately can it deal with non-linguistic production of the kind undertaken in the visual and performing arts? What are the terms and theoretical methods available to and useful for the analysis of socio-cultural life?

Requirements: active class participation, oral presentations, a research proposal and bibliography, and a final paper.

COL 328 - BODIES AND MODERN JAPAN (top)

Professor Margherita Long
Tues/Thurs, 12:00-1:20
Room: 218 Talbert
Registration Number: 169966

This course explores how men and women in modern Japan have tried to understand the human body and its representation. Is the body a passive surface? Or can bodies themselves make meaning? We will address these questions by exploring such modern Japanese phenomena as atomic bomb sickness, discrimination against the "untouchable" caste, maternity, hysteria, fashion, prostitution, animation, and computerization.

The texts are both visual and narrative: woodblock prints, papercuts, ink drawings, stories, poems, novels, films, and anime. Authors include Kuki Shuzo, Hayashi Kyoko, Nakagami Kenji and Murakami Haruki. Artists include Utamaro, Takamura Chieko and Okamoto Taro. Films include Ichikawa Kon, Tokyo Olympiad, Imamura Shôhei, Black Rain, Jim Jarmush, Ghost Dog Way of the Samurai, and Oshii Mamoru, Ghost in the Shell.

Requirements: class participation, two 3-page papers, and a final 8-page paper. No prior knowledge of Japan is required. All texts are in translation. The course is small seminar format.

COL 330: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: REVISING COLONIALISM (top)

Professor Mikko Tuhkanen
Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:50
Room: 640 Clemens
Registration Number: 138618

In this course, we will look at a number of familiar Western texts that, often implicitly and unconsciously, deal with and comment on questions of colonialism and imperialism. In order to tease out the colonial subtext of these novels, we will pair them with others that are self-conscious rewritings from colonial, subaltern points of view. Often the authors of these revisionary texts come from the colonies; sometimes they are individuals born and bred in the "mother countries." Whatever the case, they revise the original Western texts by making explicit and complicating the colonial assumptions of the latter.

The proposed reading list for this class pairs Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with J. M. Coetzee's Foe (or, alternatively, with Michel Tournier's Friday, or the Other Island); Shakespeare's The Tempest with George Lamming's Water with Berries; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness with V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River; Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Maryse Conde's Windward Heights; and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind with Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone.

Although we will not be reading theoretical texts as such, this course also serves as an introduction to some central questions in post-colonial theory. Necessarily, we must address the argument according to which the method of "writing back" deployed by the above authors remains locked within the logic and structures of colonialism. We must ask, in other words, how productive is it for subalterns to continue addressing their oppressors? Doing so, do they not constrain themselves to the system of colonialism and relinquish any possibility of creating something new, something beyond the present situation--that is, something properly post-colonial?

Requirements: attendance, short response papers, and a final research paper.

COL 443: LITERATURE AND WAR (top)

Professor Rodolphe Gasché
Tues/Thurs, 3:30-4:50
Room: 112 Baldy
Registration Number: 072891

We will read a number of philosophical and literary texts ranging from the fifth century BC to the present. We will be examining how the concept of war and the art of strategy have developed from the Chinese sage Sun Tsu to the great continental strategist of the 19th century von Clausewitz. The literary portraits of war that we will be dealing with will be analyzed with regard to the ideas of these thinkers. In doing this, we will also be looking at the specific issues, historical, psychological, autobiographical, that these literary works are concerned with. This course will also be interested in the question of why wars have been such a privileged subject in literature, and how the art of military strategy can be compared with the art of writing. Readings will include the following: Sun Tsu, The Art of War, J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (selections), Carl v. Clausewitz, On War (selections), S. Freud, "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," and "Why War?", G. Flaubert, Salammbô, E. Junger, The Storm of Steel, J. Swift, The Battle of the Books, S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage.

COL 470: EUROPEAN WOMEN FILM DIRECTORS (top)

Professor Maria Elena Gutierrez
Thurs, 3:00-5:40
Room: 17 Clemens
Registration Number: 213778
Cross-Listed with:

DMS 423 GU Registration Number: 023585
ENG 451 GU Registration Number: 025156
ENG 701 GU Registration Number: 193762
HMN 503 GU Registration Number: 317262
WS 410 GUT Registration Number: 067305

Dual-Listed with:

ITA 533 GU Registration Number: 067305

Women's cinematic eye. For over a century with their intelligence and creativity women have been contributing to the moving image. In 1896 the French, Alice Guy, directed the first film made by a woman, La Fee aux choux. In this seminar we will critically explore the cinematic production of some of the major European women filmmakers of all times. We will engage Agnes Varda's Nouvelle Vague innovations, Liliana Cavani's crucial output, the exquisite contemporary comedies of Fina Torres and Josiane Balasko, and many others. Indeed, though the reading and discussion of filmic and theoretical texts we shall engage some fundamental questions concerning subjectivity and language, body and culture. We will examine constructions of sexual difference and (re) presentations of female/male gender in these three social, political and historical contexts. The theoretical framework will be provided by the philosophical writings of film theorist and filmmakers such as Gilles Deleuze, Andre Bazin, Marguerite Duras, Kaja Silverman, Stephen Heath, Teresa de Lauretis and Judith Butler, among others.

N.B. The course and the readings will be in English. The films will be in Italian and French with English subtitles.

Required films: We will select 11 or 12 films from the following selection:

Coline Serreau, Trois homes et un couffin (Three Man and a cradle), Romauld et Juliette (Mana, there's a man in your bed)
Agnes Varda Cleo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7), Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond)
Liliana Cavani, Il Portiere di Notte (The Night Porter), Francesco, and the Berlin Affair
Lina Wertmuller, Sotto sotto, Love and Anarchy or Swept Away
Nicole Garcia, Place Vendôme
Josiane Balasko, Gazon Maudit (French Twist)
Fina Torres, Mecaniques Celestes (Celestial clockwork)
Marguerite Duras, India Song
Roberta Torre, Tano da morire
Claire Devers, Noir et blanc (Black and White)
Aline Isserman, L'ombre du doute (A Shadow of Doubt) or Claire Denis's I Can't Sleep
Sandrine Veysset, Y'aura t'-il de la neige à Noel? (Will It Snow For Xmas?)


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	:: Fall 2002 - Undergraduate Courses
Graduate Undergraduate Course Archive	COL 203 - Literary Thinking and History: The Double COL 315 - Signs and Representation COL 328 - Bodies and Modern Japan COL 330 - Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Revising Colonialism COL 443 - Literature and War COL 470 - European Women Film Directors COL 203: LITERARY THINKING AND HISTORY: THE DOUBLE (top) Professor Lisa Countryman Mon/Wed/Fri, 11:00-11:50am Room: 640 Clemens Registration Number: 082973 The image of the twins from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is among the most memorable of the film, but what is it that makes it so creepy? Certainly there is nothing explicit in the image to produce this feeling of dread, so where does it come from? While in the 20th C the image of the double, or doubling, has been a popular trope in films (especially in horror films) which treat material which Todorov has called "the fantastic," it seems to have emerged in the literature of the 19th C. It is striking that in the historical moment of secularization, we suddenly get a literature which imagines a radical destabilization of the natural and the supernatural (or the real and the fantastic). How can we account for the sudden emergence of the double? Why did it appear on such a broad scale at this particular moment in history? Why is it such a source of dread? Keeping these questions in the foreground, we shall explore the various manifestations of the double through several key texts of the 19th C, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dostoevsky's The Double, Kafka's The Castle, Nabokov's Despair, Freud's "The Uncanny"; selections from Otto Rank's The Double, from Kristeva's Powers of Horror and from Todorov's The Fantastic; as well as several short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Anderson, Nikolai Gogol, and Edgar Allen Poe. We shall supplement these readings with screenings of Alexander Alexeieff's pinscreen animation of Gogol's "The Nose", Fassbinder's 1977 version of Nabokov's Despair, and several others. Requirements: thoughtful class participation, two short papers, a proposal for the final paper and, of course, a final paper. COL 315 - SIGNS AND REPRESENTATION (top) Professor Andrea Spain Tues/Thurs, 11:00-12:20 Room: 640 Clemens Registration Number: 076759 This course is designed to introduce students to many of the major theories and issues arising in contemporary critical theory, from the pioneering work of the founders of structuralism - Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Pierce and Claude Lévi-Strauss - to the recent critiques of structuralism developed by post-structuralists like Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva. It aims to present an overview of leading figures within twentieth century critical theory, and also a discussion of the major issues raised in their work: according to what models and criteria can one adequately analyze cultural and social life? Should theories of culture and society aspire to the ideals of the natural sciences (as sociology and psychology have tended to do) or should they emulate the models given by the social sciences, most notably linguistics (as anthropology, and some literary theory is inclined towards)? Or, are these models and criteria necessary? If, for example, linguistics is taken to provide a model for cultural production, how adequately can it deal with non-linguistic production of the kind undertaken in the visual and performing arts? What are the terms and theoretical methods available to and useful for the analysis of socio-cultural life? Requirements: active class participation, oral presentations, a research proposal and bibliography, and a final paper. COL 328 - BODIES AND MODERN JAPAN (top) Professor Margherita Long Tues/Thurs, 12:00-1:20 Room: 218 Talbert Registration Number: 169966 This course explores how men and women in modern Japan have tried to understand the human body and its representation. Is the body a passive surface? Or can bodies themselves make meaning? We will address these questions by exploring such modern Japanese phenomena as atomic bomb sickness, discrimination against the "untouchable" caste, maternity, hysteria, fashion, prostitution, animation, and computerization. The texts are both visual and narrative: woodblock prints, papercuts, ink drawings, stories, poems, novels, films, and anime. Authors include Kuki Shuzo, Hayashi Kyoko, Nakagami Kenji and Murakami Haruki. Artists include Utamaro, Takamura Chieko and Okamoto Taro. Films include Ichikawa Kon, Tokyo Olympiad, Imamura Shôhei, Black Rain, Jim Jarmush, Ghost Dog Way of the Samurai, and Oshii Mamoru, Ghost in the Shell. Requirements: class participation, two 3-page papers, and a final 8-page paper. No prior knowledge of Japan is required. All texts are in translation. The course is small seminar format. COL 330: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE: REVISING COLONIALISM (top) Professor Mikko Tuhkanen Tues/Thurs, 9:30-10:50 Room: 640 Clemens Registration Number: 138618 In this course, we will look at a number of familiar Western texts that, often implicitly and unconsciously, deal with and comment on questions of colonialism and imperialism. In order to tease out the colonial subtext of these novels, we will pair them with others that are self-conscious rewritings from colonial, subaltern points of view. Often the authors of these revisionary texts come from the colonies; sometimes they are individuals born and bred in the "mother countries." Whatever the case, they revise the original Western texts by making explicit and complicating the colonial assumptions of the latter. The proposed reading list for this class pairs Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with J. M. Coetzee's Foe (or, alternatively, with Michel Tournier's Friday, or the Other Island); Shakespeare's The Tempest with George Lamming's Water with Berries; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness with V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River; Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Maryse Conde's Windward Heights; and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind with Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone. Although we will not be reading theoretical texts as such, this course also serves as an introduction to some central questions in post-colonial theory. Necessarily, we must address the argument according to which the method of "writing back" deployed by the above authors remains locked within the logic and structures of colonialism. We must ask, in other words, how productive is it for subalterns to continue addressing their oppressors? Doing so, do they not constrain themselves to the system of colonialism and relinquish any possibility of creating something new, something beyond the present situation--that is, something properly post-colonial? Requirements: attendance, short response papers, and a final research paper. COL 443: LITERATURE AND WAR (top) Professor Rodolphe Gasché Tues/Thurs, 3:30-4:50 Room: 112 Baldy Registration Number: 072891 We will read a number of philosophical and literary texts ranging from the fifth century BC to the present. We will be examining how the concept of war and the art of strategy have developed from the Chinese sage Sun Tsu to the great continental strategist of the 19th century von Clausewitz. The literary portraits of war that we will be dealing with will be analyzed with regard to the ideas of these thinkers. In doing this, we will also be looking at the specific issues, historical, psychological, autobiographical, that these literary works are concerned with. This course will also be interested in the question of why wars have been such a privileged subject in literature, and how the art of military strategy can be compared with the art of writing. Readings will include the following: Sun Tsu, The Art of War, J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (selections), Carl v. Clausewitz, On War (selections), S. Freud, "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," and "Why War?", G. Flaubert, Salammbô, E. Junger, The Storm of Steel, J. Swift, The Battle of the Books, S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage. COL 470: EUROPEAN WOMEN FILM DIRECTORS (top) Professor Maria Elena Gutierrez Thurs, 3:00-5:40 Room: 17 Clemens Registration Number: 213778 Cross-Listed with: DMS 423 GU Registration Number: 023585 ENG 451 GU Registration Number: 025156 ENG 701 GU Registration Number: 193762 HMN 503 GU Registration Number: 317262 WS 410 GUT Registration Number: 067305 Dual-Listed with: ITA 533 GU Registration Number: 067305 Women's cinematic eye. For over a century with their intelligence and creativity women have been contributing to the moving image. In 1896 the French, Alice Guy, directed the first film made by a woman, La Fee aux choux. In this seminar we will critically explore the cinematic production of some of the major European women filmmakers of all times. We will engage Agnes Varda's Nouvelle Vague innovations, Liliana Cavani's crucial output, the exquisite contemporary comedies of Fina Torres and Josiane Balasko, and many others. Indeed, though the reading and discussion of filmic and theoretical texts we shall engage some fundamental questions concerning subjectivity and language, body and culture. We will examine constructions of sexual difference and (re) presentations of female/male gender in these three social, political and historical contexts. The theoretical framework will be provided by the philosophical writings of film theorist and filmmakers such as Gilles Deleuze, Andre Bazin, Marguerite Duras, Kaja Silverman, Stephen Heath, Teresa de Lauretis and Judith Butler, among others. N.B. The course and the readings will be in English. The films will be in Italian and French with English subtitles. Required films: We will select 11 or 12 films from the following selection: Coline Serreau, Trois homes et un couffin (Three Man and a cradle), Romauld et Juliette (Mana, there's a man in your bed) Agnes Varda Cleo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7), Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond) Liliana Cavani, Il Portiere di Notte (The Night Porter), Francesco, and the Berlin Affair Lina Wertmuller, Sotto sotto, Love and Anarchy or Swept Away Nicole Garcia, Place Vendôme Josiane Balasko, Gazon Maudit (French Twist) Fina Torres, Mecaniques Celestes (Celestial clockwork) Marguerite Duras, India Song Roberta Torre, Tano da morire Claire Devers, Noir et blanc (Black and White) Aline Isserman, L'ombre du doute (A Shadow of Doubt) or Claire Denis's I Can't Sleep Sandrine Veysset, Y'aura t'-il de la neige à Noel? (Will It Snow For Xmas?)
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