COL 291 - Legal and Literary Representations Outlaws / In-Laws
COL 301 - Literary Theory
COL 470 - Modern Women Writers
COL 203 - Evil and the Politics of Perversion
COL 303 - Literature of Haunting
COL 291 - LEGAL AND LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OUTLAWS / IN-LAWS (top)
Professor Birger VanwesenbeeckMW: 9:30-10:50 am
Room: Clemens 640
Registration Number: 323328
Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.
--William Gaddis
This course will analyze representations of law and outlawry in twentieth-century literature and political theory. We will start the course by taking a closer look at the figure of the outlaw as it emerged in the cowboy western, and then move on to see how this prototypical figure lives on through more contemporary outlaw characters such as the madman, the rogue (or rogue state), the hacker (or private), and the terrorist. Our readings will help us develop a tentative definition of outlawry, and address such questions as: What does distinguish the outlaw from the (common) criminal? Do outlaws really succeed in attaining a perspective outside of law? And perhaps most importantly, how did this figure become one of the "darlings" of twentieth-century literature and political theory in the first place? In the second part of the course, we will discuss how literature has explored the contradictions that make the outlaw tip over into its opposite, or "in-law". We will also be concerned with the crucial distinction between law and justice, as it features in the writings of Gaddis and Derrida, as well as with the idea of law as an "impossible concept." Finally, we will "switch sides" and examine to what extent literature's satirical engagement with law nonetheless depends on law in matters such as copyright and canonicity.
Readings will include novels by Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, Joseph Conrad, William Gaddis, and Thomas Pynchon; theory by Derrida, Foucault, Hart Negri, and Nussbaum; and possibly one movie.
Course Requirements: weekly quizzes, one midterm paper, one final paper
COL 301 - LITERARY THEORY* (top)
Professor Krzysztof ZiarekMW: 11-12:20 pm
Room: Baldy 101
Registration Number: 291465
This course will provide an introduction to issues central to contemporary literary studies. We will begin by examining four important influences on current critical debates: Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Saussure, together with several important contemporary responses to their texts (including Derrida, Heidegger, Irigaray, Lacan). We will then discuss a number of diverse critical orientations, from Frankfurt School an psychoanalysis to feminism, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies by focusing in greater detail on the work of Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger, Foucault, Fanon, Lacan, Derrida, Irigaray, Gates, and Anzaldua. Our discussions will engage the question of aesthetics and its relation to the problems of language, experience, sexual and racial difference, power, and technology.
Requirements: presentation in class, participation in discussion, term paper (first draft 8-10 pages, final 15-18 pages).
*This course fulfills the english 301 criticism requirement
COL 470 - MODERN WOMEN WRITERS** (top)
Professor Ewa Plonowska ZiarekMW: 11-12:20 pm
Room:Clemens 640
Registration Number: 063129
"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters...But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its color, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery," wrote Virginia Woolf in A room of One's Own . In this course we will focus on the texts of three modern women writers who shared Woolf's spirit of the defiance of cultural and political authorities and contestation of social, literary, racial and sexual norms: Djuna Barnes, Nella Larsen, and, of course, Woolf herself. We will examine their experimental attitude to literary language, their attempts to imagine and create new forms of female subjectivity, their playful explorations of new modes of sexuality, pleasure and desire. But we will also discuss sometimes tragic costs of such daring artistic struggle for freedom in the world of unfreedom: loneliness, isolation, loss, morning, and destruction.The larger question we will raise in the course is about the role of literature and art in social, political, and personal transformations. Our readings will include Djuna Barnes's Nightwood ; Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Passing ; and Virgina Woolf's A Room of One's Own , Orlando , and To the Lighthouse ; as well as selected essays devoted to these literary texts.
Requirements: fresh ideas, interesting questions, and active participation in class discussion; class presentations; final research paper.
**University honors course
COL 203 - EVIL AND THE POLITICS OF PERVERSION (top)
Sorin Radu CucuTR: 9:30-10:50 am
Room: Clemens 640
Registration Number: 358534
Why is Evil related to politics? Why contemporary literature represents politics as a form of (sexual) perversion? In order to answer these questions we will start by examining the most horrid/monstrous face of political systems. We will start by looking at Kafka's Penal Colony as the epigraph for the outburst of political violence in the 20 th century. The representation of fascism/Nazism as sexual machine is explicitly used by Michel Tournier and the Italian director Pier Paolo Passolini as a means to expose the complete destruction of everyday life. The ironic presentation of corruption will be the central theme of Milan Kundera's anti-communist novel, The Joke.
In the second part of the course we will focus mainly on American literature and film. Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and The Matrix explore the political manipulation of science whereas Toni Morrison's novel Paradise or David Fincher's film Fight Club indicate the precariousness of the strongly-forged community.
Readings list: Kafka, "In the Penal Colony"; Tournier, The Ogre ; Kundera, The Joke ; Morrison, Paradise ; Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1 st part); DeLillo, White Noise
Films: the adaptation of William Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice ; Pier Paolo Passolini's Salo ; David Fincher, Fight Club ; the Wakowski Brothers, The Matrix
Requirements: active seminar participation, 1 mid-term paper (4-5 pages), 1 final paper (10 pages)
COL 303 - LITERATURE OF HAUNTING (top)
Professor Kalliopi NikolopoulouTR: 11-12:20 pm
Room: Clemens 640
Registration Number: 157779
This course will explore the relation of haunting to literature on both its thematic and philosophical dimensions. We will read several texts that offer us various visions of the otherworldly-not only the presence of literal ghosts, but also the metaphorical aspect of spectrality as the terrifying gap that opens up when our foundational myths are shattered. For instance, the myth of the Father as the source of authority will be a case in point, since in all of our texts the figure of the father is spectralized. The close readings of these works will guide us to ask the more general and philosophical question of the hauntedness of literature-namely, of how the project of writing itself is haunted. Readings include Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, The Trial, as well as shorter texts from Nietzsche, Freud, and Dostoevsky.
Requirements: 2 papers of 5-7 pages each.
