Comparative Literature Department :: University at Buffalo

SPRING 2010

University Registration Guidelines Website: http://src.buffalo.edu

October 23, 2009 - Registration begins for Graduate and Professional Schools

November 16, 2009 - Department Force Registrations: Independent Studies, Thesis Guidance, Supervised Readings

COL 710: On Presence: Barthes' Camera Lucida

COL 711: Literature of/and Human Rights

COL 712: Literature and Skepticism

COL 714: Hegel: Contemporary Interpretations of Lordship and Bondage. Kojeve, Bataille, Derrida, Butler

COL 715: Arendt: Life, polis, politcs

Other Courses
Degree Requirements

COL 710: On Presence: Barthes' Camera Lucida

Professor Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

Monday, 12:30 - 3:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640

Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 334047; REC (B) 381737

Given the recent critique of presence as an insidious metaphysical category, we will concentrate on Barthes’ Camera Lucida for its counter-insights. Is presence, categorically speaking, a synonym for subjective mastery? Conversely, does absence not run the risk of the metaphysical idealism contemporary thought so avidly critiqued in Plato’s otherworldly Ideas? We will try to respond to some of these questions as we explore the difficult and contradictory passages of Barthes’ last, and perhaps greatest, work. In what ways does his meditation on photography (and the death of his mother) present us with the very drama of presence to oneself and to one’s experience and thought?

Alongside Camera Lucida, we will read Plato’s defense of presence in the Phaedrus, and potentially some secondary texts on Barthes and photography.

COL 711: Literature of/and Human Rights (top)

Professor Shaun Irlam

Monday, 3:30 - 6:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640

Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 482682; REC (B) 276853

A prominent dimension of the novel since its inception has been the drama of human suffering and championship of the persecuted. In the 18th century, an iconic instance of this was Richardson’s heroine, Clarissa; in the 19th century, the social protest novels of Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell and others charted the horrors of industrialization in Victorian Britain while Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle did the same for the French underclasses. In each successive century, the ambit of attention has widened, from the family, to community, to nation, and finally, to sufferings and persecutions of the human family, wherever those abuses might occur. In short, the novel of human rights has emerged in diasporic and postcolonial literatures as heir to those earlier formations of a littérature engagée [Sartre’s phrase] to pose once more the urgent questions of the relationship between politics and aesthetics, truth and fiction, life and story and the responsibilities of writer and reader to the pressing social injustices of their times. This emergent sub-genre in the recent history of the novel exhibits a number of enduring traits and responds to some compelling ethical and aesthetic challenges: i) how to take the portrait of trauma; ii) how to represent political violence; iii) how an ethic of fictionalization and aestheticization impinges upon the integrity and authority of the witness; iv) how, in Sontag’s phrase, “to regard the pain of others”; v) how to map the degrees of intimacy and responsibility that bind those who only hear their stories from afar to the tragic fates of those who suffer. This course will explore the intersections between literature and human rights through a number of contemporary post-modern, diasporic and post-colonial works. Among the texts we read will be: Conrad, Heart of

Darkness, Multatuli, Max Havelaar, Adiga, The White Tiger, Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Courtemanche, Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, Danticat, The Farming of Bones, Dorfman, Death and the Maiden, Eggers, Zeitoun, Farah, Gifts, Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, Stone, The True Sources of the Nile, Zwi, The Umbrella Tree.

COL 712: Literature and Skepticism (top)

Professor Pablo Oyarzun

Tuesday and Wednesday, 3:30 – 6:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640

Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 263574; REC (B) 334172

Compressed course: 6 weeks

This course will be dedicated to the study and discussion of the relation between literature and skepticism from two points of view. On the one hand, there is a historical condition which could be described as the condition of the end of literature, an end that haunts literary experience during the last two centuries, and is particularly alluded to in the premises of Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller”. What is at stake here is the statute of literary experience in the context of modernity. On the other hand, there is a structural condition, according to which literature would only be possible on the ground of a knowledge (some kind of knowledge) about its own impossibility: this peculiar kind of knowledge suggests the affinity between literature and skepticism. What is at stake here is the statute of fiction as specific space of the literary and at the same time as dimension of the ego.

A preliminary discussion of the aforesaid elements in connection with the outlines of skepticism —as presented by Sextus Empiricus— will precede the analysis of some exemplary cases. If there is any time left, it would be possible to explore (very briefly) the techniques and rhetoric of visual self-presentation on the basis of some eminent cases of the tradition of the self-portrait.

Readings include works of Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, Borges, Benjamin, Kleist, Carroll.

COL 714: Hegel: Contemporary Interpretations of Lordship and Bondage. Kojeve, Bataille, Derrida, Butler (top)

Professor Catherine Malabou

Thursday, 3:30 - 6:10pm and

Friday, 12:30 - 3:10pm, Clemens Hall 640

Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 151626; REC (B) 053296

Compressed course: 6 weeks

Commentators have remarked that the subject of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (a subject that gradually develops itself under the names of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason and Spirit), either has no body, and is thus disembodied from the start, or seeks to renounce its body in the course of its dialectical trajectory.

In reality, we have to understand that for Hegel, the “body” is at once outside itself and not, always here and there at the same time. The body is fundamentally a detachable instance, that never coincides with itself. This suggests that the body is always evacuated, delegated to others, and lived elsewhere. It is even evacuated from its own name, to the extent that it appears most of the time not as “body” but simply as “shape” in the Hegelian text. “Life” is this perpetual experience of simultaneous self-shaping as self-disavowal of the body.

We will analyze this vexed relationship between life, shape, and detachment from the body in “Lordship and Bondage”. The central issue will be : to what extent can we consider that the slave is the master’s body ?

Required Readings

-Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. by A. V. Miller (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1977).

In “Consciousness”, Chapter II : “Perception : Or The Thing And Deception”

(67-79)

In “Self-Consciousness” : “The Truth of Self-Certainty” (104-111)

Chapter I : “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness : Lordship and Bondage” (111-119)

-Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection

(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).

-Jacques Derrida, “From Restricted to General Economy”, in Writing and Difference, tr. by Alan Bass (Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1978)

-Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I : The Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1992).

-Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1969).

COL 715: Arendt: Life, polis, politics (top)

Professor Rodolphe Gasche

Tuesday, 12:30 – 3:10pm, Clemens Hall 640

Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 231076; REC (B) 347848

The central text in this seminar will be Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. Starting with her critique of the biological conception of life, we will seek to clarify what she understands by political life, and what kind of communal life is presupposed by politics. Since Arendt develops her concept of political life in a debate with the contemporary sciences, in particular, the pilot- science of biology, we will towards the end of semester also read some of Heidegger’s essays on the sciences, in particular, the essay, “Science and Reflection.”

COL : (top)

COL : (top)

All sections with individual registration numbers for the COL Independent Studies, Supervised Readings, Thesis Guidance courses are listed on the Student Response Center website: http://www.src.buffalo.edu

OTHER COURSES (top)

COL 598 Masters Project Guidance (1 thru 3 credit hours)

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 598, 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

Comparative Literature Degree Requirements (top)

The Undergraduate Minor (18 Credits)

COL 301 and 302
Up to five additional courses
Two courses may be course you take toward your major

The Undergraduate Major (45 credits; varies)

All Comparative Literature Majors are self-designed and must be approved by the College of Arts and Sciences Special Major Advisor, as well as by two faculty advisors from the COL Department. If you are interested in designing a Comparative Literature Special Major, please consult the COL Director of Undergraduate Studies.

The M.A. (30 credits)

9 "intensive" (A) seminars
3 credits Masters Project Guidance (COL 598)
Master's Project (approximately 35 - 75 pages)
Minimum of 30 credit hours

The Ph.D. (72 Credits)

30 Credits (10 courses) Intensive (A) Seminars
Orals Examination (upon completion, students can apply for the M.A.)
Dissertation (approximately 150-300 pages)
Dissertation Defense

The above information is provided as a guide. Requirements may vary. Please see the Department Director of Graduate Studies, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, or your advisor for information tailored to your situation.


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Graduate Undergraduate Course Archive	SPRING 2010 University Registration Guidelines Website: http://src.buffalo.edu October 23, 2009 - Registration begins for Graduate and Professional Schools November 16, 2009 - Department Force Registrations: Independent Studies, Thesis Guidance, Supervised Readings COL 710: On Presence: Barthes' Camera Lucida COL 711: Literature of/and Human Rights COL 712: Literature and Skepticism COL 714: Hegel: Contemporary Interpretations of Lordship and Bondage. Kojeve, Bataille, Derrida, Butler COL 715: Arendt: Life, polis, politcs Other Courses Degree Requirements COL 710: On Presence: Barthes' Camera Lucida Professor Kalliopi Nikolopoulou Monday, 12:30 - 3:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 334047; REC (B) 381737 Given the recent critique of presence as an insidious metaphysical category, we will concentrate on Barthes’ Camera Lucida for its counter-insights. Is presence, categorically speaking, a synonym for subjective mastery? Conversely, does absence not run the risk of the metaphysical idealism contemporary thought so avidly critiqued in Plato’s otherworldly Ideas? We will try to respond to some of these questions as we explore the difficult and contradictory passages of Barthes’ last, and perhaps greatest, work. In what ways does his meditation on photography (and the death of his mother) present us with the very drama of presence to oneself and to one’s experience and thought? Alongside Camera Lucida, we will read Plato’s defense of presence in the Phaedrus, and potentially some secondary texts on Barthes and photography. COL 711: Literature of/and Human Rights (top) Professor Shaun Irlam Monday, 3:30 - 6:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 482682; REC (B) 276853 A prominent dimension of the novel since its inception has been the drama of human suffering and championship of the persecuted. In the 18th century, an iconic instance of this was Richardson’s heroine, Clarissa; in the 19th century, the social protest novels of Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell and others charted the horrors of industrialization in Victorian Britain while Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle did the same for the French underclasses. In each successive century, the ambit of attention has widened, from the family, to community, to nation, and finally, to sufferings and persecutions of the human family, wherever those abuses might occur. In short, the novel of human rights has emerged in diasporic and postcolonial literatures as heir to those earlier formations of a littérature engagée [Sartre’s phrase] to pose once more the urgent questions of the relationship between politics and aesthetics, truth and fiction, life and story and the responsibilities of writer and reader to the pressing social injustices of their times. This emergent sub-genre in the recent history of the novel exhibits a number of enduring traits and responds to some compelling ethical and aesthetic challenges: i) how to take the portrait of trauma; ii) how to represent political violence; iii) how an ethic of fictionalization and aestheticization impinges upon the integrity and authority of the witness; iv) how, in Sontag’s phrase, “to regard the pain of others”; v) how to map the degrees of intimacy and responsibility that bind those who only hear their stories from afar to the tragic fates of those who suffer. This course will explore the intersections between literature and human rights through a number of contemporary post-modern, diasporic and post-colonial works. Among the texts we read will be: Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Multatuli, Max Havelaar, Adiga, The White Tiger, Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Courtemanche, Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, Danticat, The Farming of Bones, Dorfman, Death and the Maiden, Eggers, Zeitoun, Farah, Gifts, Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, Stone, The True Sources of the Nile, Zwi, The Umbrella Tree. COL 712: Literature and Skepticism (top) Professor Pablo Oyarzun Tuesday and Wednesday, 3:30 – 6:10 pm, Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 263574; REC (B) 334172 Compressed course: 6 weeks This course will be dedicated to the study and discussion of the relation between literature and skepticism from two points of view. On the one hand, there is a historical condition which could be described as the condition of the end of literature, an end that haunts literary experience during the last two centuries, and is particularly alluded to in the premises of Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller”. What is at stake here is the statute of literary experience in the context of modernity. On the other hand, there is a structural condition, according to which literature would only be possible on the ground of a knowledge (some kind of knowledge) about its own impossibility: this peculiar kind of knowledge suggests the affinity between literature and skepticism. What is at stake here is the statute of fiction as specific space of the literary and at the same time as dimension of the ego. A preliminary discussion of the aforesaid elements in connection with the outlines of skepticism —as presented by Sextus Empiricus— will precede the analysis of some exemplary cases. If there is any time left, it would be possible to explore (very briefly) the techniques and rhetoric of visual self-presentation on the basis of some eminent cases of the tradition of the self-portrait. Readings include works of Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, Borges, Benjamin, Kleist, Carroll. COL 714: Hegel: Contemporary Interpretations of Lordship and Bondage. Kojeve, Bataille, Derrida, Butler (top) Professor Catherine Malabou Thursday, 3:30 - 6:10pm and Friday, 12:30 - 3:10pm, Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 151626; REC (B) 053296 Compressed course: 6 weeks Commentators have remarked that the subject of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (a subject that gradually develops itself under the names of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason and Spirit), either has no body, and is thus disembodied from the start, or seeks to renounce its body in the course of its dialectical trajectory. In reality, we have to understand that for Hegel, the “body” is at once outside itself and not, always here and there at the same time. The body is fundamentally a detachable instance, that never coincides with itself. This suggests that the body is always evacuated, delegated to others, and lived elsewhere. It is even evacuated from its own name, to the extent that it appears most of the time not as “body” but simply as “shape” in the Hegelian text. “Life” is this perpetual experience of simultaneous self-shaping as self-disavowal of the body. We will analyze this vexed relationship between life, shape, and detachment from the body in “Lordship and Bondage”. The central issue will be : to what extent can we consider that the slave is the master’s body ? Required Readings -Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. by A. V. Miller (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1977). In “Consciousness”, Chapter II : “Perception : Or The Thing And Deception” (67-79) In “Self-Consciousness” : “The Truth of Self-Certainty” (104-111) Chapter I : “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness : Lordship and Bondage” (111-119) -Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). -Jacques Derrida, “From Restricted to General Economy”, in Writing and Difference, tr. by Alan Bass (Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1978) -Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I : The Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1992). -Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1969). COL 715: Arendt: Life, polis, politics (top) Professor Rodolphe Gasche Tuesday, 12:30 – 3:10pm, Clemens Hall 640 Registration Numbers: SEM (A) 231076; REC (B) 347848 The central text in this seminar will be Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. Starting with her critique of the biological conception of life, we will seek to clarify what she understands by political life, and what kind of communal life is presupposed by politics. Since Arendt develops her concept of political life in a debate with the contemporary sciences, in particular, the pilot- science of biology, we will towards the end of semester also read some of Heidegger’s essays on the sciences, in particular, the essay, “Science and Reflection.” COL : (top) COL : (top) COL : (top) COL : (top) All sections with individual registration numbers for the COL Independent Studies, Supervised Readings, Thesis Guidance courses are listed on the Student Response Center website: http://www.src.buffalo.edu OTHER COURSES (top) COL 598 Masters Project Guidance (1 thru 3 credit hours) 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 598, 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 Comparative Literature Degree Requirements (top) The Undergraduate Minor (18 Credits) COL 301 and 302 Up to five additional courses Two courses may be course you take toward your major The Undergraduate Major (45 credits; varies) All Comparative Literature Majors are self-designed and must be approved by the College of Arts and Sciences Special Major Advisor, as well as by two faculty advisors from the COL Department. If you are interested in designing a Comparative Literature Special Major, please consult the COL Director of Undergraduate Studies. The M.A. (30 credits) 9 "intensive" (A) seminars 3 credits Masters Project Guidance (COL 598) Master's Project (approximately 35 - 75 pages) Minimum of 30 credit hours The Ph.D. (72 Credits) 30 Credits (10 courses) Intensive (A) Seminars Orals Examination (upon completion, students can apply for the M.A.) Dissertation (approximately 150-300 pages) Dissertation Defense The above information is provided as a guide. Requirements may vary. Please see the Department Director of Graduate Studies, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, or your advisor for information tailored to your situation.
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