Graduate Courses Spring 2009

Comparative Literature 475 - Rereading the Sacred
Professor Chris Livanos - clivanos@wisc.edu
262-3851 / 950 Van Hise
MW 2:30-3:45 / 590 Van Hise

We will discuss the interpretive nature of writing as we examine how every sacred text reinterprets previous texts, often in ways quite different from the original text's apparent meaning. Hebrew Scriptures will be studied in the context of Ancient Near Eastern sacred literature. We will then examine how the Christian Scriptures respond to, and sometimes claim to supercede, the sacred texts of Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Platonism, and other traditions. When we study the sacred texts of the ancient Near East, we will discuss not only the canonical texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also lesser known and extinct belief systems such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The ancient Gnostic idea that the story of the Garden of Eden is true but the serpent was really the hero and God the villain is one of several creative interpretations we will study as we attempt to understand the complex ways in which people come to terms with tradition.

The first part of the course will discuss scriptural traditions that originated in the ancient Middle East . We will then discuss South Asian texts, focusing especially on how Hinduism and Buddhism respond to each other, often reinventing themselves in the process of reinterpreting each other's sacred texts.

CL777 Classical Literature: Untimely Classics (Canceled)
Professor Max Statkiewicz-
Lecture: R 4:30 -7:00 - 207 Van Hise

CL822: Translation Seminar: Culture, History, Politics, Theory s
Professor Mary Layoun -
938 Van Hise - 262-9767
Lecture: T 4:00-6:30
144 Van Hise

The Course Description:
CL 822 focuses on translation – trans - latio: the "bearing across" from one language/genre/ space/time to another – as tribute and transgression, as practice and idea and on the relation of translation-as-practice-and-idea to the representation, theorizing, teaching of other experiences, texts, and cultures. CL 822 will consider as well not only the idea and practice of translating but also (without self-indulgence) the space of the translator.

Translation as both cultural transgression and tribute also points to:
a) cultural and sub-cultural translation into another "language";
b) representing a culture/text/language that is "other," "strange," "different";
c) representations of the translator as differentially able (or unable) to move back and forth across and between cultures, texts, and languages.

The Reading list:

Emily Apter: The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature (Princeton, 2006) 9780691049977
Sandra Bermann & Michael Wood:Nation, Language and the Ethics of Translation ( 978-0691116099
Lawrence Venuti: The Translation Studies Reader (Routledge, 2000) 978-0415187473

Additional reading will be available for your xeroxing and reading pleasure, including diverse literary examples of translations of various sorts.

Course Requirements
– two (2) one to two page position papers on two of the non-fiction texts from the reading list, distributed to all members of the class by the end of the day on the Monday preceding the class meeting;
– one (1) one to two page example of translation, with oral commentary on the problems (literary, linguistic, cultural) thereof, distributed to all class members as above;
– a 20 to 25 page essay on or example of translation (in the latter instance, with critical commentary) due by the end of the day one week from our last seminar.

CL963 Section 001 / Meets with Philosophy 930 Nietzsche and the Affirmation of Life
Professor Ivan Soll
R @ 3:30 - 5:30 / 5193 H.C. White

In this seminar we shall investigate:

(1) how the ultimate goal of Nietzsche’s philosophical project is the affirmation of life (despite all of its difficulties); how this project centers on the inculcation of a positive attitude toward life; and how this cannot be reduced to the defense of theses about the value of life, or to any normative program of value judgments or behavioral injunctions;

(2) how Nietzsche pursued this project by replacing a number of standard philosophical questions by corresponding psychological meta-questions; how this transformation, has been generally overlooked or under-appreciated; and how the psychological aspect of Nietzsche’s work is more central than his epistemology and metaphysics;

(3) how, as a result of (1) and (2), Nietzsche undertook his treatments of metaphysical, epistemological, ethical questions, not primarily for their own sakes, but to investigate the psychology that leads to embracing them, and to foster a positive attitude toward life.

We shall read, in addition to a number of texts by Nietzsche, several secondary works that attempt to interpret his work. There will be several very short written exercises (1-2 pages) and a term paper (12-15 pp.).

In order to be able to work at a reasonably high level from the very start, I shall ask the participants to have completed some readings during the semester before the beginning of the semester. This will be a refresher for those who have already studied him and a way to bring those with little or no exposure to his work up to speed. This will include Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (secs. 1-10) and Human, All Too Human, vol. 1.

Among the other Nietzschean texts we shall study are: The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Genealogy of Morals.

Among the secondary works we shall consider are: Nehamas’ Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Reginster’s The Affirmation of Life, and some of essays of mine and other commentators.

CL963 Section 002 - Call no. 94883 - In the Beginning: Greek Roots, German Ramifications
Professor Max Statkiewicz-
Lecture: R 4:30 -7:00

"As you began [anfiengst], so will you remain," writes the poet. "Beginning [αρχη] is everything,” writes the philosopher. If we believe Hölderlin and Plato (and so many others), the study of Western culture, of its origins, should focus on the "archaic" poets/thinkers/tragedians that “flourished” before the fateful distinctions were introduced by Plato and Aristotle in their philosophical century. This had hardly been the case, though, before the writings of the German poets/thinkers, the forerunners of postmodern thought: Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In this seminar we shall read the "archaic" Greek texts of the tragic age, the texts of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, not in themselves – there might be no texts "in themselves" – but in a dialogue with the German poets/thinkers. Indeed, those exemplary readers were able to give the study of Greek texts an "untimely" character, make them act "counter to our time and th
ereby … on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come." Rather than producing ordinary scholarly, philological readings, they entered into intimate exchanges – reading/writing "in blood" – with their texts, and we shall try to follow their example. Thus we shall attempt to gain a distance from and thus another perspective on our "philosophical," "technological," "Platonic" epoch, which is still in wait to be "overturned."

Tentative Reading List:
Pre-Socratics. Fragments (Waterfield or Barnes)
Aeschylus. Oresteia
Sophocles. Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
Euripides. Bacchae
Pindar. The Odes (Verity or Bowra)
Hölderlin. Poems and Fragments (Hamburger, fourth edition)
Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy and Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
Heidegger. Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”
Schmidt, Dennis J. On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life
Babich, Babette E. Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in
Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger

Recommended Texts:
Hölderlin, Essays and Letters on Theory
Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers
Heidegger, Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry and Early Greek Thinking