Graduate Courses Spring 2010
Comparative Literature 473: Buddhism & Literature
Lecture 001: MW 2:30-3:45
Professor Chris Livanos
Ph (608) 263-3851 - 950 Van Hise
We will study literary texts from a variety of Buddhist traditions as well as modern texts influenced by Buddhist thought. The class will discuss the development of the Buddhist religion and differences between the various forms of Buddhism. In the works of Ashvaghosha, we will discuss how the author changes the genre of epic poetry (normally used to tell stories of heroic warriors), to tell a story of enlightenment. In our reading of the Jataka tales (stories of the Buddha’s past lives) we will discuss how folk tales are incorporated into the Buddhist tradition. In the work of the eighth-century Chinese poet Wang Wei, one issue we will address will be the contrast between the poet’s remarkable ability to invoke the beauty of the physical world and the Buddhist tenet that worldly existence is unsatisfactory. We will then study parts of Osamu Tezuka’s series of graphic novels based on the life of the Buddha.
Texts:
Ashvaghosha’s Life of the Buddha
Ashvaghosha’s Handsome Nanda
The Lotus Sutra
Poems of Wang Wei
Selected Jataka Tales
Songs of Milarepa
Osamu Tezuka The Forest of Uruvela (Buddha vol. 4)
Comparative Literature 473: Grand Tour
Lecture 002: MWF 12:05
Professor Ernesto Livorni
The Grand Tour and the Romantic Myth of Italy
The course focuses on that literary phenomenon that took place from the
mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. In that period
intellectuals and artists from Germany, England, and France came to visit
Italy and to appreciate the remnants of the great past of the country, from
the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Needless to say, Florence was always
one of the most attractive places to visit. The course includes readings
from Goethe, Madame de Stael, Byron, Foscolo, Shelley, Keats, Leopardi,
Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Comparative Literature 475 - Biopolitics
M 2:25 - 4:55
Professor Sara Guyer-
Ph (608) 263-3706 - 7165 Helen C White Hall
In the late-eighteenth century, governments began recognize populations, health, sanitation, sexuality, race, etc. as their domain and to marshal power through the management of human bodies. More recently, the emergence of stem cells, health care, world hunger, and human rights, as major political issues, also suggests the centrality of biological life to politics. Philosophers, anthropologists, and literary theorists, among others have analyzed this convergence of politics and life, and it will be the aim of this course to survey the various theories of biopolitics as a means towards understanding a key development in contemporary critical theory. Authors to be read include: Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Roberto Esposito, Barbara Johnson, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, and Paul Rabinow.
Comparative Literature 475 - Existentialism: Between Philosophy & Literature
R 4:00-6:30
Professor Max Statkiewicz-
Ph (608) 262-7862 - 958 Van Hise
The popularity of "existentialism" in our time is not only the result of fashion. It is true that "existentialism" has been associated at various times with such fashionable figures as Juliette Greco, James Dean, or Jim Morrison, even if their way was to resist rather than to create fashions. In any case, existentialism has never been just a fashion. It could even be defined as resistance to fashion, and to other manifestations of orthodoxy or correctness, of "inauthentic" ways of living – that is, if it didn't resist the correctness of definition as well. Thus, existentialism as an academic term might designate first of all a problem – the problem of the limits of scientific and of ideological orthodoxy, of academic education, and of literature as an alternative way of approaching the world, of "being in the world." Our contemporary world, the "fashionable" world of the twenty-first century, is in a particular need of resisting the ever-growing uniformization of life. Existentialist texts, which thematize the uniqueness of human experience, are crucial for realizing the need for such resistance.
There is hardly a common agreement between the teachers and the editors of anthologies as to the choice of texts; there is no existentialist canon. An attempt to constitute such a canon and to formulate a coherent series of principles that would define a way of thought conspicuously hostile to any system would in fact be inappropriate. We will thus begin our study from the assumption that it is important to present the debates and controversies surrounding the term "existentialism," to re-apprise the legacy of existentialism (Alan Schrift), to study the texts that programmatically reject the security of systematic knowledge and question Western metaphysics, essential humanism, and nihilism. Our own discussion will focus on such "existential" notions as "dread," "authenticity," "alienation," "being toward death," "facticity," "the absurd," "choice and responsibility," "freedom." These considerations will force us to reconsider the apparently clear borders between various disciplines and in particular between philosophy and literature. Thus our texts will often flout the traditional generic divisions. They will include SOME of the following:
Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity
Albert Camus, Caligula, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Possessed (an adaptation of Demons)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground and Demons or The Brothers Karamazov
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling or The Concept of Anxiety or The Sickness unto Death
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science or Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Antichrist
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit, The Flies, Nausea, "The Wall," Existentialism is a Humanism
Martin Heidegger, "Letter on ‘Humanism’" and "What is Metaphysics?"
Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existenz
Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist," The Trial
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being,
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Miguel de Unamuno, On the Tragic Sense of Life
CL771 Origins & Beginnings
Professor Hans Alder
Lecture: M 4:00 -6:30 -
Van Hise
In this seminar, we will focus on three aspects of origins and beginnings.
First, we will try to understand how different cultures and times managed to think THE Origin as well as origins. Thinking the Origin (in the singular) requires a narrative that bridges the gap between Nothingness and Being. Traditionally, this has been covered by texts that we classify as “myths.” Thinking origins (in the plural) requires narratives that trace phenomena back to the point at which they come into being in an already existing world. We will read and discuss myths of Origin and theories of origins.
Second, we will try to understand what fiction is and which systemic function it serves in human culture. From an anthropological point of view, it seems to be difficult to think about origins in clearly and distinctly defined concepts. Literature, metaphors, and myths, however, enable our imagination to satisfy the desire to explain origins: “In the beginning, there was …”, or—and this is the primal scene—“At first, there was nothing and then …” Human cultures have generated an amazing plethora of tales/narratives about origins, hence, the quest for the Origin or origins seems to be a fundamental part of human curiosity that we try to satisfy through the sciences as well as through art and literature. We will read and analyze from a narratological point of view a comprehensive series of beginnings of fiction in order to understand how literary texts ‘start’ with what we call “fiction.” With every fictional text a new world comes into being through language and language only, or, to put it differently: every fictional text creates a new world. We will read and discuss fiction in order to understand its ‘creative’ function.
Since every narrative has to begin somehow—there is always a first sentence—we will move from a narratological perspective to a linguistic perspective. We will examine from the point of view of textual linguistics whether there are specific constitutive rules for initial text sentences.
Thus, the main purpose of this class is to discuss how origins were/are thought and how they are expressed. Over the course of this semester, we will identify patterns of thinking and representation. We will read and discuss a few famous theoretical texts about origins, discuss patterns of initial sentences in a series of fictional texts from the 18th century to the present. Thinking and representing the origin(s) is a journey to the threshold areas of human imagination and thinking.
All participants will give a 15-minute introduction to one of our sessions and write a scholarly paper of 15-20 pages due at the end of the semester.
CL775: Literature and Other Disciplines: "Facing Conflict: Race, Gender & Class"
Professor Mary Layoun -
938 Van Hise - 262-9767
Lecture: MW 1:20 Will meet with CL205 in 165 Bascom
Fridays: Will meet in 395 Van Hise
What can we learn as intellectuals, scholars, and teachers from literature and social theory about being confronted with, confronting, and responding productively to conflict? How can we teach not only such conflict but productive responses to it?