Graduate Courses Spring 2006

CL 768: Literature and Ideas: Imagination
M @ 3:30-6:00 - 574 Van Hise
Professor Hans Adler
940 Van Hise - 262-2045 / 870 Van Hise - 262-9863

Imagination is one of the most hazardous and, at the same time, promising powers of the human being. Imagination time and again helped to overcome a tedious and worn-out past, be it in a playful or violent way. Imagination was instrumental during the course of the history of human culture to create visions of what had before considered impossible. Imagination also led to fatal visions of the destiny of humanity. And finally, imagination might be considered to be a �discursive effect' (of imagination?). In short: Imagination is a thrilling Janus-faced endowment of the human species that challenged research from all disciplines at all times in its quality as a chance and a curse, laying ground for the Odyssey , Divina Commedia , Me-Ti , Hamlet , Faust , St. John's Passion, the Giotto Frescos , for the airplane, global communication, the discovery of America, book printing, but also Auschwitz, the Thirty Years War, and technologies of destruction. There is no culture without imagination essentially participating in its foundation and development.

But what is imagination anyway? The term itself is a metaphor and has served as such for several thousand years from antiquity to the present. Imagination does not produce �images.� In the light of modern neurology, �image� as a product of imagination is a daring term. The following questions and aspect of the concept of imagination will be considered from a historically as well as theoretically comparatist way. Does the possible limit imagination or is imagination the limit of the possible? What happens in the brain during acts of imagination? What is the role of imagination in the philosophical and the literary discourse? What is the role of imagination in �vision,' prophecy, and ecstasy? Does the eye dominate in the hierarchy of the senses and if yes, what does that mean for the literary discourse where there is nothing �to see '? What is �inner vision'? Where are the borderlines between imagination, fantasy, fancy? Is there a �beyond imagination'? We will read and discuss literary, philosophical, and essayistic texts from Greek antiquity to the present.

This seminar serves (among others) the preparation of an international and interdisciplinary conference that will be organized by the Department of Comparative Literature for the fall of 2006. The topic of the conference is: Imagination (Un)Limited . Outstanding student research papers (up to three) from our seminar may be selected for presentation at that conference.

CL775 Gender, Social space & Citizenship
T @ 3:30-6:00 - 491 Van Hise
Professor Mary Layoun

938 Van Hise - 262-9767

What is “citizenship” at the historical moment in which we live? How is our understanding and practices of that concept inflected by gender and by the social maps on which we find and position ourselves?

Using these questions as a point of departure, we will examine and analyze the dense network of relations among our three titular terms and the further configurations in which they are embedded. We will read both imaginative fictions and analytical and theoretical speculation that explore this terrain.

Draft of a Too-Long Reading List:
Etel Adnan: In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, Of Cities and Women, Sitt Marie Rose
Giorgio Agamben: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception
Danielle Allen: Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education:
Seyla Ben-Habib: The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, Citizens
Mustapha Barghouthi: selected articles
Susan Buck-Morss: Thinking beyond Terror
Judith Butler: Antigone’s Claim
Cynthia Cockburn: The Spaces between Us, The Line
Maria Hadjipavlou selected essays
Dolores Hayden: The Power of Place
Aihwa Ong: Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America
Paul Virilio: A Grammar of the Multitude

Additional required reading also includes selected essays, poetry, and short fiction, available as PDF files.

This class is offered in conjunction with the Havens Center Spring Lecture Series on Gender, Social Space and Citizenship; attendance at those lectures is a required part of class participation. (Adjustments for the specifics of your class schedules will be possible.)

For enrollment in the class, please contact Professor Layoun: