Privileging Reason and Rationality
Aug 26
Course Introduction
Pu Song Ling – “The Wise Neighbor” (China, 1679)
Aug 30
“The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas” (Vol D,pp. 91-104)
Samuel Johnson – from A Dictionary of the English Language (England, 1777)
René Descartes – The Discourse on Method (France, 1637)
Diderot & D’Alembert – The Encyclopédie (France, 1751 – 1777)
Immanuel Kant – What is Enlightenment? (Germany, 1784)
Sept 2
Molière – Tartuffe (France, 1664)
Ueda Akinari – “Bewitched” (Japan, 1776)
The Madness of Reason and Progress
Sept 6
“Introduction to the Age of Revolution” (Vol E, pp. 3-17)
Olympe de Gouges – The Rights of Woman (France, 1791)
Edmund Burke – from Reflections on the Revolution in France (Eng, 1790)
Jean-Jacques Dessalines – Liberty or Death: Proclamation to the Inhabitants of Haiti (Haiti, 1804)
Sept 9
“Romantic Poets and their Successors” (Vol. E, pp. 322-325)
Percy Bysshe Shelley – A Defense of Poetry (England, 1821)
Sept 13
Edgar Allen Poe – The Man of the Crowd (USA, 1845)
Sept 16
Charles Baudelaire – “To the Reader”, “Correspondences”, “A Carcass”, “To a Passerby” (France, ~1857)
Rosalia de Castro – “A Glowworm Scatters Flashes Through the Moss”, “I Well Know There Is Nothing”, “Some Plants Don’t Speak” (Spain, 1860s)
Sept 20
“Orature” (Vol E, pp. 915-917)
Orature Presentations (Groups 1-3)
Sept 23
Orature Presentations (Groups 4-6)
Sept 27
“Realism Across the World” (Vol E, pp. 625-630)
Anton Checkhov – The Cherry Orchard (Russia, 1904)
Sept 30
Anton Checkhov – The Cherry Orchard (Russia, 1904)
Paper 1 Due via Email by end of day
Rediscovering Shadows
Oct 4
No Class Scheduled
Marquis de Sade – from Philosophy in the Bedroom (France, 1795)
G.W. Hegel – Master-Slave Dialectic handout (Germany, 1807)
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto (Germany, 1848)
BLOG POST DUE BY MIDNIGHT OCT 4/5. In 300 words, reflect on one or more of these pieces. Consider how they fit in with what we’ve done up until this point (Enlightenment and Romanticism, etc.) and where you see them looking toward.
Oct 7
“Modernity and Modernism, 1900-1945” (Vol. F, pp. 3-13)
Tanizaki Jun’Ichirō – The Tattooer (Japan, 1910)
Tanizaki Jun’Ichirō – In Praise of Shadows (Japan, 1933)
Oct 11
No Class Scheduled
“Modern Poetry” (Vol. F, pp. 507-08)
Friedrich Nietzsche – On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense (Germany, 1873)
BLOG POST DUE MIDNIGHT OCT 11/12. In 350 words, reflect on Nietzsche’s essay. It is not the easiest essay, but choose one passage you feel either interests you or confuses you, and think through it by raising some questions. Keep in mind some of the discussions we’ve had on Truth, on Knowing, and especially how Certainty relates to these ‘categories’. What does Nietzsche say about concepts, about language? This is a major turning point in our class and also in modernist and post-modernist thought and aesthetics.
Oct 14
Franz Kafka – The Judgment (Czechia, 1912)
Oct 18
The Judgment, cont’d
Oct 21
Lu Xun – Diary of a Madman (China, 1918)
Chen Duxiu – “On Literary Revolution” (China, 1917)
Michel Foucault – from Madness and Civilization (1961)
Oct 25
“Manifestos” (Vol. F, pp. 641)
Tristan Tzara – Dadaist Manifesto (Romania, 1918)
André Breton – The Surrealist Manifesto (France, 1924)
Oct 28
Hearing and Visualizing Modernism: Music, Film & Art
A general discussion and wrap up of ‘modernism’ and its influence on media other than the written word. Check the blog for materials, discussion questions.
Postwar Nihilism and Reason’s Limits
Nov 1
“Postwar and Postcolonial Literature, 1945 – 1968” (Vol. F, pp. 671-75)
Friedrich Dürrenmatt – The Visit (1956)
Nov 4
The Visit, cont’d.
Nov 8
ELECTION DAY. NO CLASS. GO VOTE.
Find your polling place here
Nov 11
Samuel Beckett – Endgame (1957)
Nov 15
Endgame, cont’d.
Nov 18
Clarice Lispector – “The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman” (Brazil)
Nov 22
Stanley Kubrick – Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Final Paper Proposal Due
Nov 25
Thanksgiving Break
Roberto Bolaño – “Sensini” (Chile, 1997)
Nov 29
Contemporary Nihilism: Punk & Metal
RadioLab – “In The Dust of this Planet” (2014)
On the Media – “Staring into the Abyss” (2014)
Dec 2
Contemporary Nihilism: Emancipation & Terrorism
Readings to be determined
Final Paper Draft 1 Due in-class
Dec 6
Final Paper Workshop
Dec 9
Final Discussion, Wrap up and Paper Presentations
December 18
Final Papers due via email by midnight (end of day).