Beckett, Samuel: Molloy; Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier; Freud, Sigmund: Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria; Poe, Edgar Allan: The Portable Edgar Allan Poe; Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
This course will examine the problematic interactions between experience, action, and knowledge. Focusing primarily on the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, we will read mostly narrative literary works that address a problem of knowledge and self-knowledge that seems to hinge, paradoxically, on a moment of error. To the casual observer, these works might be taken to be so many detective stories. Nothing is less certain. Thus, we shall flirt mercilessly with that generic convention, as well as the not unrelated convention of the tragic, but we will refuse to allow ourselves to mistake either for truth, since it is the truth we seek. The relationship between literature and other discourses presumably concerned with truth (e.g. philosophy and something like science) also will be at stake, but above all we will address with the ways in which these texts thematize and formalize problems of the relationship between knowledge, self-knowledge, action, and error—how they are about these problems, and how they create these problems for us as we confront them.
Beyond the intrinsic interest of these works, our readings will open onto the underlying pragmatic goal of this course, which is to facilitate the development of your critical reflection and writing skills. We shall use the questions that this material poses of us, as well as those we pose of it, to construct persuasive and cogent arguments out of them, writing progressively larger essays with progressively more sophisticated conceptual substance. The session will begin with a short diagnostic essay, followed by three papers of increasing length. A peer review process will help you as you revise at least two of these papers. In all, you will produce at least thirty-two pages of writing over the session—including drafts and revisions.
This course will be taught in Session A, from May 22 to June 28.
Austen, Jane: Emma; Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice; Gissing, George: The Odd Women
Films: You’ve Got Mail; Bride and Prejudice; How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Texts from Jane Austen, excerpts
Womens’ rights and choices have been a national conversation for over a century now; but when did that conversation begin? In this course, we will examine womens’ choices in Victorian novels and discuss how the tensions between social, biological, and philosophical systems at play in the 19th century gave rise to this discourse — and how they have shaped the conversation about womens’ rights today. In doing so, students will also work to develop analytic and rhetorical skills and learn to write powerfully and persuasively.
This course will be taught in Session D, from July 3 to August 9.
Lorde, Audre: Zami: A New Spelling of my Name; Robinson, Marilynne: Gilead; Wise, Tim: White Like Me
What do we gain from learning about White privilege and experience from the perspective of both ethnic-minority and White writers and thinkers? What do these different perspectives reveal about the contours of racial privilege in the contemporary United States, as simultaneously lived and structural, explicit and implicit? This course will examine how works of literature and theory attempt to disrupt whiteness as a social construct, by imagining forms of solidarity that could transcend racial categories. We will examine both the social risks and potentials of these projects, asking what role art, writing, thinking, or imagining play in helping us envision such solidarity. Additionally, we will consider both the compelling and problematic aspects of Whites critiquing whiteness, relying on arguments by scholars of color.
This course will be taught in Session C, from June 18 to August 9.
Truong, Monique: The Book of Salt; eds. Gilbert and Porter: Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing; eds. Graff and Birkenstein: They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 3rd edition
Films: Tampopo; Eat Drink Man Woman
Additional readings will be made available on bCourses.
Our course begins with Terry Eagleton’s assertion that “food looks like an object but is actually a relationship, and the same is true of literary works” and moves to consider that relationship in texts as varied as medieval French fabliaux and twentieth-century Japanese cinema. Authors we will study include Plutarch, Virginia Woolf, M. F. K. Fisher, Michael Pollan, Pu Song Ling, Lord Byron, and many others; the topics we’ll cover range from the ethics of vegetarianism to the politics of cannibalism, from the particular formal difficulty of representing taste in words to hunger’s connection with other carnal desires. In addition to the traditionally literary modes of prose fiction, poetry, and the personal essay, we will also read restaurant reviews, political manifestos, journalistic reportage, and cultural criticism, and will learn to read meals themselves.
Food is our course’s subject, but not its object: as an offering in the University’s Reading and Composition program, the class is primarily designed to teach you to be keen readers and clear writers. While the orientation of R1B towards research means your written work will culminate in formal papers of rigorous argumentation and sound scholarship, cogently expressed, you’ll produce a range of writing over the course, in a range of other, less academic genres.
This course will be taught in Session A, from May 22 to June 28.
Hejinian, Lyn and Scalapino, Leslie: Sight; Spicer, Jack: My Vocabulary Did This To Me
Additional texts by Helen Adam, Dodie Bellamy, Robin Blaser, Bruce Boone, Sam D'Allesandro, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Glück, Judy Grahn, Bob Kaufman, Joanne Kyger, Pamela Lu, Josephine Miles, and Pat Parker will be available in a course reader, available for purchase at Copy Central on Bancroft Avenue.
This course studies Bay Area poetry, where many of the threads of twentieth-century American poetry intersect. Bay Area poetry allows us to consider the history of avant-garde movements in the 20th century, and how they align with the particular experiences and expressions of racial and sexual minorities. We will begin with poems of the indigenous peoples of the Bay Area, and poems written on the walls of the Angel Island Detention Center by Chinese immigrants to the United States. We will then move to the middle of the 20th century to consider literary movements such as the Berkeley Renaissance, the San Francisco Renaissance, movement poetry from the 1970s, Language poetry, and New Narrative. We conclude with a series of recent works by Bay Area poets published in the last three years.
This course seeks to develop your critical thinking and writing skills. We will learn how to build evidence-based arguments from our readings of literary texts. We will also consider how to construct and pursue compelling research questions. Weekly extra credit “field trip” assignments engage some of the physical locations related to the poetry of the Bay Area.
This course will be taught in Session D, from July 3 to August 9.
PRIMARY TEXTS (BOOKS)
Please purchase all texts with an ISBN-13 number next to the title. Search the ISBN on Amazon for the specific edition we will use this semester. You may, however, purchase any edition you like, as long as it is a physical copy.
Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick ISBN-13: 978-0140390339
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby ISBN-13: 978-0743273565
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text ISBN-13: 978-0679732181
Jay-Z, Decoded ISBN-13: 978-0812981155
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance ISBN-13: 978-1400082773
PRIMARY TEXTS (MEDIA)
Required. Please view/listen and analyze in advance of the day that we are discussing the text. Please wait to buy media texts. We will stream and file share when possible.
TELEVISION
Matthew Weiner, creator, Mad Men
FILM
Baz Luhrmann, dir., The Great Gatsby
MUSIC
Jay-Z, Selected lyrics & music
Various Artists, The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann’s Film
SECONDARY TEXTS (REQUIRED)
Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler, eds., Keywords for American Cultural Studies
Online: http://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural-studies/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society ISBN-13: 978-0199393213
Additional required secondary readings will be available online and/or distributed in class.
The texts for this course consider the figure of the “self-made man” and his function in the American cultural imagination. From his representation in American literature to his representation in contemporary popular culture and politics, we will explore the American fascination with the idea of “starting over.” On the one hand, we will consider Horatio Alger’s impoverished hero’s rise to respectability, William Faulkner’s monomaniacal Thomas Sutpen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mysterious Jay Gatsby. On the other hand, we will analyze Mad Men’s Don Draper, Obama’s journey from a “broken home” in Hawai'i to the White House, and Jay-Z’s trajectory from the Marcy Projects to Forbes' List.
While I am self-consciously framing our work in relation to the problem of “American masculinity,” these texts obviously create unique spaces for investigating questions of race, gender, homosociality, war, class, and class mobility. You will have the opportunity to engage these problems, among others, in your written work for this course.
Most importantly, this course will develop your proficiency in expository and argumentative writing and academic research skills. Three papers are required: a diagnostic essay; a midterm essay; and a final research project. In addition to these papers, in-class writing, workshops, participation, presentations, and full attendance are also required to earn a passing grade.
This course will be taught in Session C, from June 18 to August 9.