Course Catalog

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This course is meant for all first-year students of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS). The course trains the student to read and write academic texts with care and rigor. Through classroom discussions and closely mentored writing sessions, the course ultimately aims to inculcate in the student the faculty of critical thinking. 

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During the course we will discuss the nature of fantasy and science fiction literature as a form of fiction writing, how it is different from other forms of writing, and what it can do that other forms writing cannot. The course will be divided in 4 units, the first unit will be of a theoretical nature, and the last three will discuss select examples of fantasy and science fiction. Some movies will be screened and discussed.  (3:0:0). Prerequisites: none. Primary Texts Robert Scholes and Kellog, Nature of Narrative Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism Rosemary Jackson, The Literature of Subversion  Variable Selections from J R R Tolkien, Lord of the Rings Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed Variable Selections from Stanislaw Lem, Solaris Barry Longyear, ‘Enemy Mine’ Variable Selections from William Gibson, Necromancer Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire

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This course will introduce students to the idea of poetic form, think about what constitutes a poetic movement, and finally focus on an individual poet as training in ways to read poetry by understanding craft and cultivating an ear for resonance to understanding what individual talent has to do with tradition. We will begin the semester with a sample of genres and modes and learn about what the distinguishing and overlapping characteristics of different poetic forms and modes are, for instance in the following: sonnet, villanelle, ghazal, blank verse, ode and aubade. Moving from reading poems in isolation we will think about the idea of poetic tradition, where a group of poets can be read together as a part of a movement such as Bhakti Poetry. In the final part of the course we will focus on the work of a single poet to understand how we read poets in their time a get a sense for a body of a single poet’s work. This semester we will study Arun Kolatkar. (3:0:0). Prerequisites: none. Primary Texts A selection of poems by Shakespeare, Donne, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Mir, Adrienne Rich, Agha Shahid Ali, Elizabeth Bishop, John Keats, Philip Larkin, T. S Eliot Arundhati Subramaniam Ed. Eating God: Bhakti Poetry, Penguin 2014 Arun Kolatkar Jejuri, New York Review Book, 1974

This course will be on the basic concepts in Linguistics: Phonetics, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, includes theory plus practice sessions – to introduce students to the methodology of modern linguistics and teach analytic reasoning via examination of linguistic data. The course would be divided into four modules. Module 3 and 4 introduces students to philological analysis of literary texts like two cantos from Dante’s Inferno, as well as Dante’s essay on the eloquence of the vernacular. Students are also introduced to selected essays by the philologist Eric Auerbach and Sheldon Pollock.  Module 1: Studying Beowulf (preferably chapter 1) on its language, context, and cultural background.  Manuscript available through the Electronic Beowulf project. The module will focus on one tale from the Canterbury Tales (preferably The Knight's Tale), rudiments of Middle English as a spoken and written language, to become familiar with Middle English. Module 2: Beyond the sentence: Pragmatics; Translation exercises for Beowulf as well as for Chaucer; a word-for-word transliteration from Old/ Middle English into Modern English; grammatical information for some of the terms in that line of text. (3:0:0). Prerequisites: none. Module 3 Theory- Dante's De Vulgari Eloquentia (in translation) Praxis - Dante's Inferno Canto I and X  Module 4 Theory - Auerbach's Philology and WeltLiteratur Praxis - Auerbach's Farinata and Cavalcanti Sheldon Pollock on Liberation Philology Primary Texts Beowulf (preferably chapter 1) Manuscript available through the Electronic Beowulf project Canterbury Tales (preferably The Knight's Tale), Simon, Sherry; Gender in Translation — Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. 1996. New York: Routledge. Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, & Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language, 10th edition. Cengage Learning, 2014. Steven Pinker 2007, ‘The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language’, HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Eric Auerbach’s essay “Philology and Welt Literatur” and selections from Mimesis Sheldon Pollock’s essay ‘Liberation Philology.’ Essay and poetry by Dante (in translation). 

This course will familiarize the student with the literary-aesthetic paradigm that has come to be called “modernist.” This will be achieved through the study of exemplary works in each of the major genres: the novel, the short story, drama, and poetry. Through this study the student will gain a sound understanding not only of the particulars of the modernist aesthetic, but also of the cultural, political, and philosophical ethos that informed it. (3:0:0). Prerequisites: none. Primary Texts Fiction James Joyce, “The Dead” (1914). Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925). Drama: Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949). Poetry: A selection of poems by poets such as William Butler Yeats, Wilfred Owen, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Rainer Maria Rilke, and T S Eliot.

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This course aims to introduce students to the basic theoretical works that revolutionized literary studies during the 1970s and 80s.The focus of the texts chosen is insistently on the literary. They comprise some of the most definitive works we have on (a) the basic aspects of the literary (language, discourse, author, reader), (b) literary genres (the novel, poetry) and the locations of literary criticism (Feminism, Post-colonialism). Focusing on language, discourse, genres and social orientation, this course will equip students with sophisticated conceptual frames to deal with not just literary material but any situation in life which involves human communication. (3:1:0). Prerequisites: none Primary Texts Ferdinand de Saussure, (1915) A Course in General Linguistics W. ed. M. Baskin (London: Fontana) p111-121 M.M. Bakhtin, from. The Dialogical Imagination (1934) Holquist extract in Rice and Waugh, Modern Literary Theory pp230-39 Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author” From Image-Music-Text (1968) trans. S.Heath, pp142-48 Michel Foucault, “The Order of the Discourse” (1971) in Robert Young, Untying the Text (1971) 52-64 Wolfgang Iser, “The Reading Process” (1974) extract in Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh, Modern Literary Theory: A Reader (London: Arnold) Elaine Showalter, “Towards a Feminist Poetics” in Mary Jacobus ed. Women Writing About Women (1979) pp. 25-36 Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of the Colonial Discourse” October No. 28, Spring (1983) 125-33. Jerome J. McGann, “The Text, the Poem and the Problem of the Historical Method” (1985) from The Beauty of Inflections   pp. 251-268  

This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of contemporary poetry written around conflict, whether armed combat, protracted war, occupation or forced exile. It includes poetic texts that approach some of the most intractable conflicts of the modern world with formal dexterity, empathy and resilience. This course seeks to take the students through the enormous formal, emotional and political resources wielded by such poetry in order to speak meaningfully about the conflicts that affect our contemporary world. (3:1:0). Prerequisites: none. Primary Texts Vietnam Bruce Weigl, Song of Napalm, Elegy for Peter, The Last Lie Wislawa Szymborska (tr.. Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh) Vietnam Ocean Vuong, Aubade with Burning City, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous First World War Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est, Smile Smile Smile, Anthem for Doomed Youth Siegfried Sassoon, Glory of Women, Repression of War Experience Philip Larkin, MCMXIV Palestine Mahmoud Darwish, A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies, Identity Card (tr. Salman Masalha and Vivian Eden) Rafeef Ziadah, We Teach Life Sir, Shades of Anger Kashmir Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post-Office, I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight Roushan Ilahi/MC Kash, My People, I Protest

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This course is primarily designed to introduce students to feminist theory. The course will also examine the pleasures and problems of women's literature. The broad framework of the course lies in posing the following questions: What are the ways in which feminist theory unlocks literary texts? What is distinctive about feminine ecriture - how does a women writer write and fictionalize her vision of the world in its actuality and possibility?  (3:1:0). Prerequisites: none Primary Texts Ruth Vanita, Gender, Sex, and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India, 1780-1870 (2012). Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa (1975). Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own. A History of Feminist Literary Criticism, Cambridge U Press, 2007, 66-100 (Chapters 4 and 5).  Mary Eagleton, Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 98-102, 238-265.

This course is meant to introduce undergraduate students to the art of writing poetry. Every student will be preparing a portfolio of poems throughout the semester on which s/he will be examined. There will be a supportive workshop context within the class hours. Classroom exercises will include reading and listening to important contemporary poets, focusing on three specific areas of Form, Theme and Politics. We will explore formal, aesthetic, emotional and political choices in writing poetry through both group and individual writing exercises that are experimental and stimulating. The course would include interacting with a visiting poet, whose work the students would read in detail, and who will be responding to the students' works. Through extensive workshopping of the students' poems, this course hopes to create enthusiastic practitioners of the genre. (3:1:0). Prerequisites: none Primary Texts Week 1: Introduction Readings: I’m Explaining a Few Things by Pablo Neruda, To a Young Poet by Mahmoud Darwish, Indian Summer by Dorothy Parker, Open Letter to Honey Singh by Rene Sharanya Verma, Week 2: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Theme: Love, Workshop Readings: Dubious by Vikram Seth, Don’t ask me for that love again by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, A ‘Thank You’ Note by Wislawa Szymborska, Tonight I can write the saddest lines by Pablo Neruda Week 3: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Form: Ghazal, Workshop Readings: Ghazal on Ghazals by John Hollander, Tonight by Agha Shahid Ali, Bring the Flowers to Bloom by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Hip-Hop Ghazal by Patricia Smith           Week 4: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Politics, Workshop Readings: Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, Dear Mr. Yadav, I too am an Indian Woman by Aditi Rao, Harlem by Langston Hughes, I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight by Agha Shahid Ali Week 5: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Theme: Loss, Workshop Readings: Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden, Atlantis by Mark Doty, Aubade by Philip Larkin, Resume by Dorothy Parker Week 6: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Form: Villanelle, Workshop Readings: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, Do not go Gentle into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas, If I could tell you by W.H. Auden, Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath     Week 7: Reading, Writing Exercise: On Politics, Workshop Readings: Still I Rise by Maya Angelou, The White Man Killed My Father by David Diop, Merged Landscapes by Rudramoorthy Cheran, We Teach Life, Sir by Rafeef Ziadah, Week 8: Reading, Writing Exercise: Individuated, Workshop Readings: [TBA] Week 9: Final Revisions, Individual Workshops with Instructor, Submission of Mid-Term Portfolios Week 10: Reading Works by Writer in Focus Readings: [TBA] Week 11: Responses to Works by Writer in Focus, Workshop Week 12: Responses to Works by Writer in Focus, Workshop Week 13: Visit by Writer in Focus, Responses to Students’ Works Week 14: Individual Workshops with Instructor Week 15: Final Revisions, Submission of Portfolios

This course is a survey of folk literature identifying archetypes, themes, and motifs, orally transmitted literature across place and time. Students will begin by learning key concepts of folklore scholarship: culture, tradition, performance, genre, the local/global distinction, the folk/popular divide, and the dynamics of the customary and innovative in folklore production.  Through an exploration of these concepts students will develop an expansive definition of folklore the way that stories live between and among people i.e. tellers and audiences, collectors and translators; adapting themselves to changing times, circumstances and metaphysical spaces. The course will focus on the transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice in situations of want and plenty, peace and conflict. (3:1:0). Prerequisites: none Primary Texts Barre Toelken, The Snails Clues in The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore of the West, pp. ix-xii and 1-8 Zipes, Jack. 2003. “Once There Were Two Brothers Named Grimm.” Introduction to the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 3rd ed. New York: Bantam. xxiii-xxxvi. Propp V. (1968) Discussion of Tale-Types and Motifs, Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press, Chapter 2-4 Kirin Narayan, 1993; Refractions of the Field at Home: American Representations of Hindu Holy Men in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Cultural Anthropology 8(4):476-509 Regina Bendix, 1989 Tourism and Cultural Displays: Inventing Traditions for Whom? The Journal of American Folklore 102 (404): 131-146. Sadhana Naithani (2006) In Quest of Indian Folktales, Orient Blackswan; Chapter 3 Kelly Feltault, 2006; Development Folklife: Human Security and Cultural Conservation, Journal of American Folklore 119 (471):90-110 Films: Ever After (1998) by Andy Tennant – with Drew Barrymore in a new version of “Cinderella” (with Leonardo da Vinci as her fairy godmother) Sugar Cane Alley (1983) Director Euzhan Palcy

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This course will introduce post-graduate students to the art of research and formal research paper writing. Expect to be taken through the nitty-gritties of research training in genres of formal writing: research proposal, research paper, conference abstract, conference presentation, MLA citation, methods of researching library catalogues (card and digital), indexes and databases and how to access and gain membership in the major research libraries in Delhi. Unit 1: Reading to Write Brooks, Cleanth., Gregory Colomb, Joseph Willams Eds. The Craft of Research. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995. Foucault, Michele. “The Statement and the Archive” from The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972 Gallaghar, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt. “Introduction” Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997 Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture” in The Interpretations of Culture. New York: Basic Books Inc., 1973 MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition. 3 weeks Unit 2: Pick an area for a research paper Make a Bibliography Annotate the Bibliography Research Proposal Write a literature Review 3 weeks Unit 3: 5-page Paper 5-page paper due (1700 words) Draft 1 Draft 2 3 weeks Unit 4: 10-15 page Paper 10-15 page paper due (3500-4000 words) Rough Draft 1 Rough Draft 2 Final Draft Conference abstract Conference presentation

The three European nations that play a crucial role in the evolution of the novel in Europe in the nineteenth century are Britain, France and Russia. In this course we will investigate how the novel evolved in these countries with a view towards locating the points of convergence and divergence. As part of this investigation we will also study what two influential critics have to say about the novels in question as well as the 19th-century European novel in general. Unit 1 Jane Austen, Mansfield Park 4 weeks Unit 2 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 6 weeks Unit 3 Stendhal The Red and the Black 4 weeks Secondary Readings Georgy Lukacs ,"Balzac and Stendhal’’ in Studies in European Realism, pp. 65- 85 Mikhail Bakhtin, excerpts from "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" from The Dialogical Imagination pp.243-258. Evaluation 3 papers of 1500 words each on all 3 novels (one on each novel) A research paper of 2000-2500 words on one of the three authors studied during the semester An examination at the end of the semester

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This course which focuses on material drawn from Europe between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries aims to equip students with the ability to move between literary and visual forms and to track ways in which expressive strategies mutate in this process. The course will focus on formal categories such as realism and the differing ways in which chronotopes are deployed by literary and visual forms , but it will also take students through a set of paintings and novels to demonstrate how these forms can be brought into an interanimating relationship. Unit 1: Time and Space Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon : An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry translated by Edward Allen McCormick, Chapters 16-18 Mikhail Bakhtin “Forms of time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” ( excerpt) from The Dialogical Imagination translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. 3 weeks Unit 2: Realism E.H .Gombrich, Art and Illusion ( excerpts ) Norman Bryson Vision and Painting ( excerpts) Roland Barthes , S/Z Trans. Richard Miller. Jaques Ranciere, The Future of the Image. trans. Gregory Elliott. Chapter 3, “Painting in the Text” 6 weeks Unit 3: Painting and the Novel Titian , “Venus of Urbino” Vermeer “The Lace maker” Peter de Hooch , “Woman Reading a Letter” Jane Austen, Mansfield Park Hogarth, “Industry and Idleness” all 12 plates Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist 5 weeks Evaluation Evaluation in this course will be continuous and conducted throughout the semester. The object of evaluation will be to test a student’s knowledge of the material taught through the course and the development of her analytical, critical and writing abilities. A final grade will be awarded on the basis of written presentations in seminars, participation in seminars and a 2,000 words term paper to be submitted at the end of the course. The course instructor may also set a short written examination to test the student’s knowledge of the texts taught.

This course is meant to introduce students to the major debates within the field of Postcolonial Theory. The debates are outlined under three subheadings which familiarize the students with, first, the field of postcolonial literature and how it responds to the long history of the Empire, second, an exploration of how Postcolonial Theory is deeply invested in revising Eurocentric discourse and studying its consequences, and third, an investigation of how colour prejudice has been both the primary medium and the effect of the long duree of colonial domination. Unit 1: Writing Back Achebe, Chinua. “African Writer,” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Eds. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Ashcroft, Bill, et al., “Introduction”, “Cutting the ground: critical models of post-colonial literatures”, “Theory at the crossroads: indigenous theory and post-colonial reading”, “Rethinking the post-colonial: post-colonialism in the twenty first century” in The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London, Routledge, 1989. 4 weeks Unit 2: Changing Discourse Said, Edward., “Introduction”, “The Scope of Orientalism”, “Orientalism Structures and Restructures”, in Orientalism, New York: Pantheon, 1978. James, C. L. R., “Preface to the First Edition”, “The Property”, “The Owners”, “Parliament and Property”, “The San Domingo Masses Begin”, “And the Paris Masses Complete”, in The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, New York: The Dial Press, 1938. 5 weeks Unit 3: Colouring Perceptions hooks, bell. “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination,” in Grossberg, Lawrence et al., Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1990. Fanon, Frantz., “Introduction”, “The Black Man and Language”, “The Woman of Colour and the White Man”, “The Man of Colour and the White Woman”, “The Black Man and Psychopathology” in Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1962. 5 weeks Evaluation Mid-semester - Written Assignment (Choice between 10 questions) - 1500 words Final Submission - Written Assignment (Question decided individually for candidates in consultation with the instructor) - 2500 words

This course will examine in detail four quintessential moments that visibly shaped thought and knowledge in the British Renaissance. We will read a prose fantasy by a leading humanist, poetry that is mired in anxieties of love, politics and science, a play that puts self-doubt and skepticism at the heart of early modernity, and finally two books of an epic that gives aspiration, failure and the exercise of justification a grand lyric. The theme of wanting to know, sometimes more than what is obviously knowable, will underlie our reading and enquiry. Unit 1: Utopia by Sir Thomas More Stephen Greenblatt, "At the Table of the Great: More's Self-Fashioning and Self-Cancellation," in Renaissance Self-Fashioning Quentin Skinner, "Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia' and the language of Renaissance humanism" 3 weeks Unit 2: “In Defense of Poesie” by Philip Sidney Selections of sonnets by Petrarch, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Marvel and Donne Dolan, Francis E. “Taking the Pencil out of God’s hand: Art, Nature and the Face Painting Debate in Early Modern England”. PMLA 108. 2 (March 1993) 224-239 3 weeks Unit 3: Hamlet by William Shakespeare Peter Stallybrass, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowery, and Heather Wolfe “Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England” Selections from Kastan, David Scott, Ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. New York: G. K. Hall, 1995. 4 weeks Unit 4: Book I & 2of Paradise Lost by John Milton Fish, Stanley. Surprised by Sin Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. Guillory, John. "From the Superfluous to the Supernumerary: Reading Gender into Paradise Lost." In Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory and Seventeenth-Century English Poetry. Eds Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katherine Eisaman Maus. Chicago and London: Chicago UP, 1990. 68-88. 4 weeks Evaluation 2 papers (2500 words each) 1 creative response to any one of the texts or themes under discussion (this can be a set of poems, a story, a pamphlet, graphic art, anything at all). Word limit can be negotiated depending on the genre) 1 final paper (3500-4000 words) and conference-style presentation at the end of the semester

Students will study the various approaches to the history, theory, and criticism of literary and humanistic translation. Topics of discussion would include study of translation criticism which is the systematic study, evaluation, and interpretation of different aspects of translated works, translator’s working methods, interviews with translators, multiple translations, the changing nature of interpretive approaches, theoretical models of translation, and criteria for the evaluation of translations It is an interdisciplinary academic field closely related to literary criticism and translation theory. Unit 1: Equivalence and equivalent effect Walter Benjamin ‘The Task of the Translator’. In L. Venuti (Ed.)., The Translation Studies Reader, 2000 Eugene Nida ‘Principles of Translation as exemplified by Bible Translating’. R. A. Brower (ed.): On Translation, New York, OUP. Swann's Way. (À la recherche du temps perdu #1) by Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis (Translator) 2004 by Penguin Classics (first published 1913) [ pp ‘Overture’] David Bellos. 2012. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. [Article: A Fish in Your Ear: The Short History of Simultaneous Interpreting, pp 259-273] 5 weeks Unit 2: Translation Shift Approach & Linguistic approach to translation Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In Translation Studies Reader by L. Venuti. 2000. Routledge. Vinay, Jean-Paul and Darbelnet, Jean. ‘A Methodology for Translation’. 1995. John Benjamins Publishing. J C Catford, A Linguistic Approach to Translation. 1965. OUP Zwart, K. M. van: ‘Translation and original: Similarities and Dissimilarities, I’, Target [pp 151 – 189] 4 weeks Unit 3: Translation and Post-Structuralism Season of Migration to the North, 2003 Penguin Classics Series Derrida, J. (1985). Des Tours de Babel. J. Graham (Tr.). In J. Graham (Ed.), [Difference in Translation (pp. 165-207)]. Ithaca, London Geeta Patel . 2002. “Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings on Gender, Colonialism, and Desire” in Miraji’s Urdu Poetry. Stanford University Press. 3 weeks Unit 4: Translation as a cultural act K Ramanujan “Three Hundred Ramayanas” Bassnett Susan. 1998. ‘Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice’ Bassnett S, Lefevere A. 1998 ‘Constructing Cultures’. [The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies. pp 123-140] 2 weeks Evaluation A short paper and class presentation of 1000 words on each of the Module Final assessment: A Critical Analysis of a translated work (last week) Class Participation and peer review

This course acquaints the student with some key moments in the poetry of nineteenth-century Europe and America. We begin with the English romantics, exploring the romantic engagement with nature, the self, and the tantalizing promise of political revolution. Next, we encounter some distinctively American poetic strains such as the transcendentalist and the gothic. Finally, we return to Europe, to Browning’s dramatic monologue and the French Symbolists, where we witness the early stirrings of the twentieth-century preoccupation with the craft of poetry. Unit 1: The Romantics: Nature and the Imagination Primary Texts: William Wordsworth: “The Daffodils”, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” S. T. Coleridge:”Kubla Khan”, “The Ancient Mariner” Secondary Texts: William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” 4 weeks The Romantics: The Age of Enlightenment Primary Texts: William Blake: London, Tyger P. B. Shelley: Ode to the West Wind Secondary Texts: Thomas Paine: “The Rights of Man” 3 weeks Unit 2: Nineteenth Century American Poetry Primary Texts: Walt Whitman: “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” Emily Dickinson: “I heard a Fly buzz - when I died”, “Because I could not stop for Death”, “The Soul selects her own society”, and other selections from Complete Poems Secondary Texts: Henry David Thoreau, Conclusion of Walden Emily Dickinson, Letters of Emily Dickinson 4 weeks Unit 3: Precursors to Modernist Poetry Primary Texts: Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess”, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” Charles Baudelaire: “To a Passerby”, “Le Crépuscule du soir [Evening Twilight]”, (from The Flowers of Evil translated by William Aggeler) Secondary Texts: “The Flaneur” from The Writer of Modern Life by Walter Benjamin 3 weeks Evaluation Three assignments, one on each unit (2500 words each) Class participation

This course seeks to equip students from the humanities and especially the social sciences with methods which they might fruitfully deploy when engaging with problems related to culture. The course is made up of four units . The first comprises a set of readings that engage with one of the central problems in the analysis of modern culture : the deeply ambiguous role of technology in the production of culture . The second unit will address another cultural effect of modern capitalism – its capacity to produce desire. The third and fourth sections focus on recent methodological breakthroughs that have unfolded in the key domains of women’s and post-colonial studies. Unit 1: Culture and Industrial Capitalism Theodor Adorno, ‘Culture Industry Reconsidered’ in The Culture Industry – selected essays on mass culture. Edited and with an introduction by J. M. Bernstein, London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 98-106. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility ” in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writing 1935- 1938 , Harvard University Press, 2002,pp 101-134 3 weeks Unit 2: Desire of the insubstantial “On the fetishism of commodities” From Capital Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 4. Freud ,“Fetishism” from the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud . J. Strachey tras. Hogarth Press, pp 147-57 Jean Baudrillard,The System of Objects Verso, 1966 4 weeks Unit 3: Gendering Cultural Studies Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge: New York, 1991, 149-181. Gloria Anzaldua, "How To Tame a Wild Tongue." in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco. 1999, 75-86. bell hooks, “Gangsta culture" in We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge: New York, 2004, 15-31. Supplementary Readings Linda Zerelli, "We Feel Our Freedom': Imagination and Judgment in the Thought of Hannah Arendt" Political Theory 33, No. 2 (April 2005): 158-188. Moira Weigel" Further Materials Towards A Theory of The Man Child" The New Inquiry. July 9, 2013. Wendy Brown, "Freedom and the Plastic Cage." in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton University Press; New York. 1995, 3-29. 4 weeks Unit 4: Post-colonial Cultural Studies Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, "Moving Devi" in Other Asias. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, 2003, 178-208. Rajeswari Sunderajan, “The Ameena Case” in The Scandal Of The State: Women: Law and Citizenship in the Postcolonial State. Duke University Press; Durham, 2003, 45-71. Supplementary Readings Dipesh Chakraborty, “Of Garbage, Modernity and the Citizen's Gaze." in Habitations of Modernity: Essays in The Wake of Subaltern Studies. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2002, 65-79. Bill Ashcroft, “Sugar and slavery” in MSF Dias ed. Legacies of Slavery: Comparative Perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle, UK, 2008, 108-125. 3 weeks Evaluation. Evaluation in this course will be continuous and conducted throughout the semester. The object of evaluation will be to test a student’s knowledge of the material taught through the course and the development of her analytical, critical and writing abilities. A final grade will be awarded on the basis of written presentations in seminars, participation in seminars and a 2,000 words term paper to be submitted at the end of the course. The course instructor may also set a short written examination to test the student’s knowledge of the texts taught.

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The course will discuss, mainly, the relation between art and technology, where 'technology' is understood not only as the various techniques of production, fabrication and fabulation that are available at specific moments of production; but also as a condition which makes some techniques possible or impossible. While taking a few examples from painting and sculpting and literary writing, the discussion will mainly focus on how we understand the relation between art and technology, often seen as opposites of each other. After a discussion of the history of various techniques that available technology makes possible or impossible, we shall move on to more contemporary issues of 20th century art and 21st century art as well: graphic images made of ASCII code printing, to digital videography and 'live' coverage of events. The concept of 'virtuality' will be introduced. Unit 1 12 hrs A theoretical consideration of what technology means and does in contemporary society. Reading: Gilbert Simondon, 'Technical Mentality' Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility' Stanislaw Lem, excerpts from Summa Technologica. Unit 2 12 hrs A discussion of selected stories by Walter Miller Jr., and of positive and negative evaluations of 'technology', with a focus on Section One of 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' A discussion of Ursula Le Guin's 'The World for the World is Forest' Unit 3 13 hrs A return to the theoretical discussion of 'technology', along with a discussion of visual material from recommended readings. Donna Harraway, 'The Cyborg Manifesto' Martin Heidegger, 'The Questsion Concerning Technology' Compulsory Readings: Gilbert Simondon, 'Technical Mentality' Martin Heidegger, 'The Question Concerning Technology' Donna Haraway, 'The Cyborg Manifesto' Stanislaw Lem, excerpts Summa Technologica Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reprducibility' Recommended Readings Philosophy Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time vol. 1 Fiction Selections from fiction by Walter Miller Jr. 'Big Joe and the Nth Generation' 'Conditionally Human' Section One of A Canticle for Leibowitz Ursula Le Guin, 'The Word for the World is Forest' Visual Material Documentaries BBC 'Life: Primates', the Chimpanzee Section BBC 'Life:Birds' Movies Terminator 1-3 Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) (animation) Ghost in the Shell 1-2 (anime) Graphic H R Giger Performance Art Stellarc Stefanie Trojan Marina Abramovic Ted Talks https://www.ted.com/talks/neil_harbisson_i_listen_to_color?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let_us_run_climb_and_dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqtiM1hK6lU Assessment Attendance and Class Participation: Classroom Presentation: Mid-term Assignment: Term-end Assignment:

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

This course seeks to equip students from the humanities and especially the social sciences with methods which they might fruitfully deploy when engaging with problems related to culture. The course is made up of four units . The first comprises a set of readings that engage with one of the central problems in the analysis of modern culture : the deeply ambiguous role of technology in the  production of culture . The second unit will address another cultural effect of modern capitalism – its capacity to produce desire. The third and fourth sections focus on recent methodological breakthroughs that have unfolded in the key domains of women’s and post-colonial studies. Unit 1: Culture and Industrial Capitalism Theodor Adorno, ‘Culture Industry Reconsidered’ in The Culture Industry – selected essays on mass culture. Edited and with an introduction by J. M. Bernstein, London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 98-106. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility ” in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writing 1935- 1938 , Harvard University Press, 2002,pp 101-134 Unit 2: Desire of the insubstantial Marx, “On the fetishism of commodities” From Capital Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 4. Freud ,“Fetishism” from the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud . J. Strachey tras. Hogarth Press, pp 147-57 Jean Baudrillard,The System of Objects Verso, 1966 Unit 3: Gendering Cultural Studies Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge: New York, 1991, 149-181. Gloria Anzaldua, "How To Tame a Wild Tongue." in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco. 1999, 75-86. bell hooks, “Gangsta culture" in We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge: New York, 2004, 15-31. Supplementary Readings Linda Zerelli, "We Feel Our Freedom': Imagination and Judgment in the Thought of Hannah Arendt" Political Theory 33, No. 2 (April 2005): 158-188. Moira Weigel" Further Materials Towards A Theory of The Man Child" The New Inquiry. July 9, 2013. Wendy Brown, "Freedom and the Plastic Cage." in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton University Press; New York. 1995, 3-29. Unit 4: Post-colonial Cultural Studies Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, "Moving Devi" in Other Asias. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, 2003, 178-208. Rajeswari Sunderajan, “The Ameena Case” in The Scandal Of The State: Women: Law and Citizenship in the Postcolonial State. Duke University Press; Durham, 2003, 45-71. Supplementary Readings Dipesh Chakraborty, “Of Garbage, Modernity and the Citizen's Gaze." in Habitations of Modernity: Essays in The Wake of Subaltern Studies. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2002, 65-79. 17 Bill Ashcroft, “Sugar and slavery” in MSF Dias ed. Legacies of Slavery: Comparative Perspectives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle, UK, 2008, 108-125.   Evaluation. Evaluation in this course will be continuous and conducted throughout the semester. The object of evaluation will be to test a student’s knowledge of the material taught through the course and the development of her analytical, critical and writing abilities. A final grade will be awarded on the basis of written presentations in seminars, participation in seminars and a 2,000 words term paper to be submitted at the end of the course. The course instructor may also set a short written examination to test the student’s knowledge of the texts taught.

This course will familiarize the student with some key ideas in the history of literary theory and criticism. We shall read the relevant texts closely, beginning with the ancients and arriving at the first half of the twentieth century. From Plato to Fish, we will pay special attention to the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of each theorist. Students will write short papers on important areas covered in class. There will be an open-book exam at the end of the semester. Unit 1: Text and World: The question of mimesis Plato: Book X of The Republic Aristotle: Excerpts from Poetics 2 weeks Unit 2: Text and Author: Poetic subjectivity Alexander Pope: Excerpts from An Essay on Criticism William Wordsworth: Excerpts from “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” ST Coleridge: Excerpts from Biographia Literaria TS Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” 3 weeks Unit 3: Text and Reader (A): Aesthetics Immanuel Kant: Excerpt from Critique of Judgment Edmund Burke: “The Sublime and the Beautiful Compared” 2 weeks Unit 4: The Text Itself (A): Formalism Wimsatt and Beardsley: “The Intentional Fallacy” Viktor Shklovsky: Excerpts from “Art as Technique” 2 weeks Unit 5: The Text Itself (B): Language and Semiotics Mikhail Bakhtin: “Heteroglossia in the Novel” Ferdinand de Saussure: Excerpts from Course in General Linguistics Roland Barthes: Excerpts from Mythologies 3 weeks Unit 6: Text and Reader (B): Reader Response Theory Roland Barthes: “Death of the Author” Stanley Fish: “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One.” 2 weeks Evaluation Two assignments during the semester (2500 words each) Final Exam (open book) Class participation

Course description not available.

Course description not available.

Course description not available.