[lit-ideas] Re: education
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:27:12 -0800
Tom,
In several histories I've read the author uses letters sent home from
soldiers at the front. These letters are interesting and in the historian's
context perhaps even important, but no one has suggested that they be
presented as literature in an English class - at least not thus far.
Also, Edmund Wilson wrote an article on "Marxism and Literature." It seems
that Marx, Engels and Lenin all thought that writers should be left alone.
They should not be recruited for political purposes. But "Lenin died;
Trotsky was exiled; Lunarchasky died. The administration of Stalin,
unliterary and uncultivated himself, slipped into depending more and more on
literature as a means of manipulating a people of whom, before the
Revolution, 70 or 80 percent had been illiterate and who could hardly be
expected to be critical of what they read." This essay of Wilson's first
appeared in the collection entitled The Triple Thinkers, published in 1948.
Now in 2012 some of us might wonder if "70 or 80 percent" of the students
attending college, while not technically illiterate, can be "expected to be
critical of what they read." What do you think?
Look up "French Realism" and you will find Stendhal and Flaubert. Are any
of the writers in the class on American Realism writing "realism" in
according with the definition created by the French writers? Mark Twain was
a yarn spinner not a realistic writer. Henry James has never been
considered realistic by any standard, etc. etc.
The Freud Shakespeare Dostoevsky class sounds interesting. I probably would
have signed up for that one - also the class on the 19th century British
Novel & Empire - although the instructor obviously has an agenda, the
student would at least be exposed to at one excellent writer, Joseph Conrad.
The last three courses are all politically correct, but I don't see any good
writers mentioned - aside from St. Augustine and Rousseau, but they probably
weren't meant to be read.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Thomas Hart
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 6:06 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: education
From my undergrad and M.A. alma mater
<http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/english/undergraduate/courses/upperlev
el>
* 93061 ENGL 3560W.10 American Realism
Romines MW 03:45PM - 05:00PM
This course looks at texts produced by the Realist movement that dominated
U. S. writing in the decades between 1865 and 1912. We will read books that
reflect the rapid social changes that occurred in the U. S. in the decades
after the Civil War: urbanization, immigration, changes in gender
construction, distribution of wealth, attitudes toward ethnicity and race.
The energies of American Realist writing reflect both the accelerating pace
of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginnings of "modern"
twentieth century literature. Readings will include texts by Mark Twain,
Henry James, Pauline Hopkins, Sui Sin Far, Zitkala Sa, Edith Wharton, C. W.
Chesnutt, Sarah Orne Jewett, and others. Requirements: midterm and final
examinations, two essays and class participation. This is a WID course.
95645 ENGL 3720W.10 Contemporary American Lit
Moreland TR 03:45PM - 05:00PM
In this course, we will explore the 'howling' literature of 1950s and 1960s
America. Post-World War II America was intent on a return to "normalcy,"
which was inevitably defined narrowly. Those that deviated from the
norm-whether in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation,
socioeconomic class, psychological state, or behavior-were ejected from the
"normal" center into the margins of society. Rendered invisible by society,
those who were marginalized gave themselves voice in the literature of the
time, saying "No! in thunder" (in Melville's prescient words) to the
strictures of 1950s and 1960s American society.
Sample Texts: Ginsberg's Howl; Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind;
Kerouak's On the Road; Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest; Ellison's
Invisible Man; Plath's The Bell Jar; Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.
Requirements: An annotated bibliography, a long paper, a final exam, and
participation in class discussion.
92481 ENGL 3810.10 Freud,Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky
Carter TR 09:35AM - 10:50AM
94605 ENGL 3810.11 19th C. British Novel & Empire
Goswami TR 11:10AM - 12:25PM
This course will examine the pivotal role Britain's vast empire played in
shaping the British novel from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth
century. We will explore how actual wars, debates, laws and insurgencies in
the colonies erupt into British novels in interesting and unexpected ways.
The topics we will consider include: the idea of 'England' and
'Englishness'; notions of civility and barbarity; the metropolis versus the
colony; cultural hybridity and colonial identity; children and
empire-building; and the rhetoric of imperial fiction. We will also make a
brief foray into postcolonial fiction as an example of how the 'empire
writes back'. We will read works by Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling,
Frances H. Burnett, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and others.
97063 ENGL 3830.11 Popular Music & Identity
Wald TR 11:10AM - 12:25PM
Why on social networks like Facebook are musical likes such an important
part of user profiles? What does "our" music have to tell us about who we
imagine ourselves to be and, conversely, how does music shape identity and
identification? How are different identities "sounded"? This course explores
how identities are formed and de-formed, reflected and made, in popular
music culture, focusing on the 20th and 21st-century United States (although
we will also talk about the history of 19th-century blackface minstrelsy).
We will read theoretical texts about music and identity, as well as delve
into fiction and creative non-fiction. Topics include: race/ethnicity and
musical identity; popular music and aesthetics; pop music genres; music and
sexualities; music, consumption/production and the Internet.
95262 ENGL 3840.10 Gender and Literature
Chu MW 02:20PM - 03:35PM
Inward Journeys: Gender and Autography. The course will examine how
(primarily) American women writers transform and re-create the genres of
autobiography and memoir. Given autobiographical traditions that emphasize
individual confession and internal spiritual transformation (St. Augustine,
Rousseau) or public service or development as a citizen (Franklin,
Douglass), how do women negotiate the process of writing their stories? How
do women justify the act of writing publicly about their lives? How do
women negotiate the public/private divide, in life and in writing? How do
women write about bodies, sexuality, spirituality, citizenship, and other
aspects of self? Who gets to write a memoir, under what conditions, and for
whom?
The genres of autobiography, memoir, and "life writing" have been
re-theorized in narrative and epistemological terms; the idea of objective,
transparent reportage has been supplanted by questions about truth, memory,
language, history, ethnography. How do women's texts negotiate these
questions? Representative authors include: ; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl; Mary Antin, The Promised Land; Gertrude Stein, The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic
Girlhood; Sara Suleri, Meatless Days; and Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La
Frontera. This course fulfills the theory and/or cultural studies
requirement for the English major.
96564 ENGL 3980.10 Queer Studies
McRuer MW 12:45PM - 02:00PM
Note: this course will likely feature a short-term study abroad component,
with a week's attendance at the Prague International LGBT Film Festival.
Contact Professor McRuer directly (rmcruer@xxxxxxx) with questions about
this course.
The interdisciplinary field that has come to be called "queer" studies over
the past two decades has always concerned itself with questions of
representation: how are, for instance, lesbians and gay men, or
transgendered people, represented in film, in novels, in other forms of
media? As the field has developed, these questions of representation have
increasingly been linked to other, complex questions, involving political
economy, globalization, and transnationalism: in what ways have lgbt people
been incorporated into contemporary nation-states? What identities and
desires threaten "the nation" as it is currently (and variously)
materialized in our world? How have identities such as "gay" and "lesbian"
circulated globally? How have those recognizable minority identities come
into contact and conflict with other ways of identifying around
non-normative desires? Have those identities at times unctioned
imperialistically, especially as "gay tourism" has become a recognizable
part of global capitalism? Conversely, what kinds of unexpected alliances
have been shaped across borders as queer movements have globalized? How
have these movements theorized race, gender, class, and ability; what
connections have been made with other movements organized around identity?
This film studies course will consider how questions of queer representation
intersect with questions of queer globalization(s).
Seems like indoctrination to me.
"One god I can understand, but one wife? It is not generous.... It is not
civilized." Sheik Ilderim, Ben-Hur, 1959
Thomas Hart
tehart@xxxxxxx
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