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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
In one definition, postmodernism in art and literature is what you get when you combine modernism's radical experimentation with pop culture's easy appeal. This term has been used to describe works from Andy Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans and Jean Baudrillard's critical essays on Disneyland to Thomas Pynchon's paranoid novel about postal conspiracy, The Crying of Lot 49. Theorists of the postmodern have argued that it represents not only a radical change in aesthetic sensibilities, but a fundamentally new relationship between art, language, and society. In this tutorial, we will read some of the most important theoretical essays defining the postmodern (essays which themselves often embrace this playful and sometimes ironic style), and we will pair them with artistic texts that are said to illustrate the features of postmodernism. The latter will be mainly novels and short stories from various countries, but one feature of this theory is a flattening of the distinction between high and low culture as well as between the written and the visual, so we will also examine examples from architecture, visual art, and/or broader pop culture. Along the way will ask whether global theoretical paradigms like postmodernism can help us understand other cultures better (by locating them within a single universal system), or whether this approach conceals important cultural differences. Texts will include essays by Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others; novels and short stories by writers like Don DeLillo, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Murakami Haruki; painting and sculpture associated with Pop Art and Superflat; the architecture of Williamstown area museums; etc. Writing assignments will focus on reading the theoretical texts critically and applying their ideas to the artistic texts in creative and interesting ways. Open to sophomores as well as advanced students. Emphasis will be on understanding and engaging the criticism that we read, and comparing the critical and fictional texts creatively in a way that sheds light on both.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level literature course (Comparative Literature, English, etc.) and sophomore standing or higher, or permission of the instructor
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3.00 Credits
Satire is good nasty fun, perennially controversial, and (at its best) a complex art form. This Gateway course begins with eighteenth-century English satires by such writers as Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and Lord Byron. The second half of the course studies satirical works by Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor, and David Foster Wallace, as well as Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Sara Silverman.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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3.00 Credits
American fiction took a turn at World War II: the simplest way to name the turn is from modernism to postmodernism. The most obvious mark of postmodern narration is its self-consciousness; postmodern books tend to be about themselves, even when they are most historical or realistic. Already a paradox emerges: why would World War II make narratives more self-reflexive? The first book in the course, and the best for approaching this paradox, is Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Subsequent books: Nabokov's Pale Fire, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Morrison's Beloved, DeLillo's White Noise, Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Johnson's Jesus's Son.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English Course, or a score of 5 on the AP Examination in English Lit, or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate exam for international students
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3.00 Credits
A workshop in the writing of poetry. Weekly assignments and regular conferences with the instructor will be scheduled. Students will discuss each other's poems in the class meetings.
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3.00 Credits
A course in basic problems that arise in the composition of short fiction. Individual conferences will be combined with workshop sessions; workshop sessions will be devoted to both published and student work. Considerable emphasis will be placed on the process of revision.
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3.00 Credits
A course in the basic problems and possibilities that arise in the composition of memoir. Individual meetings with the instructor will be available. Class sessions will be devoted to the discussion of both published and student work. Students will receive written critiques from other students as well as the instructor.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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3.00 Credits
A study of the Canterbury Tales in their literary, linguistic, and historical contexts.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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3.00 Credits
A study of the origins of the Arthurian story in Welsh history and folklore and a survey of its development and transformations in the romance literature of England and the Continent, from Chretien de Troyes to Thomas Malory, circa 1100-1500. We will pay special attention to the ways in which British/English nationalism, Celtic magic, French courtly love and chivalry, and Christian morality combine and recombine to produce ever new meaning in familiar elements of the plot: Arthur's birth and establishment as king, the fellowship and adventures of his followers, the adulterous love triangle, the Quest for the Holy Grail, and, finally, Arthur's death.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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3.00 Credits
A close study of one of the most influential and early European novels. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616 C.E) was a hit in its day in the seventeenth century, and has not ceased to influence artists and thinkers since. Moving between humorous and serious tones, Cervantes takes on several issues in the Quixote: the point of fiction in real life, the complications of relationships between men and women, the meaning of madness, the experience of religious co-existence, the shapes of friendship, and the task of literary criticism, just to name a few. We will read the book in a fine modern English-language translation, and set it in several relevant contexts to better understand its original intellectual horizon--seventeenth-century Spain--as well as the reasons for its continuing relevance.
Prerequisite:
Any 200-level literature course in foreign languages, Comp Lit, or English, or permission of the instructor.
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3.00 Credits
Ludwig Wittgenstein is commonly cited as one of the central figures in twentieth-century philosophy, and the ordinary language philosophy of J. L. Austin and Stanley Cavell is often seen as one of the century's major philosophical movements. Yet the writing of all these figures remains relatively under-appreciated in literary studies. In this course we will address this shortcoming in two ways. First, we will examine some of the basic claims put forward in ordinary language philosophy, particularly as they compare and contrast with various contemporary literary-theoretical projects. Topics may include meaning and intention (Anscombe, Fish, Derrida, de Man, Michaels); experimental writing (R.M. Berry, Theodor Adorno); gender (Toril Moi, Judith Butler); emotion, affect, and expression (Deleuze, Terada, Leys, Altieri, Eldridge); and animals (Cora Diamond, Cary Wolfe). Most of our time will be spent reading philosophy and theory, but we'll also look at a couple of works of literature (a Shakespeare play and a contemporary novel) and a couple of films.
Prerequisite:
A 100-level English course, or a score of 5 on the Advanced Placement examination in English Literature or a 6 or 7 on the International Baccalaureate
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