2 classes matched your search criteria.

Spring 2017  |  CL 8910 Section 001: Advanced Topics in Comparative Literature -- Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (53278)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person Term Based
Class Attributes:
Topics Course
Meets With:
CSDS 8910 Section 001
CSDS 8910 Section 003
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017
Wed 02:00PM - 05:00PM
UMTC, East Bank
Nicholson Hall 201
Course Catalog Description:
Practical applications of specific methodologies and theories to a determined area. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
Class Notes:
Topic: Some Fundemental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
Class Description:
Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/53278/1173

Spring 2017  |  CL 8910 Section 002: Advanced Topics in Comparative Literature -- Structuralism (68120)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person Term Based
Class Attributes:
Topics Course
Meets With:
CSDS 8910 Section 002
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
01/17/2017 - 05/05/2017
Thu 05:30PM - 08:30PM
UMTC, East Bank
Nicholson Hall 135
Course Catalog Description:
Practical applications of specific methodologies and theories to a determined area. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
Class Notes:
Topic: Structuralism
Class Description:
In late modernity, one hears frequent recourse to the concept of structure to describe the workings of systems large and small (from the circulatory system to the banking system, systems of language, genre, artistic works, and style, and social, ideological, and political systems). For example, it is a common refrain from the left that the working class is caught in structured cycles of poverty, de-skilling, and pessimism, victimized by an economic system that is rigged in favor of the rich and well connected. Along another axis, structural racism entails forms of implicit bias and afflicts people of color worldwide. Women and transgender people are similarly afflicted by structural inequalities and prejudices. Why is the concept of structure doing so much work for us today?

In part, it may be because structure enables one to think beyond the limits of parochial human experiences, to contemplate actions, causes, and problems in the millions and billions. The Oxford English Dictionary links the classical Latin structura to practical activities: "a practice or process of building, method of building, masonry, brickwork, concrete, (in plural) masonry or concrete edifices, (of an army) arrangement, disposition." The English definitions it then offers range from the concrete - related to building materials and architecture - outward to more abstract arrangements of elements and systematic relationships. Across a range of scales, the concept of structure enables one to theorize the assembly and operation of systems (both large and small) that may elude the faculties of human perception.

At a time when scholars are increasingly turning to materialities and affects - things that seem to be relatively unstructured, finely grained, infinitesimal, inconsistent, qualitative, empirically textured, multiples upon multiples - how might we cast renewed attention on the concept of structure, which tends to reduce complex material circumstances to the operation of key elements? Is the concept of structure necessarily reductive? How might it be elucidating? How might we re-think its modern powers to organize bodies, languages, symbols, images, sounds, commodities, societies, and desires? And how might we distinguish structure from the related concept of form?
This course will revisit the concept of structure through a series of key readings. We will focus particular attention to the mid-century development of French structuralism, an interdisciplinary movement that attempted to recast the concept of structure at the center of aesthetic, linguistic, cognitive, social, and political forms of inquiry. Readings by Plato, Pierce, Saussure, Todorov, Merleau-Ponty, Susanne Langer, Norbert Wiener, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Jakobson, Derrida, Kristeva, Barthes, Foucault, Baudrillard, and Althusser.
Grading:
50% Response Papers or Final Paper
20% In-class Presentation
30% Attendance and Class Participation
Workload:
~ 80 - 100 pages per week
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/68120/1173
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
22 November 2016

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