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Fall 2017  |  CSDS 8910 Section 001: Advanced Topics in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society (34631)

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:
CL 8910 Section 001
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
09/05/2017 - 12/13/2017
Wed 02:15PM - 05:00PM
UMTC, East Bank
Nicholson Hall 201
Course Catalog Description:
Themes in comparative, sociohistorical analysis of discursive practices. Individually or team taught. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
Class Notes:
additional notes
Class Description:
Critical Debates in Comparative Literature
Since their "first" appearances in Noël and de Laplace (France, 1816) and in Goethe (Germany, 1827), comparative literature and its corollary, world literature, have defied easy definition: a problem, perhaps, all to the good. In this graduate seminar, we will confront questions that have vexed comparative literature since its inception. If the act of comparison presupposes both the similarity and dissimilarity of two things, what does it mean to "compare" literatures or to study "comparative" literature? If comparison establishes equivalence between two things only to claim the superiority of one over the other or to mask the inequality of one to the other, what are its ethics of commensurability and incommensurability? How do we liberate--indeed can we liberate--comparative literature from the tautological tyranny of difference and likeness? Our approach in this seminar will be transhistorical. After a look at foundational problems of comparison (Derrida, Melas), we will probe the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century roots of modern comparative and world literature in the United States (Shackford, 1876, and Gayley, 1903) and in France, Egypt, Germany, Britain, India, and China: from Goethe on Weltliteratur (1827) to al-Tahtawi and Chasles on comparativity and comparative literature as such (1834, 1835), from de Lomnitz's mobilization of Weltliteratur in defense of "minor" literatures (1877) and Posnett's social Darwinist approach to national and world literatures (1886) to the thought of Tagore and Zheng on comparative and world literature (1907, 1924-1927). At each turn, we will interleave--and yes, compare--post-World War II, postcolonial, and other contemporary reinterpretations of the meaning, method, and compass (disciplinary, linguistic, literary/trans-medial, political, geographic) of comparative and world literatures. Our discussions will center on four axes of critical debate: 1) objectivity: historicity/scientism (Chasles, Shackford, Posnett, Moretti, Tsu); 2) philology, literariness, and their discontents (Gayley, Auerbach, Said, Pollock, Ahmed, Mufti); 3) worldliness (Goethe, Tagore, Damrosch, Casanova, Tiwari, Cheah); and 4) un/translatability: the opening and impasse--across epistemes, languages, literatures, and oratures old and new--that wrinkle would-be unified worlds with the differences of comparison (al-Tahtawi, Lomnitz, Kilito, Apter, Spivak, Gikandi, Ngũgĩ). In discussions and in final papers, seminar participants are encouraged to relate their own research to these problems. By semester's end, we will come away with a sharper sense of the history of our field; its periodic reengagement of the relationship of the "literary" to geopolitics, science, and linguistic and economic exchange; and its struggle to replace a Eurocentric worldview with a polycentric vision.
Who Should Take This Class?:
This course is open to graduate students only.
Learning Objectives:
See course description.
Grading:
60% Papers
20% In-Class Presentation
20% Class Participation
Exam Format:
60% Papers
20% In-Class Presentation
20% Class Participation
Workload:
100-150 Pages Reading Per Week (average over course of term)
20-25 Pages Writing Per Term
1 Paper
1 Presentation
Other Workload: Three 500-word Moodle posts on assigned readings also are due over the course of the term, as is a two-page prospectus for the final paper.
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34631/1179
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
30 August 2017

Fall 2017  |  CSDS 8910 Section 002: Advanced Topics in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society (34632)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
Instructor Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person Term Based
Class Attributes:
Topics Course
Meets With:
CL 8910 Section 002
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
09/05/2017 - 12/13/2017
Tue 02:00PM - 05:00PM
UMTC, East Bank
Nicholson Hall 135
Course Catalog Description:
Themes in comparative, sociohistorical analysis of discursive practices. Individually or team taught. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
Class Notes:
Please contact the instructor, Cesare Casarino, for permission to enroll. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?acad_group=TCLA&subject=CSDS&level=8&x500=casarino&term=1179
Class Description:

Marx. Focus on Capital Volume One and excerpts from the Grundrisse, with minimal secondary literature (e.g., Althusser, Balibar, Negri).

Grading:
The final grade will be based primarily on a 20-to-25-page final essay
Workload:
Approximately 100 Pages Reading Per Week
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34632/1179
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
7 April 2017

Fall 2017  |  CSDS 8910 Section 003: Advanced Topics in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society (34633)

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:
CL 8910 Section 003
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
09/05/2017 - 12/13/2017
Thu 01:30PM - 04:30PM
UMTC, East Bank
Folwell Hall 118
Course Catalog Description:
Themes in comparative, sociohistorical analysis of discursive practices. Individually or team taught. Topics vary by instructor and semester.
Class Description:
Brecht's Theaters

Brecht's theater never existed. From the very beginning there was a plurality of methods, subjects and ‘stage philosophies.' And, an aspect closely related to such a plurality: Brecht's theater has always been "Brechtian," that is, the work of many. How, then, is one to identify what is specific about this theater while respecting its striking diversity? One possible unifying theme presents itself through the "impossible task" that Brecht and his collaborators had set for themselves: to present the totality of society. Theodor W. Adorno once critiqued: "This is a theater that - without mediation - drags society itself onto the stage." Yet focusing on this "assignment" opens up new readings of Brecht's plays and writings, not the least by blurring the distinction between "masterpiece" and "failure." Going with and against Adorno, it is the goal of this course to read Brecht's dramatic texts, poems, notes and theoretical essays from the perspective of an ongoing and never completed struggle for presentation; the emphasis will be on their becoming by situating them within the force field of collaborations, political allies and enemies. Finally, through digressions, we will examine contemporary examples of Brechtian theater in and outside of Germany.

Note: Students of German will have to read and write in German; a course packet with texts in German will be available at Paradigm copy. Inexpensive collections of Brecht plays in English are easy to find and the following ones will be needed: "Baal," "In the Jungle of Cities," "Man equals Man," Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," "Threepenny Opera," "Saint Joan," "The Decision," "Lindbergh's Flight," "The Caucasian Chalk Circle." Other English texts will be provided on moodle.

Grading:
40% Final Paper
30% In-class Presentations
30% Class Participation
Workload:
40 - 80 Pages Reading Per Week (plays and writings on theater)
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/34633/1179
Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
22 December 2015

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