Courses

Winter 2018 Courses

The course descriptions below are to the best of our knowledge the most recent available. If you have any questions about a specific course content or material, please contact the instructor.

For questions about the MAPH Poetics Option, please contact the Program Manager.

Please note that this list contains graduate level courses only. If you are student in the Creative Writing Major, you can find a full list of literature courses that count towards the major here.

The descriptions from previous years can be found at UChicago Catalogs or on department websites.

English Language & Literature

Dickinson’s Poetry
ENGL 25650 / 38650
Richard Strier

This course will try to give some sense of the range and power of Emily Dickinson's achievement as a poet. We will wrestle with the major issues that the poetry presents, along with its inherent difficulty: its religious content, its erotic content, its treatment of emotions and psychological states. We will reckon with questions of textual instability, but they will not be the focus of the course. A short paper and a longer paper will be required. 

Poetry and the Other Arts: Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism
ENGL 41750
Elizabeth Helsinger

Focusing on Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, we will examine the intersections between poetry and visual arts (particularly painting and design) and between poetry and song. We'll investigate movements in where these intersections are particularly prominent – Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism – and trace the practices, concepts, and attitudes associated with them from their origins in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, attending also to critical and philosophical writing about sensation and aesthetics and to the often highly critical reception of these movements in later years. 


CDI Seminar: Exploratory Translation
ENGL 42918, CMLT 42918, CDIN 42918, CRWR 42918, RLLT 42918, SCTH 42918
Jennifer Scappettone; Haun Saussy

Focusing on the theory, history and practice of poetic translation, this seminar includes sessions with invited theorists and practitioners from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Taking translation to be an art of making sense that is transmitted together with a craft of shapes and sequences, we aim to account for social and intellectual pressures influencing translation projects. We deliberately foreground other frameworks beyond “foreign to English” and “olden epochs to modern”—and other methods than the “equivalence of meaning”—in order to aim at a truly general history and theory of translation that might both guide comparative cultural history and enlarge the imaginative resources of translators and readers of translation. In addition to reading and analysis of outside texts spanning such topics as semantic and grammatical interference, gain and loss, bilingualism, self-translation, pidgin, code-switching, translationese, and foreignization vs. nativization, students will be invited to try their hands at a range of tactics, aiming toward a final portfolio of annotated translations.


Poetics of the Joke
ENGL 43704
Lawrence Rothfield

In this course we take a two-fold approach to the question of the comic, approaching it via an extended study of the joke as a micro-narrative form. In the first half of the course we will try to understand the craft and the poetics of jokemaking and joketelling, by looking carefully at the formal features of some exemplary jokes – both good and bad -- of different kinds (oneliners, knock-knocks, shaggy-dogs, etc.), and at variations of these jokes. We will try to define some ways in which jokes make us laugh (or not). In the second half of the course we will broaden the discussion to consider the ethical, ontological, and political implications of joke-telling, taking our point of departure from the ways in which stand-up comedians talk about what they are doing to/with their audiences. For the first half of the course, a primary source will be the film “The Aristocrats”; for the second half of the course, “Talking Funny” (a discussion about stand-up between Seinfeld, Rock, Louis CK, Gervais). Theorists will include Aristotle, Shaftesbury, Barthes, Ted Cohen, Bergson, Freud, Ngai, Zizek.

Radical Documentary
ENGL 48104
Jennifer Scappettone


This course will examine the nostalgic and utopian impulses of documentary work in a range of genres: prose, poetry, photography, and film. We will be charting the extreme transformations of regional and urban culture that took place over the course of the 20th century as they were expressed—and produced—by works of experimental documentary. We will study sites whose endangered cultural artifacts demanded preservation by civic bodies, asking how efforts to salvage them through art led both to transformations of practices being “preserved” and to the articulation of new modernist aesthetics, as well as sites that compel artists to participate in developing futures by documenting events in an activist vein. We will be attuned to the distressed tempo of articulating a passing present, asking to what extent "the news" participates in history, how the documentation of the present or passing aims to alter the future, and how art oscillates between or blurs these temporalities. We will dwell throughout in the foregrounded or receding mediation of the real by technology and text, asking whether recording constitutes merely an act of preservation, or whether it contributes to a transcribed object/environment’s growth and emergence. 


Medieval Longing: Affect, Aisthesis, Desire
ENGL 51502
Mark Miller

Many medieval texts represent the subject’s relation to its constitutive objects as marked by longing, that is by the affective dimension of those objects’ impossibility. This course will examine the paradigmatic sites of medieval longing, the erotic object and the divine, without assuming that we know what it would mean to describe these sites as distinct or as one. Readings will be drawn from erotic lyrics, fabliau, courtly love texts, allegory, mystical texts, visionary literature, hagiography, texts of affective piety, and theology. We will attend to the multiple forms of aisthesis produced by these texts, their ways of generating modes of sensory aliveness, and the range of affects they produce in relation to the longing at their center. We will also attend to the ontological questions these texts pose, concerning the nature of the subject, of the desire animating it, and of the objects towards which it is (dis)oriented. Writing for the course will include robust and often collaborative participation in the Chalk site discussion board, the collective production of an annotate critical bibliography, and a final seminar project in the form either of a substantial paper or a conference talk and a proposal for expansion of it into a longer project. 


Enlightenments and Romanticisms
ENGL 53450
James Chandler

The aim of this seminar will be to develop research projects under two closely related rubrics that are historically contested (perhaps never more so than now) but also still critically valuable (which is why they do not go away). The point of using these rubrics in their plural form is in part to acknowledge the transnational aspect that each has come to acquire. Although France and its lumiéres might be understood as providing the ur-site of the Enlightenment itself, we have come to speak of enlightenments in other national contexts, such as Britain (esp. Scotland), Germany, and Ireland. And although Romanticism has important roots in Britain, Ireland, and Wales--with their early involvement in what Katie Trumpener calls "bardic nationalism"--it is common enough to speak of romanticism in the context of German, America, and even France--though in France, as John Tresch has argued, romanticism is technology-friendly in a way that makes it interestingly exceptional. But another reason for using the two primary rubrics in the plural is to acknowledge that romanticism has different meanings in different conceptual frameworks. Some of the categories for the course will come from traditional faculty psychology (reason, memory, imagination). Some will come from criticism and theory: romanticism is often associated (especially in Germany) with a certain merger of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions. For us, the primary emphasis will be on literature, though questions about romanticism in music and the visual arts will not be excluded. Finally, some categories will come from historical disciplines: social history, political history, the history of science and technology, and the history of empire. Romanticism registers in each of these disciplines in a different way. The main focus of the course will fall on English language literary materials produced in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America. But key texts by such non-British writers such as Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Herder, Kant, Schiller, and the Saint Simonians may also come into play. 


Anthropological Poetics
ENGL 56500
Edgar Garcia

This course explores the problematics that congeal when the disciplinary norms of anthropology and literary studies intersect. Since the 1970s, such anthropologists as James Clifford, Nestor Garcia Canclini, Paul Rabinow, and Donna Haraway have coordinated cultural analyses through concepts of representation, narrative, poetic form, and voice. Subsequently, poets and writers of the language school, indigenous background, and the ethnopoetics movement, among others, picked up on this anthropological mode to animate those concepts through anthropological concerns with reflexivity, textual thickness, interdiscursivity, metapragmatics, the posthuman, kinship, and intercultural semiotics. These intersections have overlaid literary objects with a kind of interdisciplinary noise, challenging what a literary object is and, as well, what objects we elect to think of as literature. This course will amplify that noise to trouble disciplinary norms of literary studies--especially the study of poetry and poetics--while also tuning into that trouble as a strategy of interpretation. Final papers will be methodological position pieces, orientating analyses of literary objects within this transdisciplinary flashpoint.

Space, Place, and Landscape
ENGL 60301
W.J.T. Mitchell

This seminar will analyze the concepts of space, place, and landscape across the media (painting, photography, cinema, sculpture, architecture, and garden design, as well as poetic and literary renderings of setting, and "virtual" media-scapes). Key theoretical readings from a variety of disciplines, including geography, art history, literature, and philosophy will be included: Foucault's "Of Other Spaces," Michel de Certeau's concept of heterotopia; Heidegger's "Art and Space"; Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space; Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space; David Harvey's Geography of Difference; Raymond Williams's The Country and the City; Mitchell, Landscape and Power. Topics for discussion will include the concept of the picturesque and the rise of landscape painting in Europe; the landscape garden; place, memory, and identity; sacred sites and holy lands; regional, global, and national landscapes; embodiment and the gendering of space; the genius of place; literary and textual space. Course requirements: 2 oral presentations: one on a place (or representation of a place); the other on a critical or theoretical text. Final paper. Preference to PhD students in ENGL / ARTH / CMST / CMLT.

Comparative Literature

CDI Seminar: Exploratory Translation
ENGL 42918, CMLT 42918, CDIN 42918, CRWR 42918, RLLT 42918, SCTH 42918
Jennifer Scappettone; Haun Saussy

Focusing on the theory, history and practice of poetic translation, this seminar includes sessions with invited theorists and practitioners from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Taking translation to be an art of making sense that is transmitted together with a craft of shapes and sequences, we aim to account for social and intellectual pressures influencing translation projects. We deliberately foreground other frameworks beyond “foreign to English” and “olden epochs to modern”—and other methods than the “equivalence of meaning”—in order to aim at a truly general history and theory of translation that might both guide comparative cultural history and enlarge the imaginative resources of translators and readers of translation. In addition to reading and analysis of outside texts spanning such topics as semantic and grammatical interference, gain and loss, bilingualism, self-translation, pidgin, code-switching, translationese, and foreignization vs. nativization, students will be invited to try their hands at a range of tactics, aiming toward a final portfolio of annotated translations.

Note: Reading competency in French preferred.

Romance Languages & Literatures

CDI Seminar: Exploratory Translation
ENGL 42918, CMLT 42918, CDIN 42918, CRWR 42918, RLLT 42918, SCTH 42918
Jennifer Scappettone; Haun Saussy

Focusing on the theory, history and practice of poetic translation, this seminar includes sessions with invited theorists and practitioners from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Taking translation to be an art of making sense that is transmitted together with a craft of shapes and sequences, we aim to account for social and intellectual pressures influencing translation projects. We deliberately foreground other frameworks beyond “foreign to English” and “olden epochs to modern”—and other methods than the “equivalence of meaning”—in order to aim at a truly general history and theory of translation that might both guide comparative cultural history and enlarge the imaginative resources of translators and readers of translation. In addition to reading and analysis of outside texts spanning such topics as semantic and grammatical interference, gain and loss, bilingualism, self-translation, pidgin, code-switching, translationese, and foreignization vs. nativization, students will be invited to try their hands at a range of tactics, aiming toward a final portfolio of annotated translations.

Note: Reading competency in French preferred.

Baudelaire
FREN 27701 & 37701/ FNDL 27701/ SCTH 36001
Rosanna Warren

Taught in French
Une étude approfondie de l’oeuvre de Baudelaire. Nous lirons Les Fleurs du mal, Les Petits poèmes en prose, et morceaux choisis de sa critique d’art, essayant d’établir une perspective sur ce grand poète à la fois classique et romantique, un artiste tranditionnel et révolutionnaire qui a aide à créer la modernité.
An in-depth study of Baudelaire’s works. We will read Les Fleurs du mal, Les Petits poèmes en prose, and selections from his art criticism, in order to develop a perspective on this great poet, who was at once classical and romantic, a traditional and a revolutionary artist who helped create modernism.

 

Committee on Social Thought

Sophocles, Ajax   
SCTH 31613, CLAS 31717, CLCV 21717
Glenn Most

A close literary and philological analysis of one of the most remarkable and perplexing of all Greek tragedies. We will consider the play’s portrayal of the nature and limits of one form of male heroism against the background of earlier poetry and contemporary history; and we will attempt constantly for elate philological and literary approaches to one another in order to understand better not only Sophocles’ play but also the strengths and limitations of the ways in which scholars try to come closer to it.
PQ: Either an adequate knowledge of ancient Greek or the consent of the instructor is required; students should have refreshed their familiarity with the Iliad and Odyssey. Open to undergrads.

The Return of Homer: The Iliad and Odyssey in Contemporary English Language Fiction and Poetry
SCTH 31614, CLAS 3161
Glen Most

The course will examine the extraordinary flowering of English language novels and poems based on the Homeric epics in the past quarter century. We will ask how different contemporary poets and prose writers have interpreted Homer’s works and try to understand the appeal of this ancient poetry for modern authors, readers, and publishers. The reading will include such works as Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad; Byrne Fone, War Stories: A Novel of the Trojan War, Christopher Logue, An Account of Homer’s Iliad; David Malouf, Ransom; Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey; Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles; Alice Oswald, Memorial: A Version of Homer’s Iliad; Lisa Peterson, An Iliad; Kate Quinn, et al., A Song of War; and Derek Walcott, Omeros. English translations of such foreign-language works as Alessandro Baricco’s An Iliad and Ismail Kadare’s The Fijile on H. may also be considered if students wish.
PQ: There is no language requirement; but students are expected to have refreshed their familiarity with the Iliad and Odyssey in translation before the course begins.

CDI Seminar: Exploratory Translation
ENGL 42918, CMLT 42918, CDIN 42918, CRWR 42918, RLLT 42918, SCTH 42918
Jennifer Scappettone; Haun Saussy

Focusing on the theory, history and practice of poetic translation, this seminar includes sessions with invited theorists and practitioners from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Taking translation to be an art of making sense that is transmitted together with a craft of shapes and sequences, we aim to account for social and intellectual pressures influencing translation projects. We deliberately foreground other frameworks beyond “foreign to English” and “olden epochs to modern”—and other methods than the “equivalence of meaning”—in order to aim at a truly general history and theory of translation that might both guide comparative cultural history and enlarge the imaginative resources of translators and readers of translation. In addition to reading and analysis of outside texts spanning such topics as semantic and grammatical interference, gain and loss, bilingualism, self-translation, pidgin, code-switching, translationese, and foreignization vs. nativization, students will be invited to try their hands at a range of tactics, aiming toward a final portfolio of annotated translations.

Note: Reading competency in French preferred.

Baudelaire     
FREN 27701 & 37701/ FNDL 27701/ SCTH 36001
Rosanna Warren

Taught in French
Une étude approfondie de l’oeuvre de Baudelaire. Nous lirons Les Fleurs du mal, Les Petits poèmes en prose, et morceaux choisis de sa critique d’art, essayant d’établir une perspective sur ce grand poète à la fois classique et romantique, un artiste tranditionnel et révolutionnaire qui a aide à créer la modernité.
An in-depth study of Baudelaire’s works. We will read Les Fleurs du mal, Les Petits poèmes en prose, and selections from his art criticism, in order to develop a perspective on this great poet, who was at once classical and romantic, a traditional and a revolutionary artist who helped create modernism.

Ancient Greek Aesthetics   
SCTH 39911, PHIL 29911 & 39911
Gabriel Lear

The ancient Greek philosophical tradition contains an enormously rich and influential body of reflection on the practice of poetry. We will focus our attention on Plato and Aristotle, but will also spend some time with Longinus and Plotinus. Topics will include: the analysis of poetry in terms of mimesis and image; poetry-making as a exercise of craft, divine inspiration, or some other sort of knowledge; the emotional effect on the audience; the role of poetry in forming moral character and, more broadly, its place in society; the relation between poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy; aesthetic values of beauty, wonder, truth, and grace.

Near Eastern Languages & Civilization

Seminar: Poetry (Al-Mutanabbi)
ARAB 40383/1 [24266]
Tahera Qutbuddin

Al-Mutanabbī is arguably the best known and most quoted poet of the Arabic language. Scores of streets and bookstores in the Arab Middle East are named after him, as are schools, poetry festivals, markets, and even ships. What did al-Mutanabbī do to merit this enormous fame? Was it the power of the panegyrics that he composed celebrating the victories of important kings and princes? Or was it the biting humor of the satires that he wrote censuring these same potentates? Indeed, his poems provoked great political, lexical, critical, and grammatical debate, during his lifetime and beyond. A close reading of a selection of al-Mutanabbī’s poetry in various genres and medieval critique of his alleged “sariqāt,” will—inshaallah!—illuminate some of the answers.

Classics

Hellenistic/Imperial Literature
GREK 32300, GREK 23200
David Wray

This class features selections from the poetry and/or prose of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. This year we will read a wide range of selections from Hellenistic poetry. 

PQ: GREK 20300 or equivalent.

The Return of Homer: The Iliad and Odyssey in Contemporary English Language Fiction and Poetry
CLAS 3161, SCTH 31614
Glen Most   

The course will examine the extraordinary flowering of English language novels and poems based on the Homeric epics in the past quarter century. We will ask how different contemporary poets and prose writers have interpreted Homer’s works and try to understand the appeal of this ancient poetry for modern authors, readers, and publishers. The reading will include such works as Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad; Byrne Fone, War Stories: A Novel of the Trojan War, Christopher Logue, An Account of Homer’s Iliad; David Malouf, Ransom; Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey; Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles; Alice Oswald, Memorial: A Version of Homer’s Iliad; Lisa Peterson, An Iliad; Kate Quinn, et al., A Song of War; and Derek Walcott, Omeros. English translations of such foreign-language works as Alessandro Baricco’s An Iliad and Ismail Kadare’s The Fijile on H. may also be considered if students wish.
PQ: There is no language requirement; but students are expected to have refreshed their familiarity with the Iliad and Odyssey in translation before the course begins.

Sophocles, Ajax   
CLAS 31717, CLCV 21717, SCTH 31613
Glenn Most

A close literary and philological analysis of one of the most remarkable and perplexing of all Greek tragedies. We will consider the play’s portrayal of the nature and limits of one form of male heroism against the background of earlier poetry and contemporary history; and we will attempt constantly for elate philological and literary approaches to one another in order to understand better not only Sophocles’ play but also the strengths and limitations of the ways in which scholars try to come closer to it.
PQ: Either an adequate knowledge of ancient Greek or the consent of the instructor is required; students should have refreshed their familiarity with the Iliad and Odyssey. Open to undergrads.