1 - 10 of 176 results for: COMPLIT

Preference to freshmen. The problem of performance including the performance of gender through the plays of Shakespeare. In-class performances by students of scenes from plays. The history of theatrical performance. Sources include filmed versions of plays, and readings on the history of gender, gender performance, and transvestite theater.

Preference to sophomores. Focus is on several of the best and lesser known plays of Shakespeare, on theatrical and other kinds of playing, and on ambiguities of both gender and playing gender.

What (if anything) do supermall shoppers in the Philippines, a Filipino taxi driver in Paris, and television viewers in Nepal have to do with a legal case in Canada, two young Japanese on a pilgrimage to Graceland, and a South Asian lawyer/liquor store owner trying to reclaim his property in Uganda from where he lives, in Mississippi? This course uses literary narratives, films, and historical research to examine new textures of contemporary life, where "borders" seem hard-pressed to contain culture. Texts include Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu, Mira Nair's film Mississippi Masala, and M.G. Vassanji, No New Land. New forms of identity have emerged that reflect the cultural changes that have accompanied such movements. Nevertheless, we will not idealize such phenomena either; we will want also to carefully observe the binding power of nations. The result will be a finer-tuned sense of "globalization" and the "local" and the "global." The course emphasizes creative thinking and discussion. Students are expected to do the reading and be well prepared for every session with not only questions, but tentative answers. Each student will participate in one group presentation as their final project.

Ghost stories haunt our imagination. When the dead return they may scare us or warn us, they may pursue us with violence or burden us with sorrow. They shock us with the "boo" of surprise, just as they frustrate us by their elusiveness. Blood-chilling stories terrify us, but they also provide entertainment. The ghost story is one of the most enduring genres, from classical literature to popular film. Yet behind the door of the story lurk both anxiety and wisdom: anxiety about our own mortality and wisdom about the cultural place of the past, between memory and regret, mourning and forgetting. The undead point to what we have not accomplished, just as they direct us - since the ghost of Hamlet's father - toward deeds. In this seminar, we will explore some of these ghostly ambitions. During the summer, in preparation for the seminar, students will read selected stories and novels and post comments to the course website. When we convene in September, we will discuss the summer findings and proceed to examine a selection of novels that explore ghosts and hauntings. Texts will include Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Peter Straub's Ghost Story, and others. We will also spend some dark and stormy nights with ghost films and even follow the trail to some hauntings at Stanford and in the Bay Area. Students are expected to participate regularly in the CourseWork discussion forum and work in small groups with other course members to discuss and present readings.

Preference to freshmen. How first person narrative has been used across Western literature from antiquity to the present, in works including nonfictional autobiography, records of travel and testimonial, novels, and lyric poetry. Nonfictional readings may include Augustine, Rousseau, Cook, Equiano, and Freud; novels by Montesquieu, Mary Shelley, Conrad, and Levi; and poems by Rimbaud and Rilke. The use of the first-person in online media.

Preference to freshmen. Literary and philosophic wisdom examined using authors including classical Greek tragedians, Plato, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, and Beckett. Different conceptions of human nature and ethical life offered by literature and philosophy: how do these understandings characterize the meaning of life; and what is at a stake in the ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature? What power does reason have over the irrational? How do emotions and passions contribute to ethical wisdom?

Its thinking from its communist roots, through the changes of the 60s, the rise of conservatism in the 80s, and the invasion of Iraq. Readings include Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel P. Moynihan, and David Brooks. Guest lecturers from supporters and critics.

This course consists of film screenings, dialogues, and performances that engage critically with the theme of Occupation across contexts, exploring both the potential and limitations of the art of Occupation. Students will engage some of the most provocative artists, writers, and thinkers of our times to consider the purpose of the arts across diverse communities that engage Occupation in local, transnational and global perspective.

Preference to freshmen. How literature serves as a medium across which we encounter others. What happens when people are not only other readers but also other authors. What happens when the boundary between reading and writing is blurred, confused, refracted; how that enables a particular aesthetic and ethics. Introduction to literary texts which incorporate issues of culture, history, and ethics. Sources inclulde Barthes, Woolf, Coetzee, Daif, Shammas, and Ozeki.