Fall 2009

(All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.)

• Rhetoric 10: David Cohen & Frank Wang
• Rhetoric 24.001: David Cohen
• Rhetoric 24.002: Daniel Melia
• Rhetoric 103A: Daniel Boyarin
• Rhetoric 105: Daniel Melia
• Rhetoric 110: Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 121B: Ramona Naddaff
• Rhetoric 127: Pheng Cheah
• Rhetoric 133: Eileen Jones
• Rhetoric 152AC: Nadesan Permaul
• Rhetoric 159B: Felipe Gutterriez
• Rhetoric 164: David Cohen & Frank Wang & Laura Young
• Rhetoric 167: Nancy Weston
• Rhetoric 174: David Bates
• Rhetoric 178: Victoria Nelson
• Rhetoric 181: Dale Carrico
• Rhetoric 189.001: Michael Wintroub
• Rhetoric 189.002: Jacqueline Asher
• Rhetoric 189.003: Scott Ferguson

Instructor: David Cohen
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
W: 10am - 12pm, 7415 Dwinelle

This seminar will meet the whole semester but have various weeks off to prepare for longer assignments. Our seminar will examine the development of the new war crimes tribunal established by the UN and the Cambodian government to provide justice for victims of the Khmer Rouge Genocide (1975-79). We will examine the genocide itself, the years of negotiation that led to the creation of the court, and the challenges facing this "hybrid" national/international institution as it prepares for it first trial, which is scheduled to begin in March 2009. We will also read materials about other international tribunals for comparative analysis.

Instructor: Daniel Melia
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
Tu: 10am - 11am, 104 Dwinelle

TV "Judge" shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years. A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked "Did you hit the plaintiff?" respondents often say, "If I woulda hit him, he'd be dead!" This reply avoids answering "yes" or "no" by presenting a perverted form of the logical strategy called "a fortiori" argument ["from the stronger"] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on "Judge Judy" and "The People's Court" and discussing why such strategies are so widespread. It is NOT a course about law or "legal reasoning." Students who are interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the application of law or the operations of the court system in general.

Required Reading:

Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought
by David Hackett Fischer

Coursework: Evaluation will be based on participation in class discussion and quality of in-class reports. Missing more than 3 class meetings for any reason will result in a failing grade.

Rhetoric 103A: Approaches and Paradigms in the History of Rhetorical Theory

Instructor: Daniel Boyarin
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 9:30am - 11am, 141 Mccone (Lecture)
W: 4pm - 5pm, 2062 Valley LSB (Discussion 101)
W: 2pm - 3pm, 223 Wheeler (Discussion 102)
Tu: 3pm - 4pm, 259 Dwinelle (Discussion 103)
Tu: 5pm - 6pm, 246 Dwinelle (Discussion 104)

In this course we will study the foundations in ancient Greek and Roman culture of the division between persuasion and truth, between rhetoric and philosophy that inhabits and inhibits our intellectual lives until today. We will be studying Greek plays, the fragmentary works of the great sophists, several dialogues of Plato, Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s great work on rhetoric. The purpose of the course is to establish rhetoric and rhetorical theory as the theoretical grounding for an ongoing critique of episteme (Truth) and epistemology (the doctrine of Truth) in western thought. We will also be thinking about the relationship between rhetoric as democratic practice and Platonic philosophy as anti-democratic discourse.

Required Books:

• Cicero, M. T., J. Wisse, and J. M. May. 2001. Cicero on the ideal orator. Trans. J. Wisse. New York: Oxford University Press. X, 374 p.
• Gagarin, M., and P. Woodruff. 1995. Early Greek political thought from Homer to the sophists. Ed. and trans. M. Gagarin. Cambridge texts in the history of political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 324 p.
• Goldhill, S. 2003. Aeschylus, The Oresteia. Landmarks of world literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Viii, 95 p.
• Kennedy, G. A., trans. 1991. On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse by Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press. Xvi, 335 p.
• Plato. 1998. Plato on rhetoric and language: Four key dialogues. Ed. J. Nienkamp. Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras Press. Ix, 220 p.
• West, T. G., G. S. West, Plato., and Aristophanes. 1998. Four texts on Socrates Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, and Aristophanes’ Clouds. Trans. T. G. West. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press. 190 p.

Instructor: Daniel Melia
Area of Concentration: History & Theory
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 12:30pm - 2pm, 234 Dwinelle

Who did Chaucer think he was, anyway? How can we understand Chaucer (or any other medieval author, for that matter) when the conventions by which we decode texts seem to be so different from his? Medieval Rhetoric entailed both a theory of writing/speaking and a theory of reading/editing. The course will investigate the ways in which ancient rhetoric and rhetorical theory survived and evolved in medieval Europe as exemplified in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. This approach has two purposes: to illustrate the ways in which rhetorical theory pervades much medieval high art, and to construct some historical perspective on the problem by looking at the beginning and (arguably) the end of medieval rhetorical theory and practice. [The fact that Chaucer is a lot of fun will not be overlooked.]

Requirements will include midterm exercises, a final examination, and either a term paper or group reports. (Depending on enrollment and enthusiasm.)

Required Reading:

St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. by D. W. Robertson
Prentice Hall (January 11, 1958)

Murphy, James J., Rhetoric in the Middle Ages,
Univ of California Pr; New Ed. (June 1981)

Reynolds, Suzanne, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) (Paperback)
Cambridge University Press (July 29, 2004)

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. F.N. Robinson, C. Cannon (Paperback)
Oxford University Press; New edition (September 2008)

Recommended:

"Cicero" Ad Herennium,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press) Loeb Classical Library #403

Written Work and Evaluation: There will be two or three short mid-term quizzes which will count about 15% (total) of the final grade. The paper or project will be worth 25%; class participation, 20% and the final exam about 35%.

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse or History & Theory
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor; Juniors, Seniors
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 11am - 12:30pm, 24 Wheeler

This is a course of study and practice in advanced techniques of argumentation. It is intended for students with well-developed writing skills; however, we will be reviewing certain basic principles of analysis, writing, and research. The course is discipline based and genre specific. The discipline upon which the course is based is law and the genre upon which we will focus is the legal memorandum in its various forms. Legal writing is often criticized for its tortuous constructions and obscure terminology; however, a well-written legal memorandum, brief, or opinion is both an elegant and a persuasive text. When you have completed this course you will have a better understanding of law and legal argument as well as the ability to make fairly complex legal arguments that are clear and persuasive. This course, however, is not intended simply, or even primarily, for those interested in law or law school. It is intended for anyone interested in developing the ability to quickly master the techniques of advanced argumentation in any discipline or genre.

Required Textbook(s):

Richard K. Neumann, Jr. Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Strategy and Style, Sixth Edition.

Handouts available in class or on class website.

Requirements:

Reading: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. Much of it will involve concepts and a style of argument that are unfamiliar to many of you. Mastery of these concepts and this style of argument will require a careful and thoughtful reading of the material.

Writing: There is writing. Lots of it. There will be short written exercises on a weekly basis interspersed with several longer essays. These essays and exercises must be done in a timely and professional manner.

Class attendance: Class attendance is required. I will be taking attendance. Arriving late for class will be considered as an absence. Absences can affect your grade significantly.
 Great Themes in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Political and Legal Theory

Instructor: Ramona Naddaff
Areas of Concentration: Image and the Narrative
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
Class will not meet until September 1, 2009.
TuTh: 12:30pm - 2pm, 109 Dwinelle

In recent conversation with undergraduate rhetoric students, the following hypothesis was offered: the term “fiction” designates primarily a modern phenomenon. Or as someone put it: “When I think of fiction, I don’t think of the ancients.” Taking this hypothesis seriously, this course queries the definition of “fiction” in Ancient Greece by concentrating especially on the fifth-century BCE genre, tragedy. As is well known, the art of tragedy does not appear ex nihilio. Not only is it an art form linked to specific democratic practices and social and aesthetic conventions, it is also the fruit of readings and reinterpretations of earlier poetic forms, especially the epics of Homer.

On the one hand, the course will be structured around a cast of ancient Greek tragic characters: Oedipus, Antigone, Ajax, Hercules, Electra, and Medea. In reading these tragedies we will also encounter have occasion to meet other major and minor tragic figures whose stories we will discuss and whose tragic precursors we will discover. On the other hand, we will study the transformation of these fictive characters’ lives in the hands of authors other than the Greek tragedians—for example, Seneca, Ovid, Racine, Anouilh, Krista Wolf, to name but a few. Our investigation of tragic transformations will also consider adaptations and interpretations of these stories into other genres and media—philosophy, film, music, and television, for example. How and why—a guiding question for our work —is it that certain poetic lives and narratives are spoken about and reinterpreted repeatedly from ancient to modern times? How can one story generate so many stories? How many different ways are there to tell the same story?

Provisional and Selective Reading List:
Ancient Greek Tragedies: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Antigone; Ajax; and Electra. Euripides, Medea; Electra; Heracles. (Note we will sometimes be reading simultaneously two different translations of the same play.)

Other readings include works from: Aristotle, Seneca, Ovid; Dante; Racine; Corneille; Anouilh; Krista Wolf; Seamus Heaney; Jean-Paul Sartre: H.D.; Richard Strauss, Pacini; Pasolini, Nietzsche, and Freud; The Philoctetes Project.

Requirements:
Absolute, unconditional class attendance and participation. Two essays of five to seven pages; one 20-30 minute oral presentation; three one-page response papers.

Instructor: Pheng Cheah
Area of Concentration: Image & the Narrative
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 11am - 12:30pm, 109 Dwinelle

The dominant geographical focus of postcolonial literary and cultural studies has been on the literature of British Africa, India, the Caribbean, and their various diasporas in the North Atlantic. The historical variety of colonial regimes, however, makes it more appropriate to speak of colonialisms in the plural and different experiences of anti-colonial nationalism and postcoloniality. This course examines the relationship between the novel as a literary form and the imagining of national community through a comparative study of narrative fiction from decolonizing and postcolonial Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. We will read novels by Jose Rizal (the Spanish Philippines), Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia), Ayi Kwei Armah (Ghana), Salman Rushdie (Ukania/South Asia), and Ninotchka Rosca (postcolonial Philippines) and critical writings by theorists such as Gyorgy Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Franco Moretti and Benedict Anderson in order to explore questions such as the following: what are the consequences of the encounter of native populations with the ideas, cultural forms and sociological structures of modernity as a result of colonialism, and how are these phenomena used to subjugate native populations? How can we explain the rise of the radical "educated native" who plays a pioneering role in opposing the colonial regime despite the fact that the educated native derives many benefits under colonialism? What role can radical nationalist literature play in the continuing process of political revolution both before and after formal independence? We will also consider the use of the Bildungsroman, magical realism and the tropes of heterosexual romance and reproduction in the representation of the postcolonial nation.

Required Texts:

• Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (University of Hawaii Press, 1997)
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind (Penguin, 1996)
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer Child of All Nations (Penguin, 1996)
• Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born (Heinemann, 1988)
• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (Penguin, 1991)
• Ninotchka Rosca, State of War (Norton, 1988)

Rhetoric 133:Selected Topics in Film (Cross-listed as Film 151.004)

Instructor: Eileen Jones
Area of Concentration: Image & the Narrative
Office Hours: TBA

In Powell and Pressburger: A Cinema of Magic Spaces, Andrew Moor identifies a further crucial contradiction:

The stress Powell and Pressburger laid on their creative freedom invites us to detach their work from its industrial context and to consider its uniqueness. Paradoxically, though, they emphasize collaboration, and the famous credit, ‘Written, Produced, and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’ slaps a gauntlet down at the feet of the auteur-critic.

In this course we’ll be taking up that gauntlet, examining Powell and Pressburger as an illuminating “trouble case” for auteur theory.

This course will involve a lot of reading, writing, film viewing, and class participation. Screenings will include most of The Archer’s output, including The Red Shoes, I Know Where I’m Going!, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, A Canterbury Tale, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and The Small Back Room, as well as some of the filmmakers’ pre- and post-Archers films (Contraband, Peeping Tom).

Required Texts:

Ian Christie and Andrew Moor, eds. The Cinema of Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker. London: BFI, 2005.

Course Reader

Instructor: Nadesan Permaul
Areas of Concentration: Public Discourse
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 9:30am - 11am, 106 Wheeler (Lecture)
Tu: 11am - 12pm, 87 Dwinelle (Discussion 101)
Th: 11am -12pm, 87 Dwinelle (Discussion 102)

This course will explore the connection of the issue of race to the cultural character and identity of citizens in the new American republic during the ante-bellum, and how it has subsequently affected our contemporary social and political culture and discourse.  We will start with the question of what is American culture, and whether there is a discernable culture in our society.  If so, what was the origin that culture?

Reading will begin with James Fennimore Cooper's The Pioneers. By using the structure of this romance novel as a model, the class will view the founding of the United States as a formal problem, (not unlike the underlying problem posed in novel), in which the three principal racial groups in North America (i.e., the Native Americans, the European-Americans, and the African-Americans) sought to be included into the social and political order of the new republic. All subsequent readings will be viewed in the context of addressing that formal problem, with an emphasis on what the language and symbolism of fiction reveal about the actual historical events of the period. This is a seminar focused around class discussion of the reading materials.

Reading includes original texts in American literature and letters (e.g. My Bondage, My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens, and readings from D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Willliams, the New York Review of Books, etc.), history and criticism. Supplementary reading, in a course reader, will analyze the eras from which the literary works emerged, and the problems that shaped the course of the American founding. Contemporary news articles and film clips (ranging from Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" to Sixty Minutes, to “The American Experience”) will supplement formal reading material. There will be a take-home midterm, a paper/project making use of course materials and theme, and a take-home final exam.

Classes begin with film clips and often involve student presentation of reading materials before we break into a full discussion.  We will be open to all perspectives, no matter how controversial or widely shared.  But we will be respectful of one another, and speak in language not aimed at individuals or personalities, but at issues.

Required Texts:

• James Fennimore Cooper, The Pioneers
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Donald Jackson, ed., Autobiography of Blackhawk
• Frederick Douglas, My Bondage, My Freedom
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Instructor: Felipe Gutterriez
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse; History and Theory of Rhetoric
Theme: The Politics of Discourse
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh 2-330P, 109 Dwinelle

“For in our other facilities, as I said earlier, we do not differ from other living beings, and in fact we are inferior to many in speed, strength, and other resources. But since we have the ability to persuade one another and to make dear to ourselves what we want, not only do we avoid living like animals, but we have come together, built cities, made laws, and invented arts. Speech is responsible for nearly all our inventions. It legislated in matters of justice and injustice and beauty and baseness, and without these laws, we could not live with one another. By it we refute the bad and praise the good; through it, we educate the ignorant and recognize the intelligent. We regard speaking well to be the clearest sign of a good mind, which it requires, and truthful, lawful, and just speech we consider the image of a good and faithful soul. With speech we fight over contentious matters, and we investigate the unknown. We use the same arguments by which we persuade others in our own deliberations; we call those able to speak in a crowd "rhetorical"; we regard as sound advisers those who debate with themselves most skillfully about public affairs. If one must summarize the power of discourse, we will discover that nothing done prudently occurs without speech, that speech is the leader of all thoughts and actions, and that the most intelligent people use it most of all.”

Isocrates, Antidosis . Isocrates. Trans. David C. Mirhady and Yun Lee Too. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000. 251-52

“Argument is the glue of politics—its characteristic practice.”

Neta C. Crawford (2009). Homo Politicus and Argument (Nearly) All the Way Down: Persuasion in Politics. Perspectives on Politics, 7, pp 103-124

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor; Juniors, Seniors

In this course we will study various theories of political discourse in democratic societies ranging from deliberative democracy (Jurgen Habermas) to the agonistic pluralism (Chantal Mouffe), from traditional political oratory and “the norms of rhetorical culture” to contemporary political discourse in the “digital village”
Attendance and participation are required. Students will be asked to be prepared for presentations on the reading. Midterm and final; Two 10-page papers.

Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.

REQUIRED:

• Course Reader
• Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture

Instructor: David Cohen & Frank Wang & Laura Young
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse & History and Theory
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 3:30pm - 5pm, 182 Dwinelle

This course compares the cultural contexts of developing adjudication in the West and in China.  The course also examines the influence of past traditions and values on modern legal behavior and the resulting effects on international expectations.  Starting from modern day conflicts, the course examines themes including the value of hierarchy and social order vs. the desirability of individual agency and freedom of action, with particular emphasis on conceptions of the Rule of Law and Human Rights.  Readings will include Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Confucius, Mencius, Hsun-Zi, and many others.  There will be a reader.  Classroom participation is expected. There will be one or two papers and a final exam.

Required Books:

• Ballantine (Division of Random House), Roger Ames, et al., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, 1998.
• Penguin Classics, Aristotle, The Politics, 1981
• Penguin Classics, Plato, The Laws, 1975
• Penguin Classics, Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, 1996
• Penguin Classics, Cicero, Murder Trials, 1990
• Penguin Classics, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1972
• Course Reader

Instructor: Nancy Weston
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse, History & Theory
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
W: 2pm - 5pm, 234 Dwinelle

This course in advanced topics in law and rhetoric proceeds as a philosophical seminar inquiring, this term, into the nature of law by way of inquiry into the law of nature.

Exploring the history of philosophical concern with physics, with metaphysics, and with law, we shall ask after the relations among these concerns and endeavors, and the resonances, bearings and implications of understandings in one of these realms for those in another. We shall devote substantial thought not only to what law is, such that it is (or may be and has been thought to be) natural, but also, and principally, to what nature is, such that law does (or may and has been thought to) govern it. Exploring the history of philosophical efforts to describe or delineate the law that governs nature, we shall be brought to ask after the source, manner, necessity, and possibility of such governance. We shall thereby be drawn to think anew on the nature of law and governance, as well as on that of nature, and of our relation to and involvement in each.

Prior coursework in philosophy is not required; an openness to its challenges is.

Course readings will be drawn from, inter alia, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Planck, Heisenberg, and Heidegger.

Please note:
Enrollment is open only to those students in attendance from the outset. Accordingly, all students interested in taking this class (whether pre-enrolled, wait-listed, or neither) are to attend the first class meeting, on Wednesday, August 26, 2009, from 2-5 p.m.

In planning their schedules, students should be aware that wide-ranging collective discussions, often lasting an hour or more, generally occur after class meetings. In past classes, students have found these informal but intense discussions to be of substantial help in coming to terms with difficult material encountered in the course. If your schedule prevents you from joining them, you may wish to reconsider taking this class.

Required Books:

• E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. Dover Publications, 2003. ISBN-10: 0486425517 ISBN-13: 978-0486425511
• Metaphysics: The Classic Readings. David Cooper, ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ISBN-10: 0631213252 ISBN-13: 978-0631213253
• Sophocles, Antigone, in The Three Theban Plays. Trans. by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 2000. ISBN: 0140444254.
• Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature. Translated by Michael Chase. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Paperback edition. ISBN-10: 0-674-03049-4 ISBN 13: 978-0-674-03049-7
• A substantial course reader, to be made available for purchase at Copy Central on Bancroft Avenue.

Instructor: David Bates
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse, and History & Theory
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
MWF: 11am - 12pm, 109 Dwinelle

Robots, Computers, Cyborgs: the History and Theory of Artificial Intelligence

Human intelligence has been shaped by technological development in the modern period. Not only has machinery often supplemented (or even supplanted) human thought, our self-understanding as intelligent beings has been continually transformed by the appearance of complex, perhaps even intelligent mechanisms. This class will explore the long history of Artificial Intelligence, in an effort to understand how technology, as a practice and a discourse, has impacted the idea of intelligence and the very concept of the human. We will begin with a study of early modern robotics (in Descartes’s work and during the Enlightenment), and then focus on the first modern “computers” – the Analytic and Difference Engines of Charles Babbage in the 19th century. We will then study the development of cybernetics in the period of the Second World War, before moving onto an analysis of the rise of the digital computer and some new models of human rationality that these new machines influenced. The last part of the course will emphasize critiques of Artificial Intelligence – in both philosophical and cultural contexts – as well as new ideas about intelligence and artifice.

Readings will be posted on bpsace. Besides primary sources from the 17th to the 21st century, we will read selected articles on robots, computers, cybernetics, information theory, and cyborgs. We will also discuss two seminal films on these topics: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Rhetoric 178: Darkness Visible: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Gothic Novel

Instructor: Victoria Nelson
Area of Concentration: Image and the Narrative
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 3:30pm - 5:00pm, 215 Dwinelle

This surprisingly durable “shock” genre has a long history of attracting, repelling, and generally fascinating readers even as some of its key themes—including anticlericalism, supernaturalism, exoticism, and gender issues—have stayed strikingly intact. We will examine selected Anglo-American novels in their historical and literary context, starting with Walpole’s groundbreakinf Castle of Otranto, Lewis’s scandalous The Monk, and the Gothic-Romantic nexus, working our way through the classic Gothic ghost and vampire fictions of the Victorian-Edwardian eras, through 20th century Gothic romance to the new Gothic of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. We will also examine these increasingly hybrid conventions as they play out in the 21st-century global Gothic.

Required Books:

• Horace Walpole, THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO (Dover Thrift) ISBN-10: 0486434125 / ISBN-13: 978-0486434124
• Matthew Lewis, THE MONK (Dover Thrift) ISBN-10: 0486432149 / ISBN-13: 978-0486432144
• Charlotte Bronte, JANE EYRE (Dover Thrift) ISBN-10: 0486424499 / ISBN-13: 978-0486424491
• Sheridan LeFanu, IN A GLASS DARKLY (Oxford's World Classics) ISBN-10: 0192839470 / ISBN-13: 978-0192839473
• M.R. James, CASTING THE RUNES AND OTHER GHOST STORIES (Oxford's World Classics) ISBN-10: 0192837737 / ISBN-13: 978-0192837738
• Bram Stoker, DRACULA (Norton Critical Edition) ISBN-10: 0393970124 / ISBN-13: 978-0393970128
• H.P. Lovecraft, THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP AND OTHER STORIES (Penguin) ISBN-10: 0142180033 / SBN-13: 978-0142180037
• Jean Rhys, WIDE SARGASSO SEA (Norton) ISBN-13: 978-0393308808
• Octavia Butler, FLEDGLING ISBN-10: 0446696161/ ISBN-13: 978-0446696166
  

Course requirements: One short oral presentation (20%), one midterm (30%) and a long final paper (50%) exploring a single contemporary Gothic subgenre or theme in the historical context of this genre (film, anime, and videogame examples may be used). Class attendance and participation are essential; don’t sign up if you can’t make all the meetings.

Instructor: Dale Carrico
Area of Concentration: Public Discourse or History & Theory
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh: 5pm - 6:30pm, 156 Dwinelle

It is curious that all at once we will use the word "natural" to denote the known as against the supernatural, we will use it to describe that which is susceptible to instrumental description as against the unscientific, we will use it to describe the conventional as against the unnatural, we will use it describe wilderness as against artifice, we will use it to describe what is beyond utility in the sublime, and we will use it to mark our imperfect understanding of systems on which we depend nevertheless for our survival.

It is from the problematic and promising vantages of the "natural," so construed, that we will grapple with some Green discourses on offer, in history, and of our own: What are the differences between "environmentalisms" as sites of identification, as subcultures, as movements, as political programs, as research programs, as rhetorical
perspectives? How has Green education, agitation, organization,
consciousness changed over time? How is Green changing now, and in what ways does Greenness abide?

In this course we will read a number of canonical and representative "environmentalist" discourses and texts, seeking to understand better what it means to read and write the world Greenly. Tracking through these texts each of us will struggle to weave together and testify to our own sense of the Green as an interpretive register, as a writerly skill-set, as a site of imaginative investment, and as a provocation to action. This is a Keyword course, engaging environmentalist discourses historically, theoretically, practically through an exploration of a number of key terms, among them: "Agroforestry," "Alienation," "Appropriate Technology," "Biodiversity," "Biomimicry," "Biopiracy," "Biosphere," "Climate Change," "Climate Refugees," "Commons," "Consensus Science," "Cradle-to-Cradle," "Deep Ecology," "Democracy," "Design," "Ecology," "Ecofeminism," "Ecosocialism," "Enclosure," "Endangered Species," "Energy Descent," "Environmental Justice," "Externality," "Footprint," "Geoengineering," "Greenwashing," "Industrial Ag," "Leapfrogging," "Limit," "Local," "Militarism," "Monoculture," "Native," "Nature," "Natural Capitalism," "Organic," "Permaculture," "Political Ecology," "Polyculture,""Post-Scarcity," "Precautionary Principle," "Recycling/Downcycling,""Renewable," "Resilience," "Social Ecology," "Sustainability," "Technofix," "Toxicity/Abrasion," "Triple Bottom Line," "Viridian," "Wilderness," and so on.

The course will be quite reading intensive. Each student will be delivering an in-class presentation drawn from personal research, as well as co-facilitating discussion of one of our assigned texts. The final exam will provide an occasion to come to terms with the Key Words that will preoccupy our attention throughout our conversation.

Instructor: Michael Wintroub
Areas of Concentration: History & Theory, Public Discourse, Image & the Narrative
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
M: 2pm - 5pm, 83 Dwinelle

Where did the first collections originate? Why did people begin to collect? In what ways did—and do—museums and museum collections contribute to the maintenance and definition of the cultural values (and power) of elite groups? Can they also be associated with acts of resistance among marginal groups/tribes/clases. Are material objects just inanimate things or can they be considered actors in their own right? What is the relationship between collections and notions of sovereignty and/or resistance? How do we define ourselves—as citizens, as members of a discipline or tribe, as nations—with reference to collections? Who owns the objects that stand at the intersection of different nations/tribes/disciplines/practices? Why? What values/ideologies structure the debates and conflicts over definition, meaning and ownership of collections? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this class. We will read about court spectacles and cabinets of curiosity; about the very first museums; about practices of collecting and travel; about colonial politics, world’s fairs and evolutionary theory; we will study “freaks,” circus side-shows and exotic exhibits, and we will investigate the conflicts over ownership and repatriation of artifacts and collections, such as Berkeley’s necropolis of native Americans; finally, will study the modern corporate imaginary of theme parks such as Disneyland and Sea World.

Required Books:

• Bogdan, F. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, University of Chicago Press
• Schwartz, V., Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Paperback)
• Cuno, J., Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle…
• Scott, M., Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
• Fine-Dare, K. S., Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation...
• Cook, J. W., The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum
• Coombes, A., Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England
• Mauss, M., The Gift.
• Starn, O., Ishi’s Brain.
• Baudrillard, J., Simulations
• Davis, S. G., Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the…

Instructor: Jacqueline Asher
Area of Concentration: Narrative & Image, and Public Discourse
Office Hours: TBA

Class Times:
TuTh 2pm - 330pm, 209 Dwinelle (Lecture)
W: 6pm - 8pm, 209 Dwinelle (Dissuccion 201)

In a moment of Hillary-boosterism during the 2008 Democratic primary, SNL’s Tina Fey declared, “Bitch is the new black” and also, “bitches get stuff done.” Fey’s quip invites us to think about the queer affinities that might be drawn in relation to the figure of the bitch, and in this course we will consider generative and disciplinary rhetoric attending the figure of the unmannered woman and the non-normative sexual excesses that seem to shadow her in American culture. We will concern ourselves with historical representations of bitchiness in literature and film in order to think about how the figure of the bitch intersects with notions of sexual and social deviance. Through our readings of theory, fiction, and film, we will consider camp, diva-worship, female masculinity, and the intersections between gay male sensibility and bitchiness.

Some of our course texts include: Hannah Webster Foster The Coquette (1797), Henry James’s Roderick Hudson (1883), Toni Morrison, Sula (1973), and the following films: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Women, Little Foxes, and Mildred Pierce.

Required Books:

• Hannah Webster Foster The Coquette ; Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 19, 1987)
• Henry James’s Roderick Hudson; Publisher: IAP (January 30, 2009)
• Toni Morrison, Sula;Publisher: Vintage (June 8, 2004)