Special Topics in Rhetoric

For 1 unit only.

This seminar will explore the work of the most influential psychoanalyst writing in English today, Christopher Bollas (http://psychoanalysis.org.uk/our-authors-and-theorists/christopher-bollas), who will be scholar-in-residence at the Townsend Center in the first week of November 2016. Seminar participants will discuss Bollas’s published works (including The Freudian Moment, The Shadow of the Object, Being a Character, and When the Sun Bursts: The Enigma of Schizophrenia) as well as forthcoming and in-progress work that he will provide. Students will present their own projects to the group, and will develop questions to be tabled for seminars with Bollas himself and for one-on-one meetings with him during his residency.

Participants must be able to attend the seminars and one-on-one meetings with Bollas, as well as the events of Bollas’s residency. Professor Whitney Davis (History of Art) convenes the three seminar sessions, which meet on Wednesday, September 21 and October 5, and Tuesday, October 18, all from 5:15 pm – 7 pm. Participants must attend all three sessions, participate in one-on-one meetings with Bollas, and attend the associated public events of his residency that take place daily from October 31 through November 4.

The mini-course is open to graduate students in any program, for 1-unit credit.

Advance communication with and permission of the instructors required (wmdavis@berkeley.edu and tansmana@berkeley.edu).