210.661-662Read/Translate German
This course is designed for graduate students in other
departments who wish to gain a reading knowledge of the
German language. The first semester assumes no knowledge
of German and covers the grammatical principles
of the language. The second semester assumes a basic
knowledge of German grammar and vocabulary and concentrates
on reading
practice. For certification or credit.
Staff213.602 Pseudo-Autobiographies
Tobias 213.605 The Life of Stones: Geology in the Works
of Goethe, Novalis, and Celan
Examination of the geological motifs in all three authors
literary works. Emphasis on geological theories of the
18th and 19th centuries, particularly the debates between
the neptunists and plutonists. Consideration of theological,
aesthetic, and philosophical ramifications of debate.
Tobias 213.608 The Literatures of Blacks and Jews in the 20th Century
This course will be a seminar comparing representative narratives and poetry by African, Caribbean, and African-American authors of the past 100 years, together with European and American Jewish authors writing in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. This comparison will examine the paradoxically central role played by minority, “marginal” groups in the creation of modern literature and the articulation of the modern experience. Among the topics to be considered in this course will be the question of whether minority literatures require a distinct interpretive strategy from “mainstream” literary traditions; the problem of political discrimination and the question of identity politics in the creation, and interpretation, of literature; the commonalities of historical experience between Black and Jewish peoples; and the challenge of multiculturalism in modern society. Authors discussed will include, among others, Sholem Aleichem, Charles Chesnutt, Sh. Ansky, Jean Toomer, Sh. Y. Agnon, Amos Tutuola, Bernard Malamud, Caryl Phillips, and Anna Deavere Smith. All readings and discussions conducted in English; enrollment open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students
M. Caplan 3 213.615 Narrative Theory: A Critical Reevaluation
A commonplace of narrative theory is that narratives produce
a semblance of life. We will analyze the notions of
semblance and life that permit such a statement in works
by Lukacs, Genette, Hamburger, Benjamin, Ricoeur and
Barthes.
Tobias 213.616 Understanding Irony
Course will examine some of the classic texts on irony (Schlegel, Novalis, Solger, Hegel) and important 20th-century interpretations of them (Szondi, de Man, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy). Key concern of course will be whether there can be a conception of irony without recourse to transcendental philosophy.
Tobias 213.620 Modern Verse: Individual Poems, Poetic
Cycles
Consideration of the questions of composition in the
case of poetic works by Rilke, George, Heym, and Celan.
Examination of different strategies required in reading
an individual poem and a series or cycle.
Tobias 213.622 Negative Theologies: Meister Eckhart and
Georges Bataille
Examination of Meister Eckharts sermons with attention
to tension between a God identified with Being and one
identified with Not-Being, such that this God is removed
from the realm of all lived or conscious experience.
Tobias 213.625 Redemption and Utopia: The History of a
Concept
An examination of the concepts of redemption and utopia
as they appear in the works of 20th-century German-Jewish
thinkers, including Adorno, Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Scholem,
and Buber. To what extent is redemption presented
as a specifically Jewish concept in these authors works, one
which is opposed to the Western metaphysical tradition?
Tobias 213.626 Tropologie – Die Ordung Der Tropen
Tobias 213.632 Celan
Examination of Celans work from middle/late period
with attention to temporal aspects of his verse, i.e., treatment
of time in his work and experience of time fostered.
Investigation of distinctions “early,” “middle,” and “late”
period, assumptions underlying distinctions, and relevance
of such genealogical categories in Celans case.
Tobias 213.635 Guilt in Heidegger and Kafka
Investigation of concept of guilt in Heidegger and Kafka
with emphasis on theological precedents and ramifications
of concept. Primary texts: Sein und Zeit and Octavhefte;
ancillary readings in Augustine and Kierkegaard.
Tobias 213.638 Epistemology in Historical Perspective
In this seminar, we will discuss the French and German traditions of introducing historical thinking into philosophy of science. Readings will include Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida (his reading of Husserl) on the French part, and Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl (his late Crisis work) and Martin Heidegger on the German part.
Reading and discussion in English
Rheinberger 213.641 Hegel: On Ethics and the Theory of Tragedy
Two month intensive course The course will deal with Hegel’s conceptions of art, politics and ethical life (Sittlichkeit), as they are elaborated in his Lectures on Aesthetics and Philosophy of Right. The goal of the course is to unfold these conceptions in their internal coherence and to ask for their contemporary significance. Special consideration will be given to the question of the systematic relation between Hegel’s theories of art, politics and ethical life. Hegel’s theory of tragedy, especially in the version of his Phenomenology of the Spirit, is a good case for addressing this question.
Menke 213.647 Modernity, Aesthetic and Political: Hofmannsthal – Brecht – C. Schmitt – Reifenstahl
In recent theories of the political (Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau) totalitarianism no longer appears to be a revolt against modernity but, on the contrary, an intrinsically modern project. The course will focus on configurations of the aesthetic and the political in the early 20th century. We will ask the question to what extent this configuration might have contributed to making (German) totalitarianism possible. Reading and Discussion in German.
Hebekus 213.648 The Multilingual Culture of Weimar Berlin
This course will be a graduate-level seminar examining Berlin in the interwar era as a multilingual metropolis and center of global modernism. Juxtaposing German-language authors such as Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, and Joseph Roth with expatriate figures such as Christopher Isherwood, Vladimir Nabokov, Dovid Bergelson, and Sh. Y. Agnon, we will consider the significance of urban space in the conceptualization of literary modernism; the role of the refugee in defining urban literary culture; the applicability of German aesthetic movements such as Expressionism or Neue Sachlichkeit to other “national” literatures active in Berlin; and the notion of Berlin as a meeting point for several trends within European modernism. To what extent can one consider Weimar-Era Berlin to be “the capital of the 20th century”? All readings and discussions conducted in English.
M. Caplan 213.649 Aestheticism Reconsidered
Few terms are more maligned in contemporary criticism than aestheticism and enchantment. This course will reconsider conventional definitions of aestheticism as a privileging of art over life through readings of Weber, Adorno, Horkheimer, Simmel, Mann, Huysmans, Klages, George, Adrian and Rilke.
Tobias 213.654 Folklore & Modernism
This course will be a graduate seminar considering in structural and historical terms the impact of folklore on modern literary forms, particularly in minority and marginalized literary cultures. Among the topics we will consider are the role of folklore in the development of a national consciousness; the transformation of religious beliefs and related traditions in the context of modernization; the structural features of folk tales and how they influence (or undermine) belletristic narrative forms; the relationship between folklore and various modes of satire and parody; the place of folklore in creating fantasy or anti-realist narratives; and the preservation of oral narrative techniques in works of literature. Authors to be considered will include the Brothers Grimm, Reb Nakhman of Breslov, Nikolai Leskov, Charles Chesnutt, Sholem Aleichem, Lu Xun, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amos Tutuola. These writers will be considered comparatively in the light of theoretical discussions by, among others, Freud, Benjamin, Propp, Deleuze and Guattari, Frederic Jameson, and Aijaz Ahmad.
M. Caplan 213.655 ‘Beautiful Soul’ and Romantic Irony: Feeling,
Gender, and Theory
One might be tempted to oppose the critical attitudes
of Sensibility and early Romanticism: one allegedly simpler
and more conservative, complementing enlightened
rationality by cultivating feeling, and the other playful
and sophisticated, bending the Enlightenment’s firm
stance with its complex theory and practice of irony. In
this course, we will try to mix up the two discourses of the
‘beautiful soul’ and of Romantic irony and, since they
tend to fall along gender lines, this will also be a way of
troubling gender constructions. Readings and discussion
in English.
Pahl 213.656 Theorizing Emotionality
Accounts of affect, passion, feeling, mood by Spinoza, Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc. and their relevance for contemporary thought. Reading and Discussion in English.
Pahl 213.657 Friedrich Hölderlin
Reading some of Hölderlin’s major works (Hyperion, Empedokles, poems, theoretical texts) we will discuss their complex relation to German Idealism as well as their increased reception in the 20th century. Reading knowledge of German required.
Pahl 213.672 Literature of Terror, Terror of Literature
We will investigate competing notions of justice and jurisdiction in
Kleist's novella "Michael Kohlhaas." A key concern of the course will
be who has the authority to determine the law and to authorize
violence to maintain it. Readings available in German and English
translation.
Tobias 213.685 Hegel: The Phaenomenology des Geistes
A close reading of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes. We will pay particular attention to the work of emotionality in the development of Spirit’s self-reflection.
Pahl 213.703 Intercultural Literature
We will read contemporary intercultural literature (Turkish-German, Japanese-German, authors from Central and Eastern Europe who write in German) with particular attention to the poetics of translingualism. When appropriate, we will discuss historical links (Celan, Canetti, Kafka, Chamisso, etc.).
Readings in German. Discussion in English or German
Pahl 213.705 Nietzsche - Mann – Adorno
This course will examine two novels by Thomas Mann (Doktor Faustus, Felix Krull), which draw heavily on Nietzsche (Geburt der Tragödie) and Adorno (Philosophie der neuen Musik). Of concern will be the ‘power’ the texts attribute to art and the poltical dimensions of the aesthetic sphere.
Tobias 213.745 (H) Ontological Aesthetics
Comparison of Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s claims about
the work of art as purveyor of truth and truth as event.
Primary emphasis will be on ontological value assigned
art in modernity.
Tobias 213.800-801 Independent Study
Staff 213.811-812 Directed Dissertation Research
Staff
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