ENGL 306
Aesthetic Outrage Fall 2015
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed COMP 300
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In this tutorial course we will explore interdisciplinary ways of theorizing the outraged reception of provocative works of film, theater, and fiction. When riots, censorship, and vilification greet such works in moments of political and social upheaval, the public outrage is often strangely out of proportion to either the work’s aesthetic nature or its overt commentary on the political crisis. Something powerfully symptomatic is at work, then: a set of threatened investments, unacknowledged values, and repressed ideas which surface explosively, but indirectly, in the aesthetic outrage. In an attempt to understand the strange logic of public outrage against works of art, we will explore the works’ historical context, and use theoretical models — aesthetic, political, psychological, social — as a means of illuminating the dynamics of outrage and exposing understated linkages between the work’s figurative logic and the political passions of its historical moment. We will study instances of outrage against works addressing such crises as the French Revolution (Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro), the wave of anarchist terrorism in turn-of-the-century Paris (Jarry’s Ubu the King), World War II (Renoir’s film Rules of the Game and Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be), Stalinist collectivization (Eisenstein’s suppressed and aborted film Bezhin Meadow), the apartheid era in South Africa (anti-apartheid comedy by Pieter-Dirk Uys), and/or recent Islamist riots (Rushdie’s Satanic Verses). After two weeks in which we will meet as a group, students will meet with the instructor in pairs for one hour each week during the rest of the semester. They will write a 5- to 6-page paper every other week (five in all), and comment on their partners’ papers in alternate weeks. Emphasis will be placed on developing skills not only in reading and interpretation, but also in constructing critical arguments and responding to them in written and oral critiques.
The Class: Format: tutorial
Limit: 10
Expected: 10
Class#: 1315
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active participation in tutorial discussions, five 5- to 6-page papers, five 1- to 2-page critiques
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: a 100-level ENGL course, or a score of 5 on the AP English Literature exam, or a score of 6 or 7 on the Higher Level IB English exam
Enrollment Preferences: English majors
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 306 Division I COMP 300 Division I
Attributes: ENGL Criticism Courses
ENGL Literary Histories C

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