ENGL 383
Representing History
Spring 2018
Division I
Cross-listed
COMP 383
This is not the current course catalog
Class Details
Moments of political turmoil expose the highly charged ways in which a culture structures itself around a narrative past. In this course, we will read literary and cinematic works that invoke such moments of upheaval–the French and Russian Revolutions as well as those of 1848, the rise of fascism and the Great Depression of the 1930s, the battle for Algerian independence, the AIDS crisis, among others–in order to explore those fraught narratives of the past. We will consider such issues as the rise of the historical novel, the aesthetics of fascism and of democracy under pressure, fantasies of decolonization, representational clashes of culture, forms of affective and sexual disorientation, and the uses of melancholy in representing historical loss. Readings will be drawn from literary works by Gay, Edgeworth, Scott, Shelley, Balzac, Eliot, Conrad, Kafka, Babel, Mann, Borges, Stoppard, Kushner, Morrison, Pamuk, Bolano, and Philip, and theoretical essays by Kant, Burke, Carlyle, Marx, Benjamin, Adorno, Foucault, de Certeau, Jameson, Lefort and Ahmed. Films will include such works as Eisenstein’s October, Reifenstahl’s The Blue Light, Wellman’s Nothing Sacred and Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers.
The Class:
Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 18
Class#: 3830
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Limit: 25
Expected: 18
Class#: 3830
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation:
one 8- to 10-page essay and one 10- to 12-page essay
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
Notes:
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
COMP 383 Division I ENGL 383 Division I
COMP 383 Division I ENGL 383 Division I
Attributes:
ENGL Criticism Courses
ENGL Literary Histories B
ENGL Literary Histories B
Class Grid
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ENGL 383 - 01 (S) SEM Representing History
ENGL 383 - 01 (S) SEM Representing HistoryDivision IW 1:10 pm - 3:50 pm
Hopkins Hall 400 (Rogers Room)3830
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