Irish Modernism

Course Title: Irish Modernism
Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tihana Klepač
ECTS Credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 2nd or 4th semester
Status: Elective course

Course Overview: The course places Irish Modernism in the context of nation-state formation and identifies various attitudes towards this historical process and its protagonists as expressed in literary works.

Objective: To highlight the mechanisms that led to the formation of modernism in different English-speaking cultures; to emphasize the necessity of discussing modernity in colonial, national, and gender contexts.

Student Obligations: the final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance (max. 4 unattended classes), preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for midterm and endterm exam. The paper is worth 35%, midterm and endterm exams are worth 50% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 15% of the final grade. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.

Week-by-weekk schedule:

Week 1

Space and Themes of Modernism

Modernism, modernity, colonial, postcolonial, and semi-colonial culture, the use of literature for political purposes, cosmopolitanism versus nationalism

Week 2 and 3

Irish Culture and Literature at the Turn of the 19th to the 20th Century

Week 4

W.B. Yeats as the Initiator of the Irish Revival Movement (“Easter 1916”, “September 1913”, “The Statues”, “The Second Coming”, “Leda and the Swan”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “Among School Children”)

Week 5

Irish War of Independence

Sean O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman

Week 6 and 7

James Joyce: Dubliners – Semi-Colonial Writing, Personal and National Identity

Week 8

Mid-term exam

Week 9 and 10

James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Experiments in Form, Bildungsroman, Kunstlerroman, Personal and National Identity

Week 11 and 12

Elizabeth Bowen: The Last September, on the Process of Writing in Wartime, national identity

Week 13

Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot, Theater of the Absurd, Proto-Postmodernism

Week 14

Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls (1960) – Echoes of Modernism, Proto-Postmodernism

Week 15

End-term exam

Contemporary U.S. Ethnic Literatures (2023/24)

Dr. Jelena Šesnić Literary seminar: Contemporary U.S. Ethnic Literatures (1st/2nd Year) (A, 20th c.)
Summer 2023/2024
E-mail: jsesnic@ffzg.hr

Phone: 01-4092060

Course description: The course examines a very innovative and dynamic section of contemporary US literary/cultural production—literature produced by and about different established and newly arisen “ethnic communities” with special focus on the 1965 immigration reform, post-Cold War and post-9/11 developments, respectively. We shall address new modes of representing the ways of belonging, community and citizenship in relation to representative ethnic groups (African American, Native American), while in the second part of the course the attention will be given to the ways new cultural productions (both visual and textual) address concerns felt by more recent or recently more visible ethnic and racial formations (Asian American, Latino/ Chicano, Arab American, etc.). These textual and visual artefacts make evident some continuing concerns with nation- and community-building in the States, while they depict a new class of national subjects, a new generation of Americans. 

Requirements: Regular attendance and class participation; in-class and home assignments; seminar paper (10-12 double-spaced pp.); continuous assessment (midterm and final test).

Reading / viewing list
Primary texts

Novels
Gish Jen: Mona in the Promised Land (1996)
Mohja Kahf: Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah (2013)
Memoirs
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me (2015)
Short stories
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (1999; selection)
Junot Díaz: This Is How You Lose Her (2012; selection)
Films
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989); Smoke Signals (Chris Eyre, 1998); Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)

Readings by weeks and sections (alterations possible)
Part I: An overview
Introductory remarks: approaching ethnicity; interdisciplinarity in the study of ethnicity; race theory and ethnicity school; “racial formations” (Omi and Winant); consent and descent (Sollors); symbolic (voluntary) and ascribed (compulsory) ethnicity; American ethnic/racial pentagon; fantasmatic aspects of racial identifications; long-term ethnic groups/racial formations: African Americans, American Indians

*Entries from Keywords: “Citizenship”, “Ethnicity”, “Nation”, “Naturalization”, “Race”

March
Week 1: Introduction and key concepts 
Week 2: African-American perspective: Do the Right Thing
Week 3: African-American perspective: Coates, Between the World and Me
Week 4: Amerindians and postmodernism: Smoke Signals

Part II: An overview
New racial formations; Chicanos and Latinos/Hispanics; Asian Americans; Arab Americans; post-1965 immigration and globalization; new paradigms of reading ethnic texts: diasporic and borderlands models

*The following entries from Keywords: “Border”, “Diaspora”, “Immigration”, “Mestizo”

Week 5: Chicanos as a sub-nation: Lone Star

April
Week 1 Latino diaspora: Junot Díaz: selection of short stories
Week 2: Midterm.
Week 3: Asian Americans as perpetual others: Lahiri: selection of short stories
Week 4: Asian Americans: Gish Jen: Mona in the Promised Land

May
Week 1: Gish Jen, cont.
Week 2: Post 9/11 and Arab Americans: Mohja Kahf: Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
Week 3: Kahf, cont.
Week 4: New African diaspora: Adichie: Americanah

June
Week 1: Adichie; cont.
Week 2: Evaluation. Final test.

Secondary readings
General introduction:

Appiah, Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. New Haven: Princeton UP, 2007. (selection)
Burgett, Bruce, and Glenn Hendler, eds. Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York and London: NYUP, 2007.
(Entries: “Border”, “Citizenship”, “Diaspora”, “Ethnicity”, “Immigration”, “Mestizo”, “Nation”, “Naturalization”, “Race”)
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. 53-76.
Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. 20-39.

Additional material for each section will be provided in digital form on the Omega platform.

Anglophone Women’s Writing

Course title: Anglophone Women’s Writing
Instructor:
Assoc. Prof. Martina Domines
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective
Semester: 2nd and 4th semester
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 2nd and 4th semester

Course description: The course offers an insight into feminist theories of the 2nd half of the 20th century to the present day on the examples of poetry and prose writing of important Anglophone women writers. The focus will be on the meaning and significance of patriarchy and the changes it brings in the private and public spheres of life. In the first part of the course we will talk about the politics of intimate life and the ethics of care and vulnerability, while in the second part we will focus on the social reproduction theory by reading representative working-class women’s novels in order to understand the connection between economic exploitation and social vs. private oppression of women in the contemporary capitalist society.

Objectives: To acquaint the students with the foundations of feminist literary theories and to show the role and evolution of patriarchy by using chosen works of Anglophone women writers.

Course requirements: the final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance (max. absences allowed: 4), preparation for class, in-class participation, writing small assignments, obligatory sitting for midterm exam and timely submission of the final paper. The paper is worth 35%, midterm exam 40% and other elements of continuous assessment are worth 25% of the final grade. Students must fulfill all elements of continuous assessment.

Week by week schedule

Week 1: Women and literary history (excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf)
Week 2: Introduction to feminist literary theories of the 20th and 21st centuries (excerpts from Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Millett, Elaine Showalter, S. Gilbert & S. Gubar)
Week 3: Patriarchy, nuclear family, motherhood: Virginia Woolf ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927)
Week 4: Woolf continued
Week 5: Female body: Sylvia Plath ‘Ariel’ (1965); Louise Glück ‘ Descending Figure’ (1980) & Carol Ann Duffy ‘The World’s Wife’ (1999)
Week 6: Canon re-inscription: Emma Donoghue ‘Kissing the Witch’ (1997)
Week 7: Mid-term exam
Week 8:  Feminism and social reproduction theory (chosen texts by Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser and Tithi Bhattacharya)
Week 9:  Ethel Carnie Holdsworth ‘This Slavery’ (1925)
Week 10: Holdsworth continued
Week 11: Jeanette Winterson ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ (1985)
Week 12: Winterson continued
Week 13: Kerry Hudson ‘Lowborn’ (2019)
Week 14: Wrap-up discussion and instructions for seminar papers
Week 15: End-term exam

 

Reading list:

Primary sources:
Virginia Woolf: ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927)

Zbirke poezije: Sylvia Plath ‘Ariel’ (1965); Louise Glück ‘Descending Figure’ (1980); Carol Ann Duffy ‘The World’s Wife’ (1999)

Emma Donoghue ‘Kissing the Witch’ (1997)

Ethel Carnie Holdsworth ‘This Slavery’ (1925)

Jeanette Winterson ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ (1985)

Kerry Hudson ‘Lowborn’ (2019)

 

Secondary sources:

Belsey, Catherine & Jane Moore. ‘The Feminist Reader’, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989

Finke, Laurie A.. ‘Feminist Theory, Women’s Writing’, Ithaca, London: Cornell UP, 1992

Roberts, Helen (ed.). ‘Doing Feminist Research’, London, New York: Routledge, 1992

Rooney, Ellen (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006

De Beauvoir, Simone. ‘The Second Sex’, London: Vintage, 1997

Woolf, Virginia. ‘A Room of One’s Own’, London: Penguin Books, 2000

Butscher, Edward. ‘Sylvia Plath: Method & Madness’, Tucson: Schaffner Press, 2003

Smyth, Ailbhe. ‘Irish Women Studies Reader’, Dublin: Ahic Press, 1993

Russo, John & Sherry Lee Linkon (ed.) ‘New Working-Class Studies’, London: ILP Press, 2005

Goodridge, John & Bridget Keegan (ed.) ‘A History of British Working-Class Literature’, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017

Bhattacharya, Tithi (ed.) ‘ A Social Reproduction Theory’, London: Pluto Press, 2017

Aruzza, Cinzia, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser. ‘Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto’, London & New York: Verso, 2019

 

London in Modern Anglophone Women’s Literature

Course title: London in Modern Anglophone Women’s Literature
ECTS credits 6
Semester: Summer, 2nd or 4th
Instructor:
Tihana Klepač, PhD, Assoc. Prof.

Prerequisites: None

Goal
To become aware of mechanisms which led to the formulation of Modernism in different cultures of the English speaking world: to become aware of the necessity of discussion on modernity in colonial, national and gender context.

Teaching methods
Lectures and seminars

Assessment methods
Continuous assessment

Learning outcomes

  1. Definition and reproduction of key information from the course (space and time of modernism, women’s writing)
  2. Recognition, connection and understanding of main ideas from the course (colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial; majority/minority; history/story; Other/other; center/margin; women’s writing)
  3. Application of the material learned in new situation by relying on main ideas and information from the course (independent work on the text)
  4. Critical judging of ideas, understanding of similarities and differences based on the work on literary texts (European Modernism vs. contemporary extended space of modernism; canon vs. minority text)
  5. Synthetization and connection of knowledge from different areas (literature, anthropology, history, geography, visual arts) and application of this knowledge in formulation of new texts

 

Syllabus:

  1. Discussion of mechanisms which led to the formulation of Modernism in different cultures in the English-speaking world. Discussion of modernity in colonial, national and gender context.
  2. Space and topics of Modernism

Douglas Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz: “The New Modernist Studies”

  1. London as a hub of modern Anglophone writing: focus on colonial, national and gender context
  2. Internationalism vs. nationalist and regional characteristics of Canadian art

Sara Jeanette Duncan: Cousin Cinderella

  1. Black girl in a predominantly while London after WWII, break-up of the British Empire, ethnic movements

Una Marson: Pocomania i London Calling

  1. Modernism between different literary forces – Caribbean, Modernist, womens’ writing and postcolonialism

Jean Rhys: Voyage in the Dark

  1. Politically engaged Modernist aesthetics

Olive Schreiner: From Man to Man

  1. Socialist ideas and Australian youth at the beginning of 20th century

Christina Stead: Seven Poor Men of Sydney

  1. Colonial Modernism in the so called “little” magazines

Katherine Mansfield: “Life of Ma Parker”, “The Garden Party”, “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  
  4.  
  5.  
  6.  

 

LITERATURE:
Douglas Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz: “The New Modernist Studies”
Sara Jeanette Duncan: Cousin Cinderella
Una Marson: Pocomania i London Calling
Jean Rhys: Woman in the Dark
Olive Schreiner: From Man to Man
Christina Stead: Seven Poor Men of Sydney
Katherine Mansfield: “Life of Ma Parker”, “The Garden Party”, “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”

ADDITIONAL:
Anna Snaith: Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890-1945
Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker: Geographies of Modernism
Elleke Boehmer: Empire, the National and the Postcolonial 1890-1920
Elleke Boehmer: Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire
Partha Chatterjee: Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World
Neil Lazarus: Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World
Anne McClintock: Imperial Leather
Delia Jarrett-Macaulay: The Life of Una Marson, 1905–1960
Carolyn Burdett: Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism
Sylvie Maurel: Jean Rhys
Diana Brydon: Christina Stead
Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber, Susan Reid (eds): Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism

 

Narrative DissemiNation of the Land of Oz: Indigenous storytelling

Instructor: Assoc. Prof. Iva Polak
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Status: elective
Semester: 2 or 4
Enrolment requirements: enrolment in any graduate studies of the English Department
Course description: The course focuses on contemporary Indigenous Australian cultural production and its location within contemporary Australia. Discussions will touch upon myriad issues relevant for contemporary Indigeneities: identity, gender, multiculturalism, contemporary life, urban setting vs the outback. Selected texts (fiction, films, documentaries) range from realist to speculative. The emphasis will be placed on Indigenous humour as the prevailing trait of their cultural production. The course also includes a historical survey of Indigenous presence in Australia and introduction into Indigenous culture.
Objectives: Broadening readers’ expectations and cultural horizons to suit (as much as possible) the needs of the Indigenous literary and cinematic text.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular classes attendance (max. 4 unattended classes), preparation for and participation in class discussions, and writing and timely submission of a series of short written assignments (seven assignments, c. 1500-2000 words per assignment). Assignments are written after the end of each topical unit. Students must receive a minimum passing grade for reach written assignment to successfully pass the course.

Week by week schedule:
Week 1
Introduction to Indigenous Australia: pre-colonial and early colonial contact

Babakiueria (1986) dir. Don Featherstone, mockumentary
Week 2
Introduction to Indigenous Australia: Colonial and Post/neo-colonial contact

SBS documentary series First Australians (2008): Episode 5
Week 3
Introduction to Indigenous Australia: Post/neo-colonial contact

SBS documentary series First Australians (2008): Episode 7
Week 4
Introduction to Indigenous Australian Culture

Contact (2009) documentary
Cannibal Story (2013) animated short
Week 5
Retelling the story of Australia’s Terra Nullius as Australia’s “future history”

Claire G. Coleman. Terra Nullius (2017)
Week 6
Assimilation era wrapped in dark humour

Marie Munkara. “Sorry means you don’t do it again” (2011) essay
Marie Munkara. A Most Peculiar Act (2014)
Week 7
Introduction to Indigenous cinema

Indigenous masculinities on screen
Mad Bastards (2010) dir. Brendan Fletcher
Week 8
Mystery Road (2013) dir. Ivan Sen

Week 9
Contemporary topics

Vivienne Cleven. Bitin’ Back (2001)
Week 10
Contemporary situation in the outback

Limbo (2023) dir. Ivan Sen
Week 11
Imagining different futures

Sam Watson. “I Say This to You” (1994) essay
Sam Watson. “Recipe for Metropolis Brisbane” (2002) poem
Sam Watson. The Kadaitcha Sung (1990)
Week 12
Sam Watson. The Kadaitcha Sung (1990)

Week 13
Australian film and David Gulpilil: Indigenous humour and resilience

Charlie’s Country (2014) dir. Rolf de Heer
Week 14
Final discussion

Fiction:
Terra Nullius (2017) Claire G. Coleman
A Most Peculiar Act (2014) Marie Munkara
Bitin’ Back (2001) Vivienne Cleven
The Kadaitcha Sung (1990) Sam Watson

Feature films:
Babakiueria (1986) dir. Don Featherstone, mockumentary
Mad Bastards (2010) dir. Brendan Fletcher
Mystery Road (2013) dir. Ivan Sen
Charlie’s Country (2014) dir. Rolf de Heer
Limbo (2023) dir. Ivan Sen

Documentaries:
SBS documentary series First Australians (2008): Episode 5 and 7
Contact (2009) documentary
Cannibal Story (2013) animated short

Criticism:
– Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin Eds. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London/New York: Routledge, 2002. (selected terms)
– Holt, Lillian. “Aboriginal humour: A conversational corroboree”. Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour. Eds. Fran De Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick, St Lucia, Queensland: UQP, 2009: 81-94.
– Milner Davis, Jessica “‘Aussie’ humour and laughter: Joking as an acculturating ritual”. Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour. Eds. Fran De Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick, St Lucia, Queensland: UQP, 2009: 31-47.
– Munkara, Marie. “Sorry means you don’t do it again”, Overland, Issue 205, 2011: 59-60.
– Nicholls, Christine. “‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’ – an introduction”. A Year in Life of Australia. The Conversation. Ed. The Conversation, Sydney: Future Leaders. 2014: 77-82.
– Nicholls, Christine. “Dreaming and place – Aboriginal monsters and their meanings”. A Year in Life of Australia. The Conversation. Ed. The Conversation, Sydney: Future Leaders, 2014: 82-91.
– Polak, Iva. Futuristic Worlds in Australian Aboriginal Fiction. Peter Lang: Oxford, 2017. Chapter 6
– Watson, Sam. “I Say This to You”, Meanjin, Vol. 53, No. 4, 1994: 589-596.
– Wheeler, Belinda ed. A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature, Camden House: Rochester, New York: 2013.

All textual and audio-visual materials are provided in electronic form via cloud service.

The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (Cvek, 2021)

Course title:
Literary Seminar (MA Level): The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (A, 19/20)
Instructor: Dr. Jelena Šesnić, Dr. Sven Cvek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective (obligatory for American Studies majors in the 2nd semester)
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 2nd and/or 4th semester
Spring 2021
Office: B-018
Phone: 01- 4092060

Syllabus
Course description:
This course is a companion course to the History and Paradigms of American Studies1 which investigates the origins of the discipline of American Studies. Since the 1970s, however, the discipline has undertaken to interrogate some of its main premises based on the changing conceptions of U.S. society and the nation-state. Even though the revisionist interventions began to be felt already in the 1970s, we will posit as a starting point of our inquiry a methodological break observable in the 1980s as “ideology” becomes a necessary accompaniment of any AS inquiry. The next historical break—the end of the Cold War in 1989—indicates another momentous shift as we follow the developments thereafter. These will demonstrate the efforts by so-called New Americanists to devise contesting models of American culture, while the emphases in their agendas may differ, as our readings will show. In the process of revising American Studies various theories have been made use of ranging from New Historicism to poststructuralism, to ethnic/ race, feminist and gender studies to Marxism and cultural studies to transnational perspectives. In the last part of the course the foregoing theories will be tested on an array of texts. The course is obligatory for AS majors.

Course requirements: Regular attendance, participation in class discussions, mid-term and final test (continuous assessment, mandatory), presentation in class, written assignments and a final seminar paper. Grade break-down: tests—40 %, seminar paper—40 %; the rest—20 %.

Syllabus (alterations possible):
In the summer semester 2020/21 the instructor will be Sven Cvek.

 

 

Re-presenting Los Angeles and the American City in Media

Course Title: Re-presenting Los Angeles and the American City in Media
Instructor:
Dr. Leo Zonn

Semester: winter or summer semester 2010/11
The University of Texas at Austin, Fulbright Visitor
Course Title: Re-presenting Los Angeles and the American City in Media
Eligible Students: Graduate, Elective Course
ECTS credits: 6

Course Description: The purpose of this course is to examine representations of Los Angeles in the media of popular culture, with an emphasis upon race, ethnicity, gender, and the ways in which Los Angeles represents the ‘post-modern city’ in a globalizing world of increasingly intense interactions. The theoretical notions of place, space, and re-presentation frame our conversations, while examples from other American cities are often incorporated. A variety of media that contribute to images of Los Angeles will be considered as part of a larger network—cinema, cyberspace, documentary film, maps, murals, music and music videos, novels and short stories, newspapers and magazines, paintings and illustrations, Retablos and other folk art, television, tourist practices, and word of mouth. We can only examine a few of these in detail, but we should not ever forget that they are all interrelated with one another and with the reality of Los Angeles and beyond. We will talk about the concept of inter-textualityand associated post-structural ideas, but we should never forget that there are many versions of any reality we might think we know and they are never independent of one another. In this case these many media contribute to an image of a place called Los Angeles.

Course Objectives: And what new skills and perspectives will you have at the end of the semester other than the fact you will know much more about Los Angeles and how people see it than you did before? You will have a better sense of how to interpret the ways in which media tell us about places, in this case American cities, but you will also be more able to ask how and why do they do it. For example, what broader tales about the U.S. and the American city are being told, what broader issues about its people are embedded in these re-presentations? Race, ethnicity and gender will occupy much of our time, so what do these images say about relations between social and cultural groups in my country? How do different audiences view the same images in these terms? One of our primary objectives then, is to provide you a new framework for interpreting re-presentations not only in terms of people who created them, but perhaps more importantly in understanding the ways in which they reflect the broader culture and society within which they were made.
Course Requirements: A final examination will comprise 20% of your grade, attendance, participation and several smaller papers will be 40%, and your final paper will be 40%. Less than ideal attendance can have a negative influence on your grade. Your final paper will be a detailed and comparative study of works from within several media in terms of the ways in which they re-present the city of Los Angeles. You will be expected to incorporate the ideas we have discussed in class and have derived from our readings. Details are forthcoming, but relax, we will discuss the possible subjects and the ways in which you can approach them in detail.

Required Readings
The only book that is required is a short novel, The Day of the Locust, by Nathaniel West. We will be drawing select readings from City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (2006 edition) by Mike Davis, so you may wish to obtain a copy; it is considered to be a classic (the original edition was 1990). All other readings will be made available to you or the references will be provided and you can download them. More important, you will also be asked to find articles that will not be provided by me but that you will find through your own searching. Many of these will be included in the bibliography you will include in your paper.

We will watch and listen to pieces and segments direct from the web in terms of advertisements, music videos, and other media forms. While this class is about many different media, we will emphasize film for at least the first third of the semester. If we can somehow watch one or two, they will likely come from the following list: Blade Runner, Chinatown, Double Indemnity, Menace to Society, L.A. Story, Quincenera orMiFamilia, although there are so many, many interesting possibilities. How about Clueless?

Office and Contact
Office: B-017

Office Hours: Thursday 2.00-4.00 or by appointment

Please note that it is appropriate to contact me for appointments or information about class content at my email address, zonn@mail.utexas.edu

The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (Šesnić, 2022)

Course title: Literary Seminar (MA Level): The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2
(A, 19/20)
Instructor: Dr. Jelena Šesnić. Dr. Sven Cvek
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective (obligatory for American Studies majors in the 2nd semester)
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 2nd and/or 4th semester
Spring 2022
Mon, 10:15-11:45 (A-105); Wed, 8.00-8:45 (D 5)

Office: B-018
Phone: 01- 4092060
Office hours: Mon, 12:30-13:30 p.m.; Thur, 10:00-11:00 a.m., and by appointment
E-mail: jsesnic@ffzg.hr

Syllabus
Course description:
This course is a companion course to the History and Paradigms of American Studies1 which investigates the origins of the discipline of American Studies. Since the 1970s, however, the discipline has undertaken to interrogate some of its main premises based on the changing conceptions of U.S. society and the nation-state. Even though the revisionist interventions began to be felt already in the 1970s, we will posit as a starting point of our inquiry a methodological break observable in the 1980s as “ideology” becomes a necessary accompaniment of any AS inquiry. The next historical break—the end of the Cold War in 1989—indicates another momentous shift as we follow the developments thereafter. These will demonstrate the efforts by so-called New Americanists to devise contesting models of American culture, while the emphases in their agendas may differ, as our readings will show. In the process of revising American Studies various theories have been made use of ranging from New Historicism to poststructuralism, to ethnic/ race, feminist and gender studies to Marxism and cultural studies to transnational perspectives. In the last part of the course the foregoing theories will be tested on an array of texts. The course is obligatory for AS majors.

Course requirements: Regular attendance, participation in class discussions, mid-term and final test (continuous assessment, mandatory), presentation in class, written assignments and a final seminar paper. Grade break-down: tests—40 %, seminar paper—40 %; the rest—20 %.

Syllabus (alterations possible):

Primary works:

  1. Henry David Thoreau: Walden (1854). Multiple copies in the library; begin reading from session one.
  2. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1790?). Available in the library; start reading early.
  3. Bruce Springsteen: selection
  4. Alex Rivera: Sleep Dealer (2008; film)

March

Week 1: Laying the ground for (new) American Studies: disciplinary premises and theoretical frameworks: Leo Marx, Oppermann: intro. Begin reading Walden.

Week 2: Ideology and readings of American artefacts in the 1980s and beyond: H. D. Thoreau: Walden (1854). Exemplary approaches to Walden: 1. Michael Gilmore: “Walden and the ‘Curse of Trade’”

Week 3: Exemplary approaches to Walden: 2. Lawrence Buell: “Walden’s Environmental Projects.” 3. Various authors: “Thoreau’s Walden in the Twenty-First Century”

Week 4: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: revisions of the frontier myth: Prince: intro. 1. Richard Slotkin: from Gunfighter Nation.

Week 5: Revisions of the frontier myth: 2. Patricia N. Limerick: from Something in the Soil; 3. Neil Campbell, from The Cultures of the American New West.

April

Week 6: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: identity approaches (race, ethnicity, gender, class and religious identities). African American studies: Ron Eyerman.

Week 7: Easter Monday: no class. African-American studies: cont. Individual research project.

Week 8: Asian American studies: David Palumbo-Liu. Mid-term test.

Week 9: Chicano and Latino studies: Paul Lauter.

May

Week 10: Crises and ruptures: 9/11, Katrina: Pease, “Re-thinking American Studies”; C. Franklin; M. Sturken.

Week 11: Crises and ruptures: American Studies and China: Dirlik; Ross; Luk.

Week 12: Crises and ruptures: university in debt: C. Marez; M. Joseph.

Week 13: Case study 1: Bruce Springsteen: masculinity, religion, ethnicity, nationalism. Selection from Womack et al., ed., Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream

June

Week 14: Case study 2: Benjamin Franklin: Shapiro; Castronovo. Seminar paper.

Week 15: Case study 3: Rivera: Sleep Dealer; J. Melamed. Course evaluation. Final test.

Reading materials will be provided in a course pack on Omega.

Secondary readings:

Bercovitch, Sacvan, and Myra Jehlen, ed. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Cambridge UP, 1986. (selection)

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. The Belknap P of the Harvard UP, 1996. (selection)

Campbell, Neil. The Cultures of the American New West. Edinburgh UP, 2000. (selection)

Dallmann, Antje et al., ed. Approaches to American Cultural Studies. Routledge 2016. (selection)

Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. Cambridge UP, 2001. (selection)

Lauter, Paul. From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park: Activism, Culture, and American Studies. Duke UP, 2001. (selection)

Limerick, Patricia Nelson. Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West. W.W. Norton, 2000. (selection)

Palumbo-Liu, David. Asian/ American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier. Stanford UP, 1999. (selection)

Shapiro, Stephen. The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel: Reading the Atlantic World-System. Pennsylvania State UP, 2008. (selection)

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. U of Oklahoma P, 1998. (selection)

Womack, Kenneth, et al., ed. Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream. Ashgate, 2012.

A course reader with assigned readings will be provided on Omega.

_____________
from spring 2020

The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (Šesnić, 2018)(arch.)

Course title: The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (A, 19th c./20th c.)
Instructor: Dr. Jelena Šesnić
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective (obligatory for American Studies majors in the 2nd semester)
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 2nd and/or 4th semester

Course description: This course is a companion course to the History and Paradigms of American Studies1 which investigates the origins of the discipline of American Studies. Since the 1970s, however, the discipline has undertaken to interrogate some of its main premises based on the changing conceptions of U.S. society and the nation-state. Even though the revisionist interventions begin to be felt already in the 1970s, we will posit as a starting point of our inquiry a methodological break observable in the 1980s as “ideology” becomes a necessary accompaniment of any AS inquiry. The next historical break—the end of the Cold War in 1989—indicates another momentous shift as we follow the developments thereafter. The next point of interest is 9/11 and the way it refocused the work in the discipline. These will demonstrate the efforts by so-called New Americanists to devise contesting models of American culture, while the emphases in their agendas may differ, as our readings will show. In the process of revising American Studies various theories have been made use of, ranging from New Historicism to poststructuralism, to ethnic/ race, feminist and gender studies to Marxism and cultural studies to transnational perspectives. In the process it becomes evident how each new methodology in the discipline invents, as it were, a new conception of “America” as its object of study while ur-theories and underlying conceptions in the discipline of AS show great resilience and attest to continuity. In the last part of the course the foregoing theories will be tested on an array of texts. The course is obligatory for AS majors and elective for other English MA students.
Course requirements: regular attendance, participation in class discussions, mid-term and final test (continuous assessment), presentation in class, written assignments and a final seminar paper

Syllabus (alterations possible):

Week 1: Laying the ground for (new) American Studies: disciplinary premises and theoretical frameworks (Fluck, L. Marx, Pease, Spanos)

Week 2: Ideology and readings of American artefacts in the 1980s and beyond: L. Marx, revision of American pastoralism)

Week 3: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: R. Slotkin, revision of the frontier myth

Week 4: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: S. Bercovitch, revision of the Puritan hypothesis; Spanos

Week 5: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: identity approaches (race, ethnicity, gender, class and religious identities): ethnic studies and American studies (G. Lipsitz; T. Chakkalakal; P. Chu)

Week 6: Identity approaches: class and American studies (M. Denning; W. Fluck)

Week 7: Identity approaches: religion and American studies (J. Mechling; K. Lofton)

Week 8: Mid-term test.

Week 9: Identity approaches: gender and American studies (Sh. Samuels)

Week 10: Post 9/11 and a new state of the discipline: J. C. Rowe; D. Watson

Week 11: Contemporary America: politics, society, the economy: Love Guv series

Week 12: Case study 1: Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791, 1793; Shapiro)

Week 13: Case study 2: Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton (musical, 2015) (The Federalist Papers, 1787/88; Ambrose)

Week 14: Case study 3: C. L. R. James: Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (excerpts) (Pease)

Week 15: Final test. Course evaluation.

Readings (selection)

– Bercovitch, Sacvan, and Myra Jehlen, eds. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (selection)

– Grgas, Stipe. Američki studiji danas: identitet, kapital, spacijalnost. Zagreb: Meandar, 2015. (selection)

– Fluck, Winfried, Donald E. Pease, and John Carlos Rowe, eds. Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2011. (selection)

– Levander, Caroline and Robert S. Levine, eds. A Companion to American Literary Studies. Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. (selection)

-Pease, Donald, and Robyn Wiegman, eds. The Futures of American Studies. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. (selection)

– Rowe, John Carlos, ed. A Concise Companion to American Studies. Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (selection)

– Rowe, John Carlos. The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2012.Open Humanities Press. http://www.scribd.com/doc/132330117/Rowe-The-Cultural-Politics-of-the-New-American-Studies (selection)

– Shu, Yuan, and Donald E. Pease, eds. American Studies as Transnational Practice: Turning towards the Transpacific. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2015.

A course reader with assigned readings will be provided on Omega.

 

 

Ethics and Aesthetics of British Modernism

Course title: Ethics and Aesthetics of British Modernism
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 2nd or 4th semester
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Prerequisites: completed undergraduate studies
Course description: The course deals with trauma theory the New Poverty Studies in order to address the issue of modernist subjectivity in a wider socio-political context after the First World War.
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation).

Weekly schedule:
Week 1: socio-historical context, 1930s in England
Week 2: First World War and war trauma
Week 3: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Week 4: Mrs. Dalloway continued
Week 5: Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen (selections of poetry)
Week 6: Goodbye To All That (1929)
 Week 7: Mid-term exam
Week 8: New Poverty Studies, introduction
Week 9: The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922)
Week 10: The Garden Party and Other Stories continued
Week 11: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Week 12: Down and Out continued
Week 13: Pygmalion (1913)
Week 14: final remarks
Week 15: End-term exam, seminar paper


Reading list:
Primary literature:
Virginia Woolf (1925) Mrs. Dalloway
Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen – selections of poetry
Robert Graves (1929) Goodbye To All That
Katherine Mansfield (1922) The Garden Party and Other Stories
George Orwell (1933) Down and Out in Paris and London
George Bernard Shaw (1913) Pygmalion

Secondary literature:
Caruth, Cathy (ed.)
Trauma – Explorations in Memory (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1995)
Childs, Peter. Modernism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000)
Clarke, J., C. Critcher and R. Johnson. Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979)
Ellison, David. Ethics and Aesthetics in European Modernist Literature (Cambridge UP, 2001)
Haywood, Ian. Working-Class Fiction: from Chartism to Trainspotting (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1997)
Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy (Penguin Books, 1960)
Howarth, Peter. British Poetry in the Age of Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2005)
Hunt, Nigel C. Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge UP, 2010)
Innes, Christopher. The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw (Cambridge UP, 1998)
Korte, Barbara, Frédéric Regard (eds.) Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2014)
Leys, Ruth. Trauma-A Genealogy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge UP, 2007)
Linehan, Thomas. Modernism and British Socialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Luckhurst, Roger. The Trauma Question (London and New York: Routledge, 2008)
Punter, David. The Literature of Pity (Edinburgh UP, 2014)
Rabaté, Jean-Michel. 1913: The Cradle of Modernism (Blackwell Publishing, 2007)
Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (The University of Chicago Press, 1994)
Russo, John and Sherry Lee Linkon. New Working-Class Studies (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2005)
Sellers, Susan (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf (Cambridge UP, 2000)
Silkin, Jon (ed.) The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (London: Penguin Books, 1978)

 

British Romanticism: prose

Course title: British Romanticism: prose
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th, 8th or 10th semester
in ac. year 2017/18: 4th or 6th semester

Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 4th or 6th, 8th or 10th semester
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature

Course description: This module aims to engage students at a high level of scholarly rigour with the key themes, ideas and concerns of British Romanticism and with the wider historical, cultural and political contexts out of which they emerged. We will depart from the socio-historical contexts (Scottish Enlightenment, French Revolution, women rights) and a selection of texts which were central for the lively public debates of the period. We will then continue with the representative prose texts covering the gothic novel, the Scottish historical novel and Romantic confessional writing. Primary readings will be balanced with critical essays.
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation).

Weekly schedule:
Week 1: socio-historical context, from the Scottish Enlightenment to English Romanticism, excerpts from Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution, Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Week 2: historical novel, Scottish national identity
Week 3: Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
Week 4: Waverley
Week 5: autobiography, Romantic confessional narratives (from St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Week 6: James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Week 7: Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Week 8: Mid-term exam
Week 9: gothic novel-genre development
Week 10: Horace Walpole (1764) The Castle of Otranto
 Week 11: Jane Austen (1817) Northanger Abbey
 Week 12: <Northanger Abbey some scenes from the movie Northanger Abbey directed by Jon Jones (2007)
Week 13: Mary Shelley (1818) Frankenstein
 Week 14: Frankensteincont. with some scenes from the movie Frankenstein (2004) directed by Kenneth Branagh
Week 15: End-term exam, seminar paper

Reading list:
Primary literature :
Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Horace Walpole (1764), The Castle of Otranto
Jane Austen (1817) Northanger Abbey
Mary Shelley (1818) Frankenstein

Secondary literature:
Anderson, Linda. Autobiography (New York & London: Routlege, 2001)
Broadie, Alexander (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge UP, 2003)
Burwick, Frederick. Thomas de Quincey: Knowledge and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
Chandler, James. The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature (Cambridge UP,
2008)
Clery, E. J. Women’s Gothic: from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. (Tavistock, 2004)
Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen
(Cambridge UP, 1997)
Crawford, Robert (ed.). The Scottish Invention of English Literature (Cambridge UP, 1998)
Daiches, David. The Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh and Aberdeen: The Saltire Society,
1986)
De Bolla, Peter, Nigel Leask, David Simpson. Land, Nation, Culture: 1740-1840 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
De Groot, Jerome. The Historical Novel (London, New York: Routledge, 2010)
Duncan, Ian. Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2007)
Duncan, Ian and Douglas S. Mack (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg
(Edinburgh UP, 2012)
Levi, Susan M. The Romantic Art of Confession (New York and Woodbridge: Camden
House1998)
Lukács Georg. The Historical Novel (London: Merlin Press, 1962)
McCalman, Ian. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832
(Oxford UP, 1999)
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 (London and New York: Verso,
1998)
Moretti, Franco. Signs Taken for Wonders (London and New York, 1983)
Olney, James. Memory and Narrative: the weave of life-writing (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000)
Punter, David (ed.) A Companion to the Gothic (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008)
Robertson, Fiona (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh UP, 2012)
Smith, Joanna M. (ed.) Frankenstein: complete authoritative text with biographical and
historical contexts, critical history and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives. (Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1992)
Smith, Sidonie, Julia Watson (eds.) Women, Autobiography, Theory: a Reader (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
Townshend, Dale. The Orders of Gothic: Foucault, Lacan and the subject of Gothic
writing, 1764 – 1820 (New York: AMS Press, 2007)
Wu, Duncan (ed.). A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)

The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (Šesnić, 2017)

Course title: The History and Paradigms of American Studies 2 (A, 19th c./20th c.)
Instructor: Dr. Jelena Šesnić
ECTS credits: 6
Status: elective (obligatory for American Studies majors in the 8th semester)
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 8th and/or 10th semester
Course description: This course is a companion course to the History and Paradigms of American Studies1 which investigates the origins of the discipline of American Studies. Since the 1970s, however, the discipline has undertaken to interrogate some of its main premises based on the changing conceptions of U.S. society and the nation-state. Even though the revisionist interventions begin to be felt already in the 1970s, we will posit as a starting point of our inquiry a methodological break observable in the 1980s as “ideology” becomes a necessary accompaniment of any AS inquiry. The next historical break—the end of the Cold War in 1989—indicates another momentous shift as we follow the developments thereafter. The next point of interest is 9/11 and the way it refocused the work in the discipline. These will demonstrate the efforts by so-called New Americanists to devise contesting models of American culture, while the emphases in their agendas may differ, as our readings will show. In the process of revising American Studies various theories have been made use of, ranging from New Historicism to poststructuralism, to ethnic/ race, feminist and gender studies to Marxism and cultural studies to international/ transnational perspectives. In the process it becomes evident how each new methodology in the discipline invents, as it were, a new conception of “America” as its object of study while ur-theories and underlying conceptions in the discipline of AS show great resilience and attest to continuity. In the last part of the course the foregoing theories will be tested on an array of texts. The course is obligatory for AS majors.

Course requirements: regular attendance, participation in class discussions, mid-term and final test (continuous assessment), presentation in class, written assignments and a final seminar paper

Syllabus (alterations possible):

Week 1: Laying the ground for (new) American Studies: disciplinary premises and theoretical frameworks (Fluck, L. Marx, Pease, Spanos)

Week 2: Ideology and readings of American artefacts in the 1980s (L. Marx: revision of American pastoralism; Slotkin, Prince: revision of the frontier myth), Bercovitch

Week 3: Ideology and readings of American artefacts: identity approaches (ethnic, race, gender, border, class and religious identities) Morrison, Kaplan, Carby

Week 4: Identity approaches (cont.): Parikh, Stievermann, Dallmann

Week 5: Identity approaches (cont.): Banita, Boesenberg, O’Neill

Week 6: Framing the transnational turn: from national to post-national studies : Pease, Shapiro, Shu

Week 7: Mid-term test. Individual project discussions.

Week 8: Framing the transnational turn: imperial, hemispheric and globalist approaches (Anzaldúa, Pisarz-Ramirez, Rowe)

Week 9: Post 9/11 and a new state of the discipline: Pease, Aravamudan, Merodovoi, Gray

Week 10: Contemporary America: politics, society, the economy (Pease; Spanos; Grgas)

Week 11: Case study 1: Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791, 1793; Shapiro)

Week 12: Case study 2: Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton (musical, 2015) (The Federalist Papers, 1787/88; Ambrose)

Week 13: Case study 3: C. L. R. James: Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (excerpts) (Pease)

Week 14: Individual project and seminar paper topics presentation and discussions.

Week 15: Final test; course evaluation.

Readings (selection)

-Bercovitch, Sacvan, and Myra Jehlen, eds. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. (selection)

– Castronovo, Russ, and Susan Gillman, eds. States of Emergency: The Object of American Studies. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. (selection)

– Dallmann, Antje, et al., eds. Approaches to American Cultural Studies. London and New York Routledge, 2016. (selection)

– Grgas, Stipe. Američki studiji danas: identitet, kapital, spacijalnost. Zagreb: Meandar, 2015. (selection)

– Fluck, Winfried, Donald E. Pease, and John Carlos Rowe, eds. Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2011. (selection)

-Pease, Donald, and Robyn Wiegman, eds. The Futures of American Studies. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. (selection)

– Rowe, John Carlos The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2012.Open Humanities Press. http://www.scribd.com/doc/132330117/Rowe-The-Cultural-Politics-of-the-New-American-Studies (selection)

– Shu, Yuan, and Donald E. Pease, eds. American Studies as Transnational Practice: Turning towards the Transpacific. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anglophone Modernist Women’s Writing

Course title: Anglophone Modernist Women’s Writing
Instructor:  Dr.Tihana Klepač
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Status: elective
Enrolment requirements: enrolment in 2nd or 4th semester
Course requirements: continuous assessment; regular attendance, work in class, 1 written assignment, mid-term and end-term exam.
Course description: Selected texts exemplify Anglophone literary modernism with stress on its colonial, national and the context of gender. In line with the new modernist studies we shall view modernisms as multiple, and occurring across various temporalities and geographies, whilst responding to the drive in postcolonial studies to reshape modernism with an awareness of the British Empire.
Objectives: The objective of the course is to awaken the students’ awareness to the mechanism which led to the formulation of modernism in different countries of the Anglophone world, and to raise their awareness of the necessity to discuss modernism in colonial, national and the context of gender.
Course requirements: The final grade is based on continuous assessment which includes regular attendance, preparation for and participation in class, writing small assignments, timely submission of the final paper, and obligatory sitting for mid-term and end-term exam. Students must meet all requirements of continuous assessment.

Week by week schedule:
Week 1
Space and topics of modernism – new approach
Douglas Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz: “The New Modernist Studies”

Week 2
Social context and development of literary forms in modernism in colonial, national and the context of gender.

Week 3
Modern Indian women’s writing: questioning of formal innovations of modernism and resistance toward Eurocentric modernity
Sarojini Naidu: The Golden Threshold, collection of poetry
Sarojini Naidu: “Nilambuya: The Fantasy of a Poet’s Mood,” “Education of Indian Women,” “Women in National Life,” essays

Week 4 and 5
Modern Canadian women’s writing: awareness of internationalism as a contrast to nationalist and regional characteristics of Canadian art as a main characteristic of Canadian modernism
Sara Jeanette Duncan: Cousin Cinderella

Week 6 and 7
Modern Caribbean women’s writing: writing at the crossroads of different literary forces – those of Caribbean literature, modernism, women’s writing, and postcolonialism
Jean Rhys: Woman in the Dark

Week 8
Mid-term exam + academic writing

Week 9 and 10
Modern South-African women’s writing: politicised modernism aesthetics
Olive Schreiner: From Man to Man

Week 11 and 12
Modern Australian women’s writing: representing colonial national through the criticism of colonial-provincial structures and a detailed recreation of national space
Christina Stead: The Man Who Loved Children

Week 12 and 13
Modern New Zealand women’s writing: questioning the representation of narration through a male viewpoint and in line with patriarchal values
Katherine Mansfield: Urewera Notebook, “How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped,” “The Woman at the Store,” “Je ne parle pas francois”

Week 14
End-term exam

Ethics and Aesthetics of British Modernism (archive 16/17)

Naziv kolegija: Ethics and Aesthetics of British Modernism
Instructor: Asst. Prof. Martina Domines Veliki
8/10 semester 2016/17

(or 4./6. semestar)
Language
: English

1 semester, summer
Status: izborni
Oblik nastave: 1 sat predavanja i 2 sat seminara tjedno
Uvjeti: Upisan 8./10. semestar
Ispit: Kontinuirano praćenje. Tijekom seminara studenti/ce trebaju izraditi jedan seminarski rad te ga prezentirati na satu. Rad u seminaru, seminarski rad te dva kolokvija konstitutivni su dio završne ocjene. Svi dijelovi ocjene moraju biti pozitivni da bi student/ica dobio/la zaključnu ocjenu.

Sadržaj: Na odabranom korpusu modernističkih tekstova analizirat ćemo osobine i tematiku modernizma. U završnom dijelu seminara usporedit ćemo modernizam s nekim djelima kasnijega razdoblja. – Audenovom pjesmom «U sjećanje na W. B. Yeatsa», Cunninghamovim romanom Sati i pripovijetkom iz Barnesove zbirke pripovijedaka Stol od četurnovine»

Cilj: Cilj kolegija je problemski pristupiti razdoblju modernizma. Uz upoznavanje dijela kanona britanskoga i irskoga modernizma, u kolegiju će se raspraviti i temeljna pitanja o ulozi književnosti. ali i njezinoj ulozi u artikulaciji osobnoga i nacionalnoga identiteta u tom razdoblju. U kolegiju ćemo se također upoznati s relevantnim kritičkim metodama za promišljanje modernizma (psihoanalitička, poststrukturalistička, feministička, postkolonijalna/kulturološka kritika).

Literature and the Visual: American Film, Narrative Theory and Psychoanalysis

COURSE TITLE: Literature and the Visual: American Film, Narrative Theory and Psychoanalysis
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Tatjana Jukić
ECTS CREDITS: 6
LANGUAGE: English
SEMESTER: 2 or 4

Course description: Taking clasical Hollywood cinema as its point of departure, the course will explore how American film engages and defines critical developments that we normally associate with twentieth-century modernity. We will focus on a selection of films directed by Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford.

Course requirements: The grade is based on a written essay at the end of term (30% of the final grade), and two tests (30% of the final grade each), as well as on active participation in the class (10% of the final grade).

Syllabus:

WEEK 1 Introduction. Film as an American art form.

WEEK 2 Classical Hollywood Cinema. The narrative style.

WEEK 3 Film and narrative theory.

WEEK 4 Film and psychoanalysis.

WEEK 5 Screwball comedy. Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges.

WEEK 6 Screwball comedy. Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges.

WEEK 7 Screwball comedy. Ernst Lubitsch.

WEEK 8 Screwball comedy. Ernst Lubitsch. Midterm.

WEEK 9 Melodrama. William Wyler, Douglas Sirk.

WEEK 10 Melodrama. William Wyler, Douglas Sirk.

WEEK 11 Thriller/ Noir. Alfred Hitchcock.

WEEK 12 Thriller/ Noir. Alfred Hitchcock.

WEEK 13 The Western. John Ford.

WEEK 14 The Western. John Ford.

WEEK 15 Final discussion. Evaluation.

REQUIRED READING:

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Home in Hollywood. The Imaginary Geography of Cinema (selection)
Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears (selection)
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness (selection)
Copjec, Joan. „More! From Melodrama to Magnitude“
Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. From Lubitsch to Sturges (selection)
Heath, Stephen. „Cinema and Psychoanalysis: Parallel Histories“
Jukić, Tatjana. „Film, politika, psihoanaliza: Ernst Lubitsch“
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. (selection)
Žižek, Slavoj (ed.) Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) (selection)

OPTIONAL READING:

Bergstrom, Janet (ed.). Endless Night. Cinema and Psychoanalysis: Parallel Histories. (selection)
Crowe, Cameron. Conversations with Billy Wilder. (selection)
De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t. Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. (selection)
De Lauretis, Teresa. Figures of Resistance. Essays in Feminist Theory. (selection)
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. (selection)
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. (selection)
Jukić, Tatjana. „The Awful Truth: On Metonymic Rationality in Hawks and Cavell“
Kaplan, E. Ann. Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. (selection)
Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film. Both Sides of the Camera (selection)
Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (selection)
Novak, Ivana; Jela Krečič; Mladen Dolar (eds.). Lubitsch Can’t Wait. A Theoretical Examination. (selection)
Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. (selection)