ENG 514
Middle English Religious Literature: Devotion and Negation
No P/D/F
Professor(s): D. V. Smith
Description/Objectives:
How do religious texts express what cannot fully be named? We will answer this question by examining medieval and contemporary forms of negation: apophatic expression in pseudo-Dionysius, and Denis Hid Divinity; forgetting in The Cloud of Unknowing, Heidegger, and Adorno's Negative Dialectics; logical negation in medieval dialectics and Hegel; the aporia in Plato, Derrida, Marguerite Porete and William of Heytesbury's Insolubilia; renunciation and disavowal in Julian of Norwich, the Ancrene Wisse, and Freud; loss in the Harley Lyrics and Pearl; iconoclasm in Lollardy; devotion in the vernacular.
Sample Reading List:
anonymous , The Cloud of Unknowing
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love
anonymous , The Harley Lyrics
anonymous , Denis Hid Divinity
anonymous , The Tretis of Miraclis Pleying
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Other Information: The historical question of the course will be how English negates or fulfills Latinity in devotional and pastoral work, and the texts will be primarily Middle English. But we will also read theoretical work on apophasis by Baudrillard ("The Extermination of the Name of God"), Zizek, (Tarrying with the Negative), Jean-Luc Marion, and others.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23113 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm F
ENG 532
Early 17th Century: Writing and Revolution: Milton, Marvell and Others
Professor(s): Nigel Smith
Description/Objectives:
An examination of how the poetry and prose of John Milton and Andrew Marvell emerged from and played a role in the philosophical, religious and political ferment of seventeenth-century England. There will be consideration of the career of their writings within the literary canon, and some analysis of other writings (e.g., Lucy Hutchinson, Thomas Hobbes, John Dryden) and movements (e.g., Puritanism, republicanism, Levellers, Diggers, Ranters; experimental scientists, vegetarians) in the period.
Sample Reading List:
John Milton , Paradise Lost
John Milton , The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton
Andrew Marvell , Poems
Andrew Marvell , Prose Works
David Norbrook , Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics
Other Requirements:
Course Not Open to Freshmen
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23139 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm M
ENG 559
Studies in the American Novel: Henry James and William Faulkner
No P/D/F
Professor(s): Lee C. Mitchell
Description/Objectives:
This course examines America's two most accomplished novelists, both of whom were obsessed with the ensnaring effects of plot and imagined fictional realms that are as much "designs" on the reader as on their characters. Despite obvious differences, they share a set of recurrent emphases: on the language of perception and the relativism of perspective; on a Keatsian dialectic of chaotic vitality and lifeless aesthetic perfection; on the morality of art and the "ethics of readings"; on the costs of education; and preeminently on the active textual role of the reader.
Sample Reading List:
James , The Ambassadors
James , The Portait of a Lady
James , The Wings of the Dove
Faulkner , Absalom, Absalom!
Faulkner , As I Lay Dying
Faulkner , Go Down, Moses
Reading/Writing Assignments: Class report and final paper or examination.
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23031 - Seminar S01 : 9:00 am - 11:50 am F
ENG 563
Poetics: The New York School of Poets
No P/D/F
Professor(s): Staff
Description/Objectives:
We will read the works of the first generation of the so-called "New York School of Poets" (Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch). We may also attend to poets who influenced them (Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, David Schubert), and to artists and musicians who surrounded them (Andy Warhol, John Cage, Morton Feldman). Finally, we will examine works by poets who variously inherit the mantle of New York School practices, including Joe Brainard, Ted Berrigan, David Antin, Alice Notley, and Eileen Myles.
Sample Reading List:
John Ashbery , The Mooring of Starting Out
Frank O'Hara , The Collected Poems
James Schuyler , Collected Poems
Barbara Guest , Collected Poems
Kenneth Koch , Collected Poems
Joe Brainard , I Remember
Reading/Writing Assignments: Oral presentation and a final paper.
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22776 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm Th
ENG 567/COM 570
Special Studies in Modernism: Exilic Time
No P/D/F
Professor(s): Maria A. DiBattista
Description/Objectives:
Exile by definition entails a wrenching relocation in space, but exile also can disarrange, by fracturing, the sense of time. This course will examine the double time of exilic life, what Nabokov in Pnin calls physical time and spiritual time. Physical time accentuates the pangs of inhabiting a present so radically different from the familiar but quickly receding past. Spiritual time is more mobile and more creative; it can recall a vanished world back into existence and even project a future return. We will explore the theme of exilic time from Conrad's Under Western Eyes and Joyce's Ulysses to Sebald's Austerlitz.
Sample Reading List:
Conrad , Under Western Eyes
Joyce , Ulysses
Nabokov , Pnin
Rushdie , The Moon's Last Sigh
Sebald , Austerlitz
Tarkovsky , Nostalghia
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22951 - Seminar S01 : 9:00 am - 11:50 am T
ENG 568
Criticism and Theory: The Problem of Mimesis in Modern Literary and Cultural Theory
Professor(s): Rey Chow
Description/Objectives:
Although it has been much criticized and problematized, the notion of mimesis has lost none of its relevance in the study of literary texts and cultural forms. This course will revisit some of the well-known philosophical foundations of mimesis, explore key anti-mimetic arguments in modern/modernist theoretical discussions, and assess the uses of mimesis' affiliates (such as representation, reproduction, performance, mimicry, copying, etc.) in contemporary cultural criticism.
Sample Reading List:
Erich Auerbach , Mimesis
Michel Foucault , The Order of Things
Pierre Macherey , A Theory of Literary Production
Sigmund Freud , Totem and Taboo
Rene Girard , Violence and the Sacred
Frantz Fanon , Black Skin, White Masks
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22760 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm T
ENG 571
Literary and Cultural Theory: Freud's Toolbox
No P/D/F
Professor(s): Diana J. Fuss
Description/Objectives:
Are there any useful instruments left in Freud's Toolbox? This new course seeks to examine the uses of psychoanalysis for 21st century literary criticism. Returning to the fundamentals of Freud's work, we will read literature and psychoanalysis with and against each other, each week pairing a psychoanalytic paper with a literary work. A hundred years after some of Freud's greatest case histories, we will analyze, test, and perhaps retool a series of analytical concepts, including hysteria, paranoia, transference, fantasy, fetishism, symptom, mourning, memory, and the uncanny.
Sample Reading List:
Freud , Dora
Freud , Schreber
Sophocles , Antigone
Poe , Selected stories
Henry James , The Turn of the Screw
H.D. , Trilogy
Other Requirements:
Course Open to ENG Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22772 - Seminar S01 : 9:00 am - 11:50 am Th
MOD 500/ENG 572/GER 572
Reading Photographic Writing: An Introduction to the Study of Photography
No P/D/F
Enrollment by application or interview.
Departmental permission required.
Maximum Enrollment: 15
Professor(s): Michael W. Jennings , Eduardo L. Cadava
Description/Objectives:
This seminar will introduce students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences to the study of photography. Photography has played an increasingly prominent role in these fields-history, the literary disciplines, architecture, religious studies, anthropology, and sociology-yet students and senior scholars are seldom offered formal training in the study of photography. Through examination of literary, theoretical, and critical texts on photography and a series of case studies-students will gain a vocabulary and lens through which they will begin to learn what it means to read a photograph by examining photographys from the Museum.
Sample Reading List:
G. Batchen , Burning with Desire
Nadar , When I was a Photographer
R. Barthes , Camera Lucida
W. Benjamin , Berlin Childhood Around 1900
R. Smithson , Collected Writings
S. Beckett , Texts for Nothing
Requirements/Grading:
Other (See Instructor): 100%
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Prerequisites and Restrictions: Admission by application only. APPLICATION INFORMATION: To apply for the course, please submit a one-page statement of interest to Professor Jennings at
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by September 1, 2008 at noon. Students will be notified of decision via email by September 2, 2008.
Other Information: In addition to our weekly seminar, we will hold an additional two-hour meeting in the Princeton Art Museum in order to view and study photographs from the Museum's photography collections. Students must attend this working session and the weekly seminar.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 22489 - Class C01 : 9:00 am - 11:00 am Th
Class Number: 22488 - Seminar S01 : 10:00 am - 12:50 pm T
ENG 573
Problems in Literary Study: Confessions
No P/D/F
Professor(s): Esther H. Schor
Description/Objectives:
With Augustine's Confessions as our starting point, we will consider confessions in a variety of contexts: religious/metaphysical, rhetorical, formal/aesthetic (lyric and narrative), psychoanalytical and judicial. The spotlight will be on Romantic writers who take the confession beyond the institutions of discipline, trusting it to convey both the quality of consciousness and narratives of selfhood. At the same time, these writers severely test the authenticity and adequacy of confession. We will then explore the legacy of Romantic ambivalence toward confession in Freud, Foucault, Nabokov, Roth, and Sebald.
Sample Reading List:
Augustine , Confessions
Rousseau , Confessions
Hogg , Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Wordsworth , The Prelude, Lyrics
Nabokov , Lolita
Sebald , Austerlitz
Other Requirements:
Course Open to Graduate Students Only.
Schedule/Classroom Assignment:
Class Number: 23029 - Seminar S01 : 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm W
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