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HUSL 6398 World Literatures Sean Cotter

Spring 2006 sean.cotter@utdallas.edu


JO 4.312, Monday 7:00 – 9:45 972-883-2037

Office: JO 5.106 Office Hours: Mondays 1:00 – 3:00


and by appointment

International Literature

This seminar will investigate the new ways of discussing literature that are
enabled—even required—when literary works and movements cross national
boundaries. While writers and works cross national boundaries easily—often
engendering a language’s most productive periods—our theoretical models
and reading practices struggle to keep up. Our traditional models of literary
training focus on national literatures and particular languages. While also
valuable, this approach makes it difficult to follow international movements,
those that take inspiration from the differences between languages. This
seminar will attempt to make visible the work written at the margins of
national literatures and languages.

While we will focus on literary texts, our work will be informed by other
disciplines. International literature is both an aesthetic and a sociological
phenomenon, as shown by the biographies of twentieth-century writers and
by twentieth-century history. While we will be based in literary studies, we
will also take in critical perspectives from anthropology and philosophy,
especially from those writers interested in the post-colonial. We will
participate in a workshop of ideas, spending each session trying on critical
perspectives and experimenting with new literary texts, to better understand
the challenges of international literature.

The seminar will begin with a series of theoretical readings around the term
“global,” and then focus on three major areas: the practice of translation, the
movement “Negritude,” and the space of Central and South-eastern Europe.
We will examine the role of translation within Anglophone Modernism,
emphasizing the role of this practice against the context of World War I. We
will study the relationship of the European avant garde and African writers,
focusing on Negritude’s indebtedness to and rejection of Surrealism. Lastly
we will consider the international from the perspectives of the Czech
Republic, Bosnia and Romania, “minor” literatures constantly aware of the
international reach of “major” countries. These areas of interest will provide
a variety of concrete examples to challenge and expand our ideas of
international literature.
Policies

Please be present and on time for every session, to show your engagement
with the class and respect for your colleagues. A pattern of absence or
lateness can affect your grade adversely.

Short papers
This seminar will be based around discussion, so it is important to take some
time before we meet to digest the readings. To that end, I will ask you to
write 300 – 500 words each week reflecting on the literary works and critical
arguments you have read. (This writing is the reason the seminar paper is a
little shorter than usual.) I will collect the papers at the end of each class.

You should use this writing to come to a preliminary understanding of that


week’s material: what aesthetic, thematic, and intellectual issues do the
creative works engage, what questions and arguments do the critical works
propose? What connections do you see between the different readings
assigned? How is this week’s reading like or unlike previous weeks’? What
specific points are unclear?

Presentations
Because of the number of people enrolled in our class, I will ask for small
group presentations on assigned research topics. I will assign the groups after
asking for topic preferences. The presentation should describe the current
issues, questions, and debates within scholarship on the topic. The goal is to
bring the class up to speed on a point of theoretical interest which we can
consider in relation to our readings. It would be useful to provide a short
bibliography, including at the least citations for the works mentioned in the
presentation. The presentations, no longer than 25 minutes, should allow
each member of the group to participate.

Those presenting do not have to turn in a short paper for that week.

Seminar papers
Your paper should be clearly linked to the themes and/or texts of the course,
preferably addressing some particular example of a work or movement that
can be approached under the broad rubric of “international literature.” Please
follow the MLA style sheet and good sense (no unusual fonts, black ink only,
no covers, put your last name next to each page number).

Please come by my office hours or make an appointment to discuss your


paper before March 27. The paper is due in my office by 5:00 on Tuesday,
April 25.
Texts
Many of our readings will be posted on WebCT. Please include
printing charges when calculating the cost of this course.

Andrić, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. Trans. Lovett F. Edwards. U of


Chicago P, 1977.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. U of Minnesota P, 1996.
Breton, Andre. Selections. U of California P, 2003.
Ball, Hugo. Flight out of Time. Trans. Ann Raimes. U of California P,
1996.
Cioran, Emil Mihail. History and Utopia. Trans. Richard Howard. U of
Chicago P, 1998.
Eliot, Thomas Sterns. Collected Poems 1909 - 1962. Harcourt, 1970.
Kane, Hamidou. Ambiguous Adventure. Trans. Katherine Woods.
Heinemann, 1972.
Liiceanu, Gabriel. The Paltăniş Diary. Trans. James Christian Brown.
Budapest, Hungary: Central European UP, 2000.
Perse, St.-John. Anabasis. Trans. T. S. Eliot. Harcourt, 1970.
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. The Collected Poetry. Trans. Melvin Dixon. U
of Virginia P, 1991.

Schedule

January 9 Introductions

selection from David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? (Princeton


UP, 2003).

January 16
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday

January 23 Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large. U of Minnesota P, 1996.

Bhabba, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man” Postcolonialisms. Ed. Gaurav


Desai and Supriya Nair. Rutgers UP, 2005.

Gikandi, Simon. “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality.”


The South Atlantic Quarterly 100:3 (Summer 2001) 627 – 658.
January 30 Eliot, Thomas Sterns. Collected Poems 1909 - 1962. Harcourt, 1970. 1 –
76.

Sherry, Vincent. The Great War and the Language of Modernism. Oxford
UP, 2005. 78 – 85, 155 – 225.

February 6 Eliot, pp. 77 - 130.

Perse, St.-John. Anabasis. Trans. T. S. Eliot. Harcourt, 1970.

February Kenner, Hugh. The Pound Era. U of California P, 1971. 192 – 222.
13
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. Selected Poems and Related Prose. Trans.
Elizabeth R. Napier and Barbara R. Studholme. Yale UP, 2002. 62
– 93.

Pound, Ezra. Cathay. London: Elkin Matthews, 1915.

Rainey, Lawrence. “The Creation of the Avant-Garde: F. T. Marinetti


and Ezra Pound.” Modernism/Modernity 1.3 (1994) 195-220.

February Ball, Hugo. Flight out of Time. Trans. Ann Raimes. U of California P,
20 1996.

Tzara, Tristan. Selections and “A Note on Negro Poetry.” Trans.


Pierre Joris. http://www.ubu.com/ethno/poems/01.html.
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/tzara.html. Accessed 08
December 2005.

February Breton, Andre. Selections. U of California P, 2003.


27
Gikandi, Simon. “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.”
Modernism/modernity 10:3 (2003) 455 – 480.

March 6
Spring Break Holiday
March 13 Senghor, Léopold Sédar. The Collected Poetry. Trans. Melvin Dixon. U
of Virginia P, 1991. 75 – 153.

_____. “Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century.”


Postcolonialisms. Ed. Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair. Rutgers
UP, 2005.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Black Orpheus.” “What Is Literature?” and Other


Essays. Trans. John MacCombie. Harvard UP, 1989. 291 – 330.

GROUP PRESENTATION: Nationalism

March 20 Kane, Hamidou. Ambiguous Adventure. Trans. Katherine Woods.


Heinemann, 1972.

Kane, Hamidou. “The African Writer and His Public.” African Writers
on African Writing. Ed. G. D. Killam. Northwestern UP, 1973.

GROUP PRESENTATION: Marxism

March 27 Andrić, Ivo. The Bridge on the Drina. Trans. Lovett F. Edwards. U of
Chicago P, 1977. 1 – 174.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. “What Is a Minor Literature?”


Trans. Dana Polan. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. U of
Minnesota P, 1983.

GROUP PRESENTATION: “Minor” literatures

OFFICE VISIT DEADLINE

April 3 Andrić. 175 – 318.

Kundera, Milan. “The Tragedy of Central Europe.” Trans. Edmund


White. From Stalinism to Pluralism. Ed. Gale Stokes. 2nd ed. Oxford
UP, 1996. 217 – 224.

GROUP PRESENTATION: Orientalism


April 10 Liiceanu, Gabriel. The Paltăniş Diary. Trans. James Christian Brown.
Budapest, Hungary: Central European UP, 2000.

GROUP PRESENTATION: Exile

April 17 Cioran, Emil Mihail. History and Utopia. Trans. Richard Howard. U of
Chicago P, 1998.

Petreu, Marta. An Infamous Past: E. M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in


Romania. Trans. Bogdan Aldea. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2005.

GROUP PRESENTATION: Bilingualism

April 24 Conclusions

SEMINAR PAPER DUE APRIL 25

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