Reading & Composition

From the Tower of Babel through contemporary narratives of immigration, exile, and displacement, linguistic confusion is a venerable and evocative motif. So what can we make of a story that “stops making sense” because we can no longer understand the language in which it speaks? In this course we will read and discuss many varieties of linguistic confusion. These will include multilingual texts that address multiple audiences, as well as works that mix sacred, profane, and even dead languages. Some of our readings will baffle with secret codes or tantalize with open secrets. We will also discuss texts that employ mixed messages and media, as well as those that seem to speak in nonsense or simply leave things unsaid. By considering novels, plays, films, and poems that refuse to be transparent in their communication, we will take linguistic “confusion” not as a problem to be solved but as something productive and provocative in itself. This being a 1B course, the focus will be as much on writing as on reading. Our hope is that the “confusion” we confront in our readings will help us develop valuable analytical tools in class discussion and hone our ability to write subtly, critically, and insightfully.

Readings will be selected from the following authors:

Franz Kafka, Sappho, Theresa Cha, Gloria Anzaldúa, Emily Dickinson, Junot Díaz, Oscar Wilde, Tristan Tzara, Ahmadou Kourouma, Irena Klepfisz, Virginia Woolf, S.Y Abramowitz, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Baudelaire, as well as applicable selections from Genesis and Acts.