Senior Seminar

We will focus on the short fiction, parables, and letters of Kafka – as well as The Trial –  in addition to theoretical discussions of Kafka’s works by Theodor Adorno , Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Georg Lukács, Gershom Scholem, and Jacques Derrida.  We will ask in what way Kafka’s work poses philosophical questions for his time, focusing on historical progress, authority, and the bodily form of human life.  We will engage in close readings of Kafka’s work to find out in what ways philosophical questions are posed in his writing, and how fiction becomes part of philosophical inquiry.

texts:

Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks (Exact Change Press)1878972049
Kafka, The Complete Stories, Schocken Books,  (ISBN 0-8052-1055-5)
Kafka, Letters to Milena, Schocken Books, (ISBN 0-8052-0427-X) or
Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors, Schocken Books, (ISBN 0714537012)
Kafka, The Trial, Schocken Press,  ISBN 0-8052-0999-9

Secondary:

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, introduction by Hannah Arendt,
Schocken Books, (ISBN 0 8052 0241 2)
T. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, Verso
(ISBN 0 86091 704 5)