In his poem “Diary,” Pier Paolo Pasolini writes “Grown up? / Never — never —! Like existence itself / which never matures — staying always green.” Indeed, the mystery and nostalgia of childhood often lingers into adulthood. For some, childishness persists over time; for others, childhood is shortened by circumstance. Looking at literary texts and films from the sixteenth century to the present, this course will examine how writers and artists represent childhood and the roles that children fulfill in their families and environments.

Many of the literary texts we study today come to us incomplete. Perhaps the author passed away before the work was finished, or perhaps we know the text only through scraps of parchment used in the binding of a different manuscript. Still other texts consciously position themselves as fragments, even if this move is but an artifice on the part of the author.

This course will examine literature and the visual arts alongside and through the rapidly growing field of virtual technologies, emphasizing their medial relationships to literary artwork. It will draw widely from theory ranging from art history, to linguistics, computer science, anthropology, cognitive studies, and literary criticism in order to evaluate the virtual nature of literary space.

This course will examine the history of found documents as a literary device, i.e., stories that are told through an accumulation of texts, often “found” and assembled by the author or narrator. We will delve into the history of epistolary literature (from the Heroides to Dracula) as well as experimental tales conveyed through pieces of poetry, critical reviews, and footnotes (e.g., Pale Fire, City of Saints and Madmen).

“Fallor ergo sum.” (“I err, therefore I am.”)
—St. Augustine, 5 th century
“C’est plus qu’un crime, c’est une faute.” (“It’s more than a crime, it’s a mistake.”)
— Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe, 1804

In this class, we will read literature that explores the multifaceted perspectives immigrants have on America. How do immigrant writers see, learn about, stumble upon the particulars of American life— personally, culturally, socially, politically? What happens to these writers’ memories and perceptions of their origin countries over time? How does their writing intersect with their immigrant identity, shaping and revealing it—do they have a writerly “accent”? Can we use their individual vantage points to understand the whole?

Have the sights, sounds, or smells expressed in a written passage seemed to affect your own eyes, ears, and nose? Has certain written material managed to make you feel hungry, queasy, or warm? How can words on paper succeed in rendering (or fail to render) the sensory perceptions of a reader? If there is a hierarchy of the senses in literature, what are the contributing factors? This course will consider texts that explore specific sensory perceptions and their various effects upon the imagination and social constructs.