(This course also serves as an elective for the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory)

In this seminar we will explore developments in the field of translation studies that have taken it beyond the once common metaphors of fidelity and betrayal, of being faithful or unfaithful to the “original.”  We’ll focus on (mis)translations as symptomatic of the poetic and political dynamics of the negotiations between cultures in a particular historical moment. We’ll discuss a variety of approaches to the theory of translation, from system theory to postcolonial and globalization studies, both by reading critically and by theorizing from the translation practice itself.

What do we mean by “early modern?” How has the concept of the early modern been constructed? How have twentieth-century theorists and philosophers read early modern texts and with what consequences for contemporary theory? In this course, we will focus on a group of twentieth-century European critics who turned to early modern texts to make sense of the crisis of modernity during the interwar period.

“Sacrifice Literature” explores key concepts in critical theory (allegory, interpretation, latency, transference, sacrifice, image-making, textual pleasure, aesthetic value, the esoteric and exoteric, discipleship and discipline) and is designed as an introduction to representative critical debates in the field of comparative literature—debates concerning post-structuralism, Marxism and ideology critique, post-colonial and subaltern studies, feminism, psychoanalysis, and the critique of secularism.

Enrollment in the class is by instructor approval. Enrollment will be done from the waitlist.

This two-credit seminar will meet 6 times throughout the semester and each meeting will be devoted to one of the following questions: Why read Hegel now?  How do we read Hegel now?  Why is reading the Phenomenologydifferent from reading other Hegelian texts? Why is Hegel so difficult?  What is the relation between Hegel and contemporary critical theory?  A final session will be arranged for student presentations.

(This is a room-share with German 268.   Professor Teng notes that Students should be able to read German. However, the texts will be also available in English, so those students not as proficient in German may also take the course. French is not required, the French texts will be in translation.)

The course aspires to provide an introduction to two fields of critical discourse that have developed rapidly in recent years, affect studies and “thing theory,” asking how it might be productive to consider these fields in tandem.  Why do things play such an important role in the discourse of sentiment?  We will focus in the first half of the course on eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain and China, and in the second half of the course on contemporary texts, but throughout we will consider how empire and the after-effects of empire create conditions in which sentimental objects are as