The history of Western literary theory is often told in terms of the concept of mimesis. But there is another, equally powerful, anti-mimetic strand to this history, and that is the critique of mimesis as a form of idolatry. In this course, we will explore this critique from the prohibition against images in the Hebrew bible up through modern attacks on mimesis as inherently ideological.

Much has been written on medieval and early modern vernacular love poetry – and the many approaches that have been developed for the understanding of Troubadour lyrics, German Minnesang, or Petrarcism, can be seen as an indicator of the past and present state of medieval literary studies in general (think of “courtly love”, formalist studies, “fictionality in Minnesang”, Lacanianism, or the new emphasis on manuscript contexts).

This course is designed to give all new graduate students a broad view of the department’s faculty, the courses they teach, and their fields of research. In addition, it will introduce students to some practical aspects of the graduate career, issues that pertain to specific fields of research, and questions currently being debated across the profession. The readings for the course will consist of copies of materials by the department’s faculty.

Enrollment in this graduate seminar is limited exclusively to first-year Ph.D.

PLEASE NOTE: This course may be taken as a one-unit course (CC 17392), meeting in four consecutive sessions with Beatriz Sarlo on Nov. 9, 16, 23, 30, or as a two-unit course (CC 17395) meeting a total of eight sessions, 4 with Francine Masiello and 4 with Beatriz Sarlo.

Literature and urban civilization have long been intimately connected. Our seminar seeks to explore their connection as it relates to the emergence and global spread of the modern and contemporary city. How has the spatial and social organization of the modern city informed the thematic and formal choices writers make?

Much has been written on Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern vernacular love poetry, and the rich scholarly criticism on Latin love elegy, Troubadour lyrics, German Minnesang, or Petrarcism ranges from more traditional philological, literary, and formalist approaches to fascinating uses of gender criticism and psychoanalytic thought.  Much less critical light, however, has been shed on the Medieval Latin side – i.e.

What is sociological knowledge? What are social facts and social forms and what kind of existence do they have? How do certain novels acquire the resources to produce sociological forms of knowledge, to encourage sociological forms of attention?  In particular, what aesthetic practices and what features of novelistic form contribute to this kind of knowledge production?

This seminar will focus on lyrical poetry produced in the margins – or outside — of the modern Anglo-European canon in order to call into question static typological theories of genre, as well as the majoritarian, heteronormative or Eurocentric set of biases behind contemporary attacks on the lyric as solipsistic, apolitical “personal expression.” Participants will draw on their own cultural and linguistic specialties to help us compile a multi-lingual course Reader of modern lyrical poetry decentered by ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, class, place or language.