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HUSL 6398 World Literatures Sean Cotter Spring 2006 JO 4.312, Monday 7:00 – 9:45 sean.cotter@utdallas.edu972-883-2037 Office: JO 5.106 Office Hours: Mondays 1:00 3:00 and by appointment
International Literature
This seminar will investigate the new ways of discussing literature that are enabled—even required—when literary works and movements cross national  boundaries. While writers and works cross national boundaries easily—often engendering a language’s most productive periods—our theoretical models and reading practices struggle to keep up. Our traditional models of literary training focus on national literatures and particular languages. While also valuable, this approach makes it difficult to follow international movements, those that take inspiration from the differences between languages. This seminar will attempt to make visible the work written at the margins of national literatures and languages. While we will focus on literary texts, our work will be informed by other disciplines. International literature is both an aesthetic and a sociological phenomenon, as shown by the biographies of twentieth-century writers and  by twentieth-century history. While we will be based in literary studies, we will also take in critical perspectives from anthropology and philosophy, especially from those writers interested in the post-colonial. We will participate in a workshop of ideas, spending each session trying on critical perspectives and experimenting with new literary texts, to better understand the challenges of international literature. The seminar will begin with a series of theoretical readings around the term “global,” and then focus on three major areas: the practice of translation, the movement “Negritude,” and the space of Central and South-eastern Europe. We will examine the role of translation within Anglophone Modernism, emphasizing the role of this practice against the context of World War I. We will study the relationship of the European avant garde and African writers, focusing on Negritude’s indebtedness to and rejection of Surrealism. Lastly we will consider the international from the perspectives of the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Romania, “minor” literatures constantly aware of the international reach of “major” countries. These areas of interest will provide a variety of concrete examples to challenge and expand our ideas of international literature.
 
Policies Please be present and on time for every session, to show your engagement with the class and respect for your colleagues. A pattern of absence or lateness can affect your grade adversely.
Short papers
This seminar will be based around discussion, so it is important to take some time before we meet to digest the readings. To that end, I will ask you to write 300 – 500 words each week reflecting on the literary works and critical arguments you have read. (This writing is the reason the seminar paper is a little shorter than usual.) I will collect the papers at the end of each class. You should use this writing to come to a preliminary understanding of that week’s material: what aesthetic, thematic, and intellectual issues do the creative works engage, what questions and arguments do the critical works propose? What connections do you see between the different readings assigned? How is this week’s reading like or unlike previous weeks’? What specific points are unclear?
Presentations
Because of the number of people enrolled in our class, I will ask for small group presentations on assigned research topics. I will assign the groups after asking for topic preferences. The presentation should describe the current issues, questions, and debates within scholarship on the topic. The goal is to  bring the class up to speed on a point of theoretical interest which we can consider in relation to our readings. It would be useful to provide a short  bibliography, including at the least citations for the works mentioned in the presentation. The presentations, no longer than 25 minutes, should allow each member of the group to participate. Those presenting do not have to turn in a short paper for that week.
Seminar papers
Your paper should be clearly linked to the themes and/or texts of the course, preferably addressing some particular example of a work or movement that can be approached under the broad rubric of “international literature.” Please follow the MLA style sheet and good sense (no unusual fonts, black ink only, no covers, put your last name next to each page number). Please come by my office hours or make an appointment to discuss your paper before March 27. The paper is due in my office by 5:00 on Tuesday, April 25.
 
Texts
Many of our readings will be posted on WebCT. Please include printing charges when calculating the cost of this course. Andri
ć
, Ivo.
The Bridge on the Drina
. Trans. Lovett F. Edwards. U of Chicago P, 1977. Appadurai, Arjun.
 Modernity at Larg
. U of Minnesota P, 1996. Breton, Andre.
Selections 
. U of California P, 2003. Ball, Hugo.
 Flight out of Tim
. Trans. Ann Raimes. U of California P, 1996. Cioran, Emil Mihail.
 History and Utopia
. Trans. Richard Howard. U of Chicago P, 1998. Eliot, Thomas Sterns.
Collected Poems 1909 - 1962 
. Harcourt, 1970. Kane, Hamidou.
 Ambiguous Adventur
. Trans. Katherine Woods. Heinemann, 1972. Liiceanu, Gabriel.
The Palt 
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 ş
 Diary 
. Trans. James Christian Brown. Budapest, Hungary: Central European UP, 2000. Perse, St.-John.
 Anabasi
. Trans. T. S. Eliot. Harcourt, 1970. Senghor, Léopold Sédar.
The Collected Poetry 
. Trans. Melvin Dixon. U of Virginia P, 1991.
Schedule
January 9 Introductions selection from David Damrosch,
What Is World Literature? 
 (Princeton UP, 2003). January 16 Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday January 23 Appadurai, Arjun.
 Modernity at Large 
. U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabba, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man”
 Postcolonialisms 
. Ed. Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair. Rutgers UP, 2005. Gikandi, Simon. “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality.”
The South Atlantic Quarterly 
 100:3 (Summer 2001) 627 – 658.

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