Introduction to course

1/31   Syllabus, expectations
           *   Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “the university: last words” (2020)

2/2   The intensity of deterritorialized writing
           *   Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “What Is a Minor Literature?” (1975)

2/7     *   Deleuze and Guattari, continued

India and Pakistan

2/9   ✍ Antecedent divisions and partition
         Saadat Hasan Manto, “Sorry” and “The Return” (1951)

2/14   ✍ Conjuring trauma through the space of the poem
           Bhanu Kapil, “1947: Spell to Reverse a Line” (2018)

2/16   Articulating violence and the past
           *   Veena Das, “Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain” (2007)

South Africa

2/23   ✍ Entanglements of Truth and Reconciliation
           Lewis Nkosi, Black Psychiatrist (1994)
→ Presentation 1

2/28   ✍ Gender in the Post-Rainbow Nation
           Zoë Wicomb, “Disgrace” (2008)
           Zanele Muholi, photographs (2006-19)  
           → Presentation 2

3/2   Domination and the limits of the imagination
           *   J. M. Coetzee, “Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech” (1987)

Writing

3/7   Sources workshop

3/9   Midterm

Nigeria

3/14   ✍ Transnational cosmopolitanism (✍ 10/12 or 10/14)
             Teju Cole, Open City (2011), ch. 1-4

3/16   ✍ Cole, continued, ch. 5-9
             → Presentation 3

3/21   Cole, continued (✍ 10/19 or 10/21), ch. 10-16

3/23   ✍ Cole, continued, ch. 17-21
             → Presentation 4

3/28   ✍ Cole, continued

3/30   (Re)cognizing meaning in images
             *   Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980)

Caribbean

4/4 ✍Scales of encounter (✍ 11/2 or 11/4)
            Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988)

4/6   Kincaid, continued
           → Presentation 5

4/11   ✍Hybrid meanings and pasts
            Edwidge Danticat, “In the Old Days” from Everything Inside (2020)
            → Presentation 6

4/13   Créolité and the errantry of language
            *   Edouard Glissant, “Errantry, Exile” from Poetics of Relation (1990)

Writing

4/25   Digital essays workshop
             Guest visit: Filipa Calado, Digital Humanities Fellow, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Australia

4/27   ✍ Verbal originality
             Marjorie Bil Bil, It Just Lies There From the Beginning (1995)
             → Presentation 7

5/2   ✍ Graphic expression of refugee and indigenous experience
             Safdar Ahmed, Villawood (2015)
             Tracey Moffatt, Spirit Landscapes (2013)

5/4    Film
             Karrabing Film Collective

5/9   Last class: Fabulating collectivity
            *    Angelina Lewis, Cecilia Lewis, Joclyn MacDonald, Elizabeth Povinelli, Linda Yarrowin and Sandra Yarrowin, “Australian Babel” (2017)

Writing

5/11   Individual Conferences
             Final essay proposal due

5/16   Individual Conferences

 

5/25   Final essay due

* Theoretical texts
✍ Annotation assignments