2013/14 Group B
“Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.”
–Shakespeare, The Tempest
Life is full of repetition: attempts to remake, remodel, or rewrite what has gone before. From covers or remakes of songs and movies to the renovation or restoration of buildings and monuments, from the reinvention of communication technologies to re-readings (even misreadings) of literary works, we see a pervasive desire to adapt, rework, or subvert inherited cultural forms and traditions.
But repetition is never simple. The recurrence of historic problems or issues is perhaps less compelling than the new concerns and connections that emerge when a deceptively familiar past is reinterpreted in the present. This course examines a variety of philosophical and literary texts through a series of thematic clusters that demonstrate the dynamic tension between established understandings and new meanings.
Our hypothesis is that the appeal of the classics comes not from some timeless essence, but from our need to remake, remodel, and reinterpret the past in ever new ways. When we study these texts together, both “originals” and “remakes,” they shed new light on each other and challenge us to rethink the relations between philosophy and popular culture, tradition and modernity.
- Lectures: Mondays, 1-3pm, IBLC 182 (term one), Woodward IRC 4 (term two)
- Remake/Remodel timetable 2013/14 (pdf)
Lecture Schedule:
Term One:
- week one (Sep 9): Intro [All]
- Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave”
- Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
- Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and His Precursors”
- week two (Sep 16): Genesis [guest: Robert Daum]; Kant, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” [Christina Hendricks]
- week three (Sep 23): Plato, Gorgias [Christina Hendricks]
- week four (Sep 30): Sophocles, Antigone [Robert Crawford]
- week five (Oct 7): Butler, Antigone’s Claim [Jill Fellows]
- week six (Oct 15): Marlowe, Doctor Faustus [Miranda Burgess] at 5-7pm in Buchanan A101 (note that the day, time, and room are different from normal!)
- week seven (Oct 21): Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita [Miranda Burgess]
- week eight (Oct 28): Hobbes, Leviathan [Robert Crawford]
- week nine (Nov 4): Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality [Robert Crawford]
- week ten (Nov 12): Trouillot, Silencing the Past [guest: Paul Krause] at 5-7pm in Buchanan A101 (note that the day, time, and room are different from normal!)
- week eleven (Nov 18): Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World [Jon Beasley-Murray]
- week twelve (Nov 25): Césaire, The Tragedy of King Christophe; Walcott, Henri Christophe [Jon Beasley-Murray]
Term Two:
- week one (Jan 6): Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802); Wordsworth and Coleridge, selections from Lyrical Ballads [Miranda Burgess]
- week two (Jan 13): Austen, Northanger Abbey; Wright, Shaun of the Dead [Miranda Burgess]
- week three (Jan 20): Freud, Dora: A Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria plus “Femininity” [Christina Hendricks]
- week four (Jan 27): Fanon, Black Skins / White Masks [Jon Beasley-Murray]
- week five (Feb 3): Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction [Christina Hendricks]
- week six (Feb 11): Hacking, Rewriting the Soul [Jill Fellows] at 5-7pm in IBLC 182 (note that the day, time, and room are different from normal!)
- week seven (Feb 24): Paine, Rights of Man [Christina Hendricks]
- week eight (Mar 3): Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women [Jill Fellows]
- week nine (Mar 10): de Beauvoir, The Second Sex [Jill Fellows]
- week ten (Mar 17): Conrad, Heart of Darkness [Robert Crawford]
- week eleven (Mar 24): Achebe, Things Fall Apart [Jon Beasley-Murray]
- week twelve (Mar 31): Coppola, Apocalypse Now [Jon Beasley-Murray]
- week thirteen (April 7): review
- Seminar LB2: Robert Crawford (Political Science)
- Seminar LB3: Jill Fellows (Philosophy)
- Seminar LB4: Christina Hendricks (Philosophy)
- Seminar LB5 (term one): Miranda Burgess (English)
- Seminar LB5 (term two): Jon Beasley-Murray (French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies)
Term One:
- Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave”
- Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
- Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and His Precursors”
- Genesis (photocopy or PDF)
- Immanuel Kant, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” (photocopy or PDF, on password-protected page)
- Plato, Gorgias (Hackett; 978-1603844987)
- Sophocles, Antigone (Oxford; 978-0195061673)
- Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim (Columbia; 978-0231118958)
- Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (Broadview; 978-1551112107)
- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Penguin; 978-0141180144)
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Hackett; 978-0872201774)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Penguin; 978-0140444391)
- Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Beacon; 978-0807043110)
- Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 978-0374530112)
- Aimé Césaire, The Tragedy of King Christophe (photocopy or PDF, on password-protected page)
- Derek Walcott, Henri Christophe (photocopy or PDF, on password-protected page)
Term Two:
- William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802)
- William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (Penguin; 978-01404424621)
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Oxford; 978-0199535545)
- Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead (movie)
- Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Penguin; 978-0684829463) plus “Femininity” (photocopy or PDF, on password-protected page).
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skins / White Masks (Grove; 978-0802143006)
- Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul (Princeton; 978-0691059082)
- Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Vintage; 978-0679724698)
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (Dover; 978-0486408934. Or available online here, here, here, or here)
- Mary Wollstonecraft, The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman (Broadview; 978-1551110882)
- Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (photocopy or PDF, on password-protected page)
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Broadview; 978-1551113074)
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Anchor; 978-0385474542)
- Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (movie)
Highly Recommended:
- Wayne Booth (et al), The Craft of Research (Chicago; 978-0226062648)