The pedagogy of horror is ancient, as Michel Foucault shows in Discipline and Punish. Exhibiting mangled bodies served as a warning for others, the Law being reinforced by the spectacle of torture and painful death. There is a Spanish saying: "the letter can only enter with blood." Goya painted it ("La letra con sangre entra," in the Museum of Zaragoza). Jack London presented a similar pedagogy with his Nietzschean captain in The Sea Wolf. We will start from what Julia Kristeva called "the powers of horror" by looking at philosophical texts, literary texts, and films. We will first need to distinguish between Horror and Terror, and see how Hegel discusses the "Terror" moment in the French Revolution. We will explore parallels between Marquis de Sade and Immanuel Kant with Adorno, Horkheimer and Lacan. What are Sade's Libertines trying to teach in "The philosophy in the bedroom" and in revolutionary political pamphlets? We will follow Derrida when he meditates on cruelty and its links with the death sentence. We will ask about hte rationale of terrifying acts of violence in Prometheus Bound, The Spanish Tragedy, and Titus Andronicus. Is there something to be learned from "torture porn" in films like Hostel, Green Inferno and Martyrs, from strategies of suicide bombing presented either in films (The Terrorist) or in historical analyses (Terror in the name of God)? What is the point of the pedagogy of horror deployed by Kafka ("The Penitentiary Colony") and Samuel Beckett (How It Is)? Is an ethics of care possible after one has perused Maggy Nelson's On Cruelty, and meditated on Conrad's denunciation of colonialism in Heart of Darkness? For more information, please visit: https://www.english.upenn.edu/courses/graduate.

The present course will discuss German literature and thought from the period of the French Revolution to the turn of the twentieth century, and put it into a European context.
In regard to German literature, this is the period that leads from the Storm and Stress and Romanticism to the political period of the Vormärz, Realism, and finally Expressionism; in philosophy, it moves from German Idealism to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and neo-Kantian thought. It is also the period that saw the rise of the novel, and new forms of dramatic works. Painting moved out of the studio into plein air; the invention of photography made an imprint on all arts, and the rise of the newspaper led to new literary genres such as the feuilleton. Economically, Germany experienced the industrial revolution; politically, it was striving for a unification that was finally achieved in 1871. The nineteenth century saw the establishment of the bourgeoisie, the emergence of the German working class, and the idea of the nation state; it also saw Jewish emancipation, and the call for women’s rights.
This course is taught in German. Readings will focus on a variety of literary, political, and philosophical texts and consider a selection of art works.

Please see department website for a current course description at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/graduate/courses

This course will survey what has come to be known in literary and cultural studies as "theory" by tracking the genealogies of a select range of contemporary practices of interpretation. We will address the following questions. What are some of the historical and rhetorical conditions of emergence for contemporary critical theories of interpretation? What does it mean to interpret literature and culture in the wake of the grand theoretical enterprises of the modern period? How do conceptions of power and authority in literature and culture change as symbolic accounts of language give way to allegorical and performative accounts? How might we bring frameworks of globality and translation to bear on literary and cultural criticism? Half of the course sessions will involve the instructor and the students reading texts that represent a range of hermeneutic approaches, in classical and contemporary forms. For the other half of the class, we will welcome one visiting instructor per week from the Comparative Literature faculty, who will assign readings and lead discussion on their own area(s) of specialization.
The central, practical goals of the class will be to help first year PhD candidates in Comparative Literature prepare for their MA exam, to introduce students to a range of faculty in the Program, and to forge an intellectual community among the first year cohort.

The tumultuous political and economic history of modern China has been mirrored in and shaped by equally fundamental revolutions in language and poetic expression. In this course, we will take Chinese poetry as a crucible in which we can observe the interacting forces of literary history and social change. From diplomats who saw poetry as a medium for cultural translation between China and the world, to revolutionaries who enlisted poetry in the project of social transformation, we will examine the lives and works of some of China’s most prominent poets and ask, what can we learn about modern China from reading their poetry? In asking this question, we will also reckon with the strengths and limitations of using poetry as an historical source. In addition to poems, the course will include fiction, essays, photographs, and films by both Chinese and non-Chinese artists that place our poets in a broader context. We will pay close attention to how these poets represent China’s place in the world, as well as the role of language in social change. Topics of discussion include: national identity, revolution, translation, gender, the body, ethnicity, and technology.
Familiarity with Chinese or related cultural context is beneficial, but not required.
This course introduces students to Chinese poetry in English translation. Students will leave the course with an in-depth understanding of the main figures, themes, and techniques of Chinese poetry, and will be introduced to some of the major developments in the history of China. Through a focus on primary texts, students will develop the vocabulary and analytical skills to appreciate and analyze poetry in translation and will gain confidence as writers thinking about literary texts.

French history, culture, and politics have all been shaped by centuries of religious conflict, theological controversy, and civil strife. In many ways, Frenchness has always been defined against some kind of religious and/or ethnic Other: heretics, protestants, Jews, or Muslims. At the same time, however, France’s unique religious environment has given rise to some of the most important thought on tolerance. What gave rise to these conflicting tendencies, and how can understanding the history of French religious conflict give us perspective on issues in contemporary France?
In this course, we will attempt to answer these questions by studying a series of key historical events and episodes from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century and the present day: the Seventh and Eighth Crusades under Louis IX in the thirteenth century, the travels of Jean de Mandeville in the mid-fourteenth century, the Wars of Religion and French encounters with indigenous peoples in the Americas during the sixteenth century, Molière’s Tartuffe and conflict between free-thinking and religious orthodoxy enforced by Catholic confraternities and their prominent role in politics and society under Louis XIV in the seventeenth century, Voltaire’s conception of religious tolerance in the wake of the “Affaire Calas” in the 1760’s, the “Affaire Dreyfus” (1894-1906) and antisemitism in modern France, and contemporary controversies over religion (particularly Islam) and the public sphere. In addition to discussion-based class meetings, the course will feature visits from specialists working on the materials to be studied as well as visits to the Kislak Center for Rare Books, Special Collections, and Manuscripts to examine original materials, including the Lorraine Beitler Collection of the Dreyfus Affair.
This course is conducted entirely in French.

Learn about sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, and other standards of the established canon as they are revitalized by the most celebrated poets working today. As we read and write in various meters and forms, we will also explore United States history. Phillis Wheatley Peters' address to George Washington will teach us iambic pentameter, as Terrance Hayes' broken villanelle will describe the pre-Civil War raid on Harper's Ferry, and Emma Lazarus's sonnet in the voice of the Statue of Liberty will reveal American immigration policy. Split between discussions and workshops so we can practice the prosody we study, the course will move between early and contemporary events that shape American identity: Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan's terzanelle about Japanese internment camps, Yusef Komenyakaa's ghazal about the Ferguson protests, Patricia Smith's sestinas about Hurricane Katrina, and Reginald Dwayne Betts's sonnets about mass incarceration. We will research sources of these older forms, and look at how they influence newer ones like the bop, the Golden Shovel, and the duplex. Poets we will read in depth include: Gwendolyn Brooks, Natasha Trethewey, Natalie Diaz, Jericho Brown, Agha Shahid Ali, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Marilyn Nelson, and June Jordan. Assignments will include occasional short essays and more playful exercises on how to follow--and break--the shifting rules of meter and form.

This is a wide-ranging introduction to the “other” major cinema in English: the films of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The British film industry has been thriving in the 21st century, but it remains the underdog in a global media environment dominated by Hollywood. We will consider some of the ways British filmmakers have positioned themselves in the space of world cinema and television as close rivals or radical alternatives to the American model. Our approach will be to study two films a week, mixing films from the 21st century with films from earlier moments in British cinema history from the 1930s through the 1990s. Our aim will be to discern some of the enduring cinematic modes and transatlantic strategies that contribute to the national “signature” of British film. Our screenings will run the gamut from the big-budget James Bond and Harry Potter franchises, to mid-sized transnational productions such as Pride & Prejudice and Slumdog Millionaire, to more independent or artisanal work by such directors as Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Sally Potter, Michael Winterbottom, Lynne Ramsay, Steve McQueen, and Andrea Arnold. A number of films we will study were made for British and/or American television, and we will devote some attention to the important and changing relationship between TV and cinema in contemporary screen culture.

What counts as work, and in what ways is work divided and organized by gender? How, in turn, is gender shaped by experiences of work, occupational categories, and relationships of labor? And how do race, ethnicity, class, and nationality variously define, subdivide, and reinforce the shifting category of "women's work”? In this course we will explore the gendered dimensions of labor as they intersect with other forms of social identity—and as they construct familial relations, gender norms, and economic and emotional obligations—via a range of texts. Readings may include fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, Alice Childress, and Tsitsi Dangarembga; poetry by Mary Collier and Anna Barbauld; lifewriting by Hannah Crafts and Mary Seacole; and selections of social analysis and theory by Silvia Federici, Barbara Ehrenreich, Angela Davis, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Tithi Bhattacharya, Hortense Spillers, Nancy Fraser, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and social media are changing every aspect of our lives. The methods and questions of the humanities are critical to understanding these shifts. Run like a workshop, this course will explore various sites at Penn and around Philadelphia where humanists and artists are collaborating with scientists and engineers to solve the big problems facing our planet and our species. We’ll visit museums and special collections in search of the future of past. We’ll learn how scholars of race and gender are combating algorithmic bias in our search engines. And we’ll gain hands-on experience developing research questions in digital humanities. Students will acquire basic facility and literacy with key digital tools and platforms while gaining a critical, historical framework for understanding technology’s impact on our lives.