In this course we will read what many consider to be the greatest book in world literature. This work, Tolstoy's War and Peace, is devoted to one of the most momentous periods in world history, the Napoleonic Era (1789-1815). We will study both the book and the era of the Napoleonic Wars: the military campaigns of Napoleon and his opponents, the grand strategies of the age, political intrigues and diplomatic betrayals, the ideologies and human dramas, the relationship between art and history. How does literature help us to understand this era? How does history help us to understand this great book? Because we will read War and Peace over the course of the entire semester, readings will be manageable and very enjoyable.

How does one write about oneself? Who is the “author” writing? What does one write about? And is it fiction or truth?
Our course on autobiographical writing will pursue these questions, researching confessions, autobiographies, memoirs, and other forms of life-writing both in their historical development and theoretical articulations. Examples will include selections from St. Augustine’s confessiones, Rousseau’s Confessions, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, as well as many examples from contemporary English, German, French, and American literature.

This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each period. Special emphasis is placed on close reading of texts in order to familiarize students with major authors and their characteristics and with methods of interpretation. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 1232 has as its theme the Individual and Society.

This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each period. Special emphasis is placed on close reading of texts in order to familiarize students with major authors and their characteristics and with methods of interpretation. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion in French. French 1232 has as its theme the Individual and Society.

This basic course in literature provides an overview of French literature and acquaints students with major literary trends through the study of representative works from each literary period. Students are expected to take an active part in class discussion.

Assignments (the course will be conducted in French).
The students will do the reading assignments listed in the syllabus for the day they are assigned. For each reading assignment the students will prepare in writing two questions which may be discussed in class and they will be ready to answer these questions. The students will also be expected to take part in the discussion generated by all the questions raised.

There will be three short writing assignments (250-300 words or more) consisting of two questions formulated by the student about some element of a given text (see syllabus) and of answers to each of the questions.

The students will write a final paper (1300-1500 words or more) on some aspect of one of the required texts discussed in class. The paper will be due by 5/8/2024 at 5:00 pm.

On 5/1/2024 there will be a written assignment done in class: a synthetic discussion pertaining to some aspect of some or all of the texts examined in class.

Assessments
Written questions to discuss in class and participation in discussion will count for 50% of final grade.

Short writing assignments: 5% each.
Final paper: 25%.
Synthetic written discussion: 10%.

Syllabus
1/22 Introduction
1/24 La Chanson de Roland, stanzas 1-54
1/29 La Chanson de Roland, stanzas 55-137
1/31 La Chanson de Roland, stanzas 138-176
2/5 La Chanson de Roland, stanzas 176-267
2/7 La Chanson de Roland, stanzas 268-291
2/12 Short writing assignment due on La Chanson de Roland
François Villon, "L'Epitaphe Villon" (also known as "La Ballade des pendus") (web)
Joachim du Bellay "Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage" (web)
2/14 Joachim du Bellay, "France, mère des arts, des armes et des lois" (web)
Jean de La Fontaine, "La Cigale et la fourmi" (web)
Jean de La Fontaine, "La Mort et le bûcheron" (web)
2/19 Le Misanthrope, Act I
2/21 Le Misanthrope, Act II
2/26 Le Misanthrope, Act III-IV
2/28 Le Misanthrope, Act V
3/11 Candide, chapters 1-8
3/13 Candide, chapters 9-18
3/18 Candide, chapters 19-25
3/20 Candide, chapters 26-30
3/25 Short writing assignment due on Candide
Charles Baudelaire, "L'Albatros" (web)
Charles Baudelaire, "Spleen" ("Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . .") (Web)
Stéphane Mallarmé, "Brise marine" (web)
3/27 Eugénie Grandet (to "Monsieur Charles Grandet, beau jeune homme de vingt-deux ans")
4/3 Eugénie Grandet (to "En l'absence de son père, Eugénie eut le bonheur de pouvoir . . .")
4/5 Eugénie Grandet (to "En toute situation, les femmes ont plus de causes de douleur . . .")
4/10 Eugénie Grandet (to "A trente ans, Eugénie ne connaissait encore aucune des . . .")
4/12 Eugénie Grandet (to the end)
4/17 Short writing assignment due on Eugénie Grandet
Arthur Rimbaud, "Le Bateau ivre" (web)
Paul Eluard, "Liberté" (web)
4/19 Une si longue lettre, chapters 1-10
4/24 Une si longue lettre, chapters 11-21
4/26 Une si longue lettre, (to the end)
4/30 Conclusion
Consideration of the synthetic discussion on some aspect of some or all of the texts examined (to be written in class)
5/1 Synthetic discussion on some aspect of some or all of the texts examined (to be written in class)

gprince@babel.ling.upenn.edu
Office Hours (532 Williams Hall): MW 12:00-1:00

How does literature contend with the legacies of empire, specifically, modern European colonial rule in the 20th century? How have authors interpreted and responded to decolonisation and to emergent forms of neo-colonialism? How have these processes shaped contestations around issues of gender, race, class, caste and nation? This course will think through these concerns that continue to shape art, culture and society in the Global South today, long after the end of formal empire. We will analyze contemporary novels, short stories and essays addressing regions and contexts ranging from South Asia and West Africa to the Caribbean and post-war Britain. Texts will serve to introduce students to key authors and theoretical debates within the field of postcolonial literatures, and may include Chinua Achebe’s Thing Fall Apart, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. The course will also engage with critical perspectives on ‘post’-colonialism, and explore what postcolonial literatures can teach us about ongoing moves to ‘decolonise’ universities in the Global North and beyond.

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Bertolt Brecht

This course offers an international and multidisciplinary tour of revolutionary art from the 20th and 21st centuries, including cinema, literature, visual art, theater, and performance art. It focuses on art practices that have emerged from and contributed to Left political movements, including socialist movements, struggles for national liberation from colonial and imperialist domination, and movements for sexual liberation and against racism and sexism. Particular attention will be given to thinkers and movements from the Global South and to experimental art practices. Students will learn about the cultural politics of revolutionary movements and will gain skills in analyzing a wide array of art forms. The course will also introduce crucial theories and debates about relationships between aesthetics and politics, the role of artists and other intellectuals in political struggle, and the way the culture industries attempt to control what artists make and who it reaches. Students will develop and present their own creative project as part of the course assignments. No previous knowledge of these topics or experience in making art is required.

This class will be devoted to parallel readings of Joyce’s, Kafka’s, and Beckett’s major works. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Joyce and Kafka lived in the Austro-Hungarian empire, Joyce in Trieste, Kafka in Prag. The authors never met but shared similar concerns, both taking Flaubert as a model. When Beckett met Joyce in Paris in the 1920’s, Kafka had already died, but if Beckett was thought to be Joyce’s disciple he would soon be compared with Kafka, as Adorno regularly did. However, in spite of common features, Beckett kept Kafka at distance, believing that if Joyce had invented radically new modes of writing, Kafka had not been experimental enough. However, when Beckett attempted to move away from Joyce’s overwhelming influence, he found himself in a position that was much closer to that of Kafka. The three writers explored the ways in which language structures subjectivity while meditating on beauty, faith, humor, justice and resistance to oppression. Before examining formal links and converging concerns in selected passages of Ulysses, The Castle, and Watt, or comparing pages from Finnegans Wake, The Trial and Molloy, we will engage with a corpus of short stories, aphorisms and novellas. This will allow us to investigate commonalities in the aesthetic theories of Joyce, Kafka, and Beckett, while tackling the specific hermeneutics required by their works. Two papers will consist in rewriting one short text by one author as if it has been written by another. There will be a final paper on the three authors. Requirements: One oral presentation, two creative writing experiments, one final paper (8 pages).

The destruction of the world's forests through wild fires, deforestation, and global heating threatens planetary bio-diversity and may even, as a 2020 shows, trigger civilizational collapse. Can the humanities help us think differently about the forest? At the same time that forests of the world are in crisis, the "rights of nature" movement is making progress in forcing courts to acknowledge the legal "personhood" of forests and other ecosystems. The stories that humans have told and continue to tell about forests are a source for the imaginative and cultural content of that claim. At a time when humans seem unable to curb the destructive practices that place themselves, biodiversity, and forests at risk, the humanities give us access to a record of the complex inter-relationship between forests and humanity. Forest Worlds serves as an introduction to the environmental humanities. The environmental humanities offer a perspective on the climate emergency and the human dimension of climate change that are typically not part of the study of climate science or climate policy. Students receive instruction in the methods of the humanities - cultural analysis and interpretation of literature and film - in relation to texts that illuminate patterns of human behavior, thought, and affect with regard to living in and with nature.

How and when do media become digital? What does digitization afford and what is lost as television and cinema become digitized? As lots of things around us turn digital, have we started telling stories, sharing experiences, and replaying memories differently? What has happened to television and life after “New Media”? How have television audiences been transformed by algorithmic cultures of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video? Social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook have blurred the lines between public and private spaces, and ushered in a heightened sense of immediacy to mediations of everyday life. How have (social) media transformed socialities as ephemeral snaps and swiped intimacies become part of the "new" digital/phone cultures? This is an introductory survey/exploratory course and we discuss a wide variety of media technologies and phenomena that include: Internet of Things, hacking, trolls, “FAKE NEWS,” distribution platforms, AI/ChatGPT, surveillance tactics, social media, data centers and race in cyberspace. We also examine emerging mobile phone cultures in the Global South and the environmental impact of digitization. Course activities include analyzing/producing TikTok videos and Instagram curations. The course assignments consist of take-home mid-term of short answer-type questions, a short comparative TV essay, and a take home end-term of long answer-type questions.

Some seats in this course have been reserved for LPS Students. If seats are available, you will be able to register freely. If seats are not available, you should continue to try to register in the case that someone may drop the course. On the second day of the session, any remaining seats will be opened for all students. Permits will not be issued if the course has been filled.