This class will explore complications of representing war in the 20th and 21st centuries. War poses problems of perception, knowledge, and language. The notional "fog of war" describes a disturbing discrepancy between agents and actions of war; the extreme nature of the violence of warfare tests the limits of cognition, emotion, and memory; war's traditional dependence on declaration is often warped by language games--"police action," "military intervention," "nation-building," or palpably unnamed and unacknowledged state violence. Faced with the radical uncertainty that forms of war bring, modern and contemporary authors have experimented in historically, geographically, experientially and artistically particular ways, forcing us to reconsider even seemingly basic definitions of what a war story can be. Where does a war narrative happen? On the battlefield, in the internment camp, in the suburbs, in the ocean, in the ruins of cities, in the bloodstream? Who narrates war? Soldiers, refugees, gossips, economists, witnesses, bureaucrats, survivors, children, journalists, descendants and inheritors of trauma, historians, those who were never there? How does literature respond to the rise of terrorist or ideology war, the philosophical and material consequences of biological and cyber wars, the role of the nuclear state? How does the problem of war and representation disturb the difference between fiction and non-fiction? How do utilitarian practices of representation--propaganda, nationalist messaging, memorialization, xenophobic depiction--affect the approaches we use to study art? Finally, is it possible to read a narrative barely touched or merely contextualized by war and attend to the question of war's shaping influence? The class will concentrate on literary objects--short stories, and graphic novels--as well as film and television. Students of every level and major are welcome in and encouraged to join this class, regardless of literary experience.

This course offers a broad introduction to the study of U.S. Latina/o/x history and culture. We will read poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and essays; watch films; and examine visual art from across a wide range of mediums and traditions, including poster art, performance art, murals, graffiti, conceptual art, and guerrilla urban interventions. In each instance, we will study this work within its historical context and with close attention to the ways it illuminates class formation, racialization, and ideologies of gender and sexuality as they shape Latino/a/xs’ experience. Topics addressed in the course will include: the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, transnational migration and the function of borders, revolutionary nationalisms, Latina feminisms, queer Latinx experience, ideology and racialization, identity formation, and the study of literature and art created within social movements. While we will address key texts, historical events, and intellectual currents from the late 19th century and early 20th century, the course will focus primarily on the period from the 1960s to the present. All texts will be in English. As part of the course, students will have the opportunity to develop and present their own artistic project. Weekly discussion posts, midterm paper, final research paper, creative project and artist statement.

Please see the syllabus for the title, description and readings for the fall 2022 course.
Syllabus
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202230&c=NELC0320401

Writing and reading are common actions we do every day. Nonetheless they have changed over the centuries, and a fourteenth century manuscript appears to us very different from a Penguin book. The impact of cultural movements such as Humanism, and of historical events, such as the Reformation, reshaped the making of books, and therefore the way of reading them. The course will provide students with an introduction to the history of the book, including elements of paleography, and through direct contact with the subjects of the class: manuscripts and books. Furthermore, a section of the course will focus on digital resources, in order to make students familiar with ongoing projects related to the history of book collections (including the "Philosophical Libraries" and the "Provenance" projects, based at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at Penn). The course will be conducted in English; a basic knowledge of Latin is desirable but not required.

This seminar will provide an introduction to literary theory by focusing on ideology. We will explore how ideology becomes a name for investigating various social, political, and economic processes underwriting cultural production. Throughout the semester we will read texts that help to establish a genealogy of ideology. At the same time, we will examine a number of critical theories—including (post)structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and environmental studies—that offer frameworks for analyzing the complex relationships among language, representation, and power in literature, popular culture, and public discourse. Finally, we will place these theories in conversation with a number of contemporary political debates, including feminist challenges to pornography, legal disputes over hate speech, social controversies over affirmative action, state rhetoric regarding the “war on terror,” and scientific deliberations on climate change.

The Person in the Poem:
Through the study of a wide variety of poems from the Renaissance to the present, students in this seminar will expand their familiarity with the sweep of modern English-language poetry and will develop a thorough understanding of fundamental poetic concepts—especially those concepts related to the question of “the person in the poem”: “author,” “voice,” “persona,” “address,” “personification,” “representation,” and “referentiality.” These are all concepts essential to the advanced study of poetry and of literature more comprehensively. We’ll sharpen our understanding of these concepts in our close readings and discussions of major poems by authors including W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Alexander Pope, Claudia Rankine, Adrienne Rich, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, and William Wordsworth. These poetic works will be complemented by our study of some essential works of modern poetic theory. Course requirements will include several short essays and a variety of in-class exercises, including recitation, memorization, and imitation as well as active participation in seminar discussion. (No mid-term or final exams.)

Taught in Hebrew. Texts and discussions in Hebrew.
The art of the short story is fertile ground for non-mainstream genres like horror and mystery, and its economy lends itself to the electronic era. For Hebrew writers, the short story has been a favorite since the renaissance of Hebrew literature and the revival of the language at the end of the 19th century; now it is vibrant in Israel, where Hebrew is the dynamic language of everyday life. At the center of this course are contemporary works by both male and female authors, ranging from traditional to post-modernist. Their diction is simple, sometimes colloquial, but they reflect a rich inner world and a tumultuous outer reality. Authors include: S.Y. Agnon, Orly Castel-Bloom, Alex Epstein, Amir Gutfreund, Esty G. Hayim, and Yoel Hoffman.

This course investigates how people try to understand who they are by writing about their lives. It will cover a broad range of forms, including memoirs, novels, essay films, and even celebrity autobiographies. The course will be international and in focus and will ask how the notion of self may shift, not only according to the demands of different genres, but in different literary, linguistic, and social contexts. Questions probed will include the following: How does a writer's language--or languages--shape how they think of themselves? To what extent is a sense of self and identity shaped by exclusion and othering? Is self-writing a form of translation and performance, especially in multilingual contexts? What can memoir teach us about the ways writers navigate global literary institutions that shape our knowledge of World Literature? How do various forms of life-writing enable people on the margins, whether sexual, gendered, or racial, to craft narratives that encapsulate their experience? Can telling one's own story bring joy, affirmation, and greater transcultural or even global understanding? In sum, this course proposes to illuminate the many ways in which writing becomes meaningful for those who take it up. The format of the seminar will require students to offer oral presentations on the readings and invite them to craft their own experiences and memories in inventive narrative forms.

This course examines intersections of artistic production and radical politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. It addresses art from across a wide array of media: street art, film, theater, poetry, performance art, fiction, graphic arts, digital media, and urban interventions. We will examine artistic movements and artists from across the Americas, including revolutionary Latin American theater, film, and literature; the art of Black Liberation in the U.S.; the Chicano art movement and its queer dissidents; street performance and protest produced in the context of dictatorship; anticolonial performance art and alternative reality gaming; and activist art, political theater, and cinema from the 21st century. Through its focus on the relationship between art and politics, this course also introduces students to foundational concepts related to the relationship between culture and power more broadly. As part of the course, students will have the opportunity to develop and present their own artistic project. Weekly discussion posts, midterm paper, final research paper, creative project and artist statement.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet of things are rapidly 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 meet librarians who are helping climate scientists save their data from politics. Students will gain hands-on experience with writing grants, collaborating across disciplines, and developing research questions in digital humanities. They will also acquire basic facility and literacy with key digital tools like GitHub, XML/HTML, and online publishing platforms like WordPress and Scalar. Together, we will gain a critical, historical framework for understanding technology’s impact on our lives. Absolutely no prior coding experience is required. Coursework will involve regular in-class exercises, short response papers, and one mid-sized digital project.