Early melodrama was deliberately experimental, even avant-garde: combining poetry, dance, and scenic effects to produce a new affective theatre of suspense. It presents a rare case study for theorists of genre, a form with clear origins and initial paths of dissemination. Audiences encountering it for the first time on German, Parisian, and London stages found in it an astonishing hyper-realism that we now associate with immersive theater: set to expressive music and featuring a host of visual, sonic, and olfactory effects. Today, melodrama is arguably even more pervasive than two centuries ago. (How “melodrama” became “melodramatic” will be one of the questions lurking behind our readings and discussions).

Our seminar will begin in its first week with the performance poetry of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the groundbreaking stage designs of Jacques Phillipe de Loutherbourg, who in plays like Harlequin Robinson Crusoe (1781) and Omai, or A Voyage around the World (1785) created the first truly three-dimensional sets through which actors had to move. These sets were as arresting as they were global and exotic. Early in the course, therefore, we'll move from Europe to the Caribbean, reading works such as Inkle and Yarlco (1787), Columbus, or a World Discovered (1793), and the pantomimic (1800) and melodramatic (1830) versions of Obi, or Three-Finger'd Jack. Alongside these plays, we'll read selections from Benjamin Mosely's Treatise on Sugar (1799) and C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins (1938). Around week five we'll then move into melodrama proper, reading foundational plays like Thomas Holcroft's A Tale of Mystery (1802) and Isaac Pocock's The Miller and His Men (1813). Born during a cease-fire and exploding into popularity during thirteen years of world war, English melodrama came to dominate British and American stages by 1815. We'll also sample other cultural forms, particularly Gothic fiction and poetry of the supernatural, asking how these new aesthetic forms shape emotional response, particularly as they traverse media.

In our final weeks, the course will become a true seminar, with its members determining our final readings. Whether we move forward, backward, or laterally will be up to you. My hope is that our final meetings might see us moving into the medieval and the futuristic, the local and the diasporic.

This course is open to all Ph.D and M.A. students. Submatriculants should contact me to request permission, as well as submitting a permit request via Path@Penn. Course work will be comprised of a few responses, a presentation, and a conference paper that may be expanded into a longer work. If possible, we'll also hold a session on digital tools and archival methods. I'm also working to bring in a few guest discussion leaders if possible, including our own Jacob Myers.

Description: This graduate seminar will study French representations of modern America from the Revolutionary Age through the 20th century, with an eye to what stereotypes of the transatlantic Other say about France’s own cultural, political, and literary shifts. From Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1830’s observations on religious freedom and penal institutions in the new democracy to Jean Baudrillard’s 1986 musings on America as the site of the “hyper-real,” French writers have displayed an ambivalent fascination with their “brother nation” across the sea. The 19th century in particular set a template of stereotypes that contrasted the dynamism of capitalist growth and technological invention in American cities with their underside of materialist corruption and cultural lack of sophistication. In addition to reading Voltaire, de Tocqueville and Baudrillard, we will explore the nuanced range of literary representations of the United States through post-revolutionary ruralism (Chateaubriand, René/Voyages en Amérique), 19th-century vaudeville theater (De Leuvan, Les Sept Péchés Capitaux; Sardou, L’Oncle Sam), satirical writing (Assolant, Un Quaker à Paris), comic journalism (Allais, “Supériorité de la Vie américaine sur la nôtre”), the scientific fantastic (Villiers, Contes cruels), science fiction (Verne, Le Testament d’un excentrique/Voyage autour du monde en 80 jours), 20th-century experimentalism (Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit), poetry (Cendrars, Les Pâques à New York), and travel writing (Duhamel, Scènes de la vie future; de Beauvoir, Amérique au jour le jour). Secondary works will include chapters from Extrême-Occident (Mathy), Posthumous America (Hoffmann), Fascination and Misgivings (Portes), The American Enemy (Roger), L’Amérique au tournant (Dubosson et Geinoz), and Frères Ennemis (Cloonan). • Readings in French/discussions in English. Comments (INTERNAL)

This course will provide an introduction to some of the most important film theory debates and allow us to explore how writers and filmmakers from different countries and historical periods have attempted to make sense of the changing phenomenon known as "cinema," to think cinematically. Topics under consideration may include: spectatorship, authorship, the apparatus, sound, editing, realism, race, gender and sexuality, stardom, the culture industry, the nation and decolonization, what counts as film theory and what counts as cinema, and the challenges of considering film theory in a global context, including the challenge of working across languages. There will be an asynchronous weekly film screening for this course. No knowledge of film theory is presumed.

The opening pages of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1869), set in July 1805, feature a conversation between two nobles who are speaking in a combination of Russian and “that elegant French in which our forefathers not only spoke, but also thought.” Tolstoy’s remark points to a shift in the relative status — both practical and symbolic — of each of these languages in Russian high society that was occurring as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth. Shifts in the functions and values of language(s) comprise the subject of this graduate-level seminar, which traces the emergence of the modern Russian literary tradition as it took place in dialogue with evolving attitudes and ideologies surrounding language, translation, nation, and empire. We will adopt a diverse array of theoretical approaches as we examine the influence of linguistic culture on literary development as well as how ideas about literature can exert their own influence on realities and discourses of language.

In spite of the recent proliferation of scholarship on the topic of decolonization, Western academics have often failed to seriously engage with the rich corpus of anticolonial theory and analysis produced in the context of struggles against imperialism. This course examines theories of imperialism, neo- and internal colonialism, and decolonization developed in the 20th and early 21st centuries, focusing on thinkers and movements from the global South, and from Latin America and the Caribbean in particular. We will address differences among contemporary discourses on decolonization, while delving deep into national liberation Marxism. Theories and debates within Marxist thought concerning national self-determination, racism, and development will figure prominently in the course, as will analyses of cultural imperialism, ideology, and the role of intellectuals and artists. The course will be conducted in English; course readings will be in English and Spanish. Students with questions about language requirements should contact the instructor. This course is open to MA and Ph.D. students. Submatriculated M.A. students and advanced undergraduates should contact the instructor to request permission to enroll and should submit a permit request via Path@Penn.

What is an archive, and what is its history? What makes an archival collection special, and how can we work with it? In this course, we will discuss work essays that focus on the idea and concept of the archive by Jacques Derrida, Michel de Certeau, Benjamin Buchloh, Cornelia Vismann, and others. We will consider the difference between public and private archives, archives dedicated to specific disciplines, persons, or events, and consider the relationship to museums and memorials. Further questions will involve questions of property and ownership as well as the access to material, and finally the archive's upkeep, expansion, or reduction. While the first part of the course will focus on readings about archives, we will invite curators, and visit archives (either in person or per zoom) in the second part of the course. At Penn, we will consider four archives: (1) the Louis Kahn archive of architecture at Furness, (2) the Lorraine Beitler Collection of material relating to the Dreyfus affair, (3) the Schoenberg collection of medieval manuscripts and its digitalization, and (4) the University archives. Outside Penn, we will study the following archives and their history: (1) Leo Baeck Institute for the study of German Jewry in New York, (2) the Sigmund Freud archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., (3) the German Literary Archive and the Literturmuseum der Moderne in Marbach, Germany, and (4) the archives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.

The aim of this seminar can be described as trying to figure out how poetry and poetics figure into the effort to theorize the African American subject in the 21st Century. At a time when the sheer number of African American poets publishing today (to say nothing of the major prizes they are winning) has exploded exponentially, why does poetry continue to be so marginal in African American literary and cultural studies? As we make our way through recently published anthologies of African American poetry, then turn to the works of individual poets, we will consider issues of influence, intertextuality, periodization, stylization, and tradition as they impact approaches to form, structure, and craft. Ultimately, however, we will focus on the question of why are these poets writing these poems at this particular time? Technologies like PennSound and YouTube will provide important critical tools in our endeavors and at various points during the term, guest lecturers will join our discussions. Submatriculated MA students should contact the instructor for permission to enroll and submit a permit request via Path@Penn.

In one of the most evocative frescoes of the Renaissance, Raphael juxtaposes Plato and Aristotle. The pairing would seem obvious, since the two thinkers had been for centuries symbols of philosophy and wisdom. But only the recent revival of Plato, begun in the mid-fifteenth century, had allowed the Latin world to gain a better understanding of Platonic philosophy and, therefore, to compare Plato's doctrines directly to those of Aristotle. Were master and disciple in harmony? And if not, which of the two should be favored? Such questions were less innocent than one might think, and the answers to them had implications for philosophy, theology, speculation on the natural world, and even politics. The course will offer an overview of Renaissance philosophy and culture by focusing on the different ways in which Plato and Aristotle were read, interpreted, and exploited between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The course will be conducted in English; a basic knowledge of Latin is desirable but not required.

The greats all have something to say about translation. The Hebrew poet H. N. Bialik is attributed with saying that “he who reads the Bible in translation is like a man who kisses his bride through a veil.” That, however, is a mistranslation: What Bialik really wrote was, “Whoever knows Judaism through translation is like a person who kisses his mother through a handkerchief." (http://benyehuda.org/bialik/dvarim02.html), a saying that he probably translated and adapted from Russian or German. (https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/116448/query-bialik-kissing-bride) Robert Frost wrote, “I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.” Walter Benjamin defines it: “Translation is a form. To comprehend it as a form, one must go back to the original, for the laws governing the translation lie within the original, contained in the issue of its translatability.” Lawrence Venuti rails against translation that domesticates, rather than foreignizes, thus betraying the foreign text through a contrived familiarity that makes the translator invisible. Emily Wilson wants her translation “to bring out the way I think the original text handles it. [The original text] allows you to see the perspective of the people who are being killed.” https://bookriot.com/2017/12/04/emily-wilson-translation-the-odyssey/ Is translation erotic? A form of filial love? Incestuous? A mode of communion, or idol worship? Is translation a magician’s vanishing trick? Is translation traitorous, transcendent? Maybe translation is impossible. But let’s try it anyways! In this graduate seminar, we will read key texts on the history and theory of translating literature, and we sample translations from across the centuries of the “classics,” such as the Bible and Homer. We will consider competing translations into English of significant modern literary works from a variety of languages, possibly including, but not limited to German, Yiddish, French, Hebrew, and Russian. These readings will serve to frame each student’s own semester-long translation of a literary work from a language of her or his choice. The seminar offers graduate students with their skills in various language an opportunity to take on a significant translation project within a circle of peers.