Professor Office Lecture Times Location Phone Office Hours Course Description

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1 Professor G. Williams Office 1921 DT Lecture Times Mondays/Wednesdays 11:35 am - 12:55 pm culearn Location Tory 447 Phone ext Office Hours By Appointment Course Description This course studies representations of selfhood and identity formation in Western literature from pre-modernity to the present, paying particular attention to the 19 th and 20 th centuries. The primary genre that we will look at with a few exceptions is the short story, whose examples have been culled from various corners of American and European traditions from high literature to pulp fiction, and from the ghost story to science-fiction. I have opted to study short stories so that the course can cover a greater range of ideas and theories than a study of a few novels or plays would ever permit. Each short story has not been selected because its author has created some particularly groundbreaking or unique conception of what it means to be human, but because its conception is representative of its time and place or a larger cultural, literary, or philosophical movement. We are not reading the short stories for themselves so to speak but for what they tell us about a version of the human self, the course s main reference point. A short-story, like a time capsule found in an old building, provides us with the prevailing beliefs about how people viewed and experienced their selves at a specific historical moment. To assist us in understanding the ways in which the short stories represent selfhood and identity formation, we will periodically consult writings on philosophy and cultural theory. The course takes a historical-phenomenological and historical-psychoanalytic approach to its topic. That is, we will study the changing structures, discourses, and institutions by which subjective and affective experiences are mediated. If the syllabus s depictions and explanations of the self appear bizarre and even uncanny, the course will have achieved its goal: to defamiliarize what it means to be human in order to shake us out of the blind certainties of our own historical and cultural moment.

2 2 Primary e-books to Buy The Open Author: Georgia Agamben Translator: Kevin Attell Publisher: Standford Univ Pr Publication Date: 2003 Edition: Kindle at Amazon Metamorphosis and Other Stories Author: Franz Kafka Translator: Michael Hofmann Publisher: Penguin Publication Date: 2008 Edition: Kindle at Amazon Please buy these editions so that you will be able to follow the lectures. If you purchase different editions, you will find it difficult to locate the proper passages. Your assignments will need to refer to these editions too. The other readings can be accessed free of charge through Ares accessible with your culearn account. Great effort went towards finding free yet reliable editions for this class. However, the cost-saving measures mean that you need to keep up to date in figuring out what the week s readings are. This is your responsibility. culearn Please note that this course is managed with Carleton s Learning Management System. Course readings, student grades, contact, and other required resources can be found on the culearn web site, accessible here: If you haven t done so, please open up a culearn account. Topics and Readings DATE Jan. 7 Jan. 9 Jan. 14 Jan. 16 Jan. 21 Jan. 23 Jan. 28 LECTURE Introduction The Fictional Self, not the Self in Fiction Jorge Luis Borges s Borges and I, Robert Nozick s Fiction, and Pierre Bourdieu s The Biographical Illusion Self-Reflections IN-CLASS WRITING ASSIGNMENT The Soul and Its Residues: Classical Versions Excerpts from Plato and Virgil s underworld The Soul and Its Residues: Christian Versions Dante s Inferno, Cantos 5 and 6, and Willa Cather s Eric Hermannson s Soul The Soul and Its Residues: Ghosts Algernon Blackwood s The Listener and Anthony Boucher s The Ghost of Me The Sinful Body: Asceticism Athanasius s The Life of St. Antony and Nathaniel Hawthorne s Ethan Brand

3 3 Jan. 30 Feb. 4 Feb. 6 Feb. 11 Feb. 13 Feb. 25 Feb. 27 March 4 March 6 March 11 March 13 March 18 March 20 March 25 March 27 April 1 April 3 April 8 The Sinful Body: Scapegoating Nathaniel Hawthorne s My Kinsman, Major Molineux and Shirley Jackson s The Lottery The Double: The Uncanny E.T.W. Hoffmann s The Sand-man and Sigmund Freud s The Uncanny The Double: The Split Self Sigmund Freud s The Uncanny and Robert Louis Stevenson s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde The Double: The Unconscious Robert Louis Stevenson s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde MID-TERM TEST Animal Selves: Humanism s Others Giovanni Pico della Mirandola s Oration on the Dignity of Man and Heinrich von Kleist s On the Marionette Theatre Animal Selves: The Anthropological Machine Georgio Agamben s The Open Animal Selves: The Closed Georgio Agamben s The Open and Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis Interiority: Modern Alienation Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis Interiority: Stream of Consciousness Virginia Woolf s The Mark on the Wall and The New Dress and excerpt from Georg Lukács s The Meaning of Contemporary Realism Interiority: Foundational Documents Book 10 of St. Augustine s Confessions and René Descartes s Meditation One from Meditations on First Philosophy Horror of the Self: The Abject H.P. Lovecraft s The Outsider and Barbara Creed s Kristeva, Feminity, Abjection Horror of the Self: Beyond the Human Georgio Agamben s The Muselmann and Foucault s lecture on Biopower Horror of the Self: The Collective Ray Bradbury s The Crowd, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes s The Ghouls, and Michel Foucault s The Lives of Infamous Men Dissolution of the Self: Subject to Language Jorge Luis Borges s Funes, His Memory and Vladimir Nabokov s Symbols and Signs Dissolution of the Self: Cold War Paranoia Frederik Pohl s The Tunnel under the World and Philip K. Dick s Adjustment Team Posthumanism: Fantasy of the Robot and the Cyborg Issac Asimov s The Bicentennial Man and Donna Haraway s Cyborg Manifesto Posthumanism: Beyond Death Greg Egan s Border Guards

4 4 Evaluation ASSIGNMENT DATE DUE % OF GRADE 1. Attendance Throughout term 5% 2. In-Class Writing Jan % Assignment 3. Midterm Test Feb % 4. Essay March 13 20% 5. Final Exam TBA 40% Attendance The attendance grade is based on your presence in the classroom. I will take a roll call every class. You are allowed to miss two classes no questions asked. It is your responsibility to save these grace classes for emergencies. After those grace classes have been used up, I will deduct marks for absentees. The reason that I am giving 5% to attendance is to encourage full attendance. Success on the mid-term test and the final exam depends upon your engagement with lectures. In-Class Writing Assignment (1 hour) This assignment will ask you to reflect upon your own conception of the self. To prepare for this in-class assignment, you should consider the individuals, the institutions, and the media who have shaped not who you are but the elements, the parameters, and structures that enable you to have an identity in the first place. For instance, instead of baldly stating that you are a hockey player, you might explain that your notion of self-hood derives from the institutional framework of athletics, which supplies you with a narrative of physical and mental development through competition. This assignment will help prepare you for one question on the final exam. Midterm Test (Full Class) Held in class on Feb. 13, this test will cover all the readings up to and including those on Feb. 11. The questions will be short answer and identification and analysis of quotations according to the course s emphasis on the self. Passages and topics as well as their significance and analysis will be taken directly from lectures. The mid-term serves as a dry-run for the types of questions on the final exam. Essay ( words) You will write an essay on a topic from an assignment sheet given out in February. The topics will compare two different short stories on the syllabus. Final Exam The final exam will be comprised of the following three types of questions: short answer, identification and analysis of quotations, and an essay. These questions and their answers will be based on topics, materials, and interpretations discussed in lectures.

5 5 Note on Plagiarism and Lost Essays Carleton University maintains a strict policy on all forms of academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is an instructional offence, which may result in an F in a course or even expulsion from a course. Assignments must be original work that has been produced by the student only for the course; that is, the same assignment cannot be recycled for another course. All referencing must be complete and accurate for both direct and indirect quotations. Cases of academic dishonesty will be treated very seriously and dealt with according to the regulations outlined in the Carleton Graduate Calendar. To ensure that assignments and essays are not lost, students are required to keep an extra hard copy of their assignment before submitting it to the instructor. In the event that any questions arise concerning the sources and documentation of any written assignments, students should also keep all their research notes and drafts until the completion of the course. Requests for Academic Accommodations For Student with Disabilities For Religious Observance For Pregnancy Contact Paul Menton Centre (6608) to obtain letters of accommodations. To be worked out on individual basis with instructor. Consult Equity Services Website or an Equity Advisor (ext. 5622) for Policy and list of Holy Days ( Contact Equity Services (ext. 5622) to obtain letters of accommodation.