Readings will include many texts by Eisenstein as well as by his most eminent intellectual contemporaries. Discussion of texts and visual works will be combined with screenings. Analysis of each text as well some consideration of the historical and cultural context out of which it emerged will take up a good part of each weekly meeting. The course is designed to help PhD candidates studying literature after 1800 to acquire sounder knowledge of these classics. While it is not a practicum, the course also aims to help students teach humanities or great books surveys that regularly include some of the authors listed above.
Enrollment is limited to PhD candidates.
Permission to register must be obtained in person from Prof. Daniel Javitch . Apart from these, priniciple texts will be the Meditations , and then letters to the Princess Elisabeth and the Pssions de l'ame as they confirm a deepening commitment to moral and political issues. The overarching themes include the critique of universal rationality, the crisis of narrative, the paradox of the liberal-democratic regime, the constitution of subjectivity after the Subject, and the possibility of representation and oppositionality in the age of global capitalism. The discussion is devoted to the issues and theoretical operations specific to the individual authors as well as to recurring themes and questions to be teased out from the readings. Final grade will be based on class participation and a 20-30pp term paper.