Literature, Program in (LIT)

Professor Surin, Chair; Professors Hardt and Moi, Directors of Graduate Studies; Professors Gaines (literature and English), Hardt (literature and Italian), Jameson (literature and French), Kaplan (French and literature), Khanna (English and literature), Lenoir (literature), Lentricchia (literature), Mignolo (literature and Spanish), Moi (literature and French), Mudimbe (literature), B. H. Smith (English and literature), Surin (literature and religion), Thomas (French and literature), Wiegman (women's studies and literature); Associate Professors Farred (literature), Lubiano (African and African American Studies and literature), Viego (literature and Spanish), Willis (literature), Yoda (literature and Asian and African languages and literature); Assistant Professor Mottahedeh (literature); Research Professor Dorfman (literature and Latin American studies)

The interdepartmental program leading to a PhD in Literature offers qualified students the opportunity to develop individual courses of study with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary work, literary theory, and cultural studies, while at the same time allowing students to specialize in one or more of the national literatures. The program offers both introductory courses (the 250 series) and more specialized seminars (The 280 series), as well as tutorials (300) in specific research projects or problems.

For tutorials, advising, and dissertation supervision the program draws also on the expertise of other faculty such as Professors Baucom, Davidson, Moses, Pfau, Torgovnick (English); Abe, Stiles, and Wharton (art history); Burian and Davis (classical studies); Cooke (Asian and African languages and literature); and Flanagan (philosophy).

Students entering the program must present evidence of ability to read one language other than English, and must acquire reading competence in a second language before taking their preliminary examinations.

Students in the literature program are normally expected to take a minimum of fifteen courses, six of which should be in literature and six in a "teaching field" of their choice. More information on the program and a full descriptive brochure is available online at http://literature.aas.duke.edu/grad/.

200S. Seminar in Asian and African Cultural Studies. 3 units. C-L: see Asian and African Languages and Literature 200S; also C-L: African and African American Studies 200S, Cultural Anthropology 288S

210S. Basic Concepts in Cinema Studies. Review of theory, methodology, and debates in study of film under three rubrics: mode of production or industry; apparatus or technologies of cinematic experience; text or the network of filmic systems (narrative, image, sound). Key concepts and their genealogies with the field: gaze theory, apparatus theory, suture, indexicality, color, continuity. Instructor: Mottahedeh. 3 units.

211S. Theory and Practice of Literary Translation. Linguistic foundations, historical roles. contemporary cultural and political functions of literary translation. Readings in translation theory, practical exercises and translation assignments leading to a translation project. Instructor: Burian. 3 units.

212S. Film Feminisms. Philosophical debates and approaches to the female form in film theory and history. Phenomenology, cultural studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, post-structuralism, as well as gaze theory, apparatus theory, and feminist film theory as they approach readings of the body, subjectivity and identity in cinema. Questions of spectatorship and the gendered subject. Screening and discussion of Hollywood and European avant garde films key to early debates, and of international films central to debates around the gendered subject and representation in modernity. Interrogation of feminist approaches to national cinemas. Instructor: Mottahedeh. 3 units. C-L: Women's Studies 212S

253. Special Topics in Literature of the Modern Era. Study of a particular author, genre, or theory of modern literature. Topics include changing understandings of authorship, questions of reception, translation, and the history of criticism. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

260. Twentieth-Century Reconceptions of Knowledge and Science (DS4). Key texts and crucial issues in contemporary history, sociology, and philosophy of science-or, as the assemblage is sometimes called, 'science studies.' Focus on theoretical and methodological problems leading to (a) critiques of classical conceptions of knowledge and scientific truth, method, objectivity, and progress, and (b) the development of alternative conceptions of the construction and stabilization of knowledge and the relations between scientific and cultural practices. Readings include L. Fleck, K. Popper, P. Feyerabend, T. Kuhn, S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, and B. Latour. Instructor: Herrnstein Smith. 3 units. C-L: English 280

262. Body Works: Medicine, Technology, and the Body in Early Twenty-first Century America. 3 units. C-L: see Information Science and Information Studies 270; also C-L: Philosophy 270

279. Special Topics in Film. Selected film directors with attention to their visual style. Auteur theory or authorship as a way of understanding the cinematic work of European, American, Asian, or African masters of the form. Instructor: Lentricchia. 3 units.

281. Paradigms of Modern Thought. Specialized study of the work of individual thinkers who have modified our conceptions of human reality and social and cultural history, with special emphasis on the form and linguistic structures of their texts considered as 'language experiments.' Topics vary from year to year, including: Marx and Freud, J.P. Sartre, and Walter Benjamin. Instructor: Jameson, Moi, Mudimbe, or Surin. 3 units.

283. Modernism. Aspects of the ''modern,'' sometimes with emphasis on the formal analysis of specific literary and nonliterary texts (Joyce, Kafka, Mahler, Eisenstein); sometimes with a focus on theories of modernism (Adorno), or on the modernism/postmodernism debate, or on the sociological and technological dimensions of the modern in its relations to modernization, etc. Instructor: Jameson or Lentricchia. 3 units.

284. The Intellectual as Writer. History and theory of the literary role of the intellectual in society (e.g., in Augustan Rome, the late middle ages, the Renaissance, America, Latin America). Instructor: Jameson, Lentricchia, Moi, Mudimbe, or Surin. 3 units.

286. Topics in Legal Theory. A consideration of those points at which literary and legal theory intersect (e.g., matters of intention, the sources of authority, the emergence of professional obligation). Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

293. Special Topics in Literature and History. Relationship of literary texts to varieties of historical experience such as wars, periods of revolutionary upheaval, periods of intense economic growth, ''times of troubles,'' or stagnation. Literary texts and historical content posed in such formal ways as the theoretical problem of the relationship between literary expression and form and a range of historical forces and phenomena. Instructor: Jameson or Kaplan. 3 units.

294. Theories of the Image. Different methodological approaches to theories of the image (film, photography, painting, etc.), readings on a current issue or concept within the field of the image. Examples of approaches and topics are feminism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, technology, spectatorship, national identity, authorship, genre, economics, and the ontology of sound. Instructor: Gaines, Jameson, or Mottahedeh. 3 units. C-L: Information Science and Information Studies 294

295. Special Topics in Representation in a Global Perspective. Problems of representation approached in ways that cross and question the conventional boundaries between First and Third World. Interdisciplinary format, open to exploration of historical, philosophical, archeological, and anthropological texts as well as literary and visual forms of representation. Instructor: Dorfman, Jameson, or Mignolo. 3 units.

301. Language and Theory in the Twentieth Century. A seminar examining some of the most significant analyses, controversies, and achievements of the various disciplinary approaches to language during the past century and their implications for cultural study. Topics include the question of linguistics as a science, the muddle of meaning and interpretation, approaches to communication as social interaction, the Chomskian episode, and poststructural/postanalytic conceptions and contributions. Instructors: B. H. Smith and Tetel. 3 units.

302. Seminar in Emergent Literatures. An advanced seminar in the literature of Third World or nonwestern countries. Specific topics vary from year to year. Instructor: Dorfman. 3 units.

303. History of Criticism. Theories of art and literature from Plato and Aristotle to the early twentieth century. Special emphasis on the period from 1750 to 1900. Instructor: Moi or staff. 3 units.

304. History of LIterary Institutions. History of the university, the development of the disciplines of literary study, especially English and Comparative Literature, and of the various supporting institutions, practices, and technologies of literary study. Consent of instructor required. Instructor: Radway, Hernstein Smith, or Staff. 3 units.

391. Tutorial in Special Topics. Directed research and writing in areas unrepresented by regular course offerings. Consent of instructor required. Instructor: Staff. 3 units.

2008-09 Bulletin of the Duke University Graduate School

2008-09 Bulletin of the
Duke University Graduate School