Ger/Lit 391 Body Media
M/W 6:10-7:30 Eliot 414
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Today, even the word “body” is controversial. At once concrete and abstract, material and immaterial, the human form is something everyone wants to control, yet no one is quite sure what it is. Through analyses of literature, philosophy, film, and photography, this course explores modern ideas about the corporeality and spirituality of the flesh. We will be particularly concerned with models of expression and self-determination that enlist the body’s apparent physicality for metaphysical ends. We will also examine efforts to envision new humanoid constructs such as machines, cyborgs, and electronic avatars.
There will be three 5-page papers and regular e-mail discussions. Active participation in conference is required. Students enrolled in the course for German credit will meet in separate sessions and do some additional writing assignments.
The following books are available in the bookstore and on reserve in the library:
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish
Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Best Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann
Franz Kafka, The Complete Short Stories
Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Writings
Marquis de Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and other Writings
Four German-language works are also available in the bookstore:
Franz Kafka, Die Erzählungen und andere ausgewählte Prosa
Heinrich von Kleist, Penthesilea
Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Erzählungen und andere Prosa
Rainer Maria Rilke, Fünfzig Gedichte.
The following materials are available on the library website as e-reserves:
Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997) 15-37 & 158-71.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. John Cottingham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 12-23.
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. & tr. James Strachey, vol. 17 (London: Hogarth, 1953) 219-255.
Terri J. Gordon, “Fascism and the Female Form: Performance Art in the Third Reich,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11:1-2 (January/April 2002): 164-200.Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The reinvention of nature (New York: Routledge, 1991) 149-181.
Neil Hertz, “Dora’s Secrets, Freud’s Techniques,” The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 122-143, 248-249.
Amelia Jones: “Tracing the Subject with Cindy Sherman,” Cindy Sherman: Retrospective (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997) 33-53.
Ludmilla Jordanova, “Science, Machines, and Gender,” Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear, eds. Michael Minden and Holger Bachmann (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000) 172-197.
Michael Mackenzie, “From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia,” Critical Inquiry 29 (Winter 2003): 302-336.
Laura Mulvey: “Cosmetics and Abjection: Cindy Sherman 1977-87,” Fetishism and Curiosity (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1996) 65-76.
Juhani Pallasmaa, “Cinematic Minimalism,” The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema (Helsinki: Rakennustieto Oy, 2001) 37-62.Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia,” The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings (New York: Penguin, 1986) 110-126.
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford UP, 1985) 3-23 & 327-8.Elizabeth A.T. Smith: “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” Cindy Sherman: Retrospective (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1997) 19-31.
Weekly Schedule
Week 1
8/27 Introduction / René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
8/29 Sigmund Freud, Dora
Week 2
9/3 Labor Day—No Class
9/5 Dora; Neil Hertz, “Dora’s Secrets, Freud’s Techniques”
Week 3
9/10 E. T. A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”
9/12 “The Sandman”; Freud, “The Uncanny”
Week 4
9/17 “The Uncanny”; Heinrich von Kleist, Amphitryon
9/19 Amphitryon
First Paper due Friday, September 21 at 5PM
Week 5
9/24 Fritz Lang, Metropolis
9/26 Metropolis; Ludmilla Jordanova, “Science, Machines, and Gender”
Week 6
10/1 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”
10/3 Edgar Allan Poe, “Ligeia”
Week 7
10/8 Kleist, “On the Marionette Theater”; Leni Riefenstahl, Olympia
10/10 Olympia; Terri J. Gordon, “Fascism and the Female Form”;
Michael Mackenzie, “From Athens to Berlin”
Fall Break
Week 8
10/22 Cindy Sherman, selected images; Laura Mulvey, “Cosmetics and Abjection”;
Amelia Jones, “Tracing the Subject with Cindy Sherman”
10/24 Sherman; Elizabeth A.T. Smith, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”
Week 9
10/29 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
10/31 Discipline and Punish; Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony”
Second Paper due Friday, November 2 at 5PM
Week 10
11/5 Discipline and Punish; “In the Penal Colony”
11/7 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain
Week 11
11/12 Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom; Roland Barthes, “Sade I” and “Sade II”
11/14 Philosophy in the Bedroom; Maurice Blanchot, “Sade”
Week 12
11/19 Gottfried Benn, selected poems
11/21 Thanksgiving Eve – no class
Week 13
11/26 Alfred Hitchcock, Rope
11/28 Rope; Juhani Pallasmaa, “Cinematic Minimalism”
Week 14
12/3 TBA
12/5 TBA
Third Paper due Monday, December 10 at 5PM