COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this course, we will explore the ways in which the bizarre and the unexpected enter people’s thoughts by tracking different understandings and occurrences of the “uncanny.” The “uncanny” is a key aesthetical and cognitive concept that stretches across the humanities and allows us to approach some of the undercurrents of the mind. It has been tentatively defined by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud as a way for the mind to respond to the fear of the world, or the return of a trauma. Before Freud, psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch described it as an instinctive reaction to the uncertainty as to whether something is animate or inanimate, or a response to events that are strange and difficult to explain. Recently, the term “the uncanny valley” has allowed roboticist Masahiro Mori to think about people’s unease and fascination for robots that (almost) look like humans.

Aided by the possibilities of the fantastic, myths, and modern novels, in this course we will investigate the boundaries between familiar and unfamiliar, the human and the non-human, the harmless and the threatening, the everyday and the unusual to question our relationship to things, androids, and our environment. More specifically, we will track the internal psyche of characters who often depart from reality and are repeatedly haunted by doubt, disorientation, and anxieties. To do so, we will analyze major pieces of literature, from the short stories “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allan Poe, and “The Horla” by Guy de Maupassant to Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute and the modern novel A Moment of True Feeling by Peter Handke.

BOOKS REQUIRED

• The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud
• The Golden Pot and Other Tales, E.T.A. Hoffmann
• A Parisian Affair and Other Stories, Guy de Maupassant
• The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
• Tropisms, Nathalie Sarraute
• A Moment of True Feeling: A Novel, Peter Handke

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The theme of the metamorphose has suffused myths and fictions since antiquity. In this course, we will consider ancient and recent narratives of metamorphosis and focus on the meeting of humanity and animality in literature from The Golden Ass by Apuleius to The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka to The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector. This course explores the ways the theme of the metamorphose challenges the porosity between the human and the animal, the opposition between culture and nature, and how it offers a commentary on society, identity, alterity, and gender. We will discuss each metamorphosis both at a prosaic and metaphorical level, and analyze how the persons are transformed, both physically and psychologically, by their new condition. We will also pay particular attention to the narrative point of view, the effect, and the genre of the texts, and observe how they participate in the way readers approach these magical, unexplained, or incongruous transformations.

BOOKS REQUIRED

• The Golden Ass, Apuleius
• The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
• Lady into Fox, David Garnett
• Rhinoceros, Eugène Ionesco
• The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Taking the ’70s and ’80s essays on North American culture by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (America and Simulacra and Simulation) and Italian semiotician Umberto Eco (Faith in Fakes) as a starting point, this course aims at discussing the concepts of simulacra, simulation, and hyperreality. We will consider the artistic, socio-cultural and political effects of these concepts in a range of material and mediatic environments, as well as working towards better understanding the infiltration of the virtual, the false likeness, the imaginary, and the fake into the “real.” To do so, we will read transatlantic travel accounts and theoretical essays (Deleuze, Marin, etc.), analyze films (The Matrix, Westworld), fiction (The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick), and places (Disneyland, the wax museum, the Getty Villa).

BOOKS REQUIRED

• Course Reader
• Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard
• Faith in Fakes. Travels in Hyperreality, Umberto Eco
• The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares
• The Simulacra, Philip K. Dick

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Pioneer of the French New Wave, film essayist, avant-gardist director, and photographer, Agnès Varda is renowned for her experiments with film and other media, her mischievousness, and her wanderlust. Deeply personal, thought-provoking, and formally inventive, Varda’s oeuvre is also resolutely political. Through her films, Varda inquired into some of the most important historical events of the second half of the twentieth century (the Vietnam War, May ’68, the Black Panther Party) and reflected on major societal issues and transformations (precarity and class, our relationship to nature and the land, the feminine gender, love relationships). In this course, we will study key works directed, or co-directed, by Varda, among them Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961), Le Bonheur (1964), Salut les Cubains (1964), Black Panther (1968), Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000). In the first part of the class, we will address the form and content of Varda’s films to better understand what makes her oeuvre unique. In the second part of the class, through a series of workshops and in light of our discussions on Varda, students will produce either an “essay film” or a “photo essay,” or in other words, a form of storytelling that is by definition personal, reflective, and unorthodox.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The body is a site for anything; any commentary can be made using the body as a vehicle. The body contains so much that we have created a language for it, devoid of the language it already has itself. It has been alluded to metaphorically and literally, there is no subject matter that the body has not been able to break into, the body is a container, a vessel for human subject matter and because we all have multiple people who reside within us and have created the beings we are today, it will always be a primary concern.

Often in the spiritual realm the body is referred to as a temple, as the physical harbourer of the soul. A personal entity allowed to roam the public realm. Perhaps this is why using the body is so personal, so specific to the person whose body has been made use of. Not only is the person’s body being used or captured in a moment of time, but the soul of their being and their character in that moment is captured, partially plays a role, perhaps using the body is profoundly personal because by bearing the exterior one also inadvertently brings another soul into the interior. By allowing another to scrutinise the physical, they allow for character examination to occur. As an intermediary, a pathway to the spiritual realm, the use of the body is something that is both connected and disconnected to the vessel, only the physical entity that the trace of the person left. The body is a sign, a sign of life that was and life to come, it is a marker of space and time, a moment that signifies the time in which one lives and also serves as a reminder of what was, especially when one is a vessel.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course intends to make an interdisciplinary investigation of the different issues pertaining to the depiction of the human figure in literature, art, and sciences: how do these disciplines produce and subvert specific knowledge about the human figure and otherness? What are the institutional, cultural, and political repercussions of these representations? The corpus selected for this reading course (texts, images, sculptures, and anatomical models) addresses diverse issues that question the limitations and the field of action inherent to the translation of the human body into another media. Works will be discussed in relation to race, class, sexuality, gender, age, and health. The goal of this reading seminar is to provide a space in which students can practice close textual and visual analysis, as well as critically engage with theoretical texts on this particular topic.

TEXTBOOKS REQUIRED

• Course Reader (E.H. Gombrich, Lorraine J. Daston, Peter Galison, John Berger, Simone de Beauvoir, Paul B. Preciado, etc.)
• Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin

En 2001, l’artiste anglais Marc Quinn a affirmé que le portrait du biologiste Sir John Sulston qu’il a réalisé à partir de l’ADN du modèle, et qui est en apparence abstrait, était sans doute le portrait le plus réaliste de la National Portrait Gallery de Londres. Avec DNA portrait of Sir John Sulston, Quinn pose la question de la figuration de l’humain et questionne le concept de « réalisme » en art. À partir de cette question décisive du réalisme, ce cours d’introduction à l’histoire de l’art propose d’explorer certaines questions que pose la représentation de l’humain en sculpture, peinture, dessin, architecture, du 19e siècle à nos jours. Comment certaines représentations influent-elles sur notre compréhension de l’humain ? Quelle conception de l’homme se joue à travers une représentation ? Quels rôles jouent couleurs et matériaux dans ces représentations ? Comment certains systèmes, tels que la théorie de l’évolution de Charles Darwin, ont-ils modifié la représentation de l’homme (cf. la récente exposition du Musée d’Orsay, « Les Origines de l’homme. L’invention de la nature au siècle de Darwin ») ? Dans ce cours, nous discuterons la manière dont certaines théories et propositions participent à la mise en place de normes et discours sur le corps. À partir de textes théoriques (Ernst Gombrich, John Berger, etc.) et d’un corpus couvrant principalement le travail d’artistes européens (Edgar Degas, Charles Cordier, Francis Bacon, Le Corbusier, Marc Quinn, John Isaacs, etc.), nous étudierons la capacité d’une image à consolider ou bien subvertir certaines représentations et lieux communs et à proposer de nouvelles manières d’appréhender l’humain. Ce cours offre un espace propice à la discussion et aux analyses visuelles.

Ce séminaire se propose d’étudier les relations qu’entretiennent les individus avec les objets et aux choses au-delà de leur fonction utilitaire à partir d’un corpus littéraire et artistique français de la fin du 19e siècle à nos jours.

Ce cours sera l’occasion d’explorer la place de la culture matérielle dans la société française sous les angles historique, créatif et culturel. Il s’agira d’analyser la manière dont la littérature et les arts pensent les objets du quotidien (la voiture, les jouets, les meubles, etc.), nous montrant par là même la place que choses et objets ont dans notre vie et nos imaginaires et les liens complexes que nous entretenons avec eux.

Oeuvres au programme:

• Dossier polycopié (Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Charles Baudelaire, Marta Caraion, etc.)
• Extraits (Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Jean Rouaud, Zeina Abirached, Jacques Carelman, etc.)
• Les Choses, Georges Perec
• Les Années, Annie Ernaux
• Le Manteau de Proust : Histoire d'une obsession littéraire, Lorenza Foschini
• Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati
• Le Jouet, Francis Veber

Certains des plus grands écrivains de leur génération, Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett et Claude Simon, pour n’en citer que quelques-uns, ont publié leurs écrits aux Éditions de Minuit. Depuis sa création clandestine en 1941 comme acte de résistance, la maison d’édition s’est engagée à publier des livres qui témoignent d’événements historiques majeurs : l’Occupation allemande, l’Holocauste et la guerre d’Algérie. Son catalogue représente des auteurs reconnus pour leur voix unique et leurs innovations littéraires. Ainsi, les Éditions de Minuit sont indissociables de Beckett ou bien des écrivains du Nouveau Roman.

Étudier l’histoire de cette maison d’édition et ses acteurs permet dès lors de discuter de différentes problématiques littéraires, sociales et politiques à partir de l’analyse d’œuvres-clés des années 1940 jusqu’à nos jours.

De nombreux extraits et œuvres complètes sont au programme, parmi lesquels Le Silence de la mer de Vercors, Molloy de Samuel Beckett, La Question d’Henri Alleg, L’Amant de Marguerite Duras, Les Guérillères de Monique Wittig, La Disparition de Jim Sullivan de Tanguy Viel, Continuer de Laurent Mauvignier.