Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

In the Culture Wars of the 1990s and again over the past few years, the charge has arisen that criticism has become politicized, and that this is a bad thing—a violation of the fundamental nature of criticism’s object, whether that object is seen as literature, aesthetics, or culture. This course will examine fundamental conceptualizations of criticism, the object of criticism, and the goal of criticism as well as conceptualizations of politics, which is at least as confusing and indeed potentially misleading a concept.

If politics is defined in relation to the nation-state, for example, in what ways is political criticism thrown into question in the era of globalization, when politics (like the politics of climate change) arguably spills over the boundaries of the nation-state? Is there a "cosmo-politics," and if so what about the particular brand or brands of criticism thereof? What was and is the politics assumed by the still relatively recent sub-field of "post-colonial studies," and to what extent is it compatible with its emergent competitor, "world literature"? What roles has criticism played, and what role should it play, in relation to so-called "identity politics"? What was and is "critique," what relation does it have to politics, and what is the political meaning of so-called "postcritique"?

The course will undertake to study some of the most important past stages of intersection between criticism and politics, including classical rhetoric and the art of governing (Aristotle) and the overlap and tensions between Romantic imagination and the theory of democracy, as in Raymond Williams's classic
Culture and Society
(1958), as well as contemporary instances and controversies. It will be structured around the Table of Contents of my
Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction
(Stanford UP, 2022). Two weeks each will be devoted to:

Chapter 1: the impact on criticism of the 1960s movements

Chapter 2: the concepts of criticism and critique, including “faultfinding” (politics as purely negative critique) and Matthew Arnold’s concept of culture

Chapter 3: the social mission of criticism, the argument that it has lost its sense of vocation, the concept of the organic intellectual (Gramsci, Edward Said, Stuart Hall)

Chapter 4: the relations between aesthetics (in Kant) and governing, with special reference to Foucault

Chapter 5: criticism as a claim to victimhood: a violation of criticism&rs

Department: English and Comparative Literature
MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
Instructor: Bruce Robbins
CULPA: 35 Wikipedia h-index: 39 Info
3 points

Details

ENGL GU4943

ECONOMICS & PHILOSOPHY

Department: Philosophy
T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
4 points

Details

ECPH GU4950

Beginner Medical Spanish

BEGINNER MEDICAL SPANISH

Department: Nursing
T 7 p.m.-8:20 p.m.
W 5:30 p.m.-6:50 p.m.
Instructor: Ana I Esteban Gonzalez
Info
1 points

Details

NURS N4950

Reality Television

Department: Film
R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Instructor: Racquel Gates
Info
3 points

Details

FILM GU4953

When American Television Became American

When Amer TV Became Amer

In a 2015 interview with David Simon (creator of
The Wire
) President Barak Obama offered that
The Wire
is, "one of the greatest -- not just television shows, but pieces of American art in the last couple of decades."
The Wire
combines hyperrealism with the reinvention of fundamental American themes (from picaresque individualisms, to coming to terms with the illusory “American dream”, to a fundamental loss of faith in American institutions), and engages in a scathing expose of the shared dysfunction among the bureaucracies (police, courts, public schools etc.) that manage a troubled American inner city. On a more macro level
The Wire
humanizes (and therefore vastly problematizes) assumptions about the individual Americans’ who inhabit America’s most dangerous urban environments from gang members to police officers to teachers and even ordinary citizens.
The Wire
, of course, did not single-handedly reshape American television. Scholars like Martin Shuster refer to this period of television history as “new television.” That is, the product of new imaginations that felt television had exhausted its normative points of reference, subject matter and narrative technique. Many of the shows from this period sought to reinvent television for interaction with an evolving zeitgeist shaped by shared dissolution with 21st century American life: “I’d been thinking: it’s good to be in a thing from the ground floor, I came too late for that, I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling I might be in at the end. That the best is over,” Tony Soprano confides to Dr. Malfi in S1.E1 of the Sopranos. Series that fall within this rubric include (in chronological order):
The Sopranos
;
The Wire
;
Deadwood
;
Madmen
; and
Breaking Bad.

We need to consider carefully that these shows emerged during a particular moment on American history. This was a period shaped by an increasingly relativist conceptualizations of truth (and, at times, outright fraud) and a resultant loss of faith in American institutions. Resistance movements (MeeToo, and Black Lives Mater) began to shape. No wonder that so many of the series under discussion take place amid American cultures defined by a liminal faith in law and order, within the contexts of vague moral authorities and hold American institutions with a shared, deep, suspicion.

These show

Department: Film
W 2 p.m.-5 p.m.
Instructor: Ben Alexander
Info
3 points

Details

FILM GU4954

Visualizing History: Photography in conf

Department: History
W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
Instructor: Joao Pina
Info
4 points

Details

HIST GU4954

THE ASIAN AMERICAN NOVEL

What does it mean to write an Asian American novel? In this seminar, we will explore this question by examining a range of novels written by Asian American authors. I use the term “Asian American” to underscore its political importance as an identity and community formation that consolidated in the late 1960s. These novels we will read were published from the early twentieth century to as recently as earlier this calendar year. Some are bestsellers, prize winners, or have been deemed as pivotal to the development of Asian American literature and its history. Others are not. Some are well known authors; others are newer or emergent writers. Some feature characters who are Asian or Asian American. Others explicitly questions our assumptions and expectations regarding literary and cultural representations of Asians and Asian Americans. Across their work, these authors are nevertheless held together in part by their engagement with transnational relations in Asia and North America, including U.S. expansion across to the Pacific, migration and immigration legislation, labor exclusions and political resistance, and the changing dynamics of the United States in the wake of a so-called global Asian century.

A guiding principle will inform our work: Asian American writers have long been interested in theorizing the novel as an artistic, literary, and political form. While the content of these novels will of course be important, we will also examine how Asian American writers have explicitly experimented with the
form
of the novel as a genre, including romance,
bildungsroman
, hybrid creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, postmodern palimpsest, YA novel, apocalyptic dystopia. To guide us in this goal, we will read scholars who have theorized the novel as a genre, we’ll also situate this work alongside the substantial history of Asian American literary scholarship on the novel.

Department: English and Comparative Literature
F 10:10 a.m.-noon
Instructor: Denise Cruz
CULPA: 8 h-index: 6 Info
4 points