There is a manifest renaissance in Lacanian studies today. At least in the US, Lacan (1901-1981) who died about 40 years ago, has become paradoxically of far more interest to various scholars in the humanities than to psychoanalysts themselves. The seminar will proceed in three trajectories in order to assay this situation:

1) A granular approach to excerpts from his “Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,” (also known as his “Discourse of Rome” or manifesto,) as well as to excerpts from a few of his other remarkable texts such as “Kant with Sade” or to sections of his first published seminar The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. (Other texts will also be studied according to the interests and knowledge of participants in this seminar.) This research should underscore Lacan’s cutting edge integration of philosophy and language studies within psychoanalytic theory.

2) A careful vetting of what in Freud constituted Lacan’s rhetorical and après-coup “return to Freud.” This should lead to examine his intellectual relationships with some of his contemporaries, such as M. Klein (1882-1960) and D.W. Winnicott (1896-1971) et al., and to his influence on A. Green (1927-2012) and J. Kristeva (1941-), as well as US and UK feminist psychoanalytic thinkers (Cf. J. Mitchell & J. Rose’s “Introductions” to Lacan in Feminine Sexuality.)

In this class, we will explore the role of film in the rise of fascism, in anti-fascist responses and in the production of a collective culture of commemoration. We will focus on Europe from the 1920s to the present, but will consider other examples, such as Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and the contemporary rise of neo-fascist movements in the US and elsewhere. Readings will be film-specific as well as covering broader analytical approaches to fascism.

The last thirty years in early modern studies have seen the critical pendulum swing away from historicism and toward presentism.  But what are the limits to this collapsing of past and present? How far must the pendulum swing away from historicism toward a criticism of the now?  Certainly, the urgent, interwoven crises of our time—political, economic, ecological, intellectual—leave us with little justification for dwelling on the esoteric minutiae of the past, or for playing endless word games while the Earth burns and floods.  Our collective task will be to work out a dialectical approach that links our study of the early modern past to the present and future. 

This graduate seminar will help its participants to develop and deepen their knowledge of Shakespearean drama while offering the chance to pursue a research project that focuses on either A) a historicist reading of a play, situating it within the early modern context or B) a “presentist” reading of one of the plays by Shakespeare that we will be studying. The plays that will form the primary focus of our inquiry will be: The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, and Timon of Athens.  Seminar participants will also read and discuss critical and theoretical writings that consider the continuing importance of historicism or propose urgent new readings (or ways of reading) inspired by our present cultural and political situation. 

LTEN 222

This course considers the material and social production of gender and sexuality. We will begin with some foundational Marxist feminist texts. From this starting point, we will move in several different directions within contemporary work in feminist, queer, and trans theory in the interests of considering how scholars and activists have revisited central concepts of Marxism: production, consumption, labor, and value. We will consider how different schools of thought have engaged with the idea of gender and race as social or natural phenomena.  We will consider the cultural return to biological essentialism implicit in many mainstream gay, lesbian, and trans rights campaigns. 

Please contact instructor for course description.