The department announces two new grad courses for Fall 2014: Becoming Animal (Prof. Alice Kuzniar) and Deutsche Sprachinseln (Prof. Mat Schulze).
Becoming Animal
Prof. Alice Kuzniar (cross-listed with ENG 785)
The goal of this class is to familiarize students with current debates in critical animal studies within the wider framework of posthumanism and ecocriticism. Among the questions to be raised in the course of the semester are: What qualities do we share with animal life, mindful of the dangers of anthropomorphization? Specifically, to what extent can we speak of animal agency, mortality, vulnerability, its gaze, and, in the Levinasian sense, its face? How do we deconstruct the role the animal has been appointed in the Western philosophical tradition in order to define what is human? How do the disavowal and absence of mourning operate in contemporary society with regards to animal loss? How does our visual culture fetishize and distance the animal and how is this distance and yet yearning for closeness reflected upon in postmodern art? Finally, how in Donna Haraway’s words are we today “companion species in technoculture”? Readings include Derrida, Agamben, Deleuze, Kafka, and Heidegger.
The last third of the semester will be devoted to student-led readings and discussions, so that students can pursue their own line of investigation. Here the terms of inquiry can be broadened to involve other aspects of the posthuman, including the Disneyfication/designification of the animal, queering the nonhuman, the cyborg and the prosthetic body, and other interfaces of the so-called human with its others.
Deutsche Sprachinseln
Prof. Mat Schulze (held with GER 431)
In this course, students will investigate and discuss the development of German speech communities in minority situations both in North America and Europe. Linguistic varieties such as KW-German, Pennsylvania German, Transylvanian Saxon, Danube Swabian, and Plautdietsch of the Russian Mennonnites will be at the centre of attention from both contemporary and historical perspectives. To contextualize issues of language contact, language policies, and societal bilingualism, the cultural artefacts produced by these communities and their social and political involvement in the course of their rich histories will be discussed. Oral and written interaction in this class will be in German.