Readings
January 23 Monday
Class introduction;
BEYOND BELIEF listening session;
kvetching about small classroom; lots
of crashers kindly accomodated!
January 30 Monday
Read CARLOS FUENTES's
AURA.
February 6, Monday
Read the first chapter
of ULYSSES by James Joyce and the
first book of the Odyssey by Homer;
you are welcome to complete your
readings without benefit of a reading
guide--that said, a first-rate
dictionary and concise encyclopedia
will be of great use to you. You
may do your readings in any order:
homer first, then joyce, or the
reverse. do beware that the road
taken and not taken, to steal from r.
frost, are different roads. This
week I will be reading homer and then
joyce. cheers!
February 13, Monday
thank you all for your
work this past monday--these are
challenging and delicious works of
literature; it would be enough to read
the odyssey or joyce to perplex and
drive a normal undergraduate
class.
but we are doing both
simultaneously! at least we
were!
for this coming week,
let's switch things up a tad:
this week, to give you time to begin
your readings in earnest, we will take
a time-out and screen billy wilder's
SUNSET BOULEVARD.
this will allow us to
guage the communication between this
filmed text and AURA--but it will
also, in an odd way, help us to fathom
the figuration of the
female/mother/other archetype that so
engaged the class discussion this past
monday. gloria swanson's
portrayal of norma desmond is
remarkable in many respects, but
perhaps most of all owing to her
embodiment of a Salome-like
succubus (shades of Señora
Llorente).
eagerbeavers truly
interested in this figuration and its
psychoanalytic consequences should
read a little of LUCE IRIGARAY's
__speculum of the other woman__
essays, cornell university press. i
will put a copy of one of her essays
on your site later today....
February 20,
MondayHIATUS--read ahead!
February 27, Mondayyour
reading for Monday February 27, is to
read up to page 177, the end of book
11 of the Odyssey.
March 6, 2006
for the next week,
March 6, 2006, see if you can read in
joyce's ulysses to the end of page
291, the end of the SIRENS chapter
11.
TONS of readings!
do not hesitate to use
the guide found here to assist
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/index.html
the moving map they
have here to help you with chapter 10
is amazing!!!
one other site to see
if you want to begin to understand
just how much joyce nested in this
text is here:
http://www.ulysses-art.demon.co.uk/scheme.html
a simple map from that
page is here:
but do
know! YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED to use
these guides at all--the pleasures of
ULYSSES are bound up in giving
yourself over to joyce's singular
literary vision.
One other succinct and
useful guide is here.
Can't go to
Dublin? Peek here
for a walking tour!
March 13, 2006
Spring Break
March 20, 2006
Enter the classroom
having read all the way to page 609,
the end of section II of ULYSSES--429
to 609 are in the form of a play, so
don't let the monstrous page-count
fool you! Today, you will
receive your final project assignment
sheet that outlines your
writing/art/etc project for the
class--it is due May 8, 2006 at our
final class
seminar/colloquia/all-night-video-dance
party.
New!
Semester
Project Assignment: plain; noir and printablePDF
flavors!
March 27, 2006
Read to page in THE
ODYSSEY to page 335, the end of book
21 of Homer's epic. Also, read
to the end of page 665 in Joyce's
ULYSSES, the end of ch. 16,
Eumaeus. today's class features
a cool guest lecture by Stephanie
Wells!
Stephanie Wells is
assistant professor of English at
Orange Coast College.
She has a BA in
English and Dramatic Art from UC
Berkeley, an MA in
literature from
University of Virginia, and a PhD in
English from UC Davis.
She also attended the
University of London and has taught
at UC Davis,
the University of San
Francisco, and as a visiting
Fulbright lecturer at
Johannes Gutenberg
University in Mainz, Germany.
She specializes in
American and British
modernism, poetry, and gender
studies, and her
undergraduate thesis
at Berkeley was on Ulysses.
Don't forget your
decorated with key images from the
reading three dollar envelope
thingie!
April 3, 2006
Read to page 737, the
end of the 17nth ITHACA chapter in
ULYSSES.
April 10, 2006
Finish ULYSSES and THE
ODYSSEY--this is the week as well to
CAREFULLY LISTEN TO and READ THE
LYRICS to Elvis Costello's IMPERIAL
BEDROOM; consider the dissonance and
harmonies implicit in and explicit to
these three grand operas of love and
more.
updated
april
8, 2006
April 17, 2006
Screen THE
PILLOWBOOK by Peter Greenaway!
in preparation for
the pillowbook screening for next
monday--begin your reading of sei
sonagon, at least 100 pages, so that
the following week won't seem
onerous. in addition read this interview
with greenaway; this one
won't hurt either; and, lastly, read this
ghoulish story:
yours in books,
skins, beds, and more,
ps: the
relationship between body of
translator and body of work in Aura
shares much with the same in the
PILLOWBOOK--watch for it!
April 24
Walk into class
having read THE PILLOW BOOK by SEI
SHONAGON.
May 1, 2006
In-class imagination
festival challenge, aka APRIL SCARY
EXAM; prepare for the exam by
reviewing your reading notes from
ULYSSES and THE ODYSSEY--you may come
into class with one page of typed
quotations from ULYSSES, THE ODYSSEY,
AURA, and SUNSET BOULEVARD that you
want to play with during your SCARY
EXAM
May 8, 2006
Class Party | Cafe
Literati Terrace | South Patio Adams
Humanities | BYODOFYWLTS*
*bring your own drink or
food you would like to share
|
My
office
hours are from 1pm to 3-ishpm
on MONDAYS in Adams Humanities
4117. Please do drop
by during the semester, as I
hate working with a room full
of strangers! Only if the idea
of meeting a professor has you
breaking out in hives, then
email me at 
You
must
come to class having completed
the reading and writing
assignments noted in the day
to day menu printed below--no
late papers will be accepted.
The class will be run as a
seminar, and you should be
prepared to share your ideas
and ask tough questions on a
regular basis. As the class
meets once a week you are
perfectly entitled to miss two
of our class meetings without
punitive assaults on your
grade. Miss more than two
classes and I will drop your
final grade a whole letter
value, i.e. a "B" becomes a
"C," etc. Call me at 594.1524
if you think you are going to
have a problem.
