C LIT 451       SEMINAR IN LITERARY MOVEMENTS AND PERIODS

1 Unit             Same as MDVL 410

                        *May be repeated to a maximum of 3 units as topics vary.

                        Section B Title: Postmodernism and post-structuralism in theory and practice

                        Lecd    B         3-4:50            W             211 Davenport         N Blake

This seminar will explore some manifestations of the evolution of the Cartesian self in contemporary philosophical and artistic trends.  Beginning with foundations laid by Heidegger for experiencing linguistic and poetic practice, we will consider several influential continental thinkers as well as some American innovators in the realm of postmodern artistic production.  The focus will then shift to recent developments in nonwestern media addressed to a global audience.  The posthumanist vision is accompanied by a breakdown of genre concerns expanding in some cases to a confusion of the territories of the sciences and the arts.  Fiction, film, architecture and the plastic arts will be examined, not as illustrations of theory, but as processes of thought.

Martin Heidegger, Alain Robbe-Grillet, William Burroughs, Jacques Derrida, J.-F. Lyotard, Thomas Pynchon, Marguerite Duras, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, William Gibson, Andy Warhol, Wong Kar-wai.