English 284-00 Special Topic: War, Transgression, Trauma & Transformation
WF 10:00-11:15 a.m. Trexler B-06 | Spring 2008 | updated 04/30/2008 | skip to end of term
Dr. Jeffrey Ethan Lee
CA 247
Ofc Hrs WF 9:15-10:00 a.m. and 3:15-4:00 p.m. and by appointment.
Required books and films (free to view)
Paths of Glory, film by Stanley Kubrick
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Dial Press, ISBN 0-385-33384-6
Slaughterhouse-Five [film]
Yusef Komunyakaa’s Neon Vernacular, Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 978 0819 512116
The Deer Hunter, film by Michael Cimino
Marguerite Duras’ The Lover ISBN: 0-06-097040-5
The Lover, film contains sex, sexual violence, drugs etc.
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club
Fight Club [film]
Required secondary sources will be free online or on reserve at the library.
Course Description:
We will study great writers and film makers to explore their responses to these themes: war, transgression, trauma and transformation. We will be returning to these questions throughout the course:
(1) What do these artists say about the experience of one’s identity before, during and after war or transgression?
(2) How do traumas—on a personal or cataclysmic scale—alter one’s sense of identity?
(3) Who do we become when faced with death or other serious threats to one’s integrity?
(4) From the tragic situations of war and transgression, what kinds of truth emerge?
(5) What compensatory powers of imagination, intuition (or something else) enable survivors to do more than merely exist afterwards?
The course is designed to provoke deeper thoughts, critical reflections, and original interpretations. Readings from literature and viewings of films will be supplemented by information from history, biography, interviews, etc. I will encourage you to make original connections between works and develop theses with coherent arguments about them. You will learn to do close readings of texts and gain practice in analysis and interpretation of novels, poetry, and films. Less formal written responses will be required throughout the term as a way of generating ideas for discussion and your papers.
There will be weekly reading response logs that answer a question (or questions) designed to provoke analysis and interpretation. Ideally, students start making connections that enable them to each create their own unique thesis for the paper. Strong responses typically focus upon a specific passage or scene and relate it to a theme or topic.
There will also sometimes be creative alternatives to response logs. Instead of writing a critical analysis, you could, for example, write a missing scene in a novel. That is, you could pretend you are Kurt Vonnegut and write a new scene with the characters in the novel.
Course Requirements:
Midterm 20%
Final 20%
One paper, (10 page minimum), on two or more of the works in the course. 20%
Attendance & participation in discussions 20%
Response logs & pop quizzes 20%
Advisories:
* Attendance policy: Five (5) or more unexcused absences will result in an automatic F. If you are physically present but totally unprepared, this can also count as an absence! Latenesses can also add up to absences.
* LATE HW IS NEVER ACCEPTED unless you have a valid excuse that you tell me about in advance and which we agree upon, or there are truly dire circumstances that you tell me about later.
* ALWAYS finish the reading or film viewing before we discuss it in class! Being unready to participate hurts your participation grade.
* Some of the readings and films for this course include mature themes such as: extreme violence, disturbing violence, sex, violent sex, sex in a racist context, racism in a sexual context, suicide attempts, terroristic violence, terroristic threats, torture, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms etc. It is possible that some students may have moral/religious difficulties with the actual contents of these works of art. If you have troubles of this sort, please talk to me ASAP. It may be possible to arrange for an alternate reading or an alternate film.
* Plagiarism policy: If you ever knowingly use someone else’s writing and try to pass it off as your own, you are guilty of plagiarism, which warrants an automatic F on at least the assignment. An F may also be given for the whole course. Plagiarism does not include acknowledged collaborations or other approved learning situations.
* Cheating policy: penalties are similar to those above for plagiarism.
SCHEDULE:
(assignments will be added as the term progresses; this schedule may change also depending on the needs of the class.)
Weeks 1-2
Stanley Kubrick’s film Paths of Glory.
Discussion of Stanley Kubrick’s psychopaths (secondary source forthcoming online and on library reserve, the DSM IV).
Discuss psychopathology and narcissistic personality disorders.
Weeks 3-5
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut & the film adaptation—required viewing outside of our class.
02/06/08 and 02/08/08 Friday Quiz! (5 easy questions if you were paying attention while you were reading.)
Study questions for Vonnegut:
1. How important is historical truth in this novel, and how important are imagination and fantasy in this novel? How is it that these things do not cancel each other out?
2. How important is Vonnegut's thinking about what humans are in this novel? How important in the novel is the Tralfamadorian perspective on humanity?
3. How does Vonnegut portray the American soldiers and the German soldiers?
4. What kinds of irony are evident in the novel? Situational? Cosmic? Dramatic?
5. How important are Tralfamadore's aesthetics in this novel?
6. What major themes preoccupy Vonnegut in the novel? How do they interconnect—see the first and last chapters, especially....
7. How does the sequence of scenes reveal the themes? Try to find examples where a sequence is particularly revealing of a theme in the novel.
8. What is the effect of Vonnegut injecting himself as a real historical person into the novel occasionally, i.e. after the first chapter? (see for example p. 86.)
9. Think about the consciousness of the narrator/persona of Vonnegut in the novel; what does he have in common with Billy Pilgrim, and how are they different?
10. Think about the Tralfamadorian perspective on human time (pages 146-147) and all time in the universe. How do these perspectives alter the novel?
11. Are there any villains in the novel? If not, why not?
12. How does Kilgore Trout function in this novel? Why is he here?
13. Is this novel a Cinderella story? Is it a Christ-pattern story? Is it both?
Free historical documents online to read with Vonnegut: “HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE 14-15 FEBRUARY 1945 BOMBINGS OF DRESDEN” at
https://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/PopTopics/dresden.htm
and excerpts of David Irving’s The Destruction of Dresden, which can be downloaded at http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Dresden/
General topic:
Consider how Vonnegut, as an eyewitness to history with a unique though limited perspective on the bombing of Dresden, creates the moral authority of his novel with a mixture of memoir, fiction, science fiction etc.
.
Last Vonnegut Response Log due Friday the 15th of Feb. You can use any of the 13 questions above.
For a creative alternative, you can write an extended version of a scene in the novel. That is, you pick a short scene in the novel and try to elaborate upon it in a style that is like Vonnegut's own style. One thing you may notice as a reader is the fact that there are relatively few physical descriptions of characters and settings, and those that are given tend to be somewhat exaggerated. Think of Roland Weary.
EXTRA CREDIT TOPIC: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) defined by the DSM-IV
Read this definition and consider how Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim and possibly others in the novel seem to show symptoms of PTSD. Or pretend for a while that you are an expert in PTSD and evaluate the personae of Vonnegut and Billy for PTSD.
Note: for your final project, some of you may want to consider collaborating on a Vonnegut-inspired artwork like a collage that combines facts and fantasy from the novel. Or some of you might want to consider creating a powerpoint presentation that shows some of the counterpointed themes in the novel in a way that makes them easier to comprehend. For example, Vonnegut and Billy are frequently in close proximity, and this seems to be done with a point in mind. If you drew pictures of each of those scenes, perhaps the pattern would become more clear.
Weeks 6-7
Yusef Komunyakaa’s Neon Vernacular (especially the poetry on the Vietnam War)
Link to Some free online resources for Yusef Komunyakaa.
First readings assigned for 02/20/2008 Wednesday: Neon Vernacular: pages 137-159 (war poetry).
Discuss readings & some literary terms Wednesday.
Friday: Lannan Video series of Komunyakaa.
For Friday, read the following Komunyakaa poems.
"At the Screen Door," "Work," "Praising Dark Places," "Birds on a Powerline," "Songs for my Father," "Translating Footsteps," "Passions," "For You, Sweetheart, I'll Sell Plutonium Reactors," "Untitled Blues," "Back Then," "Elegy for Thelonius," [i.e. Thelonius Monk] "Woman, I got the Blues," "The Music That Hurts," "When in Rome—Apologia."
02/27/2008 WED. Quiz on the first readings (identify the war poems by title). Discussion of war poems and other poems....
FRI. Continue discussion of Komunyakaa.
Look at possible Komunyakaa projects, e.g. take a poem like "Elegy for Thelonius" and play examples of his music for the class and show art and photography of the character/scenes/milieu described. Put it together as a powerpoint slideshow. Take a poem like "Praising Dark Places" and create the images you'd need to storyboard it as a short film. You could also read the poem with a powerpoint slideshow or any other kind of Photoshop slideshow; you could also talk about the imagery (especially of light and dark, black and white) and what you think it means in the work. You can also make your art "interpret" or explore the themes in the poems. (In poetry, one of the essential things is to have a strong reading!)
Weeks 8-9
Midterm in class on the first Wednesday back from break
Michael Cimino’s film The Deer Hunter (3 hrs)—required viewing outside of our class.
Link to The Deer Hunter resources here.
Weeks 10-12
Marguerite Duras’ The Lover & film version (2 hrs)—required viewing outside of our class.
FRI. 04/11/08
Jean-Jacques Annaud's interview and film review here.
and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club & film version.(2 hrs 19 minutes)—required viewing outside of our class.
04/23 Review some highlights of the film. Time working on collaborative projects.
04/25 Here are some links valuable for anyone seeking a greater understanding of Chuck Palahniuk and Fight Club (novel): http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/
Funny interview here: http://www.powells.com/authors/palahniuk.html
Here is a link to the script by Jim Uhls.
The script is also available here: http://www.geocities.com/weekend_game/final_scr1.htm
Take-home final questions:
Write an essay (approximately 3-4 double-spaced pages) that addresses at least two of the major works that we have discussed during the term and relate them to one of these topics. If you write about the films and the novels, just make sure that you make it clear which things you are talking about.
1. Consider the images of the self in the light of the traumas and transgressions that can change, challenge, or undermine the identity of the self. One could think of the self portrayals in The Lover and Fight Club.
2. Consider the price one pays for trying to be true to the self in the face of traumatic events and situations. Think of the characters in The Deer Hunter or either of the last two novels and films....
3. Consider the importance of the style of the artist in conveying any of the major themes in two of the last three works in the term. (PTSD, the self trying to become something it is not, the social pressures of a society with values that are questionable or corrupt etc.)