PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2015-16 academic year
– precise seminar content may change from year to year.
Seminar
1
Benjamin: ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its mechanical
Reproducibility’ (from Illuminations)
2
Benjamin: ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its mechanical
Reproducibility’, Adorno/Benjamin, letters (from Aesthetics & Politics)
3
Benjamin: ‘On some Motifs in Baudelaire (from Illuminations)
4
Benjamin: ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ (from IlluminationsI
5
Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer’ and ‘What is Epic Theatre? First
Version’ (rom Understanding Brecht)
6
Brecht: St.Joan of the Stockyards, excerpts from Brecht on Theatre
7
Brecht: Mother Courage, A short Organum for the Theatre
(from Brecht on Theatre, pp. 179-205)
8
Lukács: ‘Realism in the Balance’, Brecht: ‘Against Lukács’
(from Aesthetics & Politics)
9
Adorno: ‘Reconciliation under Duress’ and ‘Commitment’
(from Aesthetics & Politics)
10
Adorno: ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, poems by Paul Celan (copies
provided)
Reading List
Walter Benjamin:
Bertolt Brecht:
Aesthetics & Politics
Illuminations, London, Pimlico, 1999
Understanding Brecht, London, Verso, 1998 (out of print,
used copies available on Amazon)
Brecht on Theatre (ed. John Willett), London, Methuen,
1978.
St Joan of the Stockyards, London, Methuen, 2006
(NY, Arcade, 1998.
Mother Courage and her Children, London, Methuen, 1988.
London, Verso, 1980.
Essential Readings from Brecht on Theatre:
‘The Epic Theatre and its Difficulties’, ‘On Form and Subject Matter’, ‘The Modern Theatre is the
Epic Theatre’, ‘The Question of Criteria for Judging Acting’,
‘Theatre for Pleasure or theatre for Instruction’, ‘On the Use of Music in an Epic Theatre’, ‘The Street
Scene’, ‘On experimental Theatre’, ‘A Short Organum for the Theatre’
h.schmitz@warwick.ac.uk, H210
Sept 2015
Useful Websites:
http://www.marxists.org/
holds a useful internet archive of material philosophy with many full primary and reference
texts for e.g.
Walter Benjamin:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Theodoer W.Adorno: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/index.htm
Georg Lukàcz: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/index.htm
Karl Marx: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
Karl Korsch (teacher of Brecht & author of Marxism and Philosophy):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/index.htm
Website of Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate
http://www.wbenjamin.org/index.html
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good entry on Adorno incl. bibliography:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/
Critial Theory Project:
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/index.htm