Narratives of Suffering
MW 2-3:30
Prof. Geoffrey Sanborn
Office: Johnson Chapel 106
Description:
“The word ‘suffer,’” Nietschze writes, is something that we “set up . . . at the point at which our
ignorance begins, at which we can see no further.” What makes suffering especially mysterious—
and especially attractive as an element of story-telling—is that it both escapes secure designation and
refuses to be ineffable; it is a Thing, neither fully beyond nor fully within our ken. It provokes a
desire to give it shape and a desire to do no more than approach its shapelessness; it occasions
humanitarian crises and stands beyond them as an unbudgeable element of existence; it rings like a
pure gold coin of truth and like an alarm bell that cannot be shut off. In this course, we will be
studying a series of thematically connected but wildly different works that model especially
suggestive ways of approaching this phenomenon.
Schedule:
W 9/5
Introduction
M 9/10
T 9/11
W 9/12
The Book of Job
Screening of The Sweet Hereafter (dir. Atom Egoyan), 8 p.m.
Julia Kristeva, from Black Sun, 3-25 discussion of The Sweet Hereafter
S 9/16
M 9/17
W 9/19
Screening of Leaving Las Vegas (dir. Mike Figgis), 8 p.m.
Julia Kristeva, from Black Sun, 175-208; discussion of Leaving Las Vegas
William Shakespeare, King Lear, acts 1-3
M 9/24
W 9/26
King Lear, acts 4-5
Owen Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the
Whale-Ship Essex
M 10/1
W 10/3
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 7-110
Moby-Dick, 110-214
M 10/8
W 10/10
Mid Semester Break
No class: conference
M 10/15
W 10/17
Moby-Dick, 214-331
Moby-Dick, 331-427
M 10/22
T 10/23
W 10/24
F 10/26
Emily Dickinson, poems 160, 167, 193, 241, 341, 348, 362, 364, 379, 405, 414, 459,
510, 536, 553, 561, 599, 639, 650, 686, 772, 792, 799, 951, 957, 963, 967, 1049, 1147
Screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Dreyer)
Discussion of The Passion of Joan of Arc
Paper #1 due
M 10/29
W 10/31
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, 1-48
The Sound and the Fury, 48-113
M 11/5
The Sound and the Fury, 113-99
W 11/7
John Hersey, Hiroshima
S 11/11
M 11/12
W 11/14
Screening of Night and Fog (dir. Alain Resnais), 8 p.m.
Discussion of Night and Fog
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Thanksgiving Break
M 11/26
W 11/28
Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1-158
Beloved, 159-324
M 12/3
W 12/5
Art Spiegelman, Maus I
Spiegelman, Maus II
M 12/10
W 12/12
Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 1-144
The Road, 145-287
F
Paper #2 due
12/21
Requirements:
Two ten-to-twelve-page papers (37.5% each)
Preclass responses (15%)
Attendance and participation (10%)
Preclass Responses:
The goals of the system of preclass responses are 1) to provide you with a relatively informal
venue for working out your thoughts about what you've read, 2) to ensure that everyone comes to
class having not only read but reflected on the material, and 3) to offer another way of
contributing for those of you who have difficulty speaking in class, in the hopes that you may
find it easier to join the in-class discussion further down the road. I expect most responses to run
about two paragraphs, and I value inquisitive, exploratory, open-ended work.
The system works like this:
 Shortly after every class, I post at least two prompts on the Moodle forum.
 Sometime before noon on the next class day, you post a response to one of those prompts.
 I read your postings and grade them on a scale of 0 to 3, where 0 is unsatisfactory, 1 is
minimally satisfactory, 2 is satisfactory, and 3 is positively gratifying.
 I use the postings as starting points and ongoing reference points during that day’s
discussion.
 I let you know your grades on the postings by giving you a copy of your grade sheet every
three weeks or so.
One More Thing: Turn in your papers on time. You will lose a third of a grade if you turn your
paper in after the due date; if it’s more than a week late, you lose two-thirds of a grade; if it’s
more than two weeks late, you lose a full grade. If you are obstructed by some medical or
personal emergency, let me know immediately.