HSS403(H01) Honors Literature Seminar in Humanities:
Summer 2012
Cullimore 111
MWR 6-9
Jon Curley
Telephone: (973) 596-3258
Email: seancurl @ hotmail.com
Office hours: by appointment Rm. 409 Cullimore
Course Description
This class is will focus on twentieth century political fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in their various historical and social contexts. We will explore the motivations for political art and the ethical dilemmas surrounding propaganda, partisanship, and commitment to political causes, positions, and themes. By exploring various world literatures during a turbulent century, we shall examine the function of art in a time of violence and how writers represent and respond to specific historical struggles and events.
Requirements
You are expected to keep up with the reading in the texts and complete all assigned exercises. Classroom participation is essential. I will ask that you bring responses to particular texts under discussion each week and compile a weekly writing journal based on your writing experience, classroom reactions, and any other thoughts related to literature and politics.
Also:
Two Essays 40%
Oral Presentation 10%
Final Examination 25%
Weekly writings & 15%
Oral Presentation
Class Participation 10%
Required Reading
Roberto Bolaño. Distant Star
Carolyn Forché, ed. Against Forgetting: 20 th
Century Poetry of Witness
David Levi-Strauss. Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics
George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia
Niccolo Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti
Victor Serge. Unforgiving Years

Course Outline
Week 1 May 21, 23, 24
Introduction;
“Where are We” (J. Berger, Introduction to
Between the Eyes );
“Photography & Propaganda”; “Photography & Belief”; “A Sea of
Grief is not a Proscenium”; “Where the Camera Cannot Go”; “Can You
Hear Me?”; “The Highest Degree of Illusion”;“Epiphany of the Other”;
“The Documentary Debate: Aesthetic or Anaesthetic” (
Between the Eyes )
Week 2
The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti
May 28, 30, 31
The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti
Poems from The Spanish Civil War (in Against Forgetting );
Homage to Catalonia
Week 3 June 4, 6, 7
Unforgiving Years
Poems in section “Revolution and Repression in the Soviet
Union” of Against Forgetting : A. Ahkmatova, V. Serge. O. Mandelstam,
M. Tsvetayeva
Essay #1 Due
Week 4 June 11, 13, 14
World War II poems: M. Jacob, P. Eluard, B. Brecht ( Against Forgetting
The Holocaust, The Shoah Poems ( Against Forgetting )
)
Week 5 June 18, 20, 21
Catch-Up/Finish Up!
Distant Star
Week 6 June 25
Final Examination
Essay #2 Due
Course Conclusions and Beginnings