Le monde en ruines : Espaces brisés de la littérature contemporaine

Le monde en ruines : Espaces brisés de la littérature contemporaine

Dr. Vincent Gélinas-Lemaire is excited to announce the recent publication of his edited volume on the poetics of ruins in contemporary literature.

The publication consists of contributions from both established and young scholars from Canada, France and Switzerland. Their essays touch on a variety of topics and locales, from the trenches of the Great War to the most recent photographs and narratives of Detroit. The electronic versions of the articles will be available online shorty via Erudit.org (https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/etudfr/#journal-info-about).

Excerpt from the abstract:

« La littérature contemporaine est hantée par la ruine : celle des hauts-fourneaux abandonnés à la rouille par leurs consortiums mondialisés ; celle des villes ravagées par la guerre et les catastrophes naturelles ; celle des mondes inhabitables d’un futur dystopique. Ces ruines ne sont plus héritières de la Rome mélancolique de Du Bellay ou de l’Arcadie pastorale de Poussin et du Lorrain ; elles ont oublié la nature, Dieu et le temps long. Si, donc, les ruines ne s’attachent plus à l’idéal, si elles ne sont plus le site d’une contemplation rêveuse, quel rôle jouent-elles dans les littératures française et québécoise du XXIe siècle ? » Learn more.

Published June 3, 2020

FREN470

French Language and Societies

This course is an introduction to sociolinguistics, with a focus on French-speaking societies. Throughout the semester, we will discuss basic concepts in sociolinguistics and address main topics in the field, including language variation, language contact and its possible outcomes, standardization, multilingualism, identity questions, and language attitudes and ideologies. This course aims to enable students to analyze, understand and discuss the links between language and society by providing students with the knowledge of sociolinguistic theory, research methods, main concepts and terminology along with developing the relevant application skills. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French.

Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

  • Recognize the challenges of linguistic and sociocultural diversity in the French-speaking world.
  • Understand the main concepts and theories in sociolinguistics and apply them to the study of French and multilingual communities.
  • Discuss and explain the link between various social factors and language use.
  • Conduct their own sociolinguistics research in a French-speaking community.

Required readings:
Readings will be made available through the Canvas site.

Prerequisite: All of FREN 353, FREN 370.

Corequisite: FREN 370 may be taken concurrently with the permission of the instructor.

Language of instruction: French

ITST377

Cultural Exchange between Modern Italy and China

Since Marco Polo, Italy’s communication with China has been the longest in Europe on written record. In the 20th century, increased mobility intensified cultural exchanges between the two countries. Leading Italian writers such as Italo Calvino continued to imagine Polo’s legacy, making him a main character in his postmodern masterpiece, Invisible Cities (1972). During the early 1970s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Italy was among the first Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with Maoist China. During that time, prominent intellectuals, including Michelangelo Antonioni and Alberto Moravia, went there to witness the famous social engineering. The 1940s Italian neorealist cinema significantly influenced Six-generation Chinese filmmakers, including Wang Xiaoshuai in the 1990s-2000s. Since the 1980s, Italy has been the leading country in continental Europe to receive Chinese migrants, a phenomenon that led to significant media coverage and debate to the present day.

This course will examine these events by questioning notions of the self and the other, hybrid cultural identities, and intercultural communication. Ultimately, we will put Italian and European interpretations of China as a rising superpower in perspective. To this purpose, the course is divided into four units, namely “Marco Polo and His Legacy,” “The Cultural Revolution,” “Italian Cinema and China,” and “Chinese Migration to Italy.” All readings are in English, and all films have English subtitles. No prior knowledge of China or Italy is required to enrol in this course.

Required readings:

Excerpts:

The Travels of Marco Polo
Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972)
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci 1987)
The Red Book and the Great Wall: An Impression of Mao’s China (Alberto Moravia 1968)
Chung Kuo Cina (Michelangelo Antonioni 1972)
Behind the Forbidden Door: Travels in Unknown China (Tiziano Terzani 1985)
Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai 2001)
My Name is Shanghai Joe (Mario Caiano 1972)
Gomorrah (Roberto Saviano 2006)
Story of My People (Edoardo Nesi 2010)
Shun Li and the Poet (Andrea Segre 2011)

Prerequisite: Second-year standing or higher.

Language of Instruction: English

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FREN510

Baudelaire et la poétique de la modernité

S’il est pertinent de distinguer le fait d’être moderne, c’est-à-dire le fait d’appartenir à une époque historique déterminée et la conscience de modernité comme l’effet d’une disposition active qui conduit l’homme à interroger son mode d’être pour en extraire une interprétation de sa propre identité, alors il faut admettre que l’oeuvre de Charles Baudelaire se situe du côté de cette seconde catégorie. Elle s’attache précisément à circonscrire les conditions de la modernité en l’expérimentant aussi bien sur le plan “théorique” de la réflexion critique (dans les Salons et autres essais esthétiques) que sur le plan directement poétique (dans Les Fleurs du Mal ou les Petits poèmes en prose). À travers ses textes, Baudelaire s’affirme comme penseur de la « modernité », terme qu’il a inventé en en faisant le mot d’ordre d’une esthétique et d’une poétique nouvelles centrées sur une prise de conscience du rapport apparemment contradictoire entre la beauté et la dimension du présent — modernité dans l’art et modernité de la vie quotidienne, avec sa banalité, son héroïsme, ses fausses idoles et ses humbles victimes.

Dans ce cours, nous nous proposons d’étudier la modernité telle qu’elle figure sur les plans théoriques et poétiques dans l’œuvre de Baudelaire, tout en considérant la réflexion critique qui s’y fait sur la modernité historique que se joue dans «Paris, Capitale du XIXe siècle ». Pour mieux apprécier la place centrale qu’occupe Baudelaire au XIXe siècle — historiquement, esthétiquement – nous le situerons dans les contextes poétique et critique qui l’ont determiné et qu’il a par la suite déterminés lui-même.

Readings:

Textes de Charles Baudelaire :
Les Fleurs du mal
Le Spleen de Paris (Petits poèmes en prose)
Curiosités esthétiques
Ecrits sur l’art
Journaux intimes

(à noter : beaucoup des textes de Baudelaire se trouvent en ligne)

Parmi les textes secondaires que nous consulterons:

Benjamin, Walter. Ed. Michael Jennings. The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire (2006)
Benjamin, Walter. Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle : le livre des passages (1997)
Bonnefoy, Yves. Sous le signe de Baudelaire (2011)
Brunel, Pierre. Baudelaire antique et moderne (2007)
Chambers, Ross. An Atmospherics of the City: Baudelaire and the Poetics of Noise (2015)
Compagnon, Antoine. Baudelaire moderne et antimoderne (cours au Collège de France, en ligne)
Lloyd, Rosemary, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire (anthologie d’articles critiques).(2006)

+ divers articles critiques par, entre autres, Hans Robert Jauss, Ross Chambers, Michel Foucault.

Language of instruction: French

Professor: Sima Godfrey

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FREN578

L’archéologie des textes : les problèmes de l’édition scientifique

Quand on lit une œuvre ancienne dans une édition moderne, comment le texte qu’on a sous les yeux a-t-il été produit ? L’édition scientifique a pour ambition de livrer un texte fiable et fixe à la communauté des lecteurs et des chercheurs, à partir du matériau initial que sont les manuscrits, les imprimés anciens, les brouillons d’auteurs ou autres documents d’archive. Il s’agit de l’activité nécessaire et première qui permet l’accès à notre patrimoine littéraire. Toutefois, derrière ces éditions critiques modernes, livres imprimés au texte fixe, autorisé et reproductible, se cache tout un travail critique, parfois polémique, marqué par des choix constants qui peuvent avoir un impact profond sur le texte obtenu. À partir d’exemples concrets de différentes époques des supports différentes (manuscrits médiévaux, imprimés anciens, brouillons d’auteur), ce cours se veut une introduction aux différentes théories et pratiques de l’édition scientifique, depuis les méthodes traditionnelles jusqu’aux nouvelles méthodes numériques.

Textes : TBA

Langue d’enseignement : français

Professeur : Anne Salamon

Course Registration

SPAN520D

Barroco y Neobarroco en el Mundo Hispánico: Los Casos de España y Cuba

This course explores the connections and distinctive traits between Spanish baroque and Latin American neobaroque as cultural and ideological codes in the context of the radical transformations that took place during the emergence of the modern and post-modern worlds. Using as case studies seventeenth century Spain and twentieth century Cuba, we will study how the poetics of baroque and neobaroque proposes a way of appropriating reality that does not respect limits, leaves unsolved or half-solved issues and holds within itself the seed of subversion. In this way, we will examine the use of powerful rhetorical devices such as irony, metaphor, fable, symbol, allegory or coincidentia oppositorum in the texts to promote contradictory values and ambiguity, maintain a distinct sense of cultural identity and ultimately challenge ideological or political control. Related to this, we will discuss the links between baroque/neobaroque literary production and topics such as power, cultural control, otherness, racial and religious conflict, orthodoxy/heterodoxy, polycentrism and chaos, colonialism, hybridity or sexuality. Since Baroque was always a hybrid and multi-artistic phenomenon, although the course focuses on literary representation, attention will be paid to (and students will be allowed to work on) architecture art, music, cinema (e.g., Volver, Fresa y chocolate) as well as other contemporary manifestations of the barroque/neobaroque in publicity, media, comic, fashion and computer culture of the Hispanic World.

Primary Texts:

– Góngora y Argote, Luis de. Soledad primera (1613).
– Calderón de la Barca, Pedro. La vida es sueño (1635).
– Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco de. La hora de todos y la Fortuna con seso (1645).–selección-.
– Gracián, Baltasar. El oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647).
– Saavedra Fajardo. Empresas políticas o Idea de un príncipe cristiano (1640). –selección-.
– Lezama Lima. José. Paradiso (1966) –selecciones-.
– Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. Tres tristes tigres (1967) –selección-.
– Sarduy, Severo. De donde son los cantantes (1967).
– Carpentier, Alejo. Concierto barroco (1972).

Critical Sources may include:

– Baudrillard, Jean. Cultura y simulacro (1978).
– Beverley, John. Essays on the Literary Baroque in Spain and Spanish America (2008).
– Calabrese, Omar. La era neobarroca (1994).
– Chiampi, Irlemar. Barroco y modernidad (2001).
– Deleuze, Gilles. El pliegue: Leibniz y el barroco (1988).
– D´Ors, Eugenio. Lo barroco (1935).
– Figueroa, Cristo Rafael. Barroco y neobarroco en la narrativa hispanoamericana (2008).
– Foucault, Michel. Las palabras y las cosas (1966).
– González Echevarría, Roberto. Celestina’s Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin
American Literatures (1993).
– Kaup, Monika. Neobaroque in the Americas: Alternative Modernities in Literature, Visual Art, and
Film (2014).
– Maravall, José Antonio. La cultura del Barroco (1975).
– Ortega, Julio. El discurso de la abundancia (1990).
– Rodríguez de la Flor, Fernando. Barroco. Representación e ideología en el mundo Hispánico,
1580-1680 (2002).

Language of instruction: Spanish

Professor: Raúl Alvarez-Moreno

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SPAN505D

Media Studies and Latin America

This course will offer a panoramic examination of theories and practices of media in Latin America. We will investigate questions of production and consumption of culture, public and private spheres, print and digital culture, technology, and globalization. We will examine the concept of media within Latin American contexts and within global theorizations, expanding the realms of media to include print, photography, broadcast, cinema, performance and digital forms. We will discuss distinctions of “high” and “low” culture, quotidian experiences, spectacle, propaganda, representation, and power relations. We will study concepts of mediations, function and effect within specific Latin American case studies, particularly in relation to historical, political, and social dynamics. We will explore different theoretical perspectives on the role of media in Latin America, including examinations of the media impact on values, identities, behaviors, empire, imperialism, populism, authoritarianism, and recent protests. We will analyze specific media materials, and explore the meaning of changes that occur when contextually anchored narratives are adapted into different media forms. In addition, we will study interconnections of class, race, gender, and the environment as manifested in the production and consumption of media, and in works that, directly or indirectly, address debates on media formations in Latin America within a global context.

List of required critical readings (selections from):

• Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996)
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations (1969)
• Debord, Guy. “The Commodity as Spectacle.” In Society of the Spectacle (1977)
• Dorfman, Ariel and Armand Mattelart. Para leer al Pato Donald (1971)
• García Canclini, Néstor. Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad (1990)
• Habermas, Jurgen. “The Public Sphere” In Critical Theory and Society (1989)
• Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Culture, Media, Language (1980)
• Martín‐Barbero, Jésus. De los medios a las mediaciones (1987); Oficio de cartógrafo: Travesías latinoamericanas de la comunicación en la cultura (2002); De la comunicación a la cultura (2013)
• McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media (1964)
• Monsiváis, Carlos. El Laberinto, el conjuro y la ventana. Itinerarios para mirar la ciudad (2011
• Piccato, Pablo. “The public sphere in Latin America” (2010)
• Rama, Ángel. La ciudad letrada (1984)
• Richard, Nelly. Campos cruzados. Crítica cultural, latinoamericanismo y saberes al borde (2009)
• Sarlo, Beatriz. La intimidad pública (2018)
• Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Mulculturalism and the Media (1994)
• Sontag, Susan. On Photography (1977)
• Süssekind, Flora. Cinematógrafo de letras (1987)
• Walsh, Rodolfo. “Carta abierta de un escritor a la Junta Militar” (1977)
• Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974); “Culture”

Language of instruction: Spanish

Professor: Alessandra Santos

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SPAN550

Literaturas hispánicas en tránsito, desde los viajes coloniales hasta las migraciones actuales

Source: Getty Images

Este curso se propone examinar el variado corpus de relatos de viaje escritos por autores hispanoamericanos y españoles desde la conquista de América hasta la actualidad. Dichos relatos nos guiarán a través de mundos a veces exotizados o amenazantes, misteriosos o distópicos. Dentro de este contexto, discutiremos problemáticas ligadas a la movilidad, tales como el desarrollo de los contactos interculturales, el cruce de fronteras, el impacto del exilio y la creciente globalización. Además, complementaremos el análisis de las obras primarias con una selección de textos crítico-teóricos y la cartografía propia de cada periodo estudiado, así como algunas representaciones fílmicas.

Language of instruction: Spanish

Instructor: Dr. Kim Beauchesne 

Grading Breakdown

Coming soon!

Readings

Obras primarias (fragmentos disponibles en Canvas):

  • Aguirre, Carmen. De cuerpo entero
  • Belli, Gioconda. Waslala
  • Carpentier, Alejo. Los pasos perdidos
  • Erauso, Catalina de. Historia de la Monja Alférez
  • Fukunaga, Cary Joji, dir. Sin nombre
  • Guevara, Ernesto “Che”. Diarios de motocicleta (y la adaptación cinematográfica de Walter Salles)
  • Herrera, Yuri. Señales que precederán al fin del mundo
  • Malaspina, Alejandro. En busca del paso del Pacífico
  • Mansilla, Eduarda. Recuerdos de viaje
  • Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar. Naufragios
  • Vargas Llosa, Mario. El hablador
  • Wiener, Gabriela. Huaco retrato

SPAN590

Narrativa Sonora: Sound and Literature in Contemporary Latin American Fiction

Instructor: Tamara Mitchell
Language of instruction: Spanish

Latin America has a rich and complex tradition of orality, both aural and textual. This course reads narrative fiction of the past three decades in relation to that tradition, considering how contemporary works build on, but more importantly diverge from, oral practices that have been the ground of storytelling, memory making, and political interventions in the region. Throughout the semester, we will attend closely to how contemporary aural novels grapple with and contextualize important sociohistorical, political and economic realities, such as gendered and cartel violence, ingrained corruption by political figures, disability, increased out migration through and to North America, and ecological disasters that are increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change. In particular, our conversations will inquire into how narrative texts invoke or represent sound, aurality, and silence formally—through literary devices and formal structure—as a means of indexing, critiquing, and deconstructing structures of power. We will read critical texts from literary sound studies and philosophy to account for how narrative aurality is deployed as a means of responding to precarity, inequality, and violence of the globalized present.

Readings:

  • Úrsula de Jesús, Las almas del purgatorio
  • Leonora Carrington, La trompetilla acústica
  • Horacio Castellanos Moya, Insensatez
  • Juan Villoro, Arrecife
  • Jorge Comensal, Las mutaciones
  • Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Los sordos
  • Guadalupe Nettel, El huésped
  • Rita Indiana, Papi
  • Emiliano Monge, Las tierras arrasadas
  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive

FREN514

France in Ruins: Wounded Spaces From 1945 to the Present

Ruins have been at the center of the French imaginary since the sixteenth century. They represented in turn the decay of the pagan world, its architectural genius, the height of the sublime, and a refuge for earthly pleasures or the inquisitive mind. The twentieth century, with its landscapes of broken metropolises and scorched earth, changed the literary reading of this spatial motif in radical ways, making it more malleable and more ambiguous. It has been evolving from 1945 to the present, taking unique shapes in the literature we will be studying this semester, starting with the rotting landscapes of Julien Gracq and Pierre Michon, and moving towards the industrial territories of François Bon and Élisabeth Filhol.

This seminar will allow the students to become familiar with a poetic approach to literary texts, while also remaining open to the theoretical perspectives that they will be bringing forward through class discussions and oral presentations. Our seminar will also include a substantial component dedicated to the visual history of ruins in European architecture, painting, photography, and film.

Required readings:

Julien Gracq, Un balcon en forêt

Pierre Michon, La Grande Beune

Patrick Modiano,  Pedigree

François Bon, Paysage fer

Philippe Vasset, Un livre blanc

Élisabeth Filhol, La Centrale

Céline Minard, Le Dernier monde

Theory readings will include works by Bertrand Westphal, Michel Collot, Marielle Macé, and others.

Language of instruction: French

Professor: Vincent Gélinas-Lemaire

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