The main reading for each session is set by the visitor, and will be posted below by week, along with short, additional readings intended to provide some background and define terms. Each Friday by noon, two members of the class will post 300-500 word responses to the most recent seminar on our “Discussion” page. As our final project develops, specific assignments toward that work will appear below as well.
Week 1 (Sept. 6)
An introduction to the class’s protocols and tendencies, and to each other. No assigned reading.
Week 2 (Sept. 13)
For our own purposes (meaning our first hour or so of discussion as a class), let’s all take a look at this ultra-concise “reader” that gathers some reflections on the concept of “knowledge” across various disciplines. And I am throwing in this thing (which I mentioned) on the terminology around disciplinarity and its alternatives. Just skim!
As I said, this session is a little unusual, in that we are acutally combining classes (with Gavin Steingo’s seminar) and reading a bit of my stuff in connection with that of Professor Steingo, on account of his class reading some of my Sounding of the Whale for their meeting next week.
So here is a bit of his new (unpublished) book for us to consider: a chunk of the Introduction; and the opening of Chapter 1.
And here is an extract from The Sounding of the Whale (2012). Bonus reading: the funniest and best review the book got, from a genuine character, with whom I subsequently became pals… 🙂
Week 3 (Sept. 20)
This week, for our time together, let’s move from our collation of “Knowledge” texts to a comparably selective/concise collection of readings on EXPERIENCE — a favorite category of mine. Jeff Dolven (our guest this week) and I taught a whole Graduate Seminar on this topic some years back, which took shape in a final project that was part of the 31st Ljubljana Biennial (we were able to bring the whole class along that summer…). We ended our class discussion last week by thinking about whether there is a responsible way to be something “other” than a “scientist” in the modern academy (a good question to ponder in a seminar offered through a “humanities” program). I would say that “experience” is a key term for consideration when reflecting on this problem. On the topic of experience vs. knowledge (just to warm up the discussion for Wednesday), I will offer you this from Truth and Method: “…the dialectical illusion of experience perfected and replaced by knowledge is the unattainable ideal of the Enlightenment” (emphasis added). That is a quote worth unpacking, in my view (see the Bloomsbury edition at p. 368 if you want to follow up).
Meanwhile our visitor, Professor Dolven, would like us to think a bit about scale (and also poetry). He has asked us to read this excerpt from Zachary Horton’s The Cosmic Zoom, and this bit from a thing that Jeff himself has coming out soon (with Josh Kotin) on J.H. Prynne.
Week 4 (Sept. 27)
For this week, let’s keep thinking about knowledge and experience and the problem (promise) of criticality — and let’s go after those problems by reading together (for our portion of the seminar together): the AAUP’s statement, “In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education,” and Judith Butler’s interesting response, “A Dissenting View from the Humanities on the AAUP’s Statement on Knowledge.”
And our visitor, Professor Christy Wampole (from French and Italian, and also the Director of IHUM), has asked us to take up the theme/form/tradition of the essai vidéographique by taking some time with Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s “Watching The Pain of Others,” and let’s also read Wampole’s own related essay, “Dalí’s Montaigne: Essay Hybrids and Surrealist Practice” (a contribution to this edited volume).
Week 5 (Oct. 4)
For this week, for our hour, let’s do two things that came up this past week: the Carrie Lambert-Beatty article on “Parafiction” and the Latour semi-classic “Why has critique run out of steam?” (which has started to feel a little dated to me, but I am interested in what you think). I would also invite everyone to take a little time to think about some interesting forms of collaborative (?) project work that we might find inspiring as a group. We may take some time to look at some of these.
And our guest, Professor Lisa Davis, from anthropology, has offered us two things: Part 1 from Jeanne Favret-Saada’s 1977 book, translated as Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage; and a short extract on “public secrecy” from her own new book (Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing).
Week 6 (Oct. 11)
We have Professor Karen Emmerich as our guest this week, coming from Comparative Literature, and she has send us a pair of things. The first is a piece by Shu-mei Shih from an edited volume on the history, practice, and the challenges of comparison; the second is a position paper she herself just published on the role of translation in the academy and issues of language justice. This promises to be a wonderful next step for us this term, so do dig in.
Professor Emmerich will come for the first half of our session (rather than the more traditional second-half-guest thing). For our reading as a guestless group (after she departs), why don’t we take up the idea of non-knowing and/or “negative capability” (which came up in our discussion last week), by reading this essay, to which I alluded, on the history of “Agnotology.”
Week 7 (Oct. 25)
Professor Tina Campt has sent us several chapters from Teju Cole’s Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time, and also a section from her own Listening to Images. This is a good deal of material (and we did not get much time before break to discuss “Agnotology”), so I propose we don’t supplement this week’s reading with any additional stuff. Let me know if you have another thought!
Week 8 (Nov. 1)
So we will use this session to focus on the final project. I invited you all to propose readings, and received one suggestion (picking up on our discussion at the start of last week): Queneau’s Exercises in Style. No need to do the whole thing, but here is a short excerpt (introduction to be skipped; just peruse the first few actual entries). If you would like to have a go at the original, you may find it here.
Week 9 (Nov. 8)
Jeff Whetstone, the director of Vis Arts here (and a photographer), has asked us to look at this and this, and to read this (a really extraordinary text, one that made a huge impression on me when I first discovered it!) and this. And to watch this, which we will also (I believe) watch in class. Onward!
Week 10 (Nov. 15)
We will have Professor Catherine Clune-Taylor (Gender and Sexuality Studies) with us this week, and she has asked us to read Banu Subramaniam’s “Moored Metamorphosis,” together with her own recent chapter “Is Sex Socially Constructed?”
Week 11 (Nov. 29)
Delighted that Professor David Reinfurt (Vis Arts), a distinguished and talented graphic artist, designer, and theorist, will join us this week. He has passed us a number of things to look at in advance of our session. I will tip in a bit of his introductory notes here:
1. A NOTE ON THE TIME — please…read p. 31-42 of this pdf, a short essay about how time is kept over networks. I have included the entire booklet which we made at the start of a 10-year project that is fully described in the reading. The students are welcome to read the rest of the booklet, and it might be useful (but not necessary).
2. SENSES OF STYLE — … I am currently enthralled with Jeff’s [Jeff Dolven, who visited us earlier this term! – DGB] idea of style as an index to time. I mean ofc, the idea is baked into lots of design discourse, but I was excited about this book [read excerpt – DGB] for many reasons…
Week 12 (December 6)
No new reading; but lots of work! We all have to finish up our final project contributions by the given deadlines!
