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Dawn Marlan, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Education
Ph.D. 2000, University of Chicago
Field of Interest
The European novel; contemporary fiction; creative writing; literary and cultural theory
Courses
COLT 350 Theory of the Novel
- This course is designed to introduce students to a range of approaches—generic, formal, and historical—to the theory of the novel. We will be inquiring into the parameters of the novel form, that is, what it has been and can be while maintaining its specificity, into the ways in which the novel functions and to what effects (specifically, the structural devices and analytic categories on which the novel has been constructed and thought), and finally, into the question of how this genre is especially well positioned to mediate between desire and law, between the subject and the social sphere.
We will be reading three short "exemplary" novels from different cultural traditions and historical periods, and essays selected from the following anthologies: Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, ed. Michael McKeon; Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, ed. Michael Hoffman and Patrick Murphy; Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames, ed. Brian Richardson; The Theory of the Novel: New Essays, ed. John Halperin.
COLT 350 Cultural Critique
- "…this is a difficulty pertaining to our times…either to ideologize;
or, conversely, ...to poetize...if we penetrate the object, we
liberate it but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight,
we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified.”
- Roland Barthes, 1970
We will begin this class by studying two exemplary (and closely related) cultural critics—Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag—both of whom are precursors to “Cultural Studies,” both of whom read popular culture (from boxing to wine, “camp” to porn) with the seriousness previously reserved for “high” culture. We will be assuming a kind of Barthesean view of culture as a relationship of signs to be deciphered. It will be our working assumption that content (theme) and form (sign structures) are inextricable and mutually dependent, that the task of exposing ideologies (which we will consider as one question among many) embedded in cultural myths depends on a thorough examination of their poetics. The task of the class will be to teach students to link formal questions about signifying structures with thematic questions about such realms as politics (power, often in relation to gender, race, and class), theory (ideas), and history (events) in order to describe cultural texts and phenomena, and to intervene responsibly in cultural debates. Finally, while critics are often called upon to evaluate and judge cultural texts, and while we must also take stands, we will emphasize C.S. Lewis’s dictum that criticism “should diagnose (not merely blame) & distinguish (not merely praise.)” Focusing on deciphering signs will help us find this middle ground.
This class will be structured primarily as a workshop. Students will act as practitioners, reviewing local cultural spaces, events, and offerings—from visiting artists’ studios, to exploring the Tango scene, to attending both university plays, readings, and the conference and museum exhibit on the Holocaust and genocide more broadly. Students must therefore commit to attending events that take place outside of class. Finally, treating reviews as works in their own right, we will bring student reviews into class for critique.
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