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Readings

Texts

The following is a list of books that are required for this course, along with the daily reading assignments:

Jünger, Ernst. The Storm of Steel. New York: Penguin USA, 2004.

Breton, André. Nadja. New York: Grove Press, 1988.

Ernst, Max. Une semaine de bonté, a Surrealistic Novel in Collage. New York: Dover Publications, 1976.

Bataille, Georges. Story of the Eye. San Fransisco: City Lights Books, 1987.

Brecht, Bertolt. Measures Taken and Other Lehrstucke. New York: Arcade Books, 2001.

Beckett, Samuel. Endgame and Act Without Words. New York: Grove Press, 1970.

For background on the principles of literature and cinema studies, please consult Frank Lentricchia, Critical Terms for Literary Study and James Monaco, How to Read a Film, as well as Robert Nelson, Critical Terms for Art History:

Thomas McLaughlin and Frank Lentricchia. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1995.

James Monaco. How to Read a Film. Oxford: Oxford Press, 2000.

Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff. Critical Terms for Art History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Sight and Sound

Recordings of film and music will be made available to students. Students are expected to have viewed or listened to each work before the date of its discussion. Brief excerpts reviewed in class.

This course also involves discussions of film and music, as outlined in the course calendar. Students are expected to have viewed or listened to each work before the date of its discussion. Brief excerpts are reviewed in class.

WEEK # TOPICS
1 Introduction.
2 Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto."
Marshall Berman, Introduction to All That Is Solid Melts into Air.
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception."
Igor Stravinsky, The Soldier's Tale, The Rake's Progress.
Arnold Schönberg, Pierrot Lunaire.
3 Umberto Boccioni, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
Giacomo Balla, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
Ernst Jünger, The Storm of Steel.
4 Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.
Sergei Eisenstein, "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form."
David Bordwell, The Cinema of Eisenstein, Selections.
5  
6 Vasilii Kandinsky, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
Kazimir Malevich, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
Paul Wood, "The Avant-Garde in the Early Twentieth Century," "Modernization," Avant-Gardism and Abstraction," and "Constructivism."
Yve-Alain Bois, "Lissitzky, Malevich, and the Question of Space."
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Selected Poems.
Edward Brown, "Vladimir Mayakovsky: The Poet Engaged."
7 Fritz Lang, Metropolis.
Andrew Hewitt, "Avantgarde and Technology."
Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other."
8  
9 Andrew Hewitt, "Avantgarde and Technology."
Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other."
André Breton, Nadja.
Hannah Höch, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
10 Max Ernst, Une Semaine De Bonté.
Paul Wood, "The Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: Dada, Constructivism, and Surrealism."
Marcel Duchamp, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
John Heartfield, Selected Works, In-class Viewing.
11 Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye.
Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou.
12  
13 André Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto.
Tristan Tzara, "Dada Manifesto."
Antonin Artaud, "The Theater of Cruelty: First Manifesto."
FT Marinetti, "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism."
Mary Ann Caws, "The Poetics of the Manifesto: Nowness and Newness."
14  
15 Peter Bürger, "Theory of the Avant-Garde and Critical Literary Science."
Bertolt Brecht, The Measures Taken.
16 Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch."
Samuel Beckett, Endgame.