ENGL 0710D: The Dead & the Living Prof. Ravit Reichman • Fall 2014 • MW 10-11:20

Office Hours: Wednesdays 12:00-2:00

Office: English Department, 70 Brown St., Rm. 310 Phone: 3-3562; email: Ravit_Reichman@Brown.edu

This course explores ethical, historical and personal dilemmas in modernism by examining literary and theoretical renderings of the relation between the dead and the living. We will address perennial literary questions, such as: What claims do the dead have on the living? How do the living shape the lives of the dead? Our answers to these questions, however, will focus on what makes death — and the lives it shapes — particularly and peculiarly modern. We will examine how death is represented in the modern world; what these new, often indirect experiences of death make possible; how death is imagined and remembered in dreams, images and words; what it means to write about another’s death; and how the stories of death have a distinct—and decidedly modern—afterlife. Book List: Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980) Walter Benjamin, Reflections Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) Henry James, Daisy Miller (1878) James Joyce, Dubliners (1914) Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1912) W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants (1992) Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Short Stories Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) Books are available at Brown Bookstore. If you order copies from another vendor, please check with me for ISBN numbers so that you purchase the same edition as the one we use. Additional readings will be available on Canvas, and will be indicated in the schedule with †. Film/Television (accessed via OCRA): “Spirit of the Beehive,” dir. Victor Erice (1973) “Treme,” Season One (2001)

ENGL 0710D: The Dead & the Living Prof. Ravit Reichman • Fall 2014 • MW 10-11:20

Requirements: 1. Attendance and Active participation (15%) You are expected to come to class with the reading completed, ready to participate in discussion. Two unexcused absences will lower your final grade by a full letter grade. Four unexcused absences and you will be asked to withdraw from the course. Please note that an excused absence is one that is accompanied by a note from the Dean’s office or Health Services. 2. Graded Writing Assignments (50%) Two 1600-word papers (approx. 5pp) (25% each)

Due on Friday, October 17 & Friday, November 21 (upload by 11:59PM) 3. Final Exam (35%) – December 20, 2014, 9-11AM (Exam Group 03) Laptop and Technology Policy This course is a collaborative effort in which faces and voices rather than screens make all the difference. To that end, laptops, iPads and all other screens (apart from the one at the front of the classroom) are not permitted in class. I know that many of you use your laptops to take notes—and do so effectively— and that this might be an inconvenience. But I also know full well the distractions of being connected to the whole wide world on a laptop. I kindly ask that everyone silence and stow their phones for the duration of class—this means no lap texting, furtive in-the-bag-texting, etc. Any student texting, tweeting, updating status, checking email, or engaging in web-based side missions (even class-related multi-tasking) will be asked to leave and will be counted as absent for that day. Students with special learning considerations that require the use of a laptop for taking notes in class should see me for permission. Materials from Canvas should be printed and brought to class in hard copy. If you find yourself lonely or in need of distraction, you can always raise your hand and talk to us!

ENGL 0710D: The Dead & the Living Prof. Ravit Reichman • Fall 2014 • MW 10-11:20

Schedule of Readings Wednesday 9/3: Introduction Modernist Death M 9/8: Benjamin, “The Storyteller” W 9/10: Benjamin, “A Berlin Chronicle” Dying Elsewhere I M 9/15: James, Daisy Miller W 9/17: Daisy Miller Dying Elsewhere II M 9/22: Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread W 9/24: Where Angels Fear to Tread Art and/as Death M 9/29: Mann, “Death in Venice” W 10/1: “Death in Venice” Dreaming & Waking M 10/6: Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams – “A Dream is the Fulfilment of a Wish;” The dream of dead Karl; “Dreams of the Death of Persons of Whom the Dreamer is Fond;” The dream of the burning child † “Spirit of the Beehive,” dir. Victor Erice W 10/8: “Spirit of the Beehive” Unfinished Business M 10/13: No Class [Columbus Day] W 10/15: Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Ilych” PAPER #1 DUE FRIDAY 10/17 The Spaces of the Dead M 10/20: Woolf, To the Lighthouse W 10/22: To the Lighthouse

ENGL 0710D: The Dead & the Living Prof. Ravit Reichman • Fall 2014 • MW 10-11:20

Death & History M 10/27: Joyce, “The Dead” (Dubliners) W 10/29: “The Dead” Picturing the Dead M 11/3: Barthes, Camera Lucida W 11/5: Camera Lucida Family Album or Collective History? M 11/10: Sebald, The Emigrants (“Dr Henry Selwyn,” pp. 3-23 & “Paul Bereyter,” pp. 27-63) W 11/12: The Emigrants (Ambros Adelwarth,” pp. 67-145, “Max Ferber,” pp. 149-237) Writing Lives M 11/17: Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot W 11/19: Flaubert’s Parrot PAPER # 2 DUE FRIDAY 11/21 Between Grief and Madness M 11/24: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking W 11/26: The Year of Magical Thinking Communities of Loss M 12/1: “Treme,” Season One W 12/3: “Treme” Final exam: Tuesday, December 16, 9:00 a.m. (Location tba)