"Like Herding Cats"
ENGL 275Z
Summer 2024
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
COL 275Z |
What might it reveal that cats inhabit a common-parlance simile for the unwieldy? For that which cannot be gathered, not only without resistance but also without chaos? Is a simile for uncontrollability itself not a semantic and conceptual quandary? (Also, why are cats so meme-able?)
This course will explore the metaphorical and figurative uses of cats in 20th-century literature, experimental cinema, continental philosophy, and legal studies. What implications might figurative cats have for notions of sovereignty, a body politic, coercive consensus, and so on? We will consider the cultural, linguistic, and affective lineaments of representations of cats, sometimes, by looking at them directly (even though one always risks their disdain or indifference with direct engagement) in select works by Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, Jacques Derrida, Margaret Atwood, and others, and, sometimes, indirectly--through juxtaposition with a bestiary of animals that seem to generate other kinds of metaphors, such as dogs, pigs, possums, and snakes--in select works by Colin Dayan, Jamaica Kincaid, Robin Derby, and others. We will track the linguistic and iconographic tendencies in the Western imaginary of cats to signal something uncontrollable, peripatetic, esoteric, mysterious, luciferian, blackened, marked by the feminine, that understands and perhaps even has speech, but will not lower itself to mirror the limits of "civilized language." The assigned readings and viewings for this class engage Caribbean and "World" literatures, black critical theory, the figurative in representations of the history of slavery, deconstruction, French "New Wave" cinema, and animal studies. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (COL) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 - Summer Session II |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Select readings will be available in a Course Pack. Films will be available via the Wesleyan Library, some in digital format, some in DVD format. Available at RJ Julia Bookstore: Colin Dayan, ANIMAL QUINTET; Jacques Derrida, THE ANIMAL THAT THEREFORE I AM; William Faulkner, GO DOWN, MOSES; Jesmyn Ward SING, UNDEAD, SING; Jamaica Kincaid, LUCY.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Reading notes journal, Short close-reading paper, In-class presentation, Sound recording assignment, Final close-reading and critical paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Email Prof. Ellis Neyra with course-related questions. Full syllabi will be linked as they become available. |
Instructor(s): STAFF
Times: TBA; Location: TBA |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 3 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: X |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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