THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

Graduate Program in the Humanities

 

HUMA 5300 001                                                                                                                        Spring, 2005

Call  13787                                                                     Jo 4.312                                           M  3:30 - 6:15

 

Professor Gerald Soliday                                                                    Offices:  Jonsson  4.510 and 5.406

       Hours:   M 2:30-3:30 in Jo 4.510 and by appointment:                                                   972-883-2670

       E-mail:  soliday@utdallas.edu                                          Internet:  http://www.utdallas.edu/~soliday

                      Please note that all e-mail correspondence related to the course must

                      now occur through a UTD e-mail address.

 

Reference Librarian:           Ms. Linda Snow                                                                               McD 2.518

                                            Consultation by appointment                                                     972-883-2626

                                            E-mail:   snow@utdallas.edu

 

 

 

 

HUMA 5300: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO THE  ARTS  &  HUMANITIES

 

 

 

HUMA 5300 is an introduction to the organization, requirements, and interdisciplinary goals of the Humanities Graduate Program, which seeks to integrate the arts and humanities and to join creative with critical activities.  As the core course of the program, this proseminar serves at least two major purposes.  First, students examine a variety of the intellectual and artistic interests, scholarly methods, and interpretive approaches in the arts and humanities today.  While many readings this term will focus on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European culture, their point is to offer conceptual perspectives that link historical, philosophical, literary, and artistic concerns across the entire program.  Then, second, the course also emphasizes study and research techniques that prepare students for later graduate work:  a critical engagement with different kinds of texts, the use of reference and bibliographical materials in libraries and on the Internet, but especially the development of research strategies.

 

 

       Course requirements include participation in class discussion of assigned readings [25%] and two pieces of written work:

 

(a)    a critical essay or book review                                    [25%]      due   18  October

(b)    a proposal for a research paper or creative

               project, with appended bibliography                             [50%]      due   29  November

 

 

Please note that I can not accept written assignments late, unless very unusual circumstances arise or my permission is sought and granted in advance of the due date.  Note also that you must submit all assignments in order to pass the course.

 

All written work and class discussions for this course are in gender-neutral, nonsexist language and rhetorical constructions.  Such practice is part of a classroom situation according full respect and opportunity to all participants by all others.

 

Written work is submitted in paper copy, without cover pages or special folders.  Simply put your name and course identification at the top of the first page and staple the upper left corner.  Papers are always paginated (at the bottom and center of each page after the first), double-spaced, and presented in clear 10- to 12-point type.

 

Parenthetical annotation is now strongly recommended, though any form of annotation (foot- or endnotes) and bibliography is acceptable for this course, provided that you use it correctly and consistently.  Probably most appropriate for your work in the arts and humanities are standard guides like Joseph Gibaldi’s MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.; NY, 2003) or Kate L. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (6th ed.; Chicago, 1996).

 

At the same time, Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers (5th ed.; Boston and NY, 2004) summarizes MLA stylistic conventions, outlines current grammatical practices and mechanical presentation, and offers helpful guidelines for researching and writing papers.  You may find it, her Research and Documentation in the electronic Age (3rd ed.; Boston, 2002), and her Web site (www.dianahacker.com) especially useful for your work in the course this semester. 

 

Any student who has not already read William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (4th ed.; Boston, 2000), should do so immediately.

 

I should also mention that the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA, 2003) is now the standard for everyday university work.

 

Most required readings as well as some recommended items for the course are on reserve in the McDermott Library.  Paperback books used extensively are also for sale, if you wish to purchase them, both in the University Bookstore and at Off-Campus Books.  Rather than being on the library’s reserve shelf, however, shorter readings marked with an asterisk (*) are available online through the copy of this syllabus on my Internet Web site.  Please note that those materials are under copyright, you must always cite them properly, and you must have a password to gain access to them.  I will give you the password in class.

 

 

Please also note that, although I do not anticipate them, there may be some changes in the following schedule.  If they occur, I will announce them in class and post them on the syllabus at my Web site on the Internet.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE:  all course correspondence by e-mail must now occur through the student’s UTD e-mail address.  UT-Dallas provides each student with a free e-mail account that is to be used in all communication with university personnel. This allows the university to maintain a high degree of confidence in the identity of all individuals corresponding and the security of the transmitted information.  The Department of Information Resources at UTD provides a method for students to forward email from other accounts to their UTD address and have their UTD mail sent on to other accounts. Students may go to the following URL to establish or maintain their official UTD computer account: http://netid.utdallas.edu/.

 

Every effort is made to accommodate students with disabilities.  The full range of resources available through and procedures concerning Disability Services can be found at www.utdallas.edu/student/slife/hcsvc.html.

 

Scholastic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to: cheating, plagiarism. collusion, and falsifying academic records.  Please familiarize yourself with the university's policies concerning scholastic dishonesty at www.utdallas.edu/student/slife/dishonesty.html.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCHEDULE OF CLASS MEETINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

 

 

10 Jan       Introduction to the Course

 

                 Organization of the Humanities Graduate Program

 

                      All members of the course, but particularly those new to UTD, are urged to

                      familiarize themselves with the organization of the McDermott Library.

                      Likewise, please become familiar with our graduate program home page

                      on the internet (http://www.utdallas.edu/dept/ah), where you can find both

                      general policy statements and also more specific guidelines and forms

                      that help implement them.

 

 

                 [Martin Luther King Day]

 

 

24 Jan       Teaching the Conflicts

 

                      Discussion of Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature,

                      ed. David H. Richter (2nd ed.); read Richter's introductions carefully and then as

                      many of the individual selections as you can, but feel free to omit in Part One

                      (Ohmann, During, Menard), in Part Two (Deleuze and Guattari, Guillory, and

                      Bloom), and in Part Three (Barthes, Gilbert and Gubar, Moi, Kolodny,

                      Spivak, Nussbaum, and Tucker).

 

 

31 Jan       Reading a “Literary” Text

 

Discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner [1798, 1817], ed. Paul H. Fry (Boston and NY, 1999), 3-96

 

                 Earlier Criticism:  Formalism

 

Discussion of *M. H. Abrams, “Introduction: Orientation of Critical Theories,”

The Mirror and the Lamp (Oxford, 1953), 3-29, and *Sigurd Burckhardt,

“Notes on the Theory of Intrinsic Interpretation,” Critical Theory Since Plato,

ed. Hazard Adams (NY, 1971), 1201-1211

 

 

  7 Feb      Contemporary Criticism  &  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 

                      Discussion of Coleridge, Rime, 97-342

 

 

14 Feb       Literature  &  History

 

                      Discussion of Eve Tavor Bannet, The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment

                      Feminisms and the Novel

 

 

21 Feb       Historical Interpretation Today

 

                      Discussion of New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke

                      (2nd ed.; University Park, 2001), nos. 1-3, 7, 10-12; *Gertrude Himmelfarb,

                      "The New New History," The New History and the Old (Rev. ed.; Cambridge,

                      2004), 15-30; and *Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text:  Historians and

                      the Linguistic Turn, 63-155  [Clark-4, Clark-5, Clark-6, Clark-7]

 

 

28 Feb       Reading a Text in Social and Political Thought

 

                      Discussion of Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

                      [1792], ed. Carol H. Poston  (2nd Norton Critical Edition)

 

 

                        [Spring Break]

 

 

14 Mar         Intellectual History  &  the History of Ideas

 

                      Discussion of William H. Sewell Jr., A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution:

The Abbé Sièyes and What Is the Third Estate?

 

                   A New Cultural History

 

Discussion of Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French

Revolution, 1-119

 

 

21 Mar       First Paper Due   [See the guidelines for the paper on page five.]

 

                 Library Session:  Reference Works, Bibliographic Aids, and Electronic

                 Resources in the Arts & Humanities

 

 

28 Mar       Artistic Analysis  &  Art History

 

Discussion of Jacques-Louis David's "Marat," ed. William Vaughn and

Helen Weston, 1-152

 

 

  4 Apr       Aesthetic Theory:  Between Classicism and Romanticism

 

                      Discussion of *Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art  [1797], ed. Robert

R. Wark (New Haven and London, 1975), Introduction, discourses II, III,

VI, VII, and XI. l will read from Blake’s annotations to this text, esp. on

the discourses assigned.

 

                 Discussion of Proposals for Research Topics or Creative Projects [Wickberg on proposals]

 

 

11 Apr       The Issue of Creative Genius

 

Instructor's Report on Peter Kivy, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel,

Mozart, and the Idea of Musical Genius

 

                 Further discussion of proposals

 

 

18 Apr       Performance Practice in Music:  the Issue of Authenticity

 

                      Some Audio and Video Recordings of scenes from Mozart operas

 

                 Further discussion of proposals

 

 

25 Apr       Proseminar Party at 4:00 p.m.  at the Instructor’s Home

 

  Research Proposal & Bibliography Due   [See the guidelines on the next page.]

  Please attach a stamped self-addressed envelope to the proposal, so I may

  return it with comments and your marks for the course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guidelines for Writing Assignments

 

 

 

1.  A Critical or Review Essay                                                                                                             Due   21  March

 

       In a critical essay or book review of some seven to ten pages, you should address an interpretive issue or question raised in our readings and discussions thus far in the course.  The central goal of this exercise is to practice your ability to evaluate scholarly works or address critical approaches.  Draw principally (if not exclusively) from required or supplementary course readings and assess how the authors define and conduct their research or critical tasks:  consider their questions and conceptualization of topics or problems, their assumptions and theoretical perspectives, as well as their specific methods, argumentation, and conclusions.  Summarize only to the extent that is necessary to make your points and arguments clear.  When relevant, compare different approaches to a given course topic.  Indeed, such comparison is usually the most fruitful way to critique or review scholarly work.

 

 

 

2.  A Research Proposal                                                                                                                     Due   25  April

 

       As your final assignment for HUMA 5300 this semester, you are to prepare a proposal for a project or paper.  Your topic should deal with some aspect of European cultural life of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, though students who can demonstrate sufficient progress in the graduate program toward a portfolio, casebook, or dissertation in another area may write a proposal appropriate to their own research purposes.

 

       Make the proposal a short essay of eight to ten pages, in which you define the topic and indicate why you think the subject or problem is of interest and importance to people concerned with the interdisciplinary study of the arts and humanities.  Then explain your research strategy, how you would go about investigating the subject:  what methodological approaches, what kinds of primary sources, what preliminary hypotheses would you employ in your exploration of the topic?  Please do not mistake a discussion of techniques (consultation of national bibliographies, searches on the internet, use of electronic databases, and the like) for a research strategy, which must emphasize the intellectual or artistic bases for your work as well as the specific help you expect from the documentary sources and secondary works you plan to use.

 

       While you will not be carrying out your proposal, it must nevertheless be a practicable research plan.  Think in terms of an issue, theme, or project that could be explored in some depth in a long (twenty-five- to thirty-page) seminar paper, an M.A.T. casebook, or perhaps a section of a doctoral dissertation.  To ensure practicability, you must append a bibliography of some thirty to forty items, divided into primary sources and secondary works.  Use proper bibliographical form and indicate a library and a call number for each item (should it not be available in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, however, you need include only a library from which it could be ordered through interlibrary loan).  Do not "pad" the bibliography.  If you think an item is likely to raise doubts in the instructor's mind about its relevance to your topic, indicate briefly why you think it helpful.  In a sense, then, you are providing an annotated bibliography, though your annotations concern the location and relevance rather than a substantive evaluation of the titles listed.

 

       The typed proposal with its appended bibliography is due on Monday, 25 April, at my home, where we will meet for an end-of-term party.  Please attach a stamped self-addressed envelope, so I may return the proposal with comments as well as your marks for the course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HUMA 5300 001                                                                                                    Some Recommended Readings

 

 

Literary Theory & Criticism

       Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory  (1983)

       Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide  (1999)

       The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, ed. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth  (1994)

       Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Irena R. Makaryk  (1993)

       Redrawing the Boundaries:  The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, ed. Stephen

               Greenblatt and Giles Gunn  (1992)

       Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History  (1987)

       Jonathan Culler,  On Deconstruction  (1982)

       Robert Scholes, Protocols of Reading  (1989)

       New Historical Literary Study, ed. Jeffrey Cox and L. Reynolds  (1993)

       The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser  (1989)

       Feminisms, ed. Robyn Warhol and Diane Price Herndl  (1991)

 

 

General Cultural Theory

       Postmodernism, ed. Thomas Docherty  (1993)

       Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures  (1973)

       ___, Local Knowledge  (1983)

       John Storey, Cultural Studies & the Study of Popular Culture:  Theories and Methods  (1996)

       Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History (1997)

 

 

Historical Studies:  The History of Ideas  &  Cultural History

       Keith Jenkins, On “What is History?” (1995)

       Philippe Carrard, Poetics of the New History:  French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier  (1992)

       Chartier, Roger, On the Edge of the Cliff:  History, Language, and Practices (1997)

       John Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn," American Historical Review 92 (1987): 879-907

       The exchange between David Harlan and David Hollinger ibid., 94 (1989): 581-626

       Arthur Lovejoy, “The Historiography of Ideas” [1938], Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948): 1-13

       Daniel Wickberg, “Intellectual History vs. the Social Historyof Intellectuals,” Rethinking History 5 (2001):

               383-395

       Joyce Appleby, L. Hunt, and M. Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (1994)

 

       Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters:  A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment  (1994)

Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution  (1991)

       Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment:  A Comparative Social History 1721-1794 (2000)

       T.C.W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture : Old Regime Europe, 1660-1789 (2001

 

 

Women’s History  &  Feminist Literary Criticism

       Joan Kelly, Women, History, and Theory  (1984)

       Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History  (1988)

       The New Feminist Criticism, ed. Elaine Showalter  (1985)

       Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer:  Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft,

               Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen  (1984)

       Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas  (1975)

 

Aesthetics:  Theory  &  Art Criticism and History

       Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction  (1984)  and  The Field of Cultural Production  (1993)

       Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic  (1990)

       Janet Wolff, Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art  (1993)

       ___, The Social Production of Art  (1981)

       Paul O. Kristeller, “The Modern Theory of the Arts,” Renaissance Thought and the Arts (Princeton, 1980): 163-227

               [originally 1951-52]

       Martha Woodmansee, The Author, Art, and the Market:  Rereading the History of Aesthetics  (1994)

 

       Visual Theory, ed. Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxie  (1991)

       Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art  (1976)

       Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention  (1985)

       Nigel Warburton, The Art Question  (2003)

       Thalia Gouma-Peterson and P. Mathews, "The Feminist Critique of Art History," Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 326-357

       The Expanding Discourse:  Feminism and Art History, ed. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard  (1992)

       Catherine M. Soussloff, The Absolute Artist: Historiography of a Concept  (1997)

 

       John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt  (1986)

       Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris   (1985)

       ___, Emulation:  Making Artists for Revolutionary France  (1995)

       Mary Sheriff, Fragonard:  Art & Eroticism  (1990)

       ___, The Exceptional Woman:  Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art  (1996)

       Alex Potts, Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (1994)

 

       Authenticity and Early Music, ed. Nicholas Kenyon (1988)

       Peter Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (1997)

       Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology, and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-

               Century England  (1988)

       William Weber, "Learned and General Musical Taste in Eighteenth-Century France," Past & Present 89 (1980):

               58-85

___, "The Contemporaneity of Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste," Musical Quarterly 70 (1984): 175-194

       ___, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England:  A Study in Canon, Ritual, and

               Ideology (1992)

       Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992)

       Tia DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803  (1995)

       James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History  (1995)