MA Seminar

 

This course will examine the writings of Henry James from a variety of perspectives: modernism (in terms of narrative form, theme, and intellectual history); genre (artistic subversions and experimentation with traditional genres; gender (the construction of masculinity and femininity as theme and narrative strategy); national identity (exile, emigre, imperialism, imagining national communities); aesthetics and ethics (concerns about the relation between art and war, between art and commerce); historical and social contexts (social class, commodity culture, “Gilded Age,” and “Victorian-Edwardian England”); self-reflexivity (the author's own artistic theories as well as art as theme and the relation to other art forms).

 

Theoretical readings will include essays by John Carlos Rowe, Dorothy Van Ghent, Tzvetan Todorov, Wolfgang Iser, and Millicent Bell as well as works on modernism.

 

Course Requirements

 

1. Participation in Class Discussion

2. Three short responses to the readings (250 to 500 words); a minimum of one on an assigned critical reading. They are due on the day of our discussion of those texts.

3. An oral report.

4. A referat of 10-12 pages. Topic and preliminary bibliography must be approved before submission. If you are taking the second semester course, the referat can be handed in at the completion of that class.

 

 

 

תוכנית קריאה

חומרים נוספים

James, The Portrait of a Lady

The Aspern Papers

The Turn of the Screw

"The Art of Fiction"

"The Figure in the Carpet"

"The Beast in the Jungle"

"The Pupil"

The Wings of the Dove

 

Theoretical readings will include essays by John Carlos Rowe, Dorothy Van Ghent, Tzvetan Todorov, Wolfgang Iser, and Millicent Bell as well as works on modernism.