ULT2299C: THE SUBJECT OF READING UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS PROGRAMME, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE AY SEMESTER 2

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1 ULT2299C: THE SUBJECT OF READING UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS PROGRAMME, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE AY SEMESTER 2 Seminar: Tue 12-2 pm in USP Seminar Room 3 Fri 12-2 pm in USP Tutorial Room 1 A/P Lo Mun Hou Office: Cinnamon South Learn Lobe #02-02 Tel: lomunhou@nus.edu.sg Revised 20 Feb 2017 INTRODUCTION That a reader might have a role to play in the creation of meaning has long been recognized. Since the 1970s, the field of literary studies has logically suggested that the text, the author, and the reader are three sites from where meaning can come. The reader, Terry Eagleton further observes, has always been the most underprivileged of this trio strangely, since without him or her there would no literary text at all. Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author. In other words, for Eagleton, not only can the reader contribute to the making of meaning, this role might even be the biggest one to the point where, not just meaning, but the very existence of literary texts, and literature itself, depends on the reader. But how should we think about readers? What problems arise when we specifically think about the reader as the originator of meaning and texts? Should we speak of the reader, or readers? Is there, in other words, a universal, a- or trans-historical, and objective Reader, or are readers historically specific, subjective, and even biased? What is a biased reading anyway? Can bias be a reading strategy, or does it invalidate an interpretation? Furthermore, if the reader creates meaning and texts, is there any sense in which the text in turn or even first creates the reader, or perhaps the thinking individual or subject? Might texts have a constitutive function, in which we are produced as particular kinds of subjects as a result of reading? Are we subjects of reading? This module will explore these questions by focusing on the reader, and by thinking through key terms such as meaning, interpretation, and subjectivity. To do this, we will operate, often simultaneously, on three levels. First, we will engage with films, poems, stories, and novels that thematize the process of reading (for example by featuring readers as characters, or even interpellating actual readers). Second, we will discuss essays by literary critics and theorists, linguists, philosophers, historians, and sociologists that debate the above questions. Finally, since we will ourselves be readers, we will also scrutinize and reflect on our own processes of reading. SCHEDULE Jan 10 Seminar 1.1: Beginning Strand, Mark. The Killer Poet. In Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories. Hopewell: Ecco, Jan 13 Seminar 1.2: Ending Wimsatt Jr., W. K. (with Monroe C. Beardsley). The Affective Fallacy. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,

2 Jan 17 Seminar 2.1: Affect (I) Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Concluding Remarks. Uncle Tom s Cabin, Or, Life Among the Lowly In Three Novels. New York: Library of America, Please do some simple research and find out some basic things about the 1852 novel Uncle Tom s Cabin, of which this is the final chapter. Davis, Rebecca Harding. Life in the Iron Mills You can read the story or download it as an ebook at Jan 20 Seminar 2.2: Affect (II) Warhol, Robyn. As You Stand, So You Feel and Are: The Crying Body and the Nineteenth-Century Text. Tattoo, Mutilation and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text. Ed. Francis E. Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe. Albany: State University of New York Press, Thrailkill, Jane. Excerpts from Introduction: The Affective Fallacy Fallacy. In Affecting Fictions: Mind, Body, and Emotion in American Literary Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, , Jan 24 Seminar 3.1: Beginning Again Gibson, Walker. Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Prince, Gerald. Introduction to the Study of the Narratee Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Jan 27 No class (Chinese New Year s eve) Jan 31 Class cancelled Feb 3 Seminar 4.2: Reading Calvino (II) Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter s Night a Traveler. New York: Vintage Classics, Feb 7 Seminar 5.1: Reading Calvino (III) Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter s Night a Traveler. New York: Vintage Classics, Feb 10 Seminar 5.2: Reading Calvino (III) Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter s Night a Traveler. New York: Vintage Classics, Feb 14 2

3 Seminar 6.1: Freedom (I) Fish, Stanley. Excerpts from Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics. In Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, , Feb 17 Seminar 6.2: Freedom (II) Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author and From Work to Text. In Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday, , Barthes, Roland. Excerpt from S/Z: An Essay. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Noonday, Strand, Mark. Fiction and Reading in Place. In The Continuous Life: Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, , Strand, Mark. The Story of Our Lives. Selected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Mid-Term Break Feb 28 Seminar 7.1: Conscription (I) Austin, J. L. Performative Utterances. The Philosophy of Language. Ed. A. P. Martinich. New York: Oxford University Press, Mar 3 Seminar 7.2: Conscription (II) Moore, Lorrie. How to be an Other Woman. The Kid s Guide to Divorce. Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love. Self-Help: Stories. New York: Plume, , 49-52, Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. So You re Going to Have a New Body! Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology 9.1 (1988): Mar 7 Seminar 8.1: Conscription (III) Bishop, Elizabeth. One Art The Complete Poems New York: Noonday, Johnson, Barbara. Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion. In A World of Difference. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, , (appendix containing the poems discussed). Mar 10 Seminar 8.2: Conscription (IV) Caché. Dir. Michael Haneke. DVD. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Althusser, Louis. From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Ed. Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press,

4 Mar 14 Seminar 9.1: Resistance (I) Tennyson, Alfred Lord. The Lady of Shalott You can read the poem at Bishop, Elizabeth. The Gentlemen of Shalott. The Complete Poems New York: Noonday, Culler, Jonathan. Reading as a Woman. In On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Mar 17 Seminar 9.2: Resistance (II) Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper and Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper and Please use the paginated version of The Yellow Wallpaper in our IVLE workbin, while Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper can be accessed at Woolf, Virginia. The Mark on the Wall. In A Haunted House and Other Short Stories. New York: Harcourt, Mar 21 Seminar 10.1: History Fetterley, Judith. Excerpt from Reading About Reading. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Ed. Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, Hochman, Barbara. The Reading Habit and The Yellow Wallpaper. American Literature 74.1 (March 2002): Mar 24 Seminar 10.2: Reading Nafisi (I) Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, Mar 28 Seminar 11.1: Reading Nafisi (II) Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, Mailloux, Steven. Judging and Hoping: Rhetorical Effects of Reading about Reading. New Directions in American Reception Study. Ed. Philip Goldstein and James L. Machor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Mar 31 Seminar 11.2: Reading Nafisi (III) Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, Rowe, John Carlos. Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho. American Quarterly 59.2 (June 2007):

5 Apr 4 Seminar 12.1: Reading Nafisi (IV) Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, DePaul, Amy. Re-Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran. MELUS 33.2 (Summer 2008): Apr 7 Seminar 12.2: Studying Fanmail Guest speaker A/P Barbara Ryan Apr 11 Seminar 13.1: Rereading Apr 14 No class (Good Friday) RESOURCES The two books we are reading in full are available for purchase from Book Haven in U-Town: Italo Calvino s novel If on a Winter s Night a Traveler, and Azar Nafisi s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Copies are also available in the USP Reading Room, and in the RBR of the NUS Central Library. All other readings are available as pdf files from our IVLE workbin, or for free online at Project Gutenberg (as indicated in the schedule of readings). REQUIREMENTS There is no final exam for the module, which is 100% CA. The CA is in turn based on five components, as follows: 1. Attendance and Class Participation (10%) Attendance of seminars is mandatory. You are allowed one unexcused absence; anything beyond that will affect your grade. If you need to be excused from a class for good reason family emergencies, documented illnesses let me know, in advance if possible. When you miss a meeting, you are still responsible for doing the readings for the day (especially since the readings tend to refer to and build on each other), and for completing any work assigned during the class. This is a seminar, which means that classes revolve around discussion of the assigned texts. You should arrive having carefully read the articles for the day, and with something to say about them. Even when you find a reading difficult or incomprehensible, you can still think and speak about how it is difficult, where in the text the difficulty arises, why this difficulty might be significant, and so on. This tends to be true in all my classes, but is especially so in this one, since what we are studying is reading and interpretation which includes yours. Note also that even though this CA component is only 10%, it is the one for which I tend to employ the full spectrum of marks. Hence, if you do not say a single word the entire semester, you will actually get zero marks for this component. 2. Blog Entries: Exemplification and Reflection (15%) You are expected to contribute at least two entries, both of which respond to prompts, to the class blog at 5

6 The first entry will be required by Weeks 6 and 7, and will ask you to find, document, and comment on an example of the kind of conscriptive language we will be discussing during those weeks. The second entry is a reflective essay, likely due around Week 10, asking you to ponder the bigger implications of what we ve been discussing. Since these are blog entries, there is no demand that they be highly rigorous, though they should still be reasoned. Furthermore, since you ll be able to read each other s entries, you can also respond to and converse with your classmates. 3. Seminar Presentation (15%) We are devoting seven seminars to Italo Calvino s novel If on a Winter s Night a Traveler, and Azar Nafisi s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, our two lengthiest texts. There will be two or three individual presentation slots during each one of these seminars. Each 10-min presentation should be analytical, selecting one or more moments from the text (in the case of Nafisi, this could be, or could include, the secondary works of criticism) for interpretation, commentary, argument, discussion. At least 24 hours before your presentation, you should send me a short outlining your plan. This will allow me to better weave your presentations into the overall seminar. 4. Paper 1 (20%) Paper 1 should be a 3-5 page close reading of one of the literary texts we will encounter in the module. This would therefore include: the poems by Strand, Bishop, Tennyson, or those referred to and reproduced in Johnson s essay on Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion ; the stories by Strand, Davis, Moore, Schwartz, Gilman, Woolf; Haneke s film; or Calvino s novel or Nafisi s memoir, though you cannot write on the text on which you are presenting. It is due by Week Paper 2 (40%) Paper 2, which should be 7-10 pages long, asks you to compare at least one of the theoretical texts we will read, with a literary text, loosely-defined, of your own choosing from outside the module. It is due in Reading Week. 6