1 CLCV 221/LITR 166 MW 4-5:15 pm HGS 217B Film screenings: Sunday, 6:30 pm Kyle Khellaf and Christina S. Kraus [email protected]and [email protected]IMPERIALISMS: ANCIENT AND MODERN – Empire is a complicated affair. – It aims at ordering, defining, structuring, and demarcating. – It espouses stability, unity, cosmos and imperium. – It brings with it a range of fantasies, conscious and unconscious. – Yet its realities and practical applications regularly fall short of these visions and ideals. – Empire entails disillusion and disenchantment. – It creates chaos, fragmentation, sectarian violence, stasis, nationalism and all of its fervor. – It ushers in war, xenophobia, and genocide. – Empires take on voracious appetites in their expanding, subsuming, appropriating, heaping, and monumentalizing. – They are hybrid entities with innumerable layers of becoming and intersectionality. – Yet so often they seem obsessed with effacing this diversity in the hopes of some monolithic oneness.
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CLCV 221/LITR 166 MW 4-5:15 pm HGS 217B Film screenings: Sunday, 6:30 pm Kyle Khellaf and Christina S. Kraus [email protected] and [email protected]
IMPERIALISMS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
– Empire is a complicated affair. – It aims at ordering, defining, structuring, and demarcating. – It espouses stability, unity, cosmos and imperium. – It brings with it a range of fantasies, conscious and unconscious. – Yet its realities and practical applications regularly fall short of these visions and ideals. – Empire entails disillusion and disenchantment. – It creates chaos, fragmentation, sectarian violence, stasis, nationalism and all of its fervor. – It ushers in war, xenophobia, and genocide. – Empires take on voracious appetites in their expanding, subsuming, appropriating, heaping,
and monumentalizing. – They are hybrid entities with innumerable layers of becoming and intersectionality. – Yet so often they seem obsessed with effacing this diversity in the hopes of some monolithic
oneness.
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If current events on this campus, nationwide, and abroad serve as any indication, we stand a long way from truly understanding empire and resolving its discontents. Orators, poets, playwrights, historians, novelists, politicians, philosophers, academics, cinematographers, and theoreticians have grappled with these conundrums for several millennia. This seminar will therefore investigate a selection of these constellations in the hopes of uncovering additional, comparative lenses through which to reconsider empire and its various representations, themes, and institutional forms. Students will read Greco-Roman texts in translation, including canonical works by authors such as Aeschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Vergil, and Propertius, as well as non-canonical and fragmentary works by Pliny the Elder, Arrian, Nearchus, and others; these will be paired with a wide range of post-classical “texts” including poems, novels and treatises, but also paintings, monuments, and news media representing a range of imperial visions:
– The Renaissance – The Modern Era, spanning from the Portuguese Empire to the Third Reich – Britain and South Asia – French Algeria – America and the Americas – Al Qaeda and ISIL
Students will also read theoretical writings by such thinkers as Edward Said, Tzvetan Todorov, Gayatri Spivak, Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Benedict Anderson, Mary Louise Pratt, and Ann Stoler. Finally, we will watch a series of films and film clips that engage with questions of empire by directors including Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, Leni Riefenstahl, Francis Ford Coppola, David Russell, Denis Villeneuve, Sophie Fiennes, Ousmane Sembène, and Gillo Pontecorvo. We invite students to engage in a range of methodologies and analyses of the formal, thematic, and even unconscious elements of empire through such frameworks as alterity, rhetoric, genre, visual culture, monumentality, travel, encyclopedism, slavery, terrorism, nationalism, and ideology. The course is designed for undergraduates at all levels, with weekly assignments of approximately 75 pages of reading in English (or English translation) and for weeks with a film, on average, 2 hours of film viewing. There will be both primary and secondary reading. Students may wish to keep film journals and bring them to class to aid in discussion of the films and their relation to seminar reading for the upcoming week and beyond. All material for the class will be posted on the Yale Classes V2 site except for Watchmen (collected issue, 1987), which you will have to buy: there are many copies available on Amazon and other sites. Grade Breakdown Class Participation: 15% First Response Paper: 10% Midterm Exercise: 25% Third Response Paper: 10% Final Exam: 40%
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Yale College Statement on Plagiarism “Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s work, words, or ideas as if they were one’s own. Thus most forms of cheating on examinations are plagiarism; but the term is usually used in reference to papers rather than examinations. If one uses a source for a paper, one must acknowledge it. What counts as a source varies greatly depending on the assignment, but the list certainly includes readings, lectures, websites, conversations, interviews, and other students’ papers. Every academic discipline has its own conventions for acknowledging sources. Instructors should make clear which conventions students must use. In all situations, students who are confused about the specific punctuation and formatting must nonetheless make clear in written work where they have borrowed from others—whether it be a matter of data, opinions, questions, ideas, or specific language. This obligation holds whether the sources are published or unpublished. Submission of an entire paper prepared by someone else is an especially egregious form of plagiarism, and is grounds for the imposition of a particularly serious penalty, including expulsion from the University.” The full series of policies regarding academic honesty can be found on the following web page: http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/URegs%2013-14_102413.pdf Resource Office on Disabilities This class adheres to university policies regarding students with disabilities, including a strict adherence to respecting the privacy of those students who need additional accommodations. Students in need of disability accommodations, if they have not already done so, should contact Judi York directly at the Resource Office on Disabilities (http://yalecollege.yale.edu/student-services/resource-office-disabilities). “The primary mission of the Resource Office on Disabilities (ROD) is to facilitate individual accommodations for all students with disabilities throughout the entire University, and by so doing, work to remove physical and attitudinal barriers, which may prevent their full participation in the University community…To create a university community, which is truly accessible to and inclusive of all persons, including people with disabilities requires the participation of each and every member of the community. Toward this goal, the Office serves as a resource and a catalyst for change by providing technical assistance, information, and disability awareness training to any member of the Yale community.”
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COURSE CALENDAR AND READINGS
WEEKS 1-6: IMPERIUM AND EMPIRE – DEFINITIONS, DEMARCATIONS, DESIRES
Week 1 (1/20, 1/22) – Surveying the Empire
Wednesday Class:
• Overview and introduction to the aims of the course. Discussion of critical terms (archē, imperium, empire, etc.); ancient concepts and our own
Friday (as Monday) class:
• Discussion of how to read/discuss images. Main themes of the course. • Film clip, opening of A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder 1948) and Triumph of the Will (Leni
Riefenstahl 1935)
Week 2 (1/25, 1/27) – The Mechanics of Empire: Structure and Order
Monday Class:
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1 • Thomas Martin, sketch of Athenian 5th century history (sections 7-16, starting here
Martin Overview Greek History 5th century)
Wednesday Class:
• Augustus, Res Gestae entire • Tacitus, Annals 1.1-15; Histories 1.4-11 • Polybius on the Roman army (link to translation in Resources) • Kelly, The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction, chapters 1-3
Week 3 (1/28, 1/29, 2/2) – Mechanics of Empire: Hierarchies, Surveillance, and the Citizen
Sunday Film Screening, January 28, 6:30 pm:
• Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927) (film guide and contemporary reactions in Resources)
Monday Class:
• Isocrates, selections from Panegyricus • Roman inscriptions (freedmen) • Civic ideals: Hadley, Kagan articles in Resources • Colas, Empire, Chapter 1
Wednesday Class:
• Greek inscriptions • Livy 9.17-19 and the Fasti; Maps and city plans • Petronius, Cena trimalchionis • Steiner, chapter from The Tyrant’s Writ
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Week 4 (2/7, 2/9) – The Rhetoric of Empire
Monday Class:
• Film clip: Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (1935), the speeches • Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.34-46 (Pericles’ Funeral Oration);
Pericles’ third speech • Pliny, Panegyric selections
Wednesday Class:
• Cicero, Pro Fonteio selections • Cicero, Verrine Orations, Selections (Sicily as the jewel in the crown of empire) • Catherine Steel, Cicero, Rhetoric, and Empire, Chapter 1 – “Romans in the Provinces:
Power, Autonomy, and Identity”
Week 5 (2/13, 2/14, 2/16) – From Alter To Subaltern: Empire And The Other
Sunday Film Screening, February 13, 6:30 pm:
• Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Monday Class:
• Herodotus, Histories 7 (Description of the Persian Army) • Arrian, Indika • Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, Part 1 (“Discovery”) • Paintings by Sargent and Gérôme
Wednesday Class:
• Aeschylus, Persians • Tacitus, Germania • Edward Said, Orientalism, Introduction
• Sophie Fiennes (and Slavoj Žižek), The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012)
Monday Class:
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Sicilian Debate (6.8-23) and Eros (6.24) • Trajan’s Column, Prima Porta Augustus • Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
Wednesday Class:
• Livy 1 selections, Vergil, Aeneid 6.752-901 (parade of heroes and Anchises’ command) • Étienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology” • Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Selections
Week 7 (2/29, 3/2) – Epic and the Imperial Vision: Actium, Pharsalus, Lepanto
Monday Class:
• Film clips: Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon (1975) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Vergil, Aeneid 8.585-731 • Juan Latino, Austrias Carmen • David Quint, Epic and Empire, Chapter 1 – “Epic and Empire: Versions of Actium”
Wednesday Class:
• Vergil, Aeneid 1.418-93 • Lucan, Bellum Civile 7 • Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Chapter 4 (pp. 44-57) • W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible, “Aeneas and the Monuments” or
Michael C. J. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic Designs, Chapter 1 (“Dido’s Murals”)
Week 8 (3/7, 3/9) – Encyclopedic Empire: Inquiry, Classification, Power
For Monday: watch The Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1934, 38 minutes; online here Ceylon; read accompanying synopsis and analysis)
Monday Class:
• Pliny the Elder, Book 1 (empire as a table of contents) • Felix Jacoby, Fragmentary Greek Historians – Nearchus (BNJ 133) and Onesicritus (BNJ
134) • Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Selection from Chapter 14 (pp. 205-12) • Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes, Chapter 2: “Science, planetary consciousness,
interiors” (pp. 15-36)
Wednesday class: Midterm exercise posted (due Monday after Spring Break), Yale Art Gallery Tour
• Herodotus, Histories 1, Selections (Delphic Treasuries and Croesus)
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• Vergil, Aeneid 8.306-69 • Propertius, Elegies 4.1 • Kelly, The Roman Empire, Chapter 4 (The History Wars) • Colas, Empire chapter 3 (Markets)
Wednesday Class:
• Josephus, description of the Roman triumph • Arch of Titus relief • TV Clip: Caesar’s Triumph in HBO’s Rome (2005) • Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, Selections • The Telegraph, “Islamic State release pictures after 'destroying ancient temple' at
Palmyra”
WEEKS 10-13: EMPIRE AND ITS (DIS)CONTENTS
Week 10 (4/3, 4/4, 4/6) – Center and Periphery; Going Native
Sunday Film Screening, April 3, 6:30 pm:
• Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)
Monday Class:
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Selections • Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Chapter 2: “Two Visions in Heart of Darkness” • Peter Bergen, CNN, “Jihadi John: The bourgeois terrorist” • Aimé Césaire, “Discourse on Colonialism”
Wednesday Class:
• Plutarch, Life of Alexander the Great, Selections • Ovid, exile poems • Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of Night (pp. 94-158)
Week 11 (4/11, 4/13) – Individual and Empire: From Heroism to Hell and Back Again
• Recommended Film: Zack Snyder, Watchmen (2009)
Monday class:
• Thucydides, 7.60-87 • Xenophon, Anabasis Book 3 • Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of Night (pp. 204-12)
Wednesday:
• Alan Moore, Watchmen
***Friday: Second Response Paper due by 5 pm!
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Week 12 (4/17, 4/18, 4/20) – Memories of Medellin, or No Country for Old Men
Sunday Film Screening, April 17, 6:30 pm:
• Denis Villeneuve, Sicario (2015)
Monday:
• Tacitus, Annals 1-2, 4.32-35
Wednesday:
• Lucan, Bellum Civile 1 • Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Selection from Chapter 3 (pp. 30-38) • Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, “What ISIS Really Wants” • Juan Cole, The Nation, “What’s Wrong with Robert Kaplan’s Nostalgia for Empire”
• Tacitus, Annals 14.29-39 • Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.1-12 • Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, Part One (pp. 1-46) • Ann Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality
in Twentieth Century Colonial Cultures.” American Ethnologist 16:4 (November 1989): 634-60.
Wednesday Class:
• Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, Part Two (pp. 47-109) • Gayatri Spivak, Selections from “Can the Subaltern Speak” • Danielle Marx-Scouras, “Muffled Screams/Stifled Voices,” Yale French Studies 82
