Futurity: Why the Past Matters

COMPLIT 271 (German 271) Winter 2014 Fridays, 2:15-5:05pm Building 160, rm. 328

Prof. Amir Eshel (eshel@stanford.edu) Office Hours: Friday, 10-12pm Brian Johnsrud (johnsrud@stanford.edu) Office Hours: Tuesday, 10-12pm Course Description
Drawing on literature, the arts, political discourse, museums, and new media, this course asks why and how we take interest in the watershed events of the modern era; how does contemporary culture engages with modern, man-made disasters such as the World Wars or 9/11? Readings and viewings include the literature of Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy; the cinema of Kathryn Bigelow and Steven Spielberg; political rhetoric and speeches by Barak Obama; new media and digital games; and the theoretical writing of Walter Benjamin, Hayden White, Fredric Jameson, among others. Taught in English. All of the course readings and assignments will be hosted on a new digital humanities platform, Lacuna Stories. Students will also be required to attend a course section discussing digital humanities and to learn how to fully engage with digitized and annotated texts on Lacuna Stories.

Course Requirements
Attendance, participation, and critical engagement with texts and discussions account for 80% of your grade. Due to the large weight given to participation, be aware that you are responsible for the following: Attend each class unless permission for an excused absence is given in advance Do all the required reading for each class Do the required annotation, blog, forum, or other social learning requirements for each week based on your chosen assessment track Do necessary background reading provided in the form of essays, videos, and wiki entries. This kind of contextual background will sometimes be specifically assigned, but in general they are your responsibility. At the beginning of each class you should know when the authors for that week were born, their major works, basic facts regarding the history surrounding them, etc, in order to provide a more rich and interactive discussion rather than a straightforward lecture course. Have prepared questions and comments for the ongoing discussion, with quotes from the reading to support your contributions. You should expect to be called upon to share in class the questions or comments you have prepared in advance. This can be done in advance through your digital annotation of the readings and engagement with the online course material on Lacuna Stories.

The remaining 20% of your final grade will consist of a final research project, in the form of an essay, mixed media project, an extended annotation project, or theoretical or conceptual work within the digital humanities. Note: Assessment option 5 has no final project.

Final Project Dates

Friday, January 31st: A 2-3 paragraph proposal of the essay or alternative project, emailed to johnsrud@stanford.edu. Wednesday, March 19th: Final project due at 3pm (our allotted examination time), uploaded to LacunaStories.com

Assessment Options:
You may select one of the five options to count as your critical engagement with texts and final research project. As this class promotes ways of knowing from multiple types of information, media, and platforms, we are open to new and alternative forms of assessment that may not be included here. If you would like to explore other ways of engaging with the course material for assessment, please get approval from Brian and Amir by January 31st. We want this course to be as useful as possible for your personal, academic, and professional goals.

TYPE OF WRITING

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

Annotations

30 annotations each week.

35 annotations each week.

50 annotations each week.

60 annotations each week.

70 annotations each week.

Blogs

Write 3 blog posts; respond to 3 blog posts.

Write 5 blog posts; respond to 5 blog posts.

Write 7 blog posts; respond to 7 blog posts.

Write 10 blog posts; respond to 10 blog posts.

Write 12 blog posts; respond to 15 blog posts.

Wiki

Edit or create 1 wiki page

Edit or create 2 wiki pages

Edit or create 3 wiki pages

Edit or create 4 wiki pages

Edit or create 5 wiki pages

Forum

Create one forum thread; Respond to three forum threads. 10-18 pg essay, posted in Lacuna Stories Community Stories by March 19th.

Create two forum threads; Respond to five forum threads. 6-8 page essay, posted in Lacuna Stories Community Stories by March 19th.

Create three forum threads; Respond to eight forum threads. 15 hours of Lacuna Stories development or similar.

Create four forum threads; Respond to eight forum threads.

Create five forum threads; Respond to six forum threads.

Essay (or approved project)

10 hours of Lacuna Stories development or similar.

none

Week 1

January 10

Introduction and Overview Amir Eshel, Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past Hayden White, The Modernist Event Elizabeth Clarke, History, Theory, Text **Please read all the above before our first meeting** Recommended Alain Badiou, The Century (selections) Questions: 1. How do we define the period known as the contemporary? What distinguishes it from previous periods? How do determine what is new about a period? 2. How do novels written in the contemporary period correspond to the events of the time? Its ethos, character, zeitgeist or psychology? 3. Consider how we use the terms pre-, post-, inter- to define historical periods based on singular events and its usefulness when situating a creative work. 4. What do we do with representations of the past? How are their ethics and character related to action, agency, and decision-making in the present and (for) the future?

Week 2

January 17

Official, Counter, Counter-factual, and Popular History Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theory as Narrative and Competing Narratives of 9/11 Martin Arnold, Making Books: The What-Ifs that Fascinate Sam Wineburg, Undue Certainty: Where Howard Zinns A Peoples History Falls Short Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Book and 1-hour television episode) Secondary Present Pasts, Andreas Huyssen Peter Knight, Plotting the Kennedy Assassination Loose Change, documentary Aviezer Tucker, Historiographical Counterfactuals and Historical Contingency Questions: 1. Hayden White will be speaking to the class for the first hour. Re-visit The Modern Event and explore his other writings on Lacuna Stories. Come to class ready to ask him questions. 2. What is the relationship between conspiracy theories, alternative/popular/folk histories, cultural memory, and the popular imagination? Is there a paranoid style in politics, literature, or popular culture after 9/11, 1960, 1945, etc, and is it limited or unique to the U.S.? 3. How is political and ethical agency engaged with in conspiracy theories or science fiction? 4. What are the ways we can evaluate historical representations beyond accurate/inaccurate or objective/subjective. Why do we consume fictional or conspiratorial representations of real events, rather than sticking to primary source documents?

Week 3

January 24

1989 and Utopian Thinking Ian McEwan, Black Dogs Peter Weibel, Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long Nineties (selections) Francis Fukuyama, The End of History Secondary Fredric Jameson, The End of Temporality Questions: 1. What genre or subgenre is Black Dogs? Are the characters representations, allegories, or something else? 2. Count the moments of violence portrayed in the story and those remembered or recalled in the story. What do we make of these? 3. What is the relationship between rupture and continuity before and after a modern event? How do the critical authors of this week approach the contemporary along these lines? How does the future or our concept of the future change after big events? 4. The theoretical readings this week deal with the issue of ruptures, breaking points, historical periods, and bookmarking cultural productions between dates or key events. What do you make of these theoretical arguments? How are they more or less convincing?

Week 4
Accounts of 9/11

January 31

9/11 Commission Report Illustrated 9/11 Commission Report 9/11 Toronto Report Lacuna Stories wiki on September 11 attacks Secondary Barbie Zelizer, Photography, Journalism, and Trauma and James Carey, American Journalism On, Before, and After September 11, Both in Journalism after September 11. Questions: 1. This weeks readings try to address in an objective and fact-based manner, through canonical genres, rhetoric, mediums, and different kinds of evidence and ways of knowing. How do they each approach the task of conveying what actually happened? 2. How do the style, medium, platform, authorship, and intended audience affect the import of these arguments and representations? Which invoke a sense of agency or response in their (un)intended audience? What formal, literary, or stylistic elements encourage a practical response?

Week 5

February 7

Political Realism Responses to 9/11 from the Left and Right American Response and International Response sections of September 11 Attacks in Lacuna Stories Wiki Fahrenheit 9/11 George W. Bush, Decision Points Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Noam Chomsky, 9/11: Was There an Alternative?; 2011 follow-up in TomDispatch.com Secondary United 93 (trailer) WTC (trailer) 9/11 Memorial Site Information Noam Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracies: and follow-up interview Questions: 1. In contrast to last weeks readings, these take a political or ideological stance to color their responses to 9/11, why, and what the event means. How does political rhetoric shape the representation of this event? 2. Again, pay attention to the specificity of each: the authors, their subject position, background, the content, style, and medium, and the intended audiences. How do all of these affect how we read these texts? How do they affect what these texts do and the kind of responses they may encourage?

Week 6

February 14

Imaginative Responses to 9/11 Don Delillo, The Falling Man Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Ian McEwan, Saturday Toby Keith, Courtesy of the Red White and Blue (Song and lyrics) John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls (Song and lyrics) Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers Secondary Joseph ONeill, Netherland (selections) John Updyke, Terrorist (selections) Questions: 1. What kinds of questions, arguments, and sentiments are made possible in self-acknowledged fiction or creative responses to events, that arent conveyed in the previous two weeks representations? Why do we turn to creative or fictional representations, when what really happened is often touted as the most important issue? Consider the larger ethical and political issues that are opened up in these representations, issues that extend before and beyond 9/11 itself. How do these representations use 9/11 as a conduit to other kinds of arguments, events, or issues?

2.

Week 7

February 21

Alternate Histories, Alternate Futures Reality A and Reality B, Haruki Murakami Philip Roth, The Plot Against America Thomas Mullen, The Revisionists Benjamin Percy, Red Moon Secondary Kluge, The Devils Blind Spot Amir Eshel, Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (revisit for discussion of Roth) Questions: 1. How have we seen novels naviagate between imagined, real and practical pasts, the present, and imagined futures? 2. Alternate histories (such as Philip Roths The Plot Against America) and revisionist history (consider the film Inglorious Basterds or Holocuast denials) have caputred literary and popular imaginations in the past few decades. What does the comparison between Reality A and B do for readers? What is at stake, politically, ethically, and creatively, in this kind of imaginative work? 3. In what genre or sub-genre would you classify The Revisionists? Red Moon?

Week 8

February 28

The Past in Post-Apocalyptic Futures The Road, Cormac McCarthy Man in the Dark, Paul Auster V For Vendetta Secondary Children of Men I Am Legend Book of Eli Postman Questions: 1. Insofar as The Road is a reflection of the recent past and the present, why use an imagined future to do so? 2. Think of all the historical referents in V for Vendetta those that are literally mentioned or visually or symbolically referenced. How do each of these referents function rhetorically? What about the aesthetic and tone of the film, and its relationship to audience response and the ways the film inspires different kinds of thinking and responses?

Week 9

March 7

Torture and the Past Remediated Brian Johnsrud, Putting the Pieces Together Again: Digital Photography and Ordering Violence at Abu Ghraib Homeland, selections Zero Dark Thirty Amy Zegart, Spytainment: The Real Influence of Fake Spies Secondary Benjamin Percy, Red Moon (torture scenes) Donald E. Pease, The New American Exceptionalism Questions: 1. Torture, advanced interrogation techniques, and prisoner/detainee abuse have become part of our cultural vocabulary since 9/11, affiliated with locations like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and black sites. They have also brought issues of ethics, truth/knowledge, accuracy, certainty, national security, and human rights into a shared discourse. How do these discussion, perspectives, and representations weigh in on or contribute to this discourse? 2. Focus particularly on the role of the audience and their relationship to the protagonists in Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty. What do we feel for these characters? Why? How do emotional or social connections with the characters make us implicated in their decision-making and actions? These are issues that will return to in week 10.

Week 10

March 14

Action, Agency, and Making the Past Practical Arendt, Between Past and Future Michael Oakeshott, On History Jane McGonagall, Gaming Can Make a Better World Spec Ops: The Line video game, White Phosphorous video scene Cowbird.com (explore the site) Secondary Richard Crownshaw. Perpetrator Fictions and Transcultural Memory. Brendan Keogh. Killing Is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line. Recommended Aaron Hess, You Dont Play, You Volunteer: Narrative Public Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun Brian Rejack, Toward a Virtual Reenactment of History: Video Games and the Recreation of the Past Questions: 1. We will wrap up the course considering: What to do? What do we do, as academics, to interpret these representations of the past? Adjudicate them based on their success or failure in any number or qualifications we have developed over the quarter. What do we do, as members of the public, to experience, discuss, and respond to these representations? What kinds of things do we do with these representations? How are agency, reaction, and response related to the objects we have considered this quarter: their content, organization, visual and verbal rhetoric, medium, audience, and platforms?

2. 3.