Colloquia & Booklists

Professor Leah Garrett (Jewish & Hebrew Studies)
HONS 2012G
Wednesdays; 2:30 - 5:15 pm 
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

During World War Two, the Germans undertook the Final Solution to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Jews fought back in a variety of ways against the Nazi evil, and new evidence for this is appearing all the time. Jewish resistors fought to the last in ghettos, on trains, even in the death camps themselves. And Jews also served on the front lines in all the Allied armies: in the United States, more than half a million signed up to fight the Nazi menace. In Britain there was even a secret commando unit of German Jewish refugees who served as the tip of the spear and were crucial to the Allied success. Because the war for them was personal, it meant that they battled the enemy with a focus and determination that often led to acts of unimaginable heroism.

This course will examine the story of Jewish soldiers in World War Two through a variety of means: history books, novels, films, documentaries, and poetry. We will use a global perspective that will historically contextualize the Jewish soldier and the role that they played, be it in the US military where Jews for the first time were welcome into a brotherhood of arms, to the Russian army where many Jews had to hide their background to assimilate into Soviet culture. We will also look at the experiences of African Americans in the war. To round out our study we will also take at least one field trip.

Requirements:
3 short, one-page response papers on the readings; 5 reading quizzes; 1 research paper, 10-12 typed pages, with at least four outside sources; 1 group presentation

Potential Short list of books/films/authors to be studied:
History Books:

• GI Jew: How WW2 Changed a Generation by Deborah Dash Moore
• Soviet Jews in World War Two, eds. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh
• Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War Two by J. Todd Moye
• X Troop by Leah Garrett

Novels and Readings:

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• Phillip Roth short stories
• Isaac Babel short stories

Films:

• Catch-22
• The Caine Mutiny
• G I Jew

Professor Donna Paparella (English)
HONS 2012T
Tuesdays and Thursdays; 2:30 - 3:45 pm
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

What and who defines a child? What and how do children know? How much autonomy should children have? How much protection do children need? For example, should a two-year old represent herself in court? Should a 10-year old child be forced to bear a child? Should a 14-year old be allowed to work serving alcohol or an 11-year old operate a forklift? Should a 16-year old be allowed to vote? Should fetuses be considered “unborn children?” How, when, and why did we start thinking of children as people in their own right and how did literature—for, by, and about children—participate in that change?

In our class, we’ll consider questions such as these, and their implications, through an interdisciplinary exploration with a particular focus on the literature of childhood. From our historical vantage point, it’s tempting to think of our ideas about childhood as timeless. However, our contemporary conceptualization of “the child” had historical beginnings—and, the question of what constitutes a child is particularly fraught today.

During the semester, we’ll be examining early formulations of childhood by philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, exploring some of the pleasures and darkness of children’s literature, investigating the relationship between constructions of childhood and child law, and considering what it means to be a teenager.

Readings will include early children’s textbooks like The New England Primer, versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” by the Brothers Grimm and Angela Carter, classic children’s literature like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 19th century psychological studies, contemporary law, selections from G. Stanley Hall’s and Margaret Mead’s landmark 20th c. studies on adolescence, and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (the dystopian novel with teenaged protagonist, which is currently experiencing a resurgence of popularity on BookTok). We’ll also be considering children’s book illustrations and child photography. Class outings will include a visit to the Berg archives at the New York Public Library.

Requirements include a short close reading essay, a primary source research project, and a final self-directed project that may have a public component (such as a Wikipedia revision) and may have a creative component

Professor Jill Rosenthal (History)
HONS 2012U
Tuesdays and Thursdays; 11:30 am - 12:45 pm
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

Today, it often seems that migrants and refugees are everywhere. In the news, in politics, refugees and migrants are heroized by some and villainized by others. This class will do neither. Instead, we will take an interdisciplinary approach that critically examines the mutual constitution of the categories of “refugees,” “migrants,” and “citizens.” The course examines these topics through an analysis of the politics of labelling and its relationship to changing discourses of human rights. We will also use memoir, ethnography, and oral histories to understand how migrants have resisted and engaged with the labels that so often condition their lives. Throughout, we will question the categories of “refugees,” “migrants, and “citizens” and interrogate the methods by which such people, as individuals and as groups, seek to control and alter their positions under national and international authorities. Through such analysis, the course interrogates the social, political, economic, cultural, legal, and historical constructions of the contemporary nation-state system and international migration regimes.

Course Requirements

• Reading responses (20%)
• Class participation (20%)
• Mid-term (20%)
• Take-home paper – 8-10 pages, double-spaced (30%)
• Student final presentation (10%)

Course Materials
Books Required for Purchase:

Gatrell, Peter. The Making of the Modern Refugee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
*All other readings will be available through the Hunter College Library or on Brightspace.

Professor Sarah Chinn (English)
HONS 20139
Mondays and Wednesdays; 11:30 am - 12:45 pm
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

This course explores representations of the “New Woman” in a variety of media and contexts in the United States from around 1890 to the early 1940s. A product of the late 19th century, the New Woman was the embodiment of the fears and promises of modernity: she was college educated and remained single through her twenties; she smoked, drank, gambled and was “fast.” In this course we will discuss how the image of the New Woman emerged, mutated (into the flapper, the mannish lesbian, the Harlem socialite, the Greenwich Village bohemian, the “working woman,” and so on) and endured through the 20th century. The New Woman entered the U.S. imagination at a crucial moment in the development of American culture -- a time in which changing conditions (such as industrialization and urbanization) were radically altering gender relations across class and race. Texts will include Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House; Djuna Barnes, Nightwood; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland; Nella Larsen, Passing; Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers; Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country.

Course Requirements:

Students will write two papers, one shorter textual analysis (4-5 pages) and one longer research-based paper (8-10 pages) and will prepare an oral presentation. Attendance and class participation is mandatory.

Professor Jeremy Glick (English)
Includes Guest Speakers
HONS 3011P
Mondays; 2:30 - 5:15 pm
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

This course offers an intensive survey of the work of Frantz Fanon, a philosopher, psychologist, revolutionary militant, and among the most significant voices in the anti-colonial movement and the Black Radical Tradition. Our main task here is to read Fanon carefully-- spending a lot of time reading slowly and carefully his core texts. Our survey will include Black Skin/White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth, A Dying Colonialism, and Fanon's dramatic plays and select medical writings. We will conclude the semester with a brief look at some of the commentary on Fanon, from postcolonial, Black radical, feminist, Afro-Pessimist thought, African American and Afro-Caribbean literary studies and decolonial theory, all the while placing Fanon's thought alongside influencing discourses in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Marxist theory. We will analyze one or more short novels or films and will attempt to read such works alongside Fanon's l'oeuvre.

Course Requirements:
Students will work on a work of commentary on a Fanon text (15 pages) producing such a text in stages-

1. an annotated bibliography/ literature review,

2. close-readings of Fanon in the format of short one-two page commentaries, and

3. a critical book-review (5 pages) of a scholarly monograph on Frantz Fanon.

Professor Sonali Perera (English)
Includes Guest Speakers
HONS 3011B
Mondays and Wednesday; 1 - 2:15 pm
Room: 408HW
3 hours, 3 credits

What does it mean to invoke human rights in an age where, as one literary theorist puts it, “the banalization of human rights means that violations are often committed in the Orwellian name of human rights themselves, cloaked in the palliative rhetoric of humanitarian intervention?” What can the study of literature teach us about the paradoxes and enabling fictions of human rights? How do we understand the emergence of the Human Rights novel as a literary genre—as “popular” fiction? Where and how does literature as cultural practice intersect with the activism of international civil society groups and local human rights initiatives? By way of addressing these questions, in this course we will study the formal, historical, and ideological conjunctions between human rights and particular world literary forms.

In brief, our objectives are twofold: Towards framing the question of how we produce the concept of human rights in historical and literary studies, (1) we will read historical scholarship tracking the origins of the United Nations and International Law. (2) We will also consider alternative genealogies for internationalism opened up in postcolonial feminism, critical race studies, the literature of social movements, and other forms of world literature.

We will view excerpts from two films: Dheepan (2015) and My Name is Pauli Murray (2021). Via Zoom, we will also have the opportunity to hear from guest speakers (interdisciplinary scholars, activists, and cultural workers) from South Asia and Europe as well as North America.

REQUIRED TEXTS (these may be purchased from bookstores or borrowed from libraries):
J.M Coetzee, Disgrace (Viking); Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (Vintage); Ibtisam Azem, The Book of Disappearance (Syracuse UP); Han Kang, Human Acts (Hogarth); Lynn Nottage, Ruined (Theater Communications Group/TCG)

ADDITIONAL REQUIRED READINGS WILL BE AVAILABLE ON BRIGHTSPACE. THEY MAY INCLUDE: Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (selections); Sujatha Fernandes, Curated Stories (selections); Giorgio Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights” from Means Without End; Walter Benjamin “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and other selections; Sophocles, Antigone; Sara Uribe, Antigona Gonzalez (selections); Saadat Hasan Manto, “Toba Tek Singh” from Khalid Hasan trans. A Wet Afternoon (short story); Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera (selections); Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How it Ends (selection); Aimé Césaire, A Discourse on Colonialism (selection) ; Jacqueline Rose, “Apathy and Accountability”; Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (selections) ; Crystal Parikh, Writing Human Rights (selection) Joseph Slaughter, “Novel Subjects and Enabling Fictions: The Formal Articulation of International Human Rights Law” from Human Rights, Inc ; Juliana Spahr, Du Bois’s Telegram (selection); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (selection); Oxford Amnesty Lecture series (selection)Text of the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Course Requirements:

1. A 10 minute oral presentation on one of the weekly history, theory, or literary readings (20%)
2. Take-Home Midterm exam 20%
3. Two page prospectus for the final paper (10%)
4. Final paper (15-20 pages, double spaced, 12-point font) paper (35%)
5. Engaged Class Participation and in-class writing (15%)