应中国多所大学邀请，加拿大皇家学会会员、加拿大麦克马斯特大学杰出教授詹姆士-金于4月26日至5月21日来华访学。金教授作为2005年至2007年上外—麦克马斯特大学暑期合作项目的授课老师与我校青年教师建立了深厚的友谊。
应我校多位青年教师再三邀请，金教授同意在访华期间为我校师生讲授题为“现代文学与后现代文学中的自我”的系列讲座，欢迎广大师生参加。所有讲稿和相关材料当场发放，具体内容和时间安排如下：
5月3日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
5月4日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
5月10日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
5月11日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
5月17日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
5月18日 9：00-----11: 40 12: 50----- 3: 50
地点： 松江校区 英语学院 5319
DEFINING THE MODERN AND POST-MODERN SELF
JAMES KING
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will consist of EIGHT sessions (morning and afternoon) consisting of lectures, discussions and screenings devoted to the presentation of the self in modern and contemporary literature and film. Although various theoretical approaches will be integrated into the lectures, the focus of the course will concentrate on how twentieth-century literature and film defined and presented the self. What is the nature of subjectivity (the self as shown in a work of literature or film)? What was new about the twentieth-century’s presentation of subjectivity? What are the various approaches taken to subjectivity? Other topics: meta-fictionality, gender issues, post-colonialism, feminism, masculinity, new historicism, the spectacle.
Copies of the literary texts will be made available to all participants. I will incorporate five articles (listed below) into my lectures and will have copies available for anyone who wishes to read or photocopy them.
WEEK ONE: Defining the Insubstantial Modern Subject
1. The Subjectivity of the Author: Modern Attempts to Penetrate the Consciousness of Jane Austen. MORNING: DVD Becoming Jane; AFTERNOON: Lecture. The lecture will show how the film deals with the iconic status of Jane Austen; I shall also talk about how early modern subjectivity differs markedly from modern subjectivity. To do this, I shall discuss the historical realities of Austen’s world and how individuals saw themselves in the early modern period (sixteenth through eighteenth centuries). I will then contrast this information to modern concepts of the individual.
2. Guilt, Shame and Subjectivity MORNING: Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (DVD); AFTERNOON James Joyce’s “Araby” and “Eveline”. The film and the two literary texts deal with disintegration: how did the notion of subjectivity change during the twentieth century? I will discuss the notion of disguise as one central to literary texts and will talk about masculinity (an area of theoretical interest which has become an important sub-division within gender studies.) I will also address the issue of post-colonialism in Joyce as a prelude to next week’s treatment of Conrad. ARTICLE ONE: See Vincent J. Cheng, “Of Canons, Colonies, and Critics: The Ethics and Politics of Postcolonial Joyce Studies,” (224-45) in Re: Joyce.
WEEK TWO: Defining the Modern Subject as Colonizer and Sexual Being
3. Subjectivity and the Colonial Enterprise Joseph Conrad: TEXT: MORNING. Lecture on selections from HEART OF DARKNESS; afternoon, lecture and showing of some portions of Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW [DVD]. What exactly was wrong with post-colonialism according to Conrad? What “take” does Conrad give us on the emotion of sympathy? What is Coppola’s attitude towards post-colonialism and how much does it differ from Conrad’s? Conrad’s view of the feminine in Heart of Darkness will be emphasized. ARTICLE TWO. See Lisa Schneider, “Iconography and the Feminine Ideal,” (9-32) in Conrad’s Narratives of Difference. I will use Schneider’s observations as the starting point for Lecture Three.
4. Sex and Subjectivity; Feminine Subjectivity D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf TEXTS: MORNING Lawrence’s “The Prussian Officer”; AFTERNOON: Excerpts from Mrs. Dalloway. Lawrence was deeply influenced by Freud in his writings, but he also had severe reservations about psychoanalytical interpretations of the self. Virginia Woolf attempted to find a completely new take on literature by introducing feminine aspects into it. How successful was she? Is such a thing possible? ARTICLE THREE. See Pamela L. Caughie, “Introduction: Taking Issue,” Virginia Woolf and Postmodernism (1-28).
5. Working-Class Subjectivity: Harold Pinter: The Homecoming MORNING: Screening of DVD; AFTERNOON lecture. Pinter has many interesting insights into the realms of the masculine and female. He also is fascinated with class, power and the surreal.
WEEK THREE: Defining the Modern Subject within Class; The Post-Modern Subject
6. The Post-Modern Subject. Excerpts from Nabokov’s Pale Fire; excerpts from Barnes’ Flaubert’s Parrot. Both these authors take the stance of high modernist authors such as Conrad or Woolf, but they create characters that are decidedly post-modern. Excerpts [DVD] from Schrader’s Mishima and Cavanii’s Ripley’s Game. Schrader takes a very post-modernist approach to the great Japanese modernist writer, and Cavanii’s take on Ripley is very different from Minghella’s.
Cinema as a Modernist Instrument: Looking and Not-Seeing the Self
7. Subjectivity as Watching and Waiting Alfred Hitchcock: MORNING: Screening of REAR WINDOW; AFTERNOON Lecture and screening of some scenes from VERTIGO [DVD] According to Hitchcock, the best films are about the act of watching. Why is this an intrinsic aspect of his art? What does he have to say about subjectivity? ARTICLE FOUR : Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
8. Further Post-Modern Subjectivities Antonioni and Cortázar: MORNING screening of BLOW-UP [DVD] and AFTERNOON lecture and Cortázar’s short story of the same name Antonioni’s film returns us to the world of Ripley and the search for the self, but both the Italian film director and Cortázar are post-modern in their treatments of subjectivity. ARTICLE FIVE: Alan Spiegel, “The Oval of Vision,” from Fiction and the Camera Eye
