Lynn R Wilkinson

CL 382:  Writers and Intellectuals:  Theories and Practices

Lynn R. Wilkinson

Meets TTh 3:30-5 in Mezes 1.104

What is an intellectual?  This course will begin by exploring a variety of critical perspectives on intellectuals before moving on to four clusters of texts related to particularly important moments in the history of intellectuals in the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries.  We will then turn to case studies based on the interests and research projects of the members of the class.  These projects may take many forms:  for example, they may consider one or two writers whose work combines traditional genres with publications or other activities that engage political or social issues; they may investigate one or two theories or theorists of intellectuals:  they may look at the role of journals in fostering the work of such writers; or they may focus on biographies or autobiographies as genres that help us to understand the particular nature of intellectuals and what they do.  The assigned readings for the first half of the class focus on western texts published during the past 125 years.  But I welcome projects on earlier writers and writers from non-western countries and traditions.  And I am particularly interested in questions of gender:  women often do intellectual work, but seldom figure in histories or theoretical considerations of intellectuals.

ASSIGNMENTS:  one class presentation during the first half of the class (10%); one five-page paper (15%); an abstract of the research project (5%); one class presentation on the research project (10%); a final research paper (50%); class participation (10%)

Theoretical Perspectives

Pierre Bourdieu:  The Rules of Art:  Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. 

Karl Mannheim:  Ideology and Utopia:  An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge.

Antonio Gramsci:  Selections from The Prison Notebooks.

Paolo Freire:  Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Russell Jacoby:  The Last Intellectuals:  American Culture in the Age of Academe

Toril Moi:  Simone de Beauvoir:  The Making of an Intellectual Woman

The Dreyfus Affair

Émile Zola:  The Dreyfus Affair:  J’Accuse and Other Writings.

Sigmund Freud:   “An Autobiographical Study”

Henrik Ibsen:  An Enemy of the People.

Post-War Paris

Jean Paul Sartre:  “What Is Literature?”  Baudelaire

Simone de Beauvoir:  The Mandarins

Raymond Aron:  The Opium of the Intellectuals

New York

Neil Jumonville.  Critical Crossings:  The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America.

Hannah Arendt:  Eichmann in Jerusalem;  Men in Dark Times.

Edith Kurzweil, ed.:  Writers and Politics:  A Partisan Review Reader”; Full Circle:  A Memoir

The Theorist as Intellectual

Michel Foucault:  “What Is an Author?”  Discipline and Punish

Pierre Bourdieu:  Sketch for a Self-Analysis

Julia Kristeva:  The Samurai:  A Novel; Selections from Feminine Genius: Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette

Prerequisites: Upper-division standing.

Description: Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt: Intellectual Women/Women as Intellectuals --What does it mean to be a woman and an intellectual? This course focuses on major works by two women who helped define the field in the mid-twentieth century, the French writer Simone de Beauvoir and the German-Jewish-American Hannah Arendt.

We will consider their works from a variety of perspectives. To what extent are the preoccupations of these women intellectuals defined by gender? Do they define the relationship or relationships between public and private in ways that differ from many male writers? How do the lives shape the works? What kind of stories do they tell?

We will also consider the different contexts of the two writers, as well as some recent perspectives on the nature and origins of “intellectuals.”

Required Texts:

Simone de Beauvoir: She Came to Stay; The Second Sex (excerpts); The Blood of Others; Coming of Age; Mandarins; A Very Gentle Death.

Toril Moi: Simone de Beauvoir:  The Making of an Intellectual Woman.

Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition; Between Past and Future; On Revolution; Eichmann in Jerusalem; Men in Dark Times.

Requirements & Grading: Two three-page papers (20%), one final ten-page paper (50%), and one oral report (10%). Class participation will count 20%.

See attachment.