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TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

If film screenings are possible to schedule, times and place will be announced later in the semester. (If screenings are not possible, I will put DVDs on reserve in Smathers (Library West) and you will have to see the film on your own outside of class.) Expect changes to be made in the schedule from time to time during the semester--they will be announced well ahead of time in class and by email.

Assignment for each class: Write two discussion questions on each film we view and two discussion questions on each assigned reading. Write two questions on each reading and each film (if there are three readings, for example, turn in a total of six questions). Discussion questions are due the day before each class. Email your questions in one word document to me on Mondays and Wednesdays by 6 p.m. to me at [email protected].

BIG WORDS:

Many of the readings will be difficult, partly because the vocbaularies the writers use contain technical terms you probably won't know as well as "big words" you may not know. Since you can easily go to wiktionary to look up the meanings and etymologies of words you don't know, I recommend that you include them with your discussion questions. That will help everyone in the class. And since this is an English class, you should want to expand your vocabulary. :)

January 6 Introduction: Biopolitics: Treatment and Testing of Who or What

January 11 Splice (Vincenzo Natali, dir. 2009)

First Assignment (Due Wednesday January 12, by 6:00 p.m.): Write two discussion questions on the reading (below) to be discussed Thursday January 13 and email them to me at at [email protected] .

January 13 Required Reading:
1. Michel Foucault, "Part Five: Right of Death and Power Over Life," in The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 An Introduction (Click on this link)

January 18 Required Reading:

1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, "Introduction," pp. 1-67.

January 20 Required Reading:

Carl Schmitt, "Section Six," The Concept of the Political, pp. 53-58.

January 25 Required Reading:

1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, "Part Two: Homo Sacer," 71-118.

January 27 Required Reading:

1. War Dead Autopsies (click on link)

2. Stan Brakhage, "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes," in By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion blu-ray edition) and Brakhage's audiocommentary.

Recommended:

Franz Kafka's "Before the Law." It is very short and is available here.

Orson Welles narrates it here.

February 1 Required Reading:

1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, "Part Three: The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern," 119-88.

2. "Harvesting the Dead" (1974, on the neomort)

3. "The Politics of Death" (2009)