AJ15072 Insanity in American Short Fiction

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2012
Extent and Intensity
0/20/0. 2 credit(s) (plus 2 credits for an exam). Recommended Type of Completion: zk (examination). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. et Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M.A., Ph.D. (lecturer)
Professor Christopher Stuart, Ph.D. (lecturer), Mgr. et Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M.A., Ph.D. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A.
Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Tomáš Hanzálek
Supplier department: Department of English and American Studies – Faculty of Arts
Prerequisites (in Czech)
SOUHLAS
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 10 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/10, only registered: 0/10, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/10
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
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Course objectives
Please note that this is a full-credit, intensive course and will be held the week before the spring semester begins, February 13-17, five days, ninety minutes in the morning, ninety minutes in the afternoon. The course will be guest-taught by Christopher Stuart from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, cstuart3960@gmail.com, and coordinated by Katerina Prajznerova, 68450@mail.muni.cz. All readings will be available in ELF.
Emily Dickinson famously writes that “Much madness is Divinest Sense.” In his groundbreaking and still controversial work, The History of Madness, Michel Foucault reflects that religious philosophers of the Middle Ages concurred. To them, Foucault writes, “the reason of man is nothing but folly: compared to the shallow wisdom of men, the Reason of God is caught up in the essential movement of Madness.” Or, put another way, “The renunciation of the world becomes an act of folly, like the total abandonment of the self to the obscure will of God, a mad quest that seemingly has no end, as the mystics had long acknowledged.” Thus, Foucault contends, those of the Middle Ages tended not to confine the mad, in part because they perceived a divine wisdom in certain kinds of insanity as well as a kind of madness in conventional, worldly values. Out of the contact between the sane and the insane arose rich conversations regarding what precisely constitutes each category. The rise of capitalism, however, brought the incarceration of those deemed mad, with the “mad” separated out of the general population, so that such rich conversations became increasingly difficult. The simultaneous rise of medical science and other forces led to the perception of madness as a self-evident and natural fact, as opposed to the medieval conception of it as a complex, paradoxical, and philosophical conundrum. One place in which the conversation between the sane and the insane has continued most visibly is in certain works of American literature, and it’s in that spirit that we will examine a number of influential works of American short fiction from the mid-nineteenth century to the contemporary period. We will also consider several theoretical and historical texts in order to contextualize our readings. Of course, literary texts both arise out of specific historical phenomena and respond to them, so stories about the “insane” inevitably reflect the attitudes of their periods and critique them, while also serving as metaphors for other societal problems. Our discussions of representations of the mad in American fiction will thus inevitably lead to related conversations about gender issues, racial issues, Federalist vs. Jeffersonian politics, drug use and abuse, and de-institutionalization – which is not to say, I hope, that the course will be schizophrenic.
Syllabus
  • Course Schedule:
  • 2/13: Morning Session: Introduction: Who Are the Insane, or: Are the Inmates Running the Asylum? Read Allan V. Horwitz’s “The Proliferation of Mental Illnesses” and “A Concept of Mental Disorder.” First “Daily Reading Response” due.
  • Afternoon Session: Read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” and “William Wilson.”
  • 2/14: Morning Session: Read Ernest Becker’s “Human Nature and the Heroic,” and “The Terror of Death.” Second “Daily Reading Response” paper due.
  • Afternoon Session: Read Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.”
  • 2/15: Morning Session: Read Elaine Showalter’s “Nervous Women: Sex Roles and Sick Roles.” Third “Daily Reading Response” due.
  • Afternoon Session: Read Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s (aka Gilman) “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
  • 2/16: Morning Session: Read William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” and E. B. White’s “The Second Tree from the Corner.” Fourth “Daily Reading Response” due.
  • Afternoon Session: Read James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man.”
  • 2/17: Morning Session: Read Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” and “So Much Water, So Close to Home.” Fifth “Daily Reading Response” due.
  • Afternoon Session: Read Stephen King’s “Lunch at the Gotham Cafe” and “All that You Love Will Be Carried Away.”
  • 2/27 Mental Illness as Metaphor paper due. Sent via e-mail to chris-stuart@utc.edu.
Assessment methods
Daily Reading Responses (250 words each)
In addition to the more formal paper due later, you will be expected to contribute regularly to an electronic journal, or e-journal, via the Echo Assignment function in ELF. These thoughtful, critical, narrowly focused 250-word essays should concern themselves exclusively with the work under discussion. They should consist of analysis of one kind or another and not merely personal responses to the reading, such as “I hated this book; it’s boring” or “This scene from James Baldwin reminds me of the time my uncle. . . .,” etc. Instead, focus on specific aspects of the works and the ways in which they represent mental illness or other related issues. You might also use these brief essays to suggest how the theoretical readings might apply to a short story we are reading, or you might consider how a certain character is developed, or the way in which a work seems to be structured, passages that you find interesting, odd, or puzzling (along with possible solutions to the puzzle).
Mental Illness as Metaphor Paper (1,250 words) – You will examine the text of your choice and demonstrate how mental illness – madness, insanity, depression, etc. – operates within the story or novel as a statement about something else, something, that is, besides mental illness itself. In other words, how does madness in a novel or story allow the author an opportunity to illustrate a specific social problem, or to reflect or represent a specific attitude toward, say, gender issues, or radical individualism, or racial oppression, or economic oppression?
Grade Percentages:
Daily Reading Responses = 50% (10% each).
Mental Illness as Metaphor Paper = 30%
Commitment to the Course (Attendance and Participation): 20%
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: in blocks.
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