First-Year Research Seminar: The Desert of the Real: Text, Image, Film

Catalog description

At a moment when popular culture is obsessed with reality television and new technology permits “real-time” access to current events, this course examines the concept of reality in philosophy, literature, and film. What is the relationship between language and reality? How do different genres and media represent the world around us? How do visual and linguistic representations mediate our understanding of the “true” and the “real?” We will begin the course by examining key philosophical works by Plato and Karl Marx alongside films like the Wachowskis' The Matrix and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. We will then discuss how writers associated with disparate aesthetic movements such as realism, surrealism, and magical realism claimed to present and define reality. We will probe deeply into the category of the “everyday” to explore questions relating to gender, race, (post)coloniality, and the experience of modern, urban life. Lastly, we will consider the force of the photographic image and assess its relationship to evidence and truth by examining works of photography and commercial advertisements. Readings will include texts by a range of authors including but not limited to Jamaica Kincaid, Gabriel García Márquez, Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, Susan Sontag, bell hooks, Roland Barthes, Saidiya Hartman, and Claudia Rankine. Student will draw from course themes to hone their research skills and develop final projects that engage their individual interests.