English 90rg. Recognitions

Instructor: James Simpson
Mondays, 3:00-5:00 pm | Location: Barker 211
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Representation and recognition: this course considers the European fortunes of art and recognition from Homer through to the Holocaust. What if recognition of what and whom we have known already is the most emotionally forceful, illuminating experience of art? What if we feel ourselves to be recognized by art? What if originality were not what strikes us most forcefully in art? This course will test the force of these propositions, by looking to both literature and visual art (especially painting). In addition, we will look to rhetoric, cognitive psychology and philosophy in order to understand the artistic experience of recognition. The course starts with Homer and ends with the great challenge to recognition: does the Holocaust fundamentally damage the possibility of recognition?