BOOKS:
"Melancholy, Death, and Cold Hope"
Winter 2022
Associate Professor Olivia Noble Gunn, ogunn@uw.edu
Office hours: by appointment
Elements of this syllabus are subject to change, based on the needs of the class.
Any changes will be discussed and reflected on our shared Canvas page.
Course description
During winter quarter 2022, SCAND 511 will focus on twentieth century Nordic novels (and one late nineteenth century drama) that feature death, or profound melancholy, in the snow. In addition to fiction, we will explore texts from philosophy and theory, psychoanalysis, and queer, postcolonial, and critical race studies that are focused on questions of death, melancholy, mourning, refusal, apocalypse, depressive repair, and more.
Some guiding questions
- What relationships do our fictional readings develop between death and mourning, on the one hand, and setting, season, and landscape, on the other? How and why?
- How do we negotiate the gaps and differences in scale between micro and macro, personal and political, experiences and theories of death, mourning, and crisis?
- What are the differences between political and apolitical forms of withdrawal, refusal, and mourning?
- Can negative feelings offer tools for repair?
- How does literature negotiate the unknowable and unbearable? Why?
Readings
Original language texts are available in the library (or online, in the case of Ibsen’s JGB), and we will have them on hand in the classroom. English translations are available for purchase at the UW bookstore.
- John Gabriel Borkman (Ibsen, 1896)
- Trollvinter (Moomin Midwinter, Jansson, 1957)
- Is-slottet (The Ice Palace, Vesaas, 1963)
- Kjærlighet (Love, Ørstavik, 1997)
- Skugga-Baldur (The Blue Fox, Sjón, 2003)
All other readings will be made available on Canvas. These readings will include (but are not limited to) whole works or excerpts from:
- Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 1918)
- For Derrida (Miller, 2009)
- Precarious Life (Butler, 2006)
- The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death (2012)
- Political Theology of the Earth (Keller, 2018)
- Necropolitics (Mbembe, 2019)
- "Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying, and Mourning from a Queerfeminist Perspective" (Radomska, 2020)
Reading schedule
We will start with Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman (1896) and Frode Helland’s Melankoliens spill (2000). We will alternative weekly literary and literary critical readings with philosophical and theoretical readings. For the complete reading schedule, see Canvas modules on our homepage.
Assignments
Reading diary and sharing 20%
You will keep a reading diary (by hand/on paper or on a computer), recording thoughts about one or more of our readings for each class meeting day. Using your reading diary as inspiration, you will sometimes be asked to open the second hour of class by sharing thoughts and questions and directing us to passages to inspire discussion.
Papers 60%
You will write two short (6-8 pages, double-spaced) papers for this course, focusing on 1) definition(s) and example(s) and 2) additional research. One paper must be handed in before or during week 6, another before week 11. You can choose which type of paper to hand in first.
- Definition(s) and example(s) paper
This paper will use our sources to define one of our primary concepts: death, melancholy, cold hope, mourning, etc. The definition must be exemplified by close reading (most likely of an excerpt from a literary source). You could also choose to provide an answer to one of our guiding questions.
- Additional research paper
The additional research paper will address reading(s) relevant to, but not assigned to, the class. Additional research could mean anything from completing an analytical summary of a whole work (of which we have read only excerpts together) to following an assigned work’s reference trail, to delving deeper into a particular concept, to contextualizing one of our authors through biographical and/or literary critical research.
Paper presentations 20%
When you have handed in a paper, you will give the class a short (5-7 minutes presentation) presentation, including:
- What you wrote about and why
- A reading from your paper
- What you learned during the writing process
- What further questions, research goals, etc. you would like to pursue
Presentations should be specific and rehearsed, to be sure that they do not exceed 7 minutes!
NOTE: Both papers and presentations should be exploratory and creative, written in an informal style. You must use I, names, and titles, courting specificity and avoiding passive voice (the façade of objectivity). Write what you think, not how you think you are supposed to write. Informal does not mean sloppy, unrevised, or thrown together at the last minute.
Policies and Procedures
Academic Style and format: Citations used in course work should follow either the MLA style (http://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/citations/mla-style), or The Chicago Manual of Style. Be consistent! Choose one style and stick with it.
Whenever possible, quotations from literary texts and other sources should be given in original languages with translations.
Small seminars rely on student preparation and professionalism. The classroom is a community in which we learn from one another. It is essential that you come prepared to contribute to our community. Some great ways to prepare include
- Completing sufficient reading to be an informed and generous participant
- Taking notes while you read (for this course, in your reading diary)
- Preparing questions or noting passages from the reading that you would like to discuss with me and other seminar participants
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: Cheating and plagiarism include, but are not limited to:
- Copying the work of others or allowing others to do your work
- Directly quoting the words of others without using quotation marks, indented format, and in-text citations to identify them
- Using sources (published or unpublished) without identifying them
- Paraphrasing materials or borrowing the ideas of others without identifying the sources.
Plagiarizing, or copying and/or using the words or ideas of others without acknowledgement can undermine your learning and devalue the degree that you are seeking. It can result in failure of the assignment or course. Acknowledge and/or cite every single source that you consider when producing assignments. Over-citing is better than under-citing! If you need help understanding and avoiding plagiarism, come talk to me. Consequences for plagiarizing will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Please refer to the Community Standards & Student Conduct – Academic Misconduct webpage for more information about plagiarism and other forms of misconduct.
Late work, necessitated by emergency, illness, and other relevant contexts, must be negotiated before the due date.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).
Your experience in this class is important to me. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law. If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please activate your accommodations via myDRS so we can discuss how they will be implemented in this course.
If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to; mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), contact DRS directly to set up an Access Plan. DRS facilitates the interactive process that establishes reasonable accommodations. Contact DRS at disability.uw.edu.
Face Coverings in the Classroom
The health and safety of the University of Washington community are the institution’s priorities. Please review and adhere to the UW COVID Face Covering Policy [pdf].
Sex- and gender-based violence and harassment: UW, through numerous policies, prohibits sex- and gender-based violence and harassment, and we expect students, faculty, and staff to act professionally and respectfully in all work, learning, and research environments. For support, resources, and reporting options related to sex- and gender-based violence or harassment, visit the UW Title IX webpage, specifically the Know Your Rights & Resources guide.
If you disclose information to me about sex- or gender-based violence or harassment, I will connect you (or the person who experienced the conduct) with confidential and/or private resources who can best provide support and options. Please note that some senior leaders and other specified employees have been identified as “Officials Required to Report.” If an Official Required to Report learns of possible sex- or gender-based violence or harassment, they are required to call SafeCampus and report all the details they have in order to ensure that the person who experienced harm is offered support and reporting options.