Small Wonders
Close examination of a coherent set of short texts and/or visual works. The selections may be the shorter works of one or more authors (poems, short stories or novellas), or short films and other visual media. Content varies from term to term. May be repeated once for credit if the works studied differ. Confirm start and end dates on Literature website.
Fall 2010 · Small Wonders: Media, Modernity, and the Moment: Experiments in Time
The "small wonders" to which our course will attend are moments of present time, depicted in the verbal and visual media of the modern age: newspapers, novels and stories, poems, photographs, films, etc. We will move between visual and verbal media across a considerable span of time, from eighteenth-century poetry and prose fiction to twenty-first century social networking and microblogging sites, and from sculpture to photography, film, and digital visual media. With help from philosophers, contemporary cultural historians, and others, we will begin to think about a media practice largely taken for granted in our own moment.
Readings
- Mayer-Schonberger, Victor. “Of Power and Time - Consequences of the Demise of Forgetting.” In Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age . Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 92-127. ISBN: 9780691138619.
- Bell, Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. “Vision” and “MyLifeBits.” In Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything . Dutton Adult, 2009, pp. 1-25, 27-50. ISBN: 9780525951346.
- Swift, Jonathan. “A Description of the Morning”, “A Description of a City Shower”, “The Progress of Beauty”, “The Lady’s Dressing Room”, “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed”, and “Strephon and Chloe.” In Complete Poems . Penguin Classics, 1989. ISBN: 9780140422610.
- Hunter, Paul J. “Journalism: The Commitment to Contemporaneity.” In Before Novels: Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction . W. W. Norton & Co., 1990, pp. 167-94. ISBN: 9780393028010.
- Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life.” In Selected Writings on Art and Literature . Translated by P. E. Charvet. Penguin Classics, 1993, pp. 390-435. ISBN: 9780140446067.
- Kern, Stephen. “The Present.” In The Culture of Space and Time: 1880-1918 . Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 65-88. ISBN: 9780674021693.
- Braun, Marta. “The Expanded Present: Photographic Movement.” In Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science . Edited by Ann Thomas. Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 150-84. ISBN: 9780300073409
- Canales, Jimena. “Introduction” and “Conclusion.” In A Tenth of a Second: A History . University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 1-19, 205-22. ISBN: 9780226093185.
- Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography . Hill and Wang, 2010, pp. 22-59, 94-7. ISBN: 9780374532338.
- Edison, Thomas, and Lumiere Bros. Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1. , selected short films. DVD. Image Entertainment, 1997.
- Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility.” In Selected Writings: Volume 3, 1935-1938 . Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland, et al. Edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jenning. Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 101-33. ISBN: 9780674008960. (Second Version - ca. 1936).
- ———. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator.” In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (Depth of Field) . Edited by Linda Williams. Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 114-33. ISBN: 9780813521336.
- Vertov, Dziga. The Man with the Movie Camera (1929). DVD. Image Entertainment, 2002.
- Charney, Leo. “In a Moment: Film and the Philosophy of Modernity.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life . Edited by Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz. University of California Press, 1996, pp. 279-94. ISBN: 9780520201125.
Spring 2007 · Small Wonders: Staying Alive
This course closely examines a coherent set of short texts and/or visual works. The selections may be the shorter works of one or more authors (poems, short stories or novellas), or short films and other visual media. Additionally, we will focus on formal issues and thematic meditations around the title of the course "Staying Alive." Content varies from semester to semester.
Readings
- Charters, Anne. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction . 6th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002. ISBN: 9780312397296. (Be careful: if you order on-line, we are using the full version, not the “concise” edition.)
- James, Henry. Daisy Miller . Reissue ed. New York, NY: Penguin, 1987. ISBN: 9780140432626.
- Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table . Reissue ed. New York, NY: Schocken, 1995. ISBN: 9780805210415.
- Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics . Orlando, FL: Harvest, 1976. ISBN: 9780156226004.
- Faulkner, William. Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses, Old Man, The Bear . New York, NY: Vintage, 1958. ISBN: 9780394701493.
- SES #: 1 · READINGS: (no readings)
- SES #: 2 · READINGS: Williams, William Carlos. “The Use of Force.” In The Story and Its Writer.
- SES #: 3 · READINGS: Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. pp. 1-39.
- Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. pp. 40 through end of book.
- Come prepared to point out a chapter that especially intrigues or puzzles you. Maybe we’ll even read it aloud.
- SES #: 5-6 · READINGS: Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table.
- SES #: 9 · READINGS: Alexie, Sherman. “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” In The Story and Its Writer.
- SES #: 10 · READINGS: Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” In The Story and Its Writer.
- SES #: 14 · READINGS: Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” In The Story and Its Writer .
- SES #: 16 · READINGS: Wharton, Edith. “Roman Fever.” In The Story and Its Writer .
- SES #: 17 · READINGS: Faulkner, William. “Spotted Horses.” In Three Famous Short Novels.
- SES #: 19 · READINGS: Joyce, James. “The Dead.” In The Story and Its Writer .
- Jen, Gish. “Who’s Irish?” In The Story and Its Writer .
- SES #: 21 · READINGS: Erdrich, Louise. “The Red Convertible.” In The Story and Its Writer .
- SES #: 22 · READINGS: Cisneros, Sandra. “The House on Mango Street.” In The Story and Its Writer .
- SES #: 23 · READINGS: Paley, Grace. “A Conversation with My Father.” In The Story and Its Writer .
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None U (Fall; second half of term) 2-0-4 units Can be repeated for credit.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2010
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2007
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.