Course Schedule

Course Schedule:

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Week 1: Introduction / The Texture of Time

Tuesday 1/10: Ramis, Groundhog Day; Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”.

Thursday 1/12: Ismael, “Temporal Experience”; Joyce, "The Dead"; Dvořák, “New World” Symphony

Week 2: The Here-Now

Tuesday 1/17: D­­ōgen, “Uji”,from Shōbōgenzō; Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart, Part 1, pp. 3-92.

Thursday 1/19: Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart, Part 2, pp. 95-194.

Week 3: Physics and Metaphysics of Time

Tuesday 1/24: Mellor, "The Time of Our Lives"; Fiocco, "What is Time?"; Deng, "Our Experience of Passage on the B-theory"*.

Tuesday 1/26: No meeting. Watch recorded lectures. Read: Newton, Principia, “Scholium to the definitions”; Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, Clarke §2.1 & Leibniz §§3.1-8, Weatherall notes, pp. 1-9.

Week 4: Physical Time / Time Passes 1

Tuesday 1/31: No reading

Thursday 2/2: Woolf, “The Window,” To the Lighthouse pp. 3-124.

Week 5: Time Passes 2 / Time Travel 1

Tuesday 2/7: Woolf, “Time Passes” and “The Lighthouse,” To the Lighthouse pp. 125-209.

Thursday 2/9: Lewis, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel”*; Vihvelin, "What Time Travelers Cannot do"; (Optional: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)

Week 6: Time Travel 2

Tuesday 2/14: Caruth, Primer.

Thursday 2/16: Villeneuve, Arrival.

Week 7: The Persistence of Memory / Time Travel 3

Tuesday 2/21: Ishiguro, “October 1948” and “April 1949,” An Artist of the Floating World pp. 7-127.

Thursday 2/13: Ishiguro, “November 1949” and “June 1950,” An Artist of the Floating World pp. 131-206; Hill, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Week 8: Relativity Theory

Tuesday 2/28: No meeting. Watch recorded lectures. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, §§8-10; Weatherall notes, pp. 10-15.

Thursday 3/2: Savitt, "Being and Becoming in Modern Physics" (esp. section 3); Nolan, Interstellar.

Week 9: Narrative

Tuesday 3/7: Nolan, Memento; Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, Chs. 1-3.

Thursday 3/9: Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, Chs. 4-6.

Week 10: Relativity Theory and Experience

Tuesday 3/14: Callender, “The Common Now”*; Hartle, "The Physics of Now".

Thursday 3/16: No reading.