CLIT 2079: "TRAUMATIC" EVENTS?

CLIT 2079: “Traumatic Events?”

Spring 2007

Venue: M.B. # 121, Tuesdays 10:40 - 12:30

Prof. Daniel Vukovich

Phone: 2859 7934 (mobile: 6298 1857)   Office: 208 MB

Email: vukovich@hkucc.hku.hk                 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2-4

Tutor: Mr. Isaac Hui (h0111526@hkusua.hku.hk)

DESCRIPTION:

This course will examine several major historical events that – for better and for worse – have been understood or constructed by artists and intellectuals as deeply “traumatic” to the participants or indeed to entire societies or cultures. More specifically, we’ll read and view a variety of documentary, literary and cinematic texts from different places and moments in history that depict or reflect on some type of tragic, oppressive, or simply momentous event that is both historical and deeply affective or “personal” at once. We’ll begin with the Spanish and European Conquest of the Americas, and end up in China after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or the alleged trauma of the Mao era. On the way, we’ll also examine representations of a colonial famine in India, and of World War II in Russia. Colonialism, war, and revolution, in other words, will be our overarching categories of “trauma.”

Our approach will be resolutely historical— to get a firm grasp on what actually happened during these events. But we will also be concerned with how to interpret “trauma” and how to think both critically and comparatively about such historical experiences. What makes an event traumatic, and for whom? And when does an event become understood as traumatic? Is it not always a matter of perspective, as for example when both personal and social history is recalled many years after the fact? Is trauma a useful category of analysis? These are some of the questions that I’ll pursue in lecture, and which you will also examine in writing and tutorial. We’ll seek neither to objectively define “trauma” as a universal category of experience and human psychology, nor to establish it as a separate field of study. Instead we’ll deploy a “cultural studies” or relational approach that contextualizes these events and interrogates their interpretations by intellectuals.

Finally, you should note that this is a reading intensive course, averaging about 100 pages per week. If this work load seems too daunting you might be best advised to seek another course.

TEXTBOOKS

1. Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz.

2. Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World.

*These are available at HKU bookstore ,and you should buy them there. Chapter selections from Stannard’s text are, however, also available at Ngai Mei photocopy shop and on library reserve.

3. Course Reader. Available at Ngai Mei copyshop ( tel. # 2547 1581).

TEXTBOOKS (cont’d)

4. Library Reserve: Everything on the course schedule below will also be placed on reserve and

in Chinese (whenever possible). Additional articles for reading and

reference will also be here.

GRADING:

100% Continuous Assessment:

20% Attendance, Participation, and short homework assignments (due dates: t.b.a.).

* Attendance in tutorial is mandatory. Keeping up with the readings –something I’ll be able to ascertain individually – is a major part of your participation grade.

30% Mid-term Paper (1000 words), due Week 8 in-class.

50 % Final Paper (3,000 words). Due Tuesday, May 15th.

*Instructions for each of these assignments will be given in class.

LATE and INCOMPLETE WORK POLICIES:

• 1. Late work is NOT accepted, except under verifiable or documented medical or other emergencies. If you need a brief extension for a particular assignment, you must see me one week in advance, and must commit to a new due date.

  2. You must complete ALL major assignments to pass the course, even if you are otherwise earning an “A” on the assignments you did turn in.

PLAGIARISM:

A writer who presents the ideas or words of another as if they were the writer’s own (that is, without proper citation) commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is not tolerable in this course or at H.K.U. Consult the websites: http://ec.hku.hk/plagiarism and http://www.hku.hk/plagiarism for further information. You should avoid making quotes or drawing on figures from nowhere – you must provide sources of reference for quotation and/or citations you use in the paper. This applies to images and media clips as well. Failure to observe this would risk being charged of plagiarism. In this University, plagiarism is a disciplinary offence. Any student who commits the offence is liable to disciplinary action.

COURSE SCHEDULE:

• 1. THIS SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE, DUE TO FILM AND TEXT AVAILABILITY. (Some are still on order.)

  2. Screening times and venues will be announced later. The films will also be placed on library reserve.

WK 1 Jan 30. Course Introduction. Brief Lecture on Trauma and Its Interpretation.

WK 2 Feb 6. Trauma In and As History: The Conquest of the New World

Reading: Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. “Native Peoples”:p.55 and illustrations; “Genocide”: p. 147 and illustrations; Part III, “Sex, Race and Holy War” and ‘Epilogue”: pp. 149—258.

WK 3 Feb 13 Trauma as Mental Theater

Reading: Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.”

WK 4 Chinese New Year Holidays

WK 5 Feb 27 The Great Patriotic War: Russian Trauma, I.

SCREENING: Elem Klimov, Come And See (1985, 142 min.)

Reading: t.b.a.

WK 6 March 6 Civil War: Russian Trauma, II.

SCREENING: Alexander Askoldov, The Commissar. (1967/1985, 105 min.)

Reading: Maya Turovskaya, “Commissar.” [This article will be placed on library reserve]

WK 7 Reading Week.

WK 8 March 20 The European Holocaust and the Question of Uniqueness *

Reading: Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz and Stannard (redux), 150-53,181-85, 246-7.

*MID-TERM ESSAY DUE IN-CLASS

WK 9 March 27 China’s Past and the Elite Discourse of Trauma, I

SCREENING and Reading: Xia Jun’s, He Shang (selections: Parts 4and 6) and extracts

from Su Xiaokang & Wang Luxiang’s Deathsong of the River: A Reader's Guide to the Chinese

TV Series He Shang.

河殤 [錄影資料] / 中央電視臺 ; 總撰稿蘇曉康, 王魯湘 ; 製片黃每文 ; 製片人王宋, 郭寶祥 ;

編導夏駿.

WK 10 April 3 China’s Past and the Elite Discourse of Trauma, II (GPCR)

Reading: Gao Mobo, “Do We Only Know What We Believe? Debating the Cultural Revolution” AND “Maoist Discourse and a Critique of Present Assessments of the Cultural Revolution.”

WK 11 April 10 The Great Leap Forward and the “Missing Millions”

Reading: Mao Zedong and Honan Daily staff. “Who Says a Chicken Feather Can’t Fly Up to Heaven?” Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside. Tu, Weiming. “Maoism as A Source of Social Suffering.” *Utsa Patnaik, “The Republic of Hunger.” [Patnaik’s article will be on library reserve.]

WK 12 April 17 The Great Leap Forward and Mass Mobilization: Trauma for Who?

Reading: Chao Shu-Li, “The Unglovable Hand.” Literature of the People’s Republic of China. Ed. Kai-yu Hsu. AND Tang Ko-hsin, “The First Class.” Literature of the People’s Republic of China. Ed. Kai-yu Hsu. 1980.

WK 13 April 24 South Asia and Colonial Destruction

SCREENING: Satyajit Ray, Distant Thunder (Asani Sanket). 1973, India. 101 min., OR Ray’s Chess Players (Shatranj Ke Khilari) 1977, India. 113 min.

Reading: t.b.a

WK 14 May 1: Labor Day: NO CLASS

WK 15 May 8: Catch-up Day, and Course Summary *

*TUESDAY, MAY 15: FINAL PAPERS DUE.