ENGL 396(S) Reading Benjamin and Adorno: Cultural Critique and the Example of Oz

This course will entail a reading of key texts by Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno with a view to elaborating the possibilities and limits of their notions of culture and the tasks of criticism. We will undertake critical readings of their essays on language, translation, history, and culture (popular and otherwise). We will also try collectively to test Benjamin's and Adorno's protocols in relation to examples of cultural production of our own choosing. I propose some consideration of the Wizard of Oz phenomenon, which offers a rich instance of complicated issues of cultural production, reception, translation (among different media), tradition, and history. Readings: Benjamin, essays including Eduard Fuchs, The Collector and Historian, The Task of the Translator, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, On the Concept of History; Adorno, essays including Film Transparencies, Cultural Criticism and Society, On Tradition, Culture Industry Reconsidered, On the Use of Foreign Words; and some of the following: The Wizard of Oz (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939); The Wiz (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1978); Salman Rushdie, The Wizard of Oz (1992); Geoff Ryman, Was (1995); Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995). Requirements: one class presentation, one critique of an essay by Benjamin or Adorno, one longish paper, and active class participation. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150 (formerly 103). Enrollment limited to 25. (Criticism)

Hour: BALFOUR