Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0184 - Stupidity

This course will explore irony as a literary trope and as a broader rhetorical, discursive, and psycho-social phenomenon. Often defined as "saying the opposite of what one means" or "saying one thing and meaning another," irony crosses literary genres, periods, and cultures to become entangled with philosophical inquiry, dialectical negativity, and social critique. We will ask how irony functions in relation to gender and race, paying particularly close attention to its adventures through camp, kitsch, queerness, and postmodern culture; we will ponder the ways irony pits voice against identity, text against image, poetry against prose; and we will challenge irony's reputation for political impotence, positing instead that it contains resources for political insurgency. Discussions will be based on the close reading and analysis of literature, philosophy, and perhaps some films: including Plato, Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Brecht, Patrick Chamoiseau, Niq Mhlongo, Judith Butler, Achille Mbembe, Abderrahmane Sissako, and Fanta Regina Nacro.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives In this course, students are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.