ENGL 581

Fall 2022

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Seminar Literary Theory
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Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to criticism or consent of instructor.

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CRN Type Section Time Day Location Instructor Section Details
40464
Lecture-Discussion
A
3:00PM -4:50PM
R
English Building
Hunt, A
Part of Term:
1
Date Range:
08/22/22-12/07/22
Section Title:
Fascism, Aesthetics, Critics
Section Info:
FA22 - ENGL 581, Anna Hunt Fascism, Aesthetics, CriticsFascism: its Aesthetics, its Critics, Then and Now On returning to Europe in 1948, Brecht observed that “The rapid decline of artistic methods under the Nazis seems to have taken place almost unnoticed. The damage done to theatre buildings is far more conspicuous than that done to the style of acting. This is partly because the former took place with the fall of the Nazi regime, but the latter during its rise. Even today people will speak of the ‘brilliant’ technique of the Goering-style theatre, as if such a technique could be taken over without bothering what direction its brilliance took. A technique which served to hide the causality at work in society can hardly be used to show it up.” Brecht’s point? To voice an unease that what is so worrisomely pernicious about Fascist aesthetics is much more than the ideological content. It is the way Fascism taught its audience to see, which is to say not to see: to look away. That Fascist works were extremely successful at directing – or (trans)fixing the eye and taught its audience to expect this of art is a large part of the problem. The question remains, as Brecht says, how to “show it up:” Fascist aesthetics have had troubling staying power (their influence particularly felt in Hollywood) and tackling these aesthetics has been immensely difficult. This class investigates Fascist aesthetics, contemporary critiques of the same, and subsequent critiques of spectacle. We will focus on Fascism’s elevation of beauty, spectacle and the visual register, monotony, cliché, and sentimentality. We will probe the works of artists and critics determined to liberate art from these narrow confines and find, through the liberation of the imagination, a means of effectively uprooting the remnants of Fascism deeply imbedded in our ways of seeing. Works by: Brecht, Benn, Celan, Riefenstahl, Adorno, Arendt, Benjamin, Sontag, Lommel, Debord, Sebald, Ayim, Lorde, Moten, Hartman. Class taught in English. Reading knowledge of German encouraged but not required. MEETS with GER 575
Restriction(s):
Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.
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