In this program, we’ll work through questions pivoting on the artificial: in an ancient sense, the fake, the tricky, and the clever; in a contemporary one, the constructed, the mediated, and the networked. How does the idea of the artificial inform and alter our thinking about affinity and community, order and chaos, nature and technology? What about our ideals of truth or authenticity might reveal artificial trajectories of thought and action? Could our moral or ethical codes be written, or re-written, artificially? We’ll connect the question of artifice in literature to themes of monstrosity, absurdity, immaturity, erotism, and strangeness, to old patterns in craft and style of writing, and to recent mutations in technologies of communication.  We’ll also study the process of writing in the contexts of authors’ communities and translation.

Lectures and discussions will engage these conceptual and poetic questions using methods drawn from queer research, feminist and post-colonial literary theory, deconstruction, contemporary philosophy, and media theory. Students will have opportunities to develop and improve skills in creative and critical writing, as well as close reading, focused discussion, and reading aloud. We will also engage in translation and transcription exercises. Literary readings will likely include novels by Mary Shelley, César Aira, Félix Fénéon, and Witold Gombrowicz, stories by Samuel R. Delany, poetry by Will Alexander, Antonio Porchia, Alejandra Pizarnik, Marosa di Giorgio, and plays by Copi. Theoretical and philosophical perspectives will be drawn from Donna Haraway, Barbara Johnson, Édouard Glissant, and Vilém Flusser, among others.