Zawacki, Andrew
MWF 3 :00 PM
Park Hall 0136
HATRED
This seminar will consider the role of hatred across literary, philosophical, and cinematic works spanning history, genre, and national-linguistic boundaries. We will try to define and historicize ‘hatred’ in ways that leave the concept—not merely a theme—nuanced and permissively open, while clarifying the term with enough rigor that it doesn’t blur too easily with adjacent ideas like evil and jealousy, war, obsession, crime. The Iliad will provide the course’s central text. Other works may include novels such as William Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck and Fernanda Melchior’s Hurricane Season; Alice Notley’s book-length poem The Descent of Alette; the first four books of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s play Othello; the Mathieu Kassovitz film La Haine (or Hate) along with Mike Nichols’ directorial debut Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; and relevant essays and poems by Friedrich Nietzsche, Emil Cioran, Audre Lorde, Simone Weil, Sylvia Plath, Catullus, Baudelaire, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others. Students will write extensively each week and be responsible for a substantial long-form essay at the end of semester.