New York University

Course Description

This class examines the canonical text Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre, 1961) by Martinican-born psychoanalyst and social philosopher Frantz Fanon. What is the relevance of Fanon's classic text and his insight on the revolutionary potential of the poor and intellectuals in our current world? Is there a "healing psychological force" in revolutionary action? This course provides a theoretical introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre's understanding of existentialism and bad faith and its influences on Fanon. More importantly, we will examine Fanon's ideas on existential humanism, the role of violence and tragedy in decolonization, and his notion of an "authentic existence" within and beyond post-colonial context.

Course Description

The Ur-text of literatures for children is the encounter between a child and a Wild Thing. From Little Red Ridinghood to Peter and the Wolf to Charlotte's Web, the border between the child and the wild is a rite of passage marking the transformation of the child into an adult, and is the site of a child's most fundamental education about how to be human. Works of children's literature agree that literature can be used to explicitly structure the relationship between children and the wild, and construct subjectivities by nurturing a deeper awareness of what that relationship should be. Yet, what, exactly, is the wild in children's literature? Representations of the wild reflect adult ideas about children, but do children have a privileged relationship to nature, and innate understanding of the connection between humans and the world around them? Or are they wild things themselves, in need of templates for human/humane behavior toward other beings? Representations of the wild are also informed by ideology, shaped by societal ideas about race and gender, domination and subjection, power and privilege. In this course we will be thinking and writing about the surprising ways that children's texts imagine the wild as a charged cultural, political and racialized space, and how these texts imagine and construct subjectivities based on these relations of power. Text may include Babar, The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are, Ricky Tiki Tavi and Fantasia.