Readings:

Course Reader and Selected Works TBA

Course Description:

This course will look at the ways in which recent experimental poetry reflects and responds to a wide range of social issues, from those concerning consumer culture to those of surveillance and control. More generally, we’ll discuss the claims and challenges of current experimental art and consider the stakes and pertinence of its diverse set of practices (appropriation, performance, mixed-genre and mixed-media work, collaborative and collective projects, etc.).

Focusing mainly on poetry, we will begin with writers and artists associated with the Fluxus movement (60s-70s) and Language Poetry (late 70s-80s) and then move on to contemporary writers such as Juliana Spahr, Kenneth Goldsmith, Caroline Bergvall as well as those loosely associated with Flarf, Conceptual Poetics and multi-media performance poetry in France. Short experimental films and music with also be assigned and discussed in class.

Additional information:

French R1A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition Requirement.  Classes are conducted in ENGLISH.

Section times and locations in the Schedule of Classes