ENGL6080:
Reading Time

Two linked sets of questions, about reading and time. It all starts from there.

This course juxtaposes a number of literary, theoretical, critical and philosophical texts which deal with those questions. All of them are highly attentive to the ways in which temporality is never reducible to linear succession, nor reading to the reception of a content. No two of them, however, say quite the same things about these questions, or approach them from the same standpoint, although many of them of course are working in full knowledge of others on the list.

Your Honours year is probably your first extended foray into research work. There's an experience probably everyone has when approaching a large project such as an honours thesis. You find you're drawing your reading from a number of quite disparate texts and sources and ideas, none of which necessarily fit into anything like the same framework. Nevertheless, for all of their differences and perhaps even incommensurabilities--and perhaps even because of them--these texts you're dealing with are busily talking to each other. Not to mention across and against each other.

The idea of this course is to use that as the basis for a seminar series, in which we can ask questions about what we do when we read. What happens when one text reads or addresses another perhaps very different text? What sorts of relations are set up among texts which deal with similar issues but within different and even irreducible frameworks? Those two topics suggested in the title--reading, and time--will, far from accidentally, keep falling in and out of each other. While much of the focus of the course is on theoretical and philosophical texts, the issues raised are the conceptual, procedural and methodological questions you may already be negotiating as you draw the threads of your dissertation project together. in drawing the threads of a large project together: They are also quite precisely the questions asked, in a number of different ways, in the texts we shall be looking at.

And, of course, by their juxtapositions. The seminar timetable in this course is set up to maximise those disjunctions and confluences among the texts we'll read. We'll generally spend at least two sessions on each text (or collection), but they won't be consecutive sessions. Reading of any one text will always be interleaved with another. (What reading isn't interrupted by other readings?)

• Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Library.
• Walter Benjamin, Illuminations. Library.
• Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Library.
• Geoff Ryman, 253, or Tube Theatre. A novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash. http://www.ryman-novel.com/
• Michel Serres, Genesis. Library.

To check on the availability of any of these titles through the UQ Bookshop, use this link.

The course is based on a series of weekly 2-hour seminar discussions of and around the set texts, as listed in the Timetable, augmented by email group discussion and contributions to the Reading Time website.

Each week, you'll be expected to have read a certain amount of a book, or some essays and extracts, and come to class ready to discuss them. What you should read for which class is listed on the timetable.

To start things off, the Reading Time site has notes about each week's reading. Just what these are for each week has quickly got lost in the labyrinth, so I'll post the relevant URLs to you each week via the email group or the Noticeboard. These notes are meant to suggest some ways into the texts and make some possible connections to what we've been doing up to that point.

I've opened an email group through Yahoo groups. You should sign up for it as soon as you can.

What it does

An email group is a party line for email. Any email sent to the group address (which in this case is engl6080@yahoogroups.com) gets sent automatically to everyone in the group. Any reply to a group email similarly gets sent to everyone in the group.

How to sign up for it

Go to the ENGL6080 email group home page (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/engl6080). (If you click on either of these links, the connection will open in a separate windox of your browser, and you'll be able to toggle between the group page and this one.) Bookmark the group page: it's an archive for any messages you might have missed, and has quite a few other useful features you'll find if you explore.

On the right of the screen, about a third of the way down, you'll see links asking you to register (if you're not already a member of a Yahoo group) or sign in (if you are). Follow the instructions. When you're registering, you'll be asked if you want to receive emails of interest in a number of areas: this is basically advertising, so click "no". Yahoo has a Privacy Policy you should read.

Once you're a member, any email you send to engl6080@yahoogroups.com goes to all of us.

How we'll use it

There are two reasons for having an email group in this course:

1. Notification. I'll use the group for news of any events or issues of interest to the course, for my weekly notes (see above), and for your contributions (see below).
2. A forum. If there's anything you want to discuss, any information you think others can help with, or if you simply want to share something interesting, send it to the group. I will point out that this is a peer discussion list, not one I need feel obliged to respond to everything on. (But of course, if you specifically want me to say something about an issue, or just want some information from me, I'm happy to do that.)

The Reading Time website plays an essential part in the course. The Klee angel is the link to its home page everywhere it appears.

The site began as an archive for the reading notes I'd post in advance for each week. Then it became a way of linking these notes together, and the beginnings of a collective project. What you see at present is the site as we left it at the end of semester 1 last year. If you want to continue with this project--and the decision is yours, as a class group--we'll certainly do that. (I should add quickly: you don't need to know HTML or how to operate a web editor: I'll do all that.) What we get from it, I hope, will be an increasingly complex network of interrelationships, and an ongoing group exploration of the issues the course addresses. I'll be delighted if it does unexpected things. It has so far.

You'll be alerted to all new additions to the Reading Time site, yours and mine, by the email list, and in the Reading Time index. Check the ENGL6080 noticeboard every week too, for any further news.

This course assumes you have completed the prerequisites for honours, including at least one of the designated theory courses. It does not assume you have completed any particular one of these theory courses.

The Handbook of University Policies and Procedures outlines a number of Graduate Attributes which should be fostered in all undergraduate courses. This is how they inform ENGL6080:

• In-depth knowledge of the field of study ENGL6080 is a consolidation of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary work of an honours course. It is concerned with the margins and inter-relationships of disciplines, and draws on texts from a number of different national and intellectual traditions.
• Effective communication This course is intended to complement the honours thesis and the skills of organization and expression involved in a moderately long essay project. The Reading Time web project offers the opportunity of a generically different writing and an examination of the implications of the new technology, and the seminars and email group are forums for interactive discussion of the texts and issues.
• Independence and creativity As with all honours courses, students are expected to work and learn with a high degree of independence and sophistication. The conjunction of texts around which the course is structured brings the whole issue of problem-solving, innovation and adaptation to the fore.
• Critical judgement See above
• Ethical and social understanding This course focuses specifically on the philosophical contexts of disciplinarity, and argues that these questions are fundamentally ethical issues.