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Narratives of War
ENGL 122NW - Fall 2005,  Rita Raley

Mon, 9/26
Introduction to the course



Recommended Readings: Dictionary of War (Multitude e.V. and Unfriendly Takeover)

Wed, 9/28
War neuroses

Readings Due: Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)

Mon, 10/3
War neuroses (cont.)

Readings Due: Pat Barker, Regeneration
Siegfried Sassoon, "Survivors" (Craiglockhart, October 1917) Online
Wilfred Owen, "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum Est" Online

Recommended Readings: Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive (browse contemporary photos & video) and Siegfried Sassoon site | Robert Graves, "A Dead Boche" (1918) | "Shell Shock!" (illustration from The Hydra; Dec 1917) | Roman ŕ clef (wikipedia) | Wilfred Owen, "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"

Wed, 10/5
Documents of barbarism

Readings Due: Finish Regeneration; read short introduction to Ernst Friedrich, War against War (1924). Online
Lecture will address Friedrich's captioned photographs representing battlefield atrocities of WWI.

Recommended Readings: Ernst Friedrich's Anti-War Museum, 1925-1933 | Douglas Kellner's introduction to War Against War (1987)

Mon, 10/10
War photographs: shock & the limits of sympathy

Readings Due: Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (2004)

Recommended Readings: Remembering Nagasaki Online

Wed, 10/12
War photographs: shock & the limits of sympathy (cont.)

Readings Due: Jordan Crandall, "On Warfare and Representation" Reader
Susan Sontag, "Regarding the Torture of Others," New York Times Magazine (May 23, 2004) Online
Judith Butler, "Photography, War, Outrage" Reader

Recommended Readings: Heather Burnett, Witness: AnAesthetic | Stephanie Sinclair | Reporters without borders on media casualties in Iraq | Chris Hedges on war and the press | James Der Derian, "The Semiotics of War"

Mon, 10/17
Trauma and memory

Readings Due: Tim O'Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973)

Recommended Readings: Background on the Quang Ngai province | Viet Cong | People's Army of Vietnam (all wikipedia) | Viet Nam War Overview (Vassar) | Ezra Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" (1920) | Online

Tue, 10/18
Film Screening: Apocalypse Now

Girvetz 1004 | 7:00-10:00 p.m.
Students unable to attend the Tuesday night screening of Apocalypse Now (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola; 1979) should make alternate arrangements to see the film.

Wed, 10/19
Trauma and memory (cont.)

Readings Due: Tim O'Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Recommended Readings: Tim O'Brien, "The Vietnam in Me," New York Times Magazine (1994) | T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" Online

Mon, 10/24
Military secrecy

Guest lecture: Trevor Paglen (UC Berkeley), "The Secret Bases"

Readings Due: Secret Bases, Secret Wars Online

Recommended Readings: Classified Spending in the FY2004 Defense Budget Request and the FY2006 Budget Request (CSBA) | "Exposing the Black Budget" (Wired; 1995) | Washington Post report on CIA secret prisons or "black sites" (November 2005) | Goatsucker (Trevor Paglen) Online

Wed, 10/26
Lecture canceled (instructor conference)

Mon, 10/31
Neighbors & enemies

Readings Due: Joe Sacco, Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995 (2000)

Recommended Readings: Yugoslav Wars / War in the Balkans | History of Bosnia and Herzegovina (wikipedia) Online

Tue, 11/1
Film screening: No Man's Land

Girvetz 1004 | 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Students unable to attend the Tuesday night screening of No Man's Land (Dir. Danis Tanovic; 2001) should make alternate arrangements to see the film.

Wed, 11/2
Neighbors & enemies (cont.)

Readings Due: Joe Sacco, Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

Recommended Readings: Srebrenica: The Video of a Wartime Atrocity | Mark Danner, "America and the Bosnian Genocide" (The New York Review of Books; August 1997) | Genocide Watch: The Srebrenica Massacre | Slavoj Žižek, "Against the Double Blackmail" (1999) Online

Mon, 11/7
Captivity narratives

Readings Due: Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose (1978)

Recommended Readings: Lebanese Civil War and Black September in Jordan (wikipedia) Online

Tue, 11/8
Film Screening: West Beirut

Girvetz 1004 | 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Students unable to attend the Tuesday night screening of West Beirut (Dir. Ziad Doueiri; 1988) should make alternate arrangements to see the film.

Wed, 11/9
Captivity narratives (cont.)

Readings Due: Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose

Recommended Readings: Atlas Group: The Souheil Bachar File (multi-part videotape about "the western hostage crisis") and Fadl Fakhouri file, Notebook Volume 38 (a notebook of 145 photographs of cars corresponding to "the exact make, model, and color of every car that was used as a car bomb during the civil wars of 1975-1990") Online

Mon, 11/14
War machines

Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991): Introduction; numbered series of 'black pages' (pp. 16-17, 44-45, 52-53, etc.); pp. 57-83

Wed, 11/16
Optical surveillance

Readings Due: Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Chapter Three, "Policing the Spectrum" (pp. 179-231)
Paul Virilio, "The Sight Machine," from War and Cinema Reader

Recommended Readings: James Der Derian, Interview with Paul Virilio | Jordan Crandall, "Precision + Guided + Seeing"

Mon, 11/21
The war on terror

Readings Due: Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real ("Introduction: The Missing Ink" and "From Homo sucker to Homo sacer") Reader

Recommended Readings: Slavoj Žižek, "Are we in a war? Do we have an enemy?" (London Review of Books; May 2002) | Joe Sacco, "Trauma on Loan" (pdf file)Online

Wed, 11/23
Netwar: swarms & networks

Readings Due: John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars, chapter one (RAND publication) Reader
Excerpts from "Defense Planning Guidance" (1992 classified document prepared under then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney) Online

Recommended Readings: 9.11: Netwar and MIME-NET (Information, Technology, War, and Peace Project; Brown University) | Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future" | "Information Operations Roadmap" (pdf file) Online

Mon, 11/28
War games

Readings Due: September 12 | Antiwargame | America's Army | Full Spectrum Warrior
Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (pp. 83-105)

Recommended Readings: Institute for Creative Technologies (watch short video on site) | America's Army PC Game: Vision and Realization (pdf file) | Bruce Sterling, "War is Virtual Hell" (Wired; March/April 1993) | "More Than Just a Game, But How Close to Reality?" (New York Times; April 2003) | David Plotz, "Iraq: The Computer Game" (Slate; June 2003) | "Playing Games with a Conscience" (Wired; April 2004) | "A 'Sim' That's Dead Serious" (Washington Post; April 2005) | "Virtual Reality Therapy for Combat Stress" (NPR; August 2005) | "Toy Soldiers" (Guardian; December 2005) | "War Vets Feature in U.S. Army Game" (BBC; May 2006) Online

Wed, 11/30
Representation --> information visualization

Readings Due: 79 Days (Trebor Scholz) and project description | Baghdad <> San Francisco (Paula Levine) | The Great Game (John Klima) | Iraq War Coalition Fatalities

Recommended Readings: Michael Takeo Magruder, Falluja, Iraq, 31/03/2004 (2005) | Joseph DeLappe, dead-in-iraq (2006)



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