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PART ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE IDEA OF HUMANISM AND FIRST APPROACH TO
THE IDEA OF POSTHUMANISM

Seminar # 1 March 29

a) Humanism, Petrarch and the Technology of the Word
b) Our contemporary Posthuman scenario

Primary readings:

-Francis Petrarch, Familiar Letters, I, 1; I, 9; XXI, 12.
-Francis Petrarch, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, 5, 16, 53, 308, 339.
- Cary Wolfe, posthumanities, www.carywolfe.com/post_about.html

Secondary readings:

-Ronald G. Witt’s "Petrarch, Father of Humanism?" in In the Footsteps of the Ancients. The Origins
of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni, 2000), pp.230-291.
-Francis Fukuyama, "Being Human," in Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), pp.105-177.

Suggested readings:

-Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, Chicago and London: Chicago UP, 1993, pp.93-124.
-Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002
-Terrence Cave. The Cornucopian Text. New York and London. Oxford U. P. 1985 (selections)
-Johanna Drucker, The Alphabetic Labyrinth, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
-Massimo Lollini (Ed). Humanisms, Posthumanisms and Neohumanisms, "Annali d'Italianistica" (2008).
http://www.ibiblio.org/annali/toc/2008.html

Seminar # 2 April 3

Symposium “Francesco Petrarca from Manuscript to Digital Culture”

Suggested readings:

-Brugnolo, Furio. “Libro d’autore e forma-canzoniere: implicazioni grafico-visive nell’ originale dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta”. In Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: Codice Vat. Lat. 3195. Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, a c. di G. Belloni, F. Brugnolo, H. W. Storey e S. Zamponi, 105–29. Roma–Padova: Antenore.
Del Puppo, Dario. 2004. “The Remaking of Petrarch’s Canzoniere in the Fifteenth Century”.
Medioevo Letterario d’Italia I: 115–39.
———. 2006. “Shaping Interpretation: Scribal Practices and Book Formats in Three ‘Descripti’ Manuscripts of Petrarca’s Vernacular Poems”. In Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation, edited by T. Barolini and H. W. Storey, 94–129. Leiden–Boston: Brill.

Seminar # 3 April 5

*Lecture: Prof. Wayne Storey (Indiana University), “The Petrarchan booklet and gloss: building
blocks of the early book”

Primary readings:

Storey, Wayne. 2004a. “All’interno della poetica grafico-visiva di Petrarca”. In Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: Codice Vat. Lat. 3195. Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, a c. di G. Belloni, F.Brugnolo, H. W. Storey e S. Zamponi, 131–71. Roma–Padova: Antenore.
———. 2004b. “L’edizione diplomatica di Ettore Modigliani”. In Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: Codice Vat. Lat. 3195. Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, a c. di G. Belloni, F. Brugnolo, H. W. Storey e S. Zamponi, 385–91. Roma–Padova: Antenore.

Secondary readings:

Zamponi, Stefano. 2004. “Il libro del Canzoniere: Modelli, strutture, funzioni”. In Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: Codice Vat. Lat. 3195. Commentario all’edizione in fac-simile, a c. di G. Belloni, F. Brugnolo, H. W. Storey e S. Zamponi, 13–72 [+ tables]. Roma–Padova: Antenore.

Suggested readings:

Storey, Wayne. 1993. Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric, pp. 201–433.
New York: Garland.

Seminar # 4 April 12

*Lecture: Prof. Massimo Riva (Brown University), Pico della Mirandola and Posthumanism,
Knight Library Proctor 42 from 2:00 to 4:00.

Primary readings:

- Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Discourse on the Dignity of Man (1486). http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/pico/text/ov.html

Secondary readings:

-A. Chandra Muzarraf, “From Human Rights to Human Dignity,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 27, 1995.

-Nick Bostrom, “In Defence of Post-Human Dignity,” http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/dignity.html

- Massimo Riva, "Dignità ed enigmi del postumano" in Massimo Lollini (Ed). Humanisms, Posthumanisms and Neohumanisms, "Annali d'Italianistica" (2008).

Suggested readings:

Bori, Pier Cesare, From Hermeneutics to Ethical Consensus Among Cultures, University of South Florida Press, 1994.
Fukuyama, Francis, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, New York, 2002.
Goetsch, James Robert, Vico's axioms : the geometry of the human world, New Haven, 1995.
Habermas, Juergen, The Future of Human Nature, Polity, 2003.
R. Marchesini, Post-Human. Verso nuovi modelli di esistenza, Torino: Bollati-Boringhieri, 2002.

PART TWO: OTHER HUMANISMS IN RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

*Lecture: Friday, April 16, 2010, in conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Joanna Drucker Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Information Studies at UCLA “Books Art Now” 5 p.m., Gerlinger Lounge
Suggested reading: Joanna Drucker, "Through Light and the Alphabet:' An Interview with Johanna Drucker http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.597/kirschenbaum.597

Seminar # 5 April 19

The Human Colloquy: The Humanity of Laughter

a) The other Leon Battista Alberti and Ariosto’s irony
b) Erasmus: "In Praise of Folly"
c) Francois Rabelais, Prologues to "Gargantua" and to "Pantagruel"

Primary readings:

-Leon Battista Alberti, "Fate and Fortune," "The Dream" and "The Deceased" in Dinner Pieces. Binghamton, N.Y. : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies in conjuction with the Renaissance Society of America (1987) pp. 23-27; 66-69 and 99-124.
-Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, XXIII, 101-136 (Orlando’s madness); XXXIV, 41-92 (Astolfo visits the moon) and XXXV, 1-30.
-Erasmus: "In Praise of Folly" http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1509erasmus-folly.html
-Francois Rabelais, Prologues to "Gargantua" and to "Pantagruel" in Gargantua and Pantagruel, New York, Penguin, 1955.

Secondary readings:

David Quint, "Astolfo Voyage to the Moon," in Yale Italian Studies I, 1977, 398-408.
James Chiampi, "Between Voice and Writing: Ariosto's Irony According to St. John," in Italica 60, 1983, 340-350.

Suggested readings:

-Albert Ascoli, Ariosto's Bitter Harmony. Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1987.
-Michel Foucault, “The Prose of the World”. Collected in The Order of Things. New York. Vintage, 1970.

*Lecture by Cary Wolfe, Thursday, April 22, Knight Browsing Room 4 p.m.

Seminar # 6 April 26

The poetics of the Humanist World (Prof. Leah Middlebrook)

Primary readings:

Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quijote, vol. 1, chapters11-14 (the history of Marcela and Grisostomo).
Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel (complete), Gargantua (chapters 52-58); "Fourth Book" (chapters 55-56).

Secondary readings:

-Terrence Cave. The Cornucopian Text. New York and London. Oxford U. P. 1985 (78-124)

Suggested readings:

Anthony J. Cascardi. “Secularization and literary self-assertion in Don Quijote.” Collected in
Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age. University Park. Penn State University Press. 1997.

Seminar # 7 May 3

Humanism in the wake of the Conquest

Primary readings:

-Francisco De Vitoria (c. 1480 or 1483 –1546), De Indis De Jure Belli (1532).
http:// en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Indis_De_Jure_Belli
-Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
http:// www.gutenberg.org/etext/20321-Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Tratado sobre las justas causas de la guerra contra los indios (1550)
-Mignolo, Walter, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: literacy, territoriality, and colonization. Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press. (1997) (Chapt. III)

Secondary readings:

-Edward Said. Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York. Columbia Themes in Philosophy.
2004 (selections)
-Claudia Álvarez "Slavery and the New World: What is Human?"; "On White
Mythologies: The Antihumanist Argument" in Humanism after Colonialism. Oxford-Bern-Bruxelles-Frankfurt am Main-New York-Wien: Peter Lang (2006).
-Roger Ruston, "Salamanca: Francisco de Vitoria," "Freedom and the Gospel," "Defender of the Indians", in Human Rights and the Image of God. London: SCM Press. (2004) pp.65-98; 119-156.

Suggested readings:

Michel de Montaigne, “On Cannibals,” “On Coaches,” "On Books."
Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper. The Hague : Mouton (1975), 63-106.

PART THREE: HUMANISMS AND POSTHUMANISMS

Seminar # 8 May 10

On becoming Human: Vico's Humanism and the Posthuman

Primary readings:
The new science of Giambattista Vico. Translated from the 3d ed. (1744) by Thomas Goddard Bergin
and Max Harold Fisch. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press (1948) (Selections):

Explanation of the picture placed as frontispiece to serve as introduction to the work: § 1-30.

Book I Section II, Elements, § 119-329; Section III § 330-337; Section IV § 338-360.
Book II, Poetic Wisdom § 361-411.
Book III, Discovery of the True Homer, § 780-914.

Secondary readings:

Sandra Luft, Vico's Uncanny Humanism: Reading the "New Science" between Modern and Postmodern. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Ernesto Grassi, Heidegger and the question of Renaissance humanism. Binghamton, N.Y. : Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1983, pp.9-30; 49-76.

Suggested readings:

-Giuseppe Mazzotta, “Universal History: Vico's New Science between Antiquarians and Ethnographers” in Massimo Lollini And David Castillo (Eds). Reason and Its Others. Italy, Spain, and the New World. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.
-Giuseppe Mazzotta, The new map of the world: the poetic philosophy of Giambattista Vico. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1999.

Seminar # 9 May 17

Humanism and Late Modernity

a) Sartre and Heidegger
b) Humanism as an Ethics: Levinas

Primary readings:

-Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, New Haven-London: Yale UP, 2007, pp. 17-54

- Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," in Id. Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (Ed.). San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993, pp.213-265 .

-Emmanuel Levinas, Humanism of the Other. Urbana and Chicago: Illinois UP, 2006, pp.1-69.

-Emmanuel Levinas, “The Rights of the Other Man,” in Id. Alterity and Transcendence. New York: Columbia UP, 1999, pp. 145-149.

Seminar # 10 May 24

Humanism, the Body and the Posthuman Age

Primary readings:

Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181

N. Katherine Hayles. "The semiotics of virtuality: mapping the Posthuman;" "Conclusion: what
does it mean to be Posthuman," in How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics (1999) pp.247-291.

Secondary readings:

Susan McHugh. “Literary Animal Agents.” PMLA 124.2 2009. 487-495.

Ursula K. Heise. “The Android and the Animal.” PMLA 124.2. 2009. 503 - 510.

Requirements

1) Participation in class and in working groups. This include writing in the Wiki associated to
the course one page weekly report on the meetings of the groups outside the classroom (50%)

Humanism, the culture of the book and the Posthuman age presents a challenging set of readings and discussions on a crucial topic for our time. In order to facilitate your progress in the course, we have established working groups from the start with the expectation that you will address the work of the course collaboratively, both in class and in written interventions in a Wiki. Each group will discuss outside of the class the weekly readings and lectures and post in the group page their comments and reflections. Each posting should include clear reference to which students participated in the formulation of a specific idea or "take". For students taking this course for 2 credits, the Wiki will serve as the primary basis for your grade in the course. Students taking this course for 3 or 4 credits will be expected to lead the working group to which they are assigned, and also to write a final paper.

2) One paper (12-15 pages (40%). A paper proposal (one page) is due on week #7 (10%).

*Students taking the class for 2 credits need to do the readings and participate to the working groups activities.

GRADING POLICY FOR THE ESSAY AND THE WIKI'S ENTRIES

Scores

Criteria for each category

-The thesis is clear and developed logically and coherently, using vivid and concrete detail and appropriate evidence to back up the argument (20%);

-This essay makes a fluid, reasoned, well-supported argument (10%);

-It includes pertinent quotations from multiple sources (10%)

-Each paragraph is coherent and begins with a topic sentence that presents a point of your argument and relates to your thesis (10%);

-It is well-organized: it includes an introduction, a body and a conclusion, and features smooth transitions (10%)

-Evidences varied sentence structure, fresh diction, strong voice, appropriate tone, and something memorable and original (5);

-This writing interests its audience in what you have to say. It invites reading (10%);

-There are only insignificant grammatical and mechanical errors, if any (5%)

CONTACT

maxiloll@uoregon.edu and/or middlebr@uoregon.edu

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