CURRENT COURSES
AN3008MA FACTS AND INTERPRETATIONS: ACADEMIC INQUIRY IN THE
POST-TRUTH ERA
Tuesday 12:00-14:00
The course has been inspired by the contemporary philosophical and political concept of
“post-truth,” which has acquired widespread popularity in public discourses since 2016 in the
wake of the Brexit campaign and referendum, as well as Donald Trump’s taking office as US
President in the same year. The concept designates the putative absence or disappearance of
shared objective standards for truth, often used in conjunction with terms such as “relative
truths”, “alt-facts,” or “fake news.” The primary aim of the course is to reflect on the possible
consequences of post-truth thinking for the academic discipline of Cultural Studies, especially
literary/cultural theory and criticism. Besides gaining sufficient understanding of the
theoretical framework, the course is primarily designed as a hands-on, project-based seminar,
whose purpose is to provide guidance for students on how to maintain academic
responsibility, consistency, fact-checking, and source criticism in their own work within a
disciplinary environment which dispenses with the rigorous methodologies of the hard
sciences.
AN33006BA SCIENCE FICTION IN LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL CULTURE
Wednesday 10:00-12:00
The course focuses on literary works and filmic narratives in science fiction with a twofold
purpose: to give an overview of the historical evolution of the genre mainly (but not
exclusively) in American literature, and to familiarize students with basic
philosophical/theoretical concepts. The genre of science fiction is eminently appropriate for
discussing philosophical problems because they function thought experiments which are
anchored in our experience of the world as we know it, but work to push the limits of that
experience to such extremes that one can hardly leave one’s extant “knowledge of the world”
unquestioned. We will be discussing texts by authors such as Mary Shelley, Robert Heinlein,
Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, as well as cinematic classics such as 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1969) by Stanley Kubrick, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) by
Steven Spielberg, and Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott.
AN 23001BA AMERICAN LITERATURE 2
Monday 10:00-12:00; 12:00-14:00
This seminar course is designed to help students prepare for their end-of-term examination in
20th-century American literature. However, instead of the usual survey format, the course
material is organized on a thematic basis, aiming to explore representative literary texts in
terms of the tendency of modern art, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and even science
to question certainties and received knowledge about the world and radically rearrange our
patterns of thinking. Accordingly, each text on the agenda can be interpreted as putting in
doubt a certain set of received ideas about various aspects of human existence such as
identity, morality, love, sexuality, etc. Authors on the agenda include Willa Cather, William
Saroyan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, Bret Easton
Ellis, and others.
AN(L)23002BA/AN28006BA/ AN3302OMA I.LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED
STATES IN THE 20 th AND EARLY 21 st CENTURY
Wednesday 14:00-16:00
(jointly taught with Dr. Judit Szathmari)
This lecture course is designed to be a full survey of mid- and late 20th and early 21 st century
American literature. Significant developments as well as representative authors in fiction, poetry,
and drama will be introduced. The social, political, and intellectual background, characteristic
features of decades, the various literary trends, tendencies, labels, genre debates, as well as the
cultural debates and reconceptualizations relating to race, gender, and identity will be
highlighted.