Hysterical Documents: Fiction, History, and the Art Object

In 1827, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe mused: “But what else is a novel but an unheard-of event?” Goethe’s provocative staging of the unknown through narrative interlaces the plausible and the historical in a manner equally appropriate to much historical writing and broad swaths of the visual arts. In this course we will consider the different roles interpretation and imagination—fact, fiction, and the porous space between—play in our engagement with works of art.

We will read recent fiction, history, poetry and criticism as well as writing that purposefully sidesteps these categories not only to engage the limits of the archive and its objects but also to explore the critical and aesthetic possibilities of writing beyond the binary of fiction and nonfiction. Seminar; no prerequisites, though some exposure to art history would be useful.