Silent Subjects

Who is speaking?
What matter who’s speaking?

“Silent Subjects,” a first-semester course in Reading & Composition, addresses both the subjects about which literature does not or cannot speak; and those subjects who themselves do not or cannot speak in the literary works on its syllabus. The class poses the implicit flipside to the famous pair of theory questions cited above, namely: Who isn’t speaking? and What matter who isn’t speaking? Further, it asks: About what aren’t they speaking? and Why? It gently mobilizes various methodologies—including feminism, deaf and disability studies, queer theory and critical race studies—to ground these interrogations.

Over the semester, students will grapple with instances in which absent speech is eminently significant, no matter the motivation for the silences they encounter—which range in the readings from the pathological to the political, the natural to the supernatural. The course will contemplate the formal implications of muteness for the verbal work of art (as stylistic device and aesthetic consequence). At the same time, it will pursue the social and structural implications of breaking speech and biting tongues. Students are encouraged to read between the lines relentlessly as they explore the poetics and politics of silence in our textual universes and beyond them.