pynchon in the ivies

[Matthew Cissell]

TP's presence in the university is an interesting area of research. I wonder how long they have been offering theses courses? I would also like to find out what other universities or colleges in the U.S offer courses focused on or including Pynchon. It would be interesting to know if inclusion of TP's work in syllabi has increased over the years. Another P-lister (Martin Eve) once posted a graph, which I can't find right now, that showed the number of dissertations (in the UK) involving TP as increasing, if I recall correctly.

ciao
mc otis



________________________________
From: Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
To: Don Antenen <dantenen at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: pynchon in the ivies

This prompted me to search the Harvard course catalog,
https://coursecatalog.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do, which turns up three
(four, but two appear identical) courses whose descriptions include
Pynchon.  I see only one Yale course this fall:

CPLT 651 01 (10563) /LITR431/GMST315/HUMS368/GMAN647/PHIL606
Systems and Their Theory
Henry Sussman
M 3.30-5.20 WLH 203
Fall 2012

This course spans the developments between two of the most original
and still-telling early system-makers, Kant and Hegel, and some
important twentieth-century fiction writers, among them Kafka, Proust,
Borges, Calvino, and Pynchon, whose works built and played upon the
architecture of systems. We read a number of scholars and scientists
who have thought about the systematic dimensions of culture and life:
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind; Fritjof Capra, The Web
of Life; Anthony Wilden, System and Structure; and James Gleick,
Chaos. Seminars are divided between elucidations of systematic
pictures of the world and specific instances from criticism,
literature, and other art forms. We work to discern the follow-through
between conceptual systems and the systematic dimensions of our
everyday lives, whether legal, institutional, or familial.

Sounds like fun....
On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Don Antenen <dantenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> There was a discussion a few weeks ago about Pynchon not being taught at the Ivies anymore. This is the Penn class I mentioned: http://www.english.upenn.edu/Courses/Undergraduate/2012/Fall/ENGL364.301
>
> Sounds fun (the kids I know taking it think so too), but GR ought to deserve a class all its own.
>
> all the best,
> Don