IP305 Posthumous Geographies II: Paradises

Module Overview

How have conceptions of earthly paradises served to legitimize colonial violence, to develop gendered geographies, and to promote music festivals and all-inclusive resorts? In what way do our conceptions of contemplative paradises within influence futuristic conceptions of cloud consciousness?

This transdisciplinary module explores these and other problems. The module employs a combination of approaches from cultural criticism, intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, marketing, religious studies, and spatial poetics to explore problems such as how specific constructions of paradise spaces may critique the social, cultural, religious, and political values of a particular society; how ideas of profane and sacred spaces shape popular perceptions of ethical behaviour.

N.B. This module is complemented by IP304 Posthumous Geographies I: Underworlds which explores similar problems but focuses instead on paradise spaces. You may take either module individually or both in succession.

Module aims:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

identify the central narratives of paradisal journeys in Western culture and their reception from the classical world to present day.
critically analyse the dynamic between how such narratives have been inherited, reconfigured, and reshaped according to changing cultural concerns and how they, in turn, influence and often justify such cultural values.
critically apply a range of theoretical perspectives to the paradises we will examine.
engage in critical reflection on how narratives of paradises are articulated and marketed today as part of the experience economy.
apply advanced cognitive skills to build transdisciplinary knowledge that fosters transformative dialogue between the humanities, the social sciences, tourism studies, and other areas.
implement meta-cognitive skills in approaching complex contemporary problems.

This is a Year 2 and Year 3 Liberal Arts optional core module.

Available to Year 2 and Year 3 students in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, and Year 2 and Year 3 external students.

Module Leader: Dr Bryan Brazeau

15 CATS

Term 2 | 10 weeks

2 hour workshop per week

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-Faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages

Example topics:

Please note that these topics are purely indicative, and that actual module content may differ.

Legends of the Fall
“I Want it All:” Ambition and Hubris
"Run to the Water”: Healing and Weeping in Eden
Sex, Orientalism, and Paradise as Prison
Paradisal Geography and Colonial Violence
Mysticism and the Fetish of Contemplation
Transhumanism and Uploaded Consciousness: Paradise in the Cloud
Innings: Baseball, National Identity, and Returning Home
Paradise and Capitalism: Retail, Travel, and Music Festivals

Assessments:

There are four assessments on this module:

Assessment	Weighting	Description
Creative Group Presentation	25%	collaborative design and presentation of your own paradise
Paradise Challenges	15%	pop quizzes on module discussions and readings
Final Research Paper	50%	academic essay exploring a problem related to the concept or theme of paradise
Participation and Preparation	10%	contributions in class and engagement with readings and preparation tasks

Illustrative reading list:

Aristotle. 2004. The Nicomachean Ethics. London: Penguin
Bachelard, Gaston. 1958. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bartlett Giamatti, A. 1990. The Earthly Pradise and the Renaissance Epic. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Bartlett Giamatti, A. 2011. Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games. New York: Bloomsbury.
Brazeau, B. 2023. "Take me Down to the Paradise City: An Ecocritical Approach to Paradise Spaces in Italian Renaissance Epic." Satus Queastionis 24: 21-45.
Butterworth, Michael L. 2010. Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity During the War on Terror. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Charlesworth, James H., ed. 1985. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic.
Columbus, Christopher. 1992. The Four Voyages. Translated by John Cohen. London: Penguin.
Dante, Alighieri. 2002. Paradiso. Translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. New York: Random House.
Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. 1973. The Conquest of New Spain. Translated by John Cohen. London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel. 1967 / 1984. "Of Other Spaces". Translated by Jay Miskoweic. Diacritics 16.1: 22-27.
Malcom, Domininc. 2012. Globalizing Cricket: Englishness, Empire and Identity. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jamison, Leslie. 2018. The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Milton, John. 2020. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Gordon Teskey. New York: W. W. Norton and Comapny.
Laine, Tarja. 2017. Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsy. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Lester, Jo-Anne and Caroline Scarles, eds. 2013. Mediating the Tourist Experience: From Brochures to Virtual Encounters. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
O'Neill, Kevin. 2016. Internet Afterlife: Virtual Salvation in the 21st Century. London: Praeger.
Petrarch, F. 1976. Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics. Translated and edited by Robert M. Darling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pseudo Dionysius. 1987. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Salazar, Noel B. 2012. Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing Imaginaries in Tourism and Beyond. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Scafi, Alessandro. 2006. Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Tasso, Torquato. 2009. The Liberation of Jerusalem. Translated by Max Wickert. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thorn, John. 2012. Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Wright, Louis B. 2011. The Colonial Search for a Southern Eden. Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama Press.