"We envisage this course as an exploration of the overlap between  Romanticism's critique of (Enlightenment) rationality (with special  attention to its efforts to undermine, set aside, or volatilize the  subject-object binary: e.g., Hegel, Marx, Marcuse, Wordsworth,  Coleridge, Keats, Shelley) AND, the uniquely pre/post/ or non-critical  thought-style and presuppositions of Buddhism. Although the body of  scholarly work that studies this conjuncture (e.g., work by Antonio Negri,  Niklas Luhmann, Eleanor Rosch, Francisco Varela) is powerful and  productive, the course will focus on primary texts and on practices of  knowing (as in, poetry, fiction). Course requirements will consist of  weekly short exercises  rather than the standard critical/research essay, and the overall purpose  of these assignments is to advance understanding of the models of  knowing/being (i.e. philosophical models) discussed in class, and  to cultivate the students' self-awareness with respect to their  own intellectual/social/psychic formation."

There's the official description for this course, which I taught with my friend Marjorie Levinson of the Michigan  English Department this past Winter semester.  Marjorie and I had been talking about teaching a course together for at least a couple of years.  Our first, abortive attempt resulted in my "love" course.  We finally got it together and planned last fall this course on Buddhism, specifically Zen, and Romanticism, specifically English and specifically poetry.  Last January we started the course out, with 45 Michigan undergraduate seated in rows slowly, mindfully eating oranges on the very first day.  Below you can take a look at the syllabus for the course.  For me it was an incredible exhilirating and inspiring learning experience.  Marjorie is an extraordinary teacher and I felt like a student again, just soaking in the reflections and meditations and close readings of this brilliant thinker of British Romanticism.  In addition to this, it was a wonderful experience to teach with someone else, to have the opportunity to play off each other publicly in the classroom, to feel myself working much better from "one side" (rather than from the center) of the classroom.

Here's the rest of the syllabus for that course:

**Floating Unit"**: Week VI

"Groundhog Day"

**Winter Break**: NO CLASSES on Tuesday, February 24 and Thursday, February 26

IV.Week X through XII

• Selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("Kubla Khan, "The Eolian Harp," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight," "Dejection - an Ode") [RA]
• Selections from William Wordsworth (from Lyrical Ballads: "Simon Lee, the Old Huntmsan", "We Are Seven," "Anecdote for Fathers," "Expostulation and Reply," "The Tables Turned," "Resolution and Independence," "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey"; and, from the 1807Poems: "Ode. Intimations of Immortality," "The SolitaryReaper," "I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud." [RA]
• Ernest Hemingway, "In Our Time" [CP]

V.Weeks XIII and XIV

• Stephen Batchelor, The Faith to Doubt
• Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild [CP] and "The Real Work Interview" [CP]
• Julio Cortazar, "To Be Read in the Interrogative" [CP]
• Basho, "Narrow Road to the Interior"

Romanticism and Buddhism