Spring 2003 Course Offerings: 1A-1B
R1A:1, #17203, Lisowski, MWF 10, 225 WHEELER
“Narrative and Memory”
What structures each of the three pairs of texts below is a set of relationships between narrative, the telling of the story of the past, and memory, the present and future task of recollection. Students' work toward improving their expository writing skills in this course will be shaped by these three pairs of texts. Moving through an ordered sequence of paper assignments, students will learn both how to write effective, persuasive college-level papers, and how to use both drafting and revision as part of the process of constructing and improving an essay. As the course moves from the first pair, in which the relationship between narrative and specific violent memories is relatively clear, to the second and third pairs, in which the relationship between narrative and memory grows more complex, so too will the arguments and papers which make up a student's body of work be expected also to develop and become increasingly complex.
I: Narratives of Violence
-Toni Morrison, Beloved
-Aeschylus, Agamemnon
II: Narratives of Discovery, Narrative and Discovery
-Sophocles, Oedipous the King
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
III: Narrative and Memory
-Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems
-Shakespeare, Macbeth
Required texts
- Toni Morrison. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books. 1988.
- Aeschylus. The Oresteia. M. Ewans, tr. New York: Everyman Press, 1996.
- Sophocles. Four Dramas of Maturity. M. Ewans, ed. New York: Everyman Press, 1999.
- C. Brontë. Jane Eyre. R. Nemesvari, ed. Broadview Books, 1999.
- S. Heaney. Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.
- Shakespeare. Macbeth. N. Brooke, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Recommended text
- Strunk and White. The Elements of Style. New York: Pearson, 1959.
R1A:2, #17206, Herbold, MWF 11, 224 WHEELER
"The Erotic and the Exotic"
We will explore the link between eroticism and adventure, both imaginary and real, in texts ranging from a Greek tragedy of the fourth century B.C. to a novels, essays, and poems written by African-American women in the twentieth century. How and why have sexual and geographical adventures been linked by such diverse writers? How, for example, do these texts raise questions of discovery, excess, loss of control, violation of rules or boundaries, and the forbidden? In particular, how and why do female desirers raise these issues?
Students will write and revise three essays and do several shorter writing assignments in addition to the assigned reading. There will be frequent quizzes, but no midterm or final.
Course Readings
- Euripides, Medea
- Shakespeare, Othello
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Xeroxed selection of lyric poetry by P. B. Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Baudelaire, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Ntozake Shange, and others
R1A:3, #17209, Treat, TT 8-930, 125 DWINELLE
“Love, Love, Love”
This course is about love's many dimensions, and especially about same-sex desire. We start by examining the Greek concept of love through Plato’s Symposium, then we will discuss Shakespeare’s Sonnets, addressed to two lovers: one young, male, and fair, the other an older, dark female. As we move into more modern texts, we will give special attention to the “transgressive” nature of love and ask, what happens when love is a “forbidden love˜ because of race, gender, class, age, or family relation? What are the attractions and perils of taking an older lover? A lover of another race? A lover of the same sex? A family member? What special kind of magnetism is generated by „”love triangles?” Why is hatred so often a part of love? And why is death often presented as the inevitable outcome of love? These questions and more will be explored in this course.
Required texts
- Plato, The Symposium
- Shakespeare, The Sonnets
- James Baldwin, Another Country
- Elsa Morante, Arturo’s Island
- Film: Deepa Mehta’s Fire
- A reader will include short stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Jewelle Gomez and critical essays by Freud, Eve Sedgewick, and more.
R1A:4, #17212, Anderson & Bermudez, TT 930-11, 9 EVANS
FOOL AND THE SAGE”
THEME:
The figure of the "holy fool"-a man or woman considered stupid who is actually very wise-is an ancient one and one that is still with us as movies such as "Being There" and "Forrest Gump" attest. Why is this figure such a compelling one? Why does the figure seem to hold such universal appeal, appearing in places as radically different as ancient China and the modern U.S.? In this course, we will look at the "literature of the fool" and examine why this "wise fool" is so compelling and universal a figure. We will also consider how the wise fool is sometimes divided into two different characters-the sage and the idiot-and what this division means. Finally, we will look at the religious implications of the wise fool and ask why s/he is so often associated with the sacred.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS:
This course will focus principally on the improvement of reading and writing skills. We will give particular emphasis to doing close readings of texts and, of course, to writing critical essays. Students will also give oral presentations towards the end of the semester. While you are not required to have taken any reading and compositions classes at the university level prior to this one, you must be willing to put considerable time and energy into the class since you will write 35 pages of formal literary analysis over the course of the semester as well as several pages of informal writing.
Note: We will be using a course website for the class so any prospective students should be aware that you will be required to have regular access to a computer and to the internet.
Required Texts: The following are required textbooks for the course and may be purchased at the A.S.U.C. Bookstore, Ned's, or Campus Textbook Exchange***
[Note: It is possible that some of the following may be included in the class reader and/or cut from the final list of readings.]
- Apology-Plato
- Pseudolus-Plautus
- King Lear-Shakespeare
- Monkey-trans. by Burton Watson
- Chuang Tzu-trans. by Burton Watson
- The Idiot-F. Dostoyevsky
- Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy
- Random House Handbook, 6th ed.-Frederick C. Crews
Selections from Chinese, Latin, and English lyric poetry; assembled folk tales from Medieval Europe, the Middle East, India, and China.
Possible Films: "Being There"
"Rain Man"
"Harvey"
Songs: "The Fool on the Hill"
Selected essays on the "wise fool"
***Important: It is necessary to get these exact editions so that we are all working with the same pagination.
R1A:5, #17215, Walter & Dillon, TT 11-1230, 174 BARROWS
“Dreamworlds”
"In my twentieth year, at the time when Love claims his tribute from young men, I lay down one night, as usual, and fell fast asleep. As I slept, I had a most beautiful and pleasing dream, but there was nothing in the dream that has not come true, exactly as the dream told it…" Our class will begin with these lines from Lorris' Romance of the Rose, and from there on, we will try to make sense--and nonsense--of the world of dreams. We'll look at how the buried life of the subconscious encroaches on "normal" life and--in many cases--completely transforms it.
Required texts
- St. Teresa of Avila, Life of St. Teresa of Avila by Herself
- Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream
- Freud, Dora
- Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks
- Barnes, Nightwood
- Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Films
- The Wizard of Oz (Baum)
- Ma Vie en Rose (Belgio)
- Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Visual Art: Works of Aboriginal art, works from the tradition of European surrealism
Additional Readings: A Reader will include selections from Ovid, Macrobius, Lorris, Dante, Morrone, Keats, Coleridge, Borges and Cortazar.
R1B:1, #17221, Lin, MWF 9, 123 DWINELLE
“Literature of Fantasy, Fantasy of Literature”
What is fantasy? In this class it's more than a category found in bookstores where stories about voyages, adventures in a never-never land await you (though I wouldn’t mind if you want to bring Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter into our classroom discussions). We will examine the role imagination plays in the construction, distortion, perversion, etc., of the literary texts. As you will see, fantasy could be a genre, a mode of expression, a moment of departure (or return), an ambience, or a material object (or fetish), and the readings range from fairy tales, adventure novel, ghost/supernatural stories, mysteries, science fiction, realist novel, epic, lyrical poetry, martial art movies, "anything you could fantasize about.” Fantasy, hardly ideologically innocent, could have more dimensions than we imagine it to be. With the help of critical texts and theories, we will examine fantasy in its various forms (colonial, oriental, feminist, sexual, traumatic, whimsical, visionary and/or optical, satirical, etc.), and write argumentative essays about the texts.
Requirements: Attendance, active participation in class, one oral presentation, two shorter papers (5-7pp) and one research paper (10-12pp).
Reading List
- Nibelungenlied
- Hoffmann, The Golden Pot & Other Tales
- Zola, Ladies’ Paradise
- Haggard, She
- and more.
- Course reader: Available at the beginning of the semester.
R1B:2, #17224, Popkin, MWF 10, 205 DWINELLE
Reporting from Ground Zero:
Passing On Trauma in Literature, Film and the Media
This course will examine why it is so difficult to pass on stories of trauma. To what extent are stories of trauma passed on (narrated), and to what extent are they passed on (overlooked)? What makes it possible for them to be narrated, and what limits this possibility? We will consider the role of language, the psyche, shame and pleasure in answering these questions.
Secondly, we will examine how the passing on of trauma shapes the identities of survivors, bystanders, and more broadly, ethnicity, race and gender. We will play close attention to the ways in which identity can both be torn asunder in the wake of trauma, and, also, paradoxically, how it can be constructed through the ‘wakefulness’ of trauma.
These questions will be pursued through a broad range of literature, film and the news media. We will consider how these questions are addressed from the positions of survivors, bystanders and perpetrators - and the instability between these boundaries which often occurs.
Required Texts:
- The Bible
- Song of Roland
- Elie Wiesel, The Accident, Night
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- Leo Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata
- Slavenka Drakulic, S. A Novel About the Balkans
- Marquis de Sade, Philosophy of the Bedroom
- Films including Life is Beautiful and Wag the Dog
- A course reader to include newspaper articles and psychoanalytic and philosophical essays on the course topic
R1B:3, #17227, Springer, MWF 10, 80 HAAS PAV.
“War is Hell”
Like the daily newspaper, our reading list dwells on some of our species’ less benign tendencies. The reading list is not, however, a horror-fest: no American Blood or Spark of Life here. But we will take a long hard look at institutional destruction and its transformation into art and legend. Dr. Strangelove will be the comic relief in this class.
We will write a 4-5 page paper on each major work, and students should be committed to regular attendance and discussion. There will also be several shorter P/NP writing assignments.
Required texts
- Aeneid (Mandelbaum translation)
- Macbeth, Shakespeare
- The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
- The Debacle, Emile Zola
- The Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien
- Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
- Selections from James Jones' novels Thin Red Line & Whistlestop
Movies
- Dr. Strangelove
- Bridge over the River Kwai
- Throne of Blood
- This is Not Living
R1B:4, #17230, Green, MWF 10, 123 DWINELLE
“Journey and Quest”
As we travel through textual worlds, we shall explore journey as a metaphor for human life and the unfolding of human experience. In its testing and molding of individuals and communities, how does journey invite (or require) transformation, whether physical, moral, psychological or spiritual? What is the relationship between journey and quest? Are they isolated ventures or interdependent enterprises? Finally, what is the importance of their “end”?
We shall address such questions through class discussions and group presentations. Additionally, in fulfillment of the R&C requirement, students will have the opportunity to hone their skills in argumentative and expository writing in the completion of two short essays (with revisions) and a final research paper.
Required texts (available at Ned’s and ASUC)
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, The Story of the Grail
- Dante, The Divine Comedy: The Inferno
- Shakespeare, Pericles
- Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
- Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Lunsford and Connors, The New St. Martin’s Handbook
Course Reader
- Selections from the Bible: Exodus and Jonah
- Selection of poetry: Coleridge, Shelley, Baudelaire, Amichai, and Oliver
- Selection of critical articles on Homer, Dante, Carroll, and Woolf
Films
- O Brother, Where Art Thou
- Aguirre, The Wrath of God
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
R1B:5, #17233, Copenhafer & Manalo, MWF 11, 242 DWINELLE
“Love Stories”
Taking our cue from Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, we will ask after the nature of "love" in a variety of literary and philosophical texts as well as in several films. How is love to be differentiated from desire or from sexuality? Is love primarily a feeling or a way of acting/doing? How does writing structure love and how does love structure writing? These are some of the questions that will motivate our investigations over the course of the semester.
Students will be expected to attend faithfully and to produce approximately 25 pages of thoughtful prose. A reader will contain a selection of poetry as well as texts by Abelard, Virgil, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Freud.
Required texts
- Barthes, A Lover's Discourse
- Kierkegaard, Seducer's Diary
- Plato, The Symposium
- Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Barnes, Nightwood
Films
- Godard, A Bout de souffle (Breathless)
- Julian, Looking for Langston
- Marker, La Jetée
R1B:6, #17236, Lillis, MWF 11, 123 DWINELLE
“Reflections on Confrontation and War”
History, it has been said, is a series of battlefields and defeats. What do the writers and film-makers think? How does the contemplative mind react to such a violent trajectory? The spirit of confrontation has yielded epic, romance, testimony, comedy, journalism, propaganda ... In writings on war we cannot ignore the author’s point of view, be it cultural, political or religious. This class will be concerned with reflections on violent confrontation found in the vast artistic and literary production that war has yielded since the earliest epics. In our readings, we will explore and analyze the text’s viewpoint, the author’s cultural context, and the medium (epic, theater, poetry, novel, film).
We will learn to place texts in dialogue with one another and to see relations between these representations in different media such as text, film and canvas.
One of our goals is to improve writing skills. Students will write a number of short essays (3-5 pages) over the course of the semester.
Required texts
- Homer, The Odyssey
- The Song of Roland
- Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
- Voltaire, Candide
- Joyce, Ulysses (selected chapters “Nestor” and “Cyclops”)
- Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
- Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
- Clark, Art and Propaganda in the 20th Century
Course Reader: selected texts by Arthur Rimbaud, Wilfred Owen, W.B. Yeats, Paul Fussell, Jay Winters, Joanna Bourke, Sigmund Freud.
Films
- Chaplin, Soldier Arms (1918)
- Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)
- Loach, Land and Freedom (1995)
R1B:7, #17239, Alaniz, TT 8-930, 123 DWINELLE
"Back" to "Nature"
What is nature? What do we mean by "going back" to it? "Going back" implies
a previous separation, a return to some former state. But has man ever truly
"left" nature? This course will consider the meaning of nature in different
cultures and traditions, from antiquity to the present day, and examine
various discourses that purport to present a "return" to nature. Among the
topics we will discuss: nature myths, the epic, anthropomorphism,
anthropocentrism, lycanthropy, environmentalist ethics of various sorts,
colonialism, masculinity, death & dying, disability, the body.
As a 1B Reading & Composition course, we will focus throughout the semester on
the principles of sound argumentative writing, honed through writing/revising
assignments, crafted in grammatically-correct, rhetorically persuasive
language.
Reading List
- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Albert Camus, The Plague
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest
- Gilgamesh
- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies
- Arturo Longoria, Keepers of the Wilderness
- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man & the Sea
- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
- Katherine Dunne, Geek Love
Viewing List
- Deliverance
- Mother & Son
- Starship Troopers
- Derzu Uzala
- The Edge
- Freaks
- Nanook of the North
A substantial class reader will contain selections of poetry, the essay, literary criticism, short story, journalism, memoir and other genres.
R1B:8, #17242, Hausdoerffer, TT 930-11, 151 BARROWS
The Odyssey and its Offspring
Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, is recognized as one of the key sources of the western narrative tradition-it is a veritable fountain of narrative modes and motifs. In this course, we will begin with a careful reading of The Odyssey, paying special attention to such issues as: the quest for identity, the uses and abuses of disguise, storytelling as a survival tactic, the search for the father, the meaning of home and of homelessness, and the dynamics of gender. Having opened up these issues as they are manifested in The Odyssey, we will then consider how they are taken up again and again by some of its many direct and indirect descendants, from the strange travel fantasies of the 17th century English author Margaret Cavendish, to the profound psychological and metaphysical odysseys of 20th century authors such as Juan Rulfo of Mexico and Alberto Moravia of Italy.
Since this is technically the second part (1B) of the two-part composition course, the focus will be on developing and improving the skills required for writing longer critical papers that are comparative/contrastive in nature. The coursework is broken into three types: short writing responses to interpretive issues arising from the texts (6 one page rough responses); one medium-length paper (5 pages); and three longer papers (7-8 pages). The short responses are intended to help you develop your ideas in anticipation of the longer papers you will be writing on each text. The medium-length paper, on Homer’s Odyssey, will be assigned in the first part of the semester so that we quickly get a sense of each student’s strengths and weaknesses and can adjust our teaching accordingly. The three longer papers will involve considering the direct and indirect relation of modern works to The Odyssey.
Required Texts
- Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland or, the Transformation. (Modern Library edition)
- Carter, Angela. The Passion of New Eve. (Virago Press edition)
- Cavendish, Margaret. Assaulted & Pursued Chastity. (Penguin Books edition)
- Homer. The Odyssey. (Penguin edition, Fagles translation)
- Moravia, Alberto. Contempt. (New York Review Books edition)
- Rulfo, Juan. Pedro Paramo. (Grove Press edition)
R1B:9, #17245, Hornby, TT 930-11, 6 EVANS
“Optical Illusions: vision and perspective in literature and film”
This reading and composition course will consider how literature and film conceive of and condition the sense of sight. Some of the questions that we will pursue are: How does literature express an optical position (indeed, a point of view) through narrative technique? What are the stakes of ekphrasis (the verbal representation of visual representation) and how is the visual conscripted? What models of spectatorship and perspective can literature offer? How do the technologies of sight-glasses, scopic instruments, the camera--affect verbal and visual art? What happens when sight is overdetermined, and we see too much (or nothing at all)?
Required texts
- Homer, The Iliad
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon
- E.T.A. Hoffmann, "My Cousin's Corner Window"
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- José Saramago, Blindness
- Italo Calvino, "Adventures of a Photographer"
- Raymond Carver, "Viewfinder"
- Tim Gautreaux, "Misuse of Light"
- Cynthia Ozick, "Shots"
- John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Films
R1B:10, #17248, Ben-Yishai, TT 930-11, 80 HAAS PAV.
“Telling the Truth”
How do we know that a storyteller is telling the truth?
Many writers of fiction, poetry and non-fiction use different ways to convince us that they are telling the truth. Some do so by insisting that they are, others by hinting that they are not. In this course we will look at the different narrative and poetic strategies for truth telling. The texts we will read vary not only in their genres and approaches to the truth but also in their languages of origin and in the historical periods in which they were written. They raise questions of objectivity and subjectivity, referential and fictional understandings of truth; and ultimately will help us question and defamiliarize the very concept of truth itself.
Good reading, hopefully, will lead to good writing, but so as not to leave that to chance we will stress close readings as a method of textual analysis, and revision and peer editing as part of an intensive focus on writing skills. Course requirements include regular participation in class discussion, weekly on-line bulletin board entries, 5 papers (two of which will be substantial revisions), and a final portfolio (papers, revisions and a short retrospective essay).
Required texts
- Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
- Salman Rushdie, Shame
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (selections)
- Gunther Grass, Cat and Mouse
- Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Course Reader including:
- Selected poetry by Keats, Celan, Blake, Dickinson
- Ambrose Bierce, “Oil of Dog”
- Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths”
- Selected essays by the following: Erich Auerbach, Dorrit Cohn, Sisela Bok, Horkheimer & Adorno, Patricia J. Williams
R1B:11, #17251, Fisher & Tran, TT 11-1230, 220 WHEELER
"Tales of Travel"
Epic journeys, Arthurian quests, colonial missions, voyages of self-discovery: these familiar tales are all tales of travel. What is it about traveling that fascinates writers, and what is it about writing that fascinates travelers? Does the unknown entice or frighten? Hold the promise of utopia or suggest a threat to existing social order? Does travel foster understanding or beget colonialism and cultural hegemony? Do we travel to learn about others or about ourselves? This course will examine various literary representations of travel, with attention to its utopian, allegorical, psychological, and colonial aspects.
Required Texts
- Virgil, The Aeneid
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
- Forster, A Passage to India
- Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller
- Course reader, including Nhat Linh’s "Going to France" and short pieces from Granta
R1B:12, #17254, Levy & Dimova, TT 11-1230, 242 DWINELLE
“Exile, Displacement, and the Literary Imagination”
It has been said that with the unprecedented upheavals of the 20th century, exile and displacement have become the norm, rather than the exception, of the human condition. But at the same time, exile occupies an ages-old place in the literary consciousness, as reflected in works as ancient as the Hebrew Bible and classical Chinese poetry. This course will take a cross-cultural and cross-temporal approach to the question of exile, following its depiction across centuries and continents in novels, stories, poems, and essays from both East and West. In these works, we will encounter archetypal stories of mythological figures, as well as
stories deeply enmeshed with history: writings engendered by war and violence, and narrated in the voices of refugees, immigrants, the colonizers, and the colonized. We will consider narratives of homecoming alongside narratives of no return, looking closely at the concepts of
home, identity, language, and memory. Finally, in seeking to uncover what these texts share and how they differ, we will come to see how their authors have imagined, responded to, and perhaps transcended the experience of exile.
Required texts
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation
- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Slave
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Tayyib Salih, Season of Migration to the North
- Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine
Recommended: MLA Style Guide
There will also be a course reader containing readings from the Hebrew Bible and classical Chinese poetry, in addition to poems, essays, short stories, and criticism by writers including Celan, Brecht, Brodsky, Seghers, Darwish, and Rushdie. Some of this reading will be optional. All course readings are in English translation.
R1B:13, #17257, Zumhagen, TT 11-1230, 89 DWINELLE
"Epigonous Epiphanies"
Literally a showing forth or revelation, in Greek drama 'epiphany' can refer to the climactic moment when a god appears and imposes order on a scene before him. In the Christian religious tradition, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the revelation of Christ's divinity to the Magi. James Joyce famously used the term in a peculiar but related way in the aesthetic theory put forth by his character Stephen Dedalus in a draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen relates his articulation of epiphany to claritas, the last of Thomas Aquinas' three prerequisites for beauty, something which allows a reader or viewer to recognize the quidditas, the soul, essence or radiant 'whatness' that at a given moment can shine forth from an otherwise drably ordinary object. Joyce writes "By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments."
This course will be dedicated to exploring a variety of epiphanies presented in literature, philosophy and film. Although the course focuses primarily on the epigonous (or second-generation) epiphanies to be found in the high modernist literature of the 20th century, it also strives to position these latter-day conceptions and treatments of the phenomenon in relation to its various precursors to be found not only in medieval religious and mystical writings but also in some of the leading works of philosophy, poetry and prose of the 19th century. Throughout the course of the semester, class discussions will likely be guided by broad questions concerning the way that epiphany can be said to work as an aesthetic technique with an ethical or affective aim, how it can be put to work to make a work of art into an attractive and even saleable commodity, the relationship between the 'epiphanic moment' and the "Happy (or not so happy) Ending" or "moral", and the way that modernist epiphany can be said to relate to the modern detective story, among others.
Course readings will be chosen from among the following:
- Homer, The Odyssey
- William Blake, "A Vision of the Last Supper" and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
- William Wordsworth, Prelude (1799)
- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (selections)
- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and "The Dead" (from Dubliners)
- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and selected parables
- Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The South"
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Ohio Impromptu
- Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (selections)
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (selections)
- Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
- Sam Mendez, American Beauty
- Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, Rushmore
H1B, #17218, Moore, TT 930-11, 225 WHEELER
"Fictions of Memory”
In this course, we will interrogate the shifting boundary between fiction and fact as we explore the role of memory in a variety of narratives. In our investigations of the tangled relations between personal recollection and collective memory, language and writing, culture and history, memory and fiction, we will examine how memory structures narrative. We will look at
The various ways memory works in these texts: the past as something which sustains or threatens the present, how time erodes or ossifies memory, memory as inheritance or legacy. Throughout our discussions, we will consider how memory contributes to the construction of identity and the interrelated themes of race, class and gender.
Students will be required to read assigned works carefully, attend classes and participate actively in class discussions, and produce approximately 30 pages of thoughtful prose (in the form of 1 diagnostic paper and 2 formal papers of increasing length, each of which will be subject to extensive revisions). Additional requirements include several informal writing
assignments and one oral presentation. As an honors course, students will also have the opportunity to select and read a text that is not on the syllabus in its original language. Prerequisites: 1A or equivalent, reading ability in a second language.
Required texts
- Nathalie Sarraute, Childhood
- Marguerite Duras, The Lover
- Nicole Brossard, She would be the first sentence of my next novel
- Dacia Maraini, Woman at War
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genjii (abridged version)
In addition to these texts, a course reader with a selection of essays, short stories and poems will also be required.
Films
- Alain Resnais & Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour
- Christopher Nolan, Memento
- Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo
Recommended text
- Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
2B, #17260, Perciali, MW 10-12, 107 MULFORD and F 11-12, 107 MULFORD
“Outsiders”
A proficient reading and speaking knowledge of French is required for this course.
Outsiders are very powerful or very depressed; and often both. They can know and see more lucidly than insiders who are too close to a situation, and they can step back and pronounce judgments with a special authority. But, they can also be rejected and cast away, mistrustful of their own sanity and identity in their isolation, uncertain whether they even are bodily beings or just "floating eyeballs." The works we read will consider all of these possibilities. How can we determine the boundary that separates outsideness, and what calls it into question? What do different versions of outsideness tell us about the cultural and social models in which they exist? Finally, is there a difference between outsideness as presented in classical vs. experimental novels, in novels vs. poetry, or in literature vs. theater or film?
This class gives you the opportunity to exercise your analytic reading and writing skills in a bilingual context: we will be alternating class discussion between English and French, the French texts will be read in the original language, and some of the writing assignments will be in French. Inevitably, we will all feel like outsiders approaching some of these texts and operating in a non-native language. Sharing our experiences with the bilingual reading and writing process will enrich the content of the class itself, and deepen our approach to the use of "outsider language" in the literary texts at hand. One of our central aims will be to foreground the process of writing analytic papers, so you will be asked to actively reflect upon, share, and develop your composition strategies.
Course requirements include: active participation; informal oral presentations; short, informal writing assignments; and four papers (three of which are written in two drafts).
Required texts
- Montesquieu, Lettres persanes
- Beckett, Compagnie
- first section of Balzac, Père Goriot
- Girardin, La Canne de M. Balzac
- Virgil, The Aeneid
- Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Melville, Benito Cereno
- Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed
- Brecht, The Art of Theater
- Baudelaire, "Les Fenêtres," Adrienne Rich, "Take," and other poetry selections.
- Critical selections from Emerson, Henry James, and others.
- Film: Les Visiteurs
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