EN 203-Tradition and Change in Literature:
The Voyage Out and Back
EN280-Topics in English: Introduction to African Literature/African Literature
in a Postcolonial Context
PS115/EN115/GS101-Concepts of Freedom from Ancient to Modern
Times
Block I: George Butte, EN 203, Tradition and Change in Literature: The Voyage Out and Back
Block II: Bonnie Nadzam, EN 203, Tradition and Change in Literature:
The Voyage Out and Back.
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 units).
This course will examine paradigms of voyage in two basic ways: the voyage
out (Odysseus into the world) and the voyage back to the interior (Frankenstein's
monster: understanding the self, the unconscious). The readings will introduce
several master plots and several theoretical frameworks, from voyaging to
the Other and the Orient (Said) to navigating the shadows inside the self
(Freud's uncanny).
The first block will begin with Homer's The Odyssey, and include at least
one ancient Greek play, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one Shakespeare play,
among other texts, and conclude with Shelley's Frankenstein, as a culminating
example of both kinds of voyage.
In the second block we will investigate literary journeys with constructions of racial or cultural identity as a principal question or factor. This block will introduce students to the history and experiences of the four major ethno-cultural groups in the United States through examining and analyzing stories of migration and dislocation. This interdisciplinary block is also cross-listed as Race and Ethnic Studies 185, which is one of the two required courses for the Race and Ethnic Studies minor and LAS major. We will study writers such as James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
The course is one two-block class, with a separate instructor
for each block and one final grade.
Block I: Lilian Osaki, EN 280, Topics in English: Introduction
to African Literature
Meets one unit of Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques.
Block II: Rashna B. Singh, EN 280, Topics in English: African
Literature in a Postcolonial Context.
Meets one unit of Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques.
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the study of African Literature and its cultural contexts in relation to specific literary texts. Our concern is with the complexities of defining African Literature, the relationship between African oral and written literature, the relevance of European languages on African cultural productions and the place of women writers in African Literature. In block one our central focus will be on developing a critical and theoretical appreciation of representative literary texts from the continent available in English.
The second block will extend the context and continue the discussion.
We will take up new titles and critically examine them in the wider context
of postcolonial writing and theory. Important concepts in postcolonial literature,
such as the matter of authenticity or the notion of “talking back”
will be applied as we read African novelists who are “talking”
or writing back to colonial texts, Chinua Achebe to Joseph Conrad and Joyce
Cary, for instance. Or the contesting narratives Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and Karen
Blixen offer of the white settlement of Kenya. We will also read some of the
seminal theoretical writings about colonialism and its effects on the continent
and elsewhere, for instance works by Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon. This part
of the course will also comprise some white South African writers, such as
Nadine Gordimer, J.M Coetzee and Andre Brink. Selected films will be screened
to complement the written texts. The aim will be to explore the richness of
African Literature and to frame it in a social, historical and political context.
A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together; separate grades
will be given for each block.
Block I & II: Tim Fuller & John Simons, PS115/EN115/GS101, Concepts
of Freedom from Ancient to Modern Times
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 units).
This interdisciplinary course explores enduring questions in the Western tradition:
What does it mean to be free? What are the basic ideas of freedom that figure
prominently in the Western tradition? What is freedom for? Is there a rational
use of freedom? Discussion will spring from readings in ancient, medieval,
Renaissance and modern philosophy, politics, religion and literature, and
complementary films. Texts to be chosen from among the following philosophers,
writers, filmmakers: The King James Bible, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles,
Shakespeare, Locke, Rousseau, Mary Shelley, Dostoevsky, Camus, Alfred Hitchcock,
Ridley Scott, Kazuo Ishiguro.
A two-block, team taught course; one grade will be given for the course as
a whole.