Fall 2005
International/World Literature Courses
ENLT 206; WORLD
LITERATURE: COMING OF AGE; M 5:30 PM; Prof. Lorenz
ENLT 206; WORLD
LITERATURE: COMING OF AGE; MW 8:30 AM; Prof. Furr
ENLT 206-03; WORLD
LITERATURE: COMING OF AGE; MR 11:30 AM; Prof.
Nielsen
What is the “coming of
age” experience after 1945, which marked the end
of several global atrocities (the Atom Bomb, the Holocaust) and the
beginning of new revolutions for individuals, communities, and nations?
How does fiction from East and West represent these changes? In this
introduction to World Literature course, we will read books in pairs
(from a Western and non-Western perspective) on the aftermath of World
War II; the postcolonial experience and the revolutions of the 1960s;
and magical realism. Literature from Africa, Europe, East Asia, and
South America--including a few Nobel Prize winners, Kenzaburo Oe, Pablo
Neruda, and Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years
of
Solitude)—will help students appreciate the way literature reflects
and
shapes global issues. Satisfies: 1c (other literature); 3: genre
(fiction); 4a (multinational); women writers; GER 1983/2002: F1 (World
Literature)
ENLT 207; WORLD
LITERATURE: TRADITION AND CHALLENGE; MR 10:00 AM;
Prof. Afzal-Khan
This course is a gateway
course into the study of International Literature for English majors.
It serves as an introduction to issues pertinent to the study of
postcolonial societies, linking social, cultural and political themes
and issues to issues of literary form. The basic premise of the course
is that writers generally respond to their societies' traditions and
ideologies by conforming or dissenting; hence, the course is structured
around texts that can be analyzed through the lens of “tradition” or
“challenge.”
Examples of works/authors to be studied are Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness, Tayyib Salih's Season of Migration to the North,
Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India,
E.M Forster's A Passage to India, Ghassan Kanafani's Men in
the Sun, Nawal el Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero etc.
Course requirements include two exams, one final paper, and an in-class
group presentation or "provocation."
ENLT 230: Images of
Muslim Women; MR 11:30 AM; Prof.
Afzal-Khan
In this course we study
the ways in which Muslim women writing around the globe in the 20th and
21st centuries are perceived through stereotypical lenses, and how
their writings respond to these stereotypes. A crucial question studied
in the course is the relationship between the creation and circulation
of stereotypes and the critical issues of representation, Power and
ideology; that is, in whose interests are certain images created and
what needs to they serve? To what extent and in what ways might they be
challenged or reified?
In order to grapple
with some of the theoretical issues raised by the
representation-power-ideology nexus, we will start off by reading some
of the work of the late great literary and culturla scholar and critic,
Edward Said. We will also look at some of the writings on this topic by
other well-known postcolonial theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Winifred
Woodhull, Malek Alloula etc since this course takes its theoretical
impetus from the field of Postcolonial Studies. We will also look at
films like Gillo Pontecorvo’s now classic rendition of the conflict
between oppressed and oppressor in a colonial context, The Battle
of Algiers, documentaries like Not Without My Veil: the Women
of Oman, and The Dancing Girls of Lahore as well as at mock
documentaries such as the controversial Death of a Princess
made by British Television’s Channel Four in the early 1980s.
Some of the women’s
texts to be studied in this course include :
Fawzia Afzal Khan,
ed. Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out! Assia
Djebar, Fantasia. Alifa Rifaat, View of a Minaret.
Mariama Ba, So Long a
Letter. Samina Ali, Madras in Rainy Days. Azar Nafici, Reading
Lolita in Tehran. Rukhsana Ahmed, ed. We Sinful Women.
Requirements: One-page
Responses to at least 6 works studied
One Oral report
Two exams
One Final Paper,approx.
8pp. long
ENLT 274-01; 20TH C LIT OF IMMIGRATION; MR 2:30 PM; Prof. Hiram Perez
ENLT 376-01: Modern
European Novel; MR 4:00 PM; Prof. Wendy Nielsen
The title of this course is “The Modern European Novel: Authoring
the Experimental Self.” Before it was known as World War I, the
so-called Great War left writers, thinkers, and individuals reeling
from uncertainty, doubt, and fear. The great Modernist
novels written
between 1910 and 1930 thus depict a common struggle across
Europe: to self-author an “experimental self” free from
traditional trappings. We will read and discuss characters who find
themselves caught between things—between two world wars, between
individualism and society, between male and female
identity, between national borders, and between
desire and reason. Students will leave this course with a
profound appreciation for the ways in which the novel has evolved from
1866 to 1984. In order to understand the past and future of Modernist
novelists (Hesse, Breton, and Kafka), we will read their predecessors
(Dostoevsky) and successors (Kundera).
Satisfies: 1c (other
literature), 3 (genre), 4a
(multinational), and 4d (gender studies)
ENLT 367-01 Contemporary
African Literature, MR 10-11:15am; Sally
McWilliams, PhD
Contemporary African writers are challenging old paradigms to their
fullest extent. The transformative impulses come about
through: critical analyses of power; exploration of gender and
sexual politics; re-evaluation of the interplay of customs,
(neo)colonialism, and emerging social structures; and the declaration
of new modes of representation. We will examine some of the
following issues throughout the semester:
*impact of urbanization
*the aftermath of
political upheavel
*shifting configurations
of subjectivity
*discourses of gender,
nationalism, and postcolonialism
*moving beyond the
nomenclature of "Third World"
*the political interplay
between content and narrative techniques
We'll read a variety of narrative and theoretical texts by such writers
as Achebe, Aidoo, Chinodya, Coetzee, Dangarembga, McClintock, Ngcobo,
Nixon, Nkoli among others.
Requirements for the class: regular class participation;
background papers on issues/texts; response papers; discussion group
participation; final project.
Fulfills English guidelines: 1c, 3 (fiction), 4a (multinational),
4d (gender studies).
Counts towards African
American Studies minor.
ENLT 372-01; WOMEN PROSE
WRITERS; TR 8:30 AM; Prof. Isaacs
We will read primarily
20th century women's novels, short stories and essays from around the
world with the aim of exploring "the" female experience. Is there
even such a thing as a female experience? In seeking to
understand writers' representations of female experiences we will look
at some of the ways in which these representations serve to re-inscribe
or resist dominant ideologies of what it means to be female. As
readers we will look at how our own assumptions about what it is to be
female are challenged or affirmed by writers who come from a range of
different subject positions, as is most easily defined by race, class,
sexual orientation, and nationality.
ENLT 372-02; WOMEN PROSE
WRITERS; W 5:30 PM; Prof. Elbert
ENLT 492
SEMINAR in International/Comparative
Literature; Prof. Deena Linett
We will be reading literature by such writers as J. M. Coetzee, Nadine
Gordimer, and Thomas Keneally, from the Southern Hemisphere, as well as
the Europeans Seamus Heaney, Czeslaw Milosz, Marguerite Duras, and
Marguerite Yourcenar. Some of the books I want us to read are not
in print, so the list remains, at this writing, flexible.
I do not lecture, so the course will be built upon your responses to
the literature. Serious consideration of the works, and class
participation, are required.
Multinational and Minority Writers
