A Pitch for Fall 2010

NOTE: The new questions for Carmilla are in the previous post...

(at left: portrait of Rudyard Kipling, one of my all-time favorite authors, who is featured in English 4983 by his greatest novel, Kim)

It's enrollment week, and for those interested, I have included a blurb and a reading list for my two Fall 2010 courses that may be of interest.  Both will touch on themes in this class, the "Colonial and Postcolonial Literature" class more explicitly than the Humanities.  However, both courses will be of interest to English majors and those who enjoy literature and its cultural implications.

ENG 4983: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE (TR 11-12:15): In this course we will read works that chart the boundaries of the colonial British empire in India, Africa, and the Carribbean. These works, often written by outsiders with only a tenuous connection to England, give us a unique glimpse into the true nature of “Englishness,” particularly in the years leading up to WWI. As the empire fades, we will also read several works by writers of former British colonies who struggle to assert a national voice in the Queen’s English.

BOOKS:
* Behn, Oroonoko (Norton Critical edition)
* Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical edition)
* Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Bedford St. Martins edition)
* Tutuola, The Palm Wine Drinkard (any edition)
* Kipling, Kim (Longman Cultural edition)
* V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness (any edition)

HUM 2113: GENERAL HUMANITIES I (T 6:30-8:30): A better name for this course might be “Cultural and Literary Archeology,” as we will unearth selected “classics” from the literary canon and analyze them through related art, philosophy, music, and architecture. The goal is to understand the very human ideas and impulses the fuel even the most exotic texts, and reconstruct the seemingly invisible roots that bind the ancient world to the present.

BOOKS:
* Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (any)
* The Bhagavad Gita (Penguin)
* Tales from the 1,001 Nights (Penguin)
* Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories (Penguin)
* Machiavelli, The Prince (any)
* Shakespeare, The Sonnets (any)