INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED COMMUNICATION,
EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
(Affiliated to Pokhara University)
COURSES OF STUDY
M.A. & M. Phil. in English
Contents:
MA LEVEL
401
INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE
401.1 What is Literature?
401.3 Foundations of Western Literature
403 LITERATURES AND HISTORY
403.15 A Critical Survey of British and American
Literature
405* WRITING
405.7 English in Journalism
505.8 Writing for Academic Purposes
420 LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS
420.1 Languages and Linguistics 1
420.2 Linguistics for Literature
420.3 Linguistics for Literature - 2
425* CRITICISM AND THEORY
425.1 Critical Approaches to Literature
425.2 Introduction to Literary Theory
430 LITERATURES AND ART
403.2 Humanities and Arts
435 LITERATURES AND QUEST
435.1 Literature of Spiritual Quest
440 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
440.1 Environmental Composition
440.2 Mapping Literature
450 FICTION
450.8 The Modern Novel
450.9 18th and 19th Century Novels
455* ENGLISH PROSE
455.1 Discourse in Disciplines
470* WESTERN INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS
470.1 History of Ideas
475 PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSES
475.6 Essays in Literature and Philosophy
480 CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
480.4 The Self and the Other Cultural Encounters:
Texts and Contexts
500 POETRY
500.8 Introduction to Poetry: Poetry as verbal
Artifice
500.9 A Survey of Major British and American
Poems
500.10 Appreciating English Poetry
505 DRAMA
505.9 Drama as Stage Play
505.10 Drama: A Survey Course
505.11 Drama From the Beginning to the 19th
Century
505.12 20th Century Drama
510* REGIONAL STUDIES
510.1 Native American Studies
510.4 Nepalese Studies
510.8 20th Century European and American Novels
515* READING, WRITING, AND THINKING FOR THE
PROFESSIONS
515.1 Technical Writing
515.2 Translation: Theory and Practice
525 INDEPENDENT STUDY FOR THESIS
525.1Independent/Group Project
545 DISABILITY STUDIES
545.2 The Disabled Body
550* GLOBALIZATION AND IMMIGRATION STUDIES
550.2 Theories and Literatures of Globalization
550. 3 Issues on Globalization
570* INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL PRACTICES
570.3 Literatures and Environment
570.4 Communicating Across Cultures
590 INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
595 THESIS (6 credits)
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M. PHIL. LEVEL
600 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN RECENT TRENDS IN LITERATURE,
COMMUNICATION AND RESEARCH
600.7 Introduction to Literature and Society
610 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN TEACHING LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE
610.5 Reading, Writing, Thinking, Teaching
625 ADVANCED SEMINAR IN RECENT TRENDS IN CRITICISM
AND THEORY
625.1 Recent Trends in Criticism and Theory
625.2 Post-Colonial Theory
630 INDEPENDENT STUDY FOR M. PHIL. THESIS (3
credits)
640 ETHNIC IDENTITIES: RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER
640.1 Race and Identity Studies
647 INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS IN HUMANITIES
AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND RESEARCH*
647.1 Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
and Social Sciences
655 TOPICS ON POPULAR CULTURE
655.1 Theory and Practice of Pop Culture
680 PRACTICAL COMPOSITION
680.1 Media Practices and Communicative Contexts
685 SEMINAR IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
685.1 Comprehending, responding, and relating
to Nature
690 M. PHIL. THESIS (9 CREDITS)
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401 INTRODUCTION
TO LITERATURE (3 cr)
401.1 What is Literature?
The course aims to introduce the beginning student
to contemporary methods and problems in the
study of literature and culture. The texts include
readings from classical literature, modernist
literature, and postmodernism. It also includes
readings in the basic foundational texts of
modern philosophy, most notably Freud and Marx.
It judiciously introduces students to the study
of contemporary mass culture and media, and
finally involves an exposure to a selection
of the most important and difficult texts of
contemporary theory from Barthes to Foucault.
Unit 1. Western Canonical Classics
Homer: "Book 22: The Death of Hector"
In The Iliad.
Sophocles: Antigone
Dante: "Canto IV." In The Inferno
William Shakespeare: The Tempest
Donald G. Marshall: “Literary Interpretations”
Unit 2. Fundamental Texts of Modern Philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche: From The Birth of Tragedy
from the Spirit of Music
Martin Heidegger: "The Nature of Language”
Karl Marx: “The German Ideology” and “A Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy”
Sigmund Freud: Chapter II, "The Method
of Dream" in The Interpretation of Dreams.
Simone de Beauvoir: "Introduction: Woman
as Other" in The Second Sex:
Levi Strauss: “The Structural Study of Myth”
Roland Barthes: “The Death of the Author”
Theodor Adorno: “Cultural Criticism and Society”
Walter Benjamin: “Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction”
Jacques Derrida: “That Dangerous Supplement."
in Of grammatology
Michael Foucault: “What is an Author?” “Truth
and Power,” “Power and Strategies” and “The
Eye of Power.”
Unit 3. Modern Texts
W.B.Yeats: "When You are Old," "No
Second Troy," " Solomon and the Witch,"
" The Second Coming," "A Prayer
for My Daughter," "Leda and the Swan,"
"Sailing to
Byzantium," "The Tower," "Among
School Children," "Crazy Jane Talks
with the
Bishop," The Circus Animals Desertion"
T.S.Eliot. “Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock,”
The Waste Land.”
“Wallace Stevens: "Sunday Morning,"
"Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Anecdote
of the Jar," "The Emperor of the Ice
Cream"
Robert Frost. “Death of the Hired Man,” “Apple-Picking,”
“Home Burial,” “Two Look at Two,” “West Running
Brook”
Unit 4. Postmodern Texts
Alice Walker. The Color Purple
David Hwang. M Butterfly
Leslie Marmon Silko. Ceremony
Films:
Forest Gump
Pulp Fiction
American Beauty
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401.3 Foundations of Western Literature
Course Description and Objectives: The course
examines in detail texts that have shaped the
Western literary tradition. It is designed to
provide an understanding of both the works and
of central issues around which the Western literary
tradition has organized itself: the relation
of literature to political power, the status
of the writer, the social function of literature,
relations between the sexes, the relation of
poetry to religion, and the nature of literature
itself.
Unit 1
Homer, The Iliad
Plato, Phaedrus
Unit 2
Aeschylus, Agamemnon.
Aristotle, Poetics
Unit 3
Virgil The Aeneid
Dante The Inferno
Unit 4
Selections from The Bible (King James A.V.):
Genesis, Chapters 1-4
Deuteronomy, Chapters 5-6, 32
The Book of Job
Matthew, Chapter 5
Mark, Chapters 14-16
Luke, Chapters 10-24
Psalms, Nos. 8, 23, 63, 72, 86, 98, 137
Acts of Apostles, Chapters 24-27.
Prescribed Texts:
Homer. The Iliad.
Plato. Phaedrus.
Aristotle. Poetics.
Aeschylus. Agamemenon.
Virgil. The Aeneid.
Dante. The Inferno.
The Bible. (King James A.V.)
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403. LITERATURE
AND HISTORY (3 cr)
403.15 A Critical Survey of British and American
Literature
Course Description and Objectives:
This course is designed to help students to
make a critical and chronological survey of
British and American literature. It aims to
approach literary history as a continuous narrative,
to discuss, interpret and explain the works
of British and American authors as literary
texts, to make students familiar with literary
movements and schools of thought, and to help
students understand the social, political, cultural,
and aesthetic influences of a particular age
on the writings of a particular author.
British
Unit 1
Old English Literature
Medieval Literature
Literature of the Renaissance and Reformation
Literature of Revolution and Restoration
Eighteenth-Century Literature
Unit 2
Romantic Literature
Victorian Literature
Modernism
Post-War and Post-Modern Literature
American
Unit 3
The Literature of British America
From Colonial Outpost to Cultural Province
Unit 4
Native and Cosmopolitan Crosscurrents: From
Local Color to Realism and
Naturalism
Modernism in the American Grain
Prescribed Texts:
Ruland, Richard and Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism
to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature.
New York: Penguin, 1991.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of
English Literature. 2nd Edition. Rpt. India:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
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*405. WRITING (3 cr)
405.7 English in Journalism
This course comprises four units. They are Media
Analysis Techniques, Media Issues, Journalism
Lab-work, and Internship Program. The first
and second units contain a selection of texts
on media analysis and issues in media. The third
unit focuses on journalism lab-work which will
ultimately lead to the production of IACER newsletter/journal
and publication of news stories and features
in a newspaper or magazine. The unit mainly
comprises activities such as news-writing, layout
and page designing, feature writing and editing.
The fourth unit comprises a three to four week
internship program in a newspaper or magazine.
Unit 1: Media Analysis
The following essays have been prescribed for
this unit:
i) Techniques of Interpretation
ii) Marxist Analysis
iii) Psycho-analytical Criticism
iv) Sociological Analysis
v) Murderers in the Orient Express
vi) Seven Points on the Game of Football
vii) The Maiden with the Snake: Interpretations
of a Print Advertisement
Unit 2: Media Issues
The following texts have been prescribed for
this unit:
Peter Golding: “New Technologies and Old Problems:
Evaluating and Regulating
Media Performance in the Information Age”
Karen Siunne: “Is Broadcasting Policy Becoming
Redundant”
Jan Van Cuilenberg: “Diversity Revisited: Towards
a Critical Rational model of Media Diversity”
Cees J Hamlink: “World Communication: Conflicting
Aspirations for the Twenty-first Century”
Jan Weiten: “Reality Television and Social Responsibility
Theory”
Karle Nordenstreng: “Professional Ethics: Between
Fortress Journalism and Cosmopolitan Democracy”
George Gerber: “Stories of Violence and the
Public Interest”
Andrew Mc Luhan: “Sports Reporting: Race, Difference
and Identity”
Marshall Mc Luhan: “The Medium is the Message”
Clifford Adelman: “Media and the Generations”
Unit 3. Lab-work
The following activities have been prescribed
for this unit
i) Reporting
ii) News-Editing
iii) Sub-Editing
iv) Feature Writing
v) Picture Editing
vi) Story Construction
vii) Writing the Intro
viii) Avoiding Confusion
ix) News is
x) Interviewing
xi) The News Conference
xii) Meetings
xiii) Speeches
xiv) Observation and Descriptions
Unit 4.
This unit comprises the internship program for
students at newspaper publications or broadcasting
organizations
Prescribed Textbooks:
i) Course Packets will be available for Unit
II
ii) Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Analysis Techniques.
2nd Ed. London: Sage, 1998.
iii) Barton, Frank. The Newsroom (Communication
Manual). Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung,
iv) Cardownie, John. News Agency Journalism
(Communication Manual). Berlin: Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung.
405.8 Writing for Academic Purposes* (3 Credits)
Course Description and Objectives:
This course deals with writing in social contexts
and encourages creativity and originality in
writing. The main objective of this course is
to enable students to respond to, interpret
& evaluate the meaning of their reading;
use sources effectively and develop independent
thought and voice in their own writing; understand
& assess social situations and then shape
writing as an effective response within that
context.
UNIT 1
Writing
A. Writing: situation, problem, and strategy
i) Reacting to Reading: Annotations and Journals
ii) Paraphrasing
iii) Summarizing
UNIT 2
Responding to Reading
A. Developing responses to reading: Essays
i) Argument
ii) Writing an Essay Comparing Reading and Experience
B. Recognizing the many voices in a text
i) The Voice of Authority and Our Voice
ii) Multiple voices in Your Own Writing
iii) Writing an Essay Analysing Voices
C. Analysing the Author’s Purpose & Technique
i) Writing an Essay Analysing Purpose &
Technique
D. Evaluating the Book as a Whole
i) Books as Tools
ii) Writing a Book Review
UNIT 3
Writing using Reading
A. Comparing and Synthesizing Sources
i) Writing and Synthesis of Sources
ii) Writing an Essay of Evaluative Comparison
B. Writing the Research Paper
i) Finding a Direction
ii) Finding Needed Information
iii) Formalizing the Topic
iv) Completing the Research
v) Outlining the Argument
vi) Creating the Full Statement: Drafting
vii) Revision and Final Form
C. A Guide to Reference and Documentation
i) Methods of Reference
ii) Documentation: What and How
iii) Modern Language Association (MLA) Bibliographic
Form
UNIT 4
Reading & Writing in the Disciplines
A. Reading and Writing about Past Events: The
Humanities and Historical Sciences
i) Writing an Essay about the Past
ii) Interpreting & Analysis
iii) Reading an Interpretation
iv) Writing an Interpretation
B. Reading and Writing about Events as they
happen: Observation in Social and Natural Sciences
i) Collecting Data as Events Unfold
ii) Reading Studies of Events as they Happen
iii) Writing Studies of Events as they Happen
C. Reading and Writing about Theory
Submission:
i) Paraphrase
ii) Summary
iii) Response to Reading
iv) Essay (Comparative)
v) Essay (Argumentative)
vi) Essay Analyzing the author’s Purpose and
Technique
vii) Book Review
Final portfolio should contain:
Paraphrase 1
Summary 1
Essays 2
Book Review 1
Response to Reading 1
Prescribed Text:
Bazerman, Charles. The Informed Writer: Using
Sources in the Disciplines. Boston; Houghton
Mifflin, 1995 (5th edition).
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420. LANGUAGE
AND LINGUISTICS (3 CR)
420.1 Language and Linguistics 1
This course will make students familiar with
different aspects of language and linguistics,
including historical linguistics, socio-linguistics,
pragmatics and semantics. The course will offer
a general background of the development of linguistic
thought, which will be accompanied by a number
of classic papers on linguistics. The study
of historical linguistics and socio-linguistics
is expected to enable students into carrying
out independent research work in their own native
context of language. In addition, this course
will orient students towards developing linguistic
perspectives to look at different disciplines
/genres of academic pursuit. Analysis of different
forms of discourse, both literary and otherwise,
will be another focus of this course.
Students will be required to undertake an assignment
in the last week of every month of the term.
The concerned Faculty Members will provide the
students with details regarding this.
Unit 1. Linguistic Background
Charles Barber: “The Origin of Language”
Edward Finegan: “Linguistics”
Peter Woolfson: “Language, Thought and Culture”
Ferdinand de Saussure: Synchronic Linguistics;
Concrete Entities of Language; Linguistic Value;
Syntagmatic and Associative Relations and the
Mechanism of Language.
Roman Jakobson: "Linguistics and Poetics"
Noam Chomsky: “Language and the Mind”, "The
Formal Nature of Language"
Benjamin L. Whorf: "Linguistic Relativity"
Unit 2. Pragmatics
J. L. Austin: “Speech Acts”
H. P. Grice: "Logic and Conversation"
and “Meaning”
Thomas Creswell: “The Trouble with Usage”
G. Leech: “Politeness Principle”
D. Crystal and D. Davy: Stylistic Analysis
Unit 3. Semantics
Gottlob Frege: "Sense and Reference"
Laurence and Margolis: "Concepts and Cognitive
Science"
Hilary Putnam: “The Meaning of Meaning”
Unit 4. Socio-linguistics
C.A. Ferguson and J.D. Gumperz: “Variety, Dialect
and Language”
Dennis Baron: “Language, Culture and Society”
Dialects and literary texts
Languages of Nepal: past and future
Politics of language: linguistic controversies
in Nepal's socio-political context
Issues of language, identity, culture and national
unity.
420.2 Linguistics for Literature
Course Description and Objectives:
The course will examine some of the core aspects
of linguistics and see how linguistic insights
can be employed to enrich the study of literature.
Students will be familiar with the background
of language and linguistics including phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse
analysis. Such linguistic studies in turn will
offer students various perspectives for the
interpretation and analysis of a literary text.
Unit 1
a. Background of Language, Linguistics and Literary
Analysis
What is Language? Symbols, System, Language
Universals, Creativity,
Ambiguity
b. The Task of the Linguist
Competence and Performance, Underlying and Surface
Structure
c. Applications to Literature
Applying Linguistics, Literature as a Type of
Discourse, Cohesion, The Idea of the Grammar
of a Text
Unit 2
a. Phonology (Sounds as System)
b. Phonology and Literature
c. Morphemes
d. The Lexicon
e. The Whorfian Hypothesis
f. Morphemes, the Lexicon and Style
Unit 3
a. Syntax
The Base, Transformations, The Recursive Property
of Language, Syntax and Literature
b. Semantics
Role Relations, Selectional Restrictions, Contradiction,
Anomaly, and Tautology, Role Structures and
Literary Analysis
c. Speech Act Theory
Analyzing Discourse, Analyzing Fictional Discourse
Unit 4
a. Pragmatics and Written Discourse
Point of View in Narrating Fiction, Narrative
Tense
b. Free Indirect Style
c. Sociolinguistics
d. Language Acquisition
e. English as a World Language
Prescribed Text
Traugott, E.C. & M. L. Pratt. Linguistics
for Students of Literature. New York, London:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
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420.3 Linguistics for
Literature - 2 (3 Credits)
Course Description and Objectives:
The course will examine some of the core aspects
of linguistics and see how linguistic insights
can be employed to enrich the study of literature.
Students will be familiar with the background
of language and linguistics including phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and discourse
analysis. Such linguistic studies in turn will
offer students various perspectives for the
interpretation and analysis of a literary text.
Unit 1
a. Background of Language, Linguistics and Literary
Analysis
What is Language? Symbols, System, Language
Universals, Creativity,
Ambiguity
b. The Task of the Linguist
Competence and Performance, Underlying and Surface
Structure
c. Applications to Literature
Applying Linguistics, Literature as a Type of
Discourse, Cohesion, The Idea of the Grammar
of a Text
Unit 2
a. Phonology (Sounds as System)
b. Phonology and Literature
c. Morphemes
d. The Lexicon
e. The Whorfian Hypothesis
f. Morphemes, the Lexicon and Style
Unit 3
A. Semiotics
Definition, Traditions, Methodologies, Relation
to Linguistics, Why study Semiotics?
B. Challenging the Literal
Rhetorical Tropes, Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche,
Irony, Denotation and connotation, Myth
C. Syntax
The Base, Transformations, The Recursive Property
of Language, Syntax and Literature
D. Semantics
Role Relations, Selectional Restrictions, Contradiction,
Anomaly, and Tautology, Role Structures and
Literary Analysis
Unit 4.
Speech Act Theory
Analyzing Discourse, Analyzing Fictional Discourse
a. Pragmatics and Written Discourse
Point of View in Narrating Fiction, Narrative
Tense
b. Free Indirect Style
Sociolinguistics
Varieties of English (Social Varieties, Standard
English)
English in Contact
Bilingual Situations (digglosia, code Switching)
Language Acquisition
Prescribed Text
Traugott, E.C. & M. L. Pratt. Linguistics
for Students of Literature. New York, London:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New
York: Routledge, 2002.
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425. CRITICISM AND
THEORY (3 CR)
425.1 Critical Approaches to Literature
Course Description and Objectives: This course
will orient the students towards various critical
schools and approaches including traditional
criticism, formalism, psychoanalysis, mythological
and archetypal criticism, feminist criticism,
cultural studies, Marxist criticism, structuralism
and post-structuralism, and reader response
criticism. The students will learn how to apply
these critical approaches to read particular
literary texts: Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marvell’s
“To his Coy Mistress,” Blake’s “Sick Rose,”
Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and Hawthorne’s “Young
Goodman Brown.”
Unit 1
Traditional and Formalist Approaches:
1. The Pre-critical response
2. Nature and Scope of Traditional Approaches
3. The Traditional Approaches in Practice
4. Introduction to the Formalist Approach
5. History of Formalist criticism
6. Key concepts and terms of formalist approach
7. The Formalist Approach in Practice
8. Limitations of the formalistic approach
Unit 2
Psychological and Mythical Approaches
1. Aims and principles of psychological approaches
2. The psychological approach in practice
3. Limitations of psychological approach
4. Definitions and examples of archetypes
5. Myth criticism in practice
6. Limitations of myth criticism
Unit 3
Feminist and Cultural Studies Approaches
Definitions and major themes in Feminist criticism:
Feminist approaches: gender studies, marxist
feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, minority
feminist criticism
The future of feminist literary studies
Feminist criticism in practice
What is cultural studies?
Three ways to study culture
Cultural Studies in practice
Unit 4
Additional Approaches
1. Aristotelian criticism
2. Genre criticism
3. Genetic criticism
4. History of ideas
5. Rhetoric, Linguistics and Stylistics
6. Marxism
7. Structuralism and Post-structuralism
8. Phenomenological criticism
9. Dialogics
10. Reader Response Criticism
Prescribed Texts:
Blake, William. “Sick Rose”
Guerin, Wilfred, ed. A Handbook of Critical
Approaches to Literature. 4th ed. New York:
OUP, 1999.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel “Young Goodman Brown”
Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress”
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet
Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn.
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425.2 Introduction
to Literary Theory (3 Credits)
Course Description and Objectives:
The course aims to orient the students in the
discipline of literary theory. The major approaches
to literature and culture in general, the critical
movements of the 20th century and their literary
practices, and the sophistication in critical
reading behavior are the major focuses of the
course.
Unit one: Basic concepts (1)
1. Hans Bertens. "Reading for meaning:
practical criticism and new criticism"
2. - - -. " Reading for form I: formalism
and early structuralism, 1914 -1960
3. - - -. " Reading for form II: French
structuralism, 1950 -1975
4. - - -. "Political Reading": the
1970s and 1980s
5. - - -. "The Poststructuralist Revolution":
Derrida, deconstruction, and postmodernism"
Unit two: Basic concepts (II)
6. Hans Bertens. "Poststructuralism continued:
Foucault, Lacan, and French Feminism"
7. - - -. "Literature and Culture: the
new historicism and cultural materialism"
8. - - -. "Postcolonial criticism and theory"
9. - - -. "Sexuality, literature, and culture"
Unit three: Theoretical Essays (1)
10. Ferdinand de Saussure. "The object
of study"
11. Roman Jacobson. "Linguistics and Poetics"
and "the Metaphoric and metonymic poles"
12. Jacques Lancan. "The insistence of
the letter in the unconscious"
13. Jacques Derrida. "Structure, sign and
play in the discourse of the human sciences"
14. Mikhail Bakhtin. " From the prehistory
of novelistic discourse"
15. Roland Barthes. "The Death of the Author"
17. Wolfgang Iser. "The Reading process:
a phenomenological approach"
Unit Four: Theoretical essays (1I)
18. Edward Said. "Crisis [in Orientalism]"
19. Elaine Showalter. "Feminist criticism
in the Wilderness"
20. Terry Eagleton. "Capitalism, modernism
and postmodernism"
21. Jean Baudrillard. "Simulacra and Simulations"
22. Luce Irigaray. "The bodily encounter
with the mother"
23. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick."The best in
the Closet"
24. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "Feminism
and Critical Theory"
25. Stephen Greenblatt. "The circulation
of social energy"
Prescribed Texts:
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics.
London: Routledge, 2001
Lodge, David & Nigel Wood. eds. Modern Criticism
and Theory: A reader. 2nd ed. Delhi: Pearson,
2003.
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430. LITERATURE
AND ART (3 cr)
430.2 Humanities and Arts.
This course is an exploratory approach to the
humanities that focuses on the special role
of the arts. We will study the interrelationship
between various forms of art and examine the
similarities and differences between the role
of the literary artists and that of the other
humanists, and methods of writing and researching
about the arts.
Unit 1. Arts in the Humanities
David Martin and Lee A Jacobus : “Introduction
to humanities”; “What is a work of art?;” “Being
a critic of the arts”
J. D. McClatchy (ed): "Arts and Ideas"
Robert S Nelson: “Someone Looking reading and
writing”
Unit 2: Concepts and Issues
Robert S Nelson: “Word and Image;” “Narrative;”
“Context;” “Meaning/ Interpretation” ,
Anne Sheppard "Expression"
Robert S Nelson: “Art History;” “Modernism”
“Primitive;” “Value;” “Postmodernism and postcolonialism”
Anne Sheppard: "Art and morals”
Unit 3. Art forms (1)
Martin and Jacobus: “Painting;” “Sculpture;”
“Architecture,” The Humanities through the Arts
“The Poet as a painter;” “Painters as writers”
“The relation between poetry and painting,”
Poets and Painters
C. Day Lewis: “How a poem is made”
Archibald MacLeish: “Ars poetica”
Henry Moore: “Notes on Sculpture”
Gio Ponti: “The architect, the artist”
Unit 4. Art Forms (2)
Martin and Jacobus: “Literature;” “Drama;” “Dance”
“Music”
Shaw: “The Problem play – A symposium”
Martin and Jacobus: “Film;” “Photography;” “Almost-Art”
“The Humanities: Their Interrelationships”
Ingmar Bergman: “Film has nothing to do with
literature”.
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435 LITERATURE OF QUEST
435.1 Literatures of Spiritual Quest
The course will examine spiritual quest as an
alternative mode of being that is at odds with
the mainstream twentieth century capitalist
culture. The course will examine the issues
of work and leisure, environment and health
and individual and society in relation to the
theme of spiritual quest.
Unit 1. Poetic of Representation
Black Elk Speaks
Tagore: Gitanjali
Unit 2. Fictional Representation
Hilton: Lost Horizon
Maugham: The Razor's Edge
Unit 3. Quest and Travel
Peter Mattheissen: The Snow Leopard
Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Unit 4. Non-fictional representation
Yogananda: An Autobiography of a Yogi
Gandhi: Autobiography or The Story of My Experiment
with Truth
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440 LITERATURE
AS EXPLORATION
440.1 Evironmental Composition
WEEK 1: LITERATURE, SOCIETY, PLANET
Day 1 Course introduction. Why study literature
in order to learn about the relation between
nature and culture?
Day 2 : Interpretive reading: scholarship and
imagination.
Reading: Gary Snyder, from " The Etiquette
of Freedom" and " Song of the Taste"
Assignment: Essay # 1 (diagnostic, in class):
What are the societal implications of Pattiann
Rogers's "Knot"?
Day 3: Why take an environmental approach
to writing? Why now?
Reading: "World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity" and U.S. Bishops, "Renewing
the Earth"
WEEK 2: OUR ANIMAL SELVES
Day 4: Animal appetites, animal needs.
Reading: Mary Oliver, "The Honey Tree,"
and Pattiann Rogers, "Knot."
Day 5: The story of our animal selves.
Reading: Kent Nelson, "Irregular Flight,"
and Jack London, " To Build a Fire."
Day 6: Analyzing the human animal.
Reading: Annie Dillard, " Living like Weasels,
" Terry Tempest Williams, "The Erotic
Landscape," and Tom Wolfe, "O Rotten
Gotham."
Assignment: Essay #2 (2-3 typed page, due Friday
of Week 3): Analyze the author's use of self-characterization
and physical/geographical setting throughout
one of the essays that were assigned for today's
class. How does the author associate or distance
himself of herself from the characteristics
emphasized in the essay? What is the role of
setting in this process? How does self- representation
contribute to the larger massage of the text?
WEEK 3: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
Day 7: A social context for analyzing encounters.
Reading: " Just Like Us?" and Maxine
Hong Kingston's " A City Person Encountering
Nature."
Day 8: Problematic encounters.
Reading: John Updike," The Crow in the
Woods,"
Rita Dove, " Crab-Boil,"
Barry Lopez," Apologia, " and
Ursula K. Le Guin, " The Creatures on My
Mind."
Day 9: Transcendent encounters.
Reading: Denise Levertov, "Come into Animal
Presence,"
James Wright, "A Blessing,"
Pat Murphy, "In the Abode of the Snows."
Due: Essay #2.
WEEK 4: HUNTING AND FISHING
Day 10: Consuming animals.
Reading: Paul Shepard, from "Fellow Creatures,"
Wintu tribe, "The Willingness of a Deer
to Die," and
Susan Griffin, "The Hunt. "Assignment:
Essay #3 (due Monday of Week 5): Imitative exercise,
stretching the limits of personal style.
Closely imitate the precise sentence patterns
of one paragraph from each of the prose works
read this weak. Select substantial paragraph
to imitate.
Day 11: Hunting: a range of perspectives.
Reading: James Dickey, "A Dog sleeping
on My Feet,"
Wintu Tribe, "The Willingness of a Deer
to Die,"
Richard K. Nelson, "The Gifts,"
Joyce Carol Oates, "The Buck".
Day 12: Broader social implications.
Reading: Aldo Leopold, "Thinking like a
Mountain,"
Susan Griffin, "the Hunt,"
Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish."
WEEK 5: IMPRINT OF THE LAND
Day 13: Ancestral imprints.
Reading: Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks
of Rivers"
Bell Hooks, "Touching the earth."
Due: Essay # 3. Assignment:
Essay # 4 (3 typed pages, due Monday of Week
6): Analyze and explain the use and apparent
purpose of one specific stylistic device in
Pam Houston, "A Blizzard Under blue Sky"
or Alberto Rios, "The Secret Lion."
Select a device that seems particularly important
to the underlying goals of the story. Possible
devices to analyze: Characterization, setting,
structure, paradox, symbolism.
Day 14: Places of Power.
Reading: Lucille Clifton, "Sonora desert
Poem,"
John Muir, " A Wind-Storm in the Forests,"
Jack Kerouac, "Alone on a Mountaintop,"
Simon Ortiz, "Forever."
Day 15: Complicated impressions. Also, brief
workshops to discuss progress in Essay # 4.
Reading: Barbara Kingsolver, "The Memory
Place,"
Jerry Mander , "The walling of awareness,"
Villa Nueva, "Haciendo apenas la recoleccion."
WEEK 6: VISIONS OF HOME
Day 16: Bioregionalism.
Reading: Jim dodge, "Living by life: Some
Bioregional Theory and Practice,"
Leonard Charles et al., "Where You At?
A Bioregional Quiz"
Wendell Berry, "Stay Home,"
Carol Polsgrove, "On a scrap of Land in
Henry County."
Due: Essay # 4. Assignment:
Essay #5 (Essay plans due Friday of this week,
Final Version due Friday of Week7): Compare
the use of a single stylistic device as a way
of communicating an idea about place in any
two of the following stories:
Raymond Carver, "What's in Alaska?"
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, "Rock Garden,"
Beth Brant, "This Place,"
Dan O'Brien, "Eminent Domain."
You might begin by detecting a thematic connection
between the two stories--perhaps a similar attitude
toward place on the part of the central characters
in each story but the goal of this essay will,
as always, go beyond mere summary of the work's
content. Ideally, you will be able to show how
the writers can express different ideas about
similar topics by using a particular device
(Symbolism, characterization, metaphor, setting,
etc) in different ways.
Day 17: Rootedness versus rootlessness.
Reading: Pat Mora, "Curandera,"
Scott Russell Sanders, "Buckeye,"
John Daniel, "A word in Favor of Rootlessness,"
Ellen Meloy, "The Flora and Fauna of Las
Vegas."
Day 18: Preserving home.
Reading: Rick Bass, "On willow Creek,"
William Kittredge," Second Chance at Paradise."
WEEK 7: POLITICS OF PALCE
Day 19:Threats to property.
Reading: Dan O'Brien, "Eminent Domain,"
and
Margaret L. Knox, "The world According
to Cushman."
Day 20: Threats to identity.
Reading: Wendy Rose. "Long Division: A
Tribal History,"
Benjamin Alire Saenz, "Exile. El Paso,
Texas," and
E.C. White, "Black Women and the Wilderness."
Day 21:Threats to nature.
Reading: Edward Abbey, "Eco-Defense,"
and
Terry Tempest Williams, "The Clan of One–Breasted
Women."
Due: Essay #5
WEEK 8: GETTING AND SPENDING
Day 22: Watch Robert Redford's film version
of John Nichols's 1974 Novel, The Milagro Beanfield
War.
Day 23: Finish Watching Film.
Day 24: Assignment:
Essay #6 (in class): Having taken substantial
notes while watching the film, write an analytical
"review" of the film in which you
explain how Redford's cinematographic technique
contributes (or fails to contribute) to the
apparent message of the film. Try to explain
how Redford's selection and presentation of
characters, settings, relationships, camera
angles, images, and realistic/stylized situations
affect the achievement of the film. What seem
to be the work's principal messages about community
organization and the struggle over land and
natural resources in contemporary America? Since
this paper is, in part, a "review"
of the film, try to evaluate it in addition
to analyzing and explaining it.
WEEK 9: MORE ON GEETING AND SPENDING
Day 25: Reading and Writing in context: The
case of Consumption.
Reading: W. Wordsworth, "The World is Too
Much With Us"
A Ginsberg, "A supermarket in California,"
A.T.Durning, "The Conundrum of Consumption,"
D. Meadows, "Living Lightly and Inconsistently
on the land,"
Assignment: Essay #7 (3-4 typed pages, due first
day of week 10): Select a pair of texts--a literary
work and a cultural document – and explain how
the literary piece uses particular stylistic
devices to explore the issues raised in the
cultural text. Develop an argument that either
supports the combination of literary and cultural
documents or suggests that literature should
be read by itself, independently of cultural
evidence. Use a pairing from one of the chapters
in Part 3 of the anthology.
Day 26: The virtues and pitfalls of "connectedness,"
Reading: B Traven, "Assembly line"
Martin W. Lewis, "On Human Connectedness
with Nature."
Day 27: Doing the "right" work in
the "right" way.
Reading: Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Work We
Hate and Dreams We Love,"
T. Roszak, "Take This Job and Shove It,"
D. Meadows, "Living Lightly and Inconsistently
on the Land," and
W Berry, "A Good Scythe,"
WEEK 10: LAND USE
Day 28: The consequences of development.
Reading: M Piercy, "Sand Roads: the Development,"
R. Frost, "A Brook in the City," and
W.S. Merwin, "Rain at Night."
Assignment: Essay # 8 (5-7 typed pages, due
Monday of week 13): Select a specific environmental
topic pertaining to the region where you live;
orient the reader to the topic and provide an
interpretive analysis (an "argument").
You can choose to address a social, economic,
religious, political, or scientific issue, or
you can choose to focus on a particular style
or piece in some essential way to the region's
environment. Use at least five secondary sources
(books, magazine or newspaper articles, scholarly
studies, government documents, interview transcripts,
or other sources of information relevant to
the topic). If you are writing on a particular
writer or literary text, try to find five or
more critical/scholarly responses in addition
to the primary text(s). All sources, primary
or secondary should be documented according
to the MLA Format.
Day 29: Overcoming stereotypes: land use and
the question of character.
Reading: W. Kaufman, "Confessions of a
Developer,"
Louise Erdrich, "Line of Credit."
S.A. Russell, "The physics of Beauty,"
Day 30: Different backgrounds, different views.
Reading: S. Birgham, "A woman's Land,"
W. Stegner, "Wilderness Letter,"
L Owens, "The American Indian Wilderness."
Spend fifteen minutes in small groups discussing
topics for Essay # 8
WEEK 11. LOCAL/REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES.
Day 31: What's going on here?
Reading: Students should recommend three or
four readings from any chapter in the anthology
that seem to bear on issues currently important
in the place where the Institute is located.
Day 32: Small-group workshops to discuss progress
on research papers. Each Student should bring
one or two introductory pages, plus a preliminary
list of sources. The introductory pages should
indicate the argument that will be developed
in the rest of the paper.
Day 33: Local texts. Each student brings in
a journalistic article or a literary text that
pertains to something going on in the local
environment. There materials could include texts
being used in student's research papers. Depending
on the size of the class, students present the
materials to the entire class or to small groups
(about 10 per group).
WEEK 12: DOOMSAYING AND DOWNPLAYING
Day 34: The language of warning.
Reading. "World Scientists Warning to humanity,"
B. McKibben, "Not So Fast,"
R. Carson, "Of Man & the Stream of
time."
Day 35: Waving off the crisis.
Reading: R Samuelson, "The end is not at
Hand," and
J. Simon, "Are People an Environmental
Pollution?
Day 36: The literature of environmental crisis.
Reading: Mary Austin, "The Last Antelope,"
R Jeffers, "Passenger Pigeons."
WEEK 13: TOWARD CLOSURE
Day 37: Students present final Projects.
Day 38: Students present final projects.
Day 39: Optimism, caution, sustainability.
Reading: J. Bruchac, "The circle is the
way to see."
Due Essay #8
WEEK 14: DEAD WEEK
Course recap and preparation for exams.
WEEK 15: EXAMS WEEK
Exam: Essay #9: Analyze two literary works,
C.K. Williams's "Tar" and R Anaya's
"Devil Deer," comparing how the two
represent the direness and/or hopefulness of
our contemporary environmental quandary. Using
techniques of textual analysis developed in
the course prepare an argument that evaluates
the rhetorical effectiveness of each work.
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440.2 Mapping
Literature
Locating literature, mapping and tracing how
and why writers come up with works of imaginations
grounded on the realities of the places and
people, of cities, towns, and countryside. The
course focuses on writers and their works in
relation to the spatial network to which they
belonged. Malcolm Bradbury's book The Atlas
of Literature informs us about writers in relation
to the places they lived, grew up and wrote.
The course thus demands our cultural literacy
and general knowledge to set forth in the artistic
exploration and adventure. Along with mapping
the places and people of the western literary
world, the students should also be able to read
their literary works as well. The course is
designed to encourage them to be familiar with
the writers and their texts in relation to the
context they belong to.
Unit 1: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
The Age of Reason
A two-page paper from Dante's Divine Comedy
by selecting an extract from Canto I. The paper
focus on the textual mode of interpretation
instead of giving general interpretation of
the work
The students will be asked to prepare for an
oral presentation on the literary modes of medieval
France and Spain
A further assignment would be reading from
Thomas More's Utopia and Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia
Writing a three-page paper on the critical
history of America including an extensive bibliography
on American literary history
The final assignment would be preparing ten
questions each for the chapters on Chaucer and
Cervantes
Unit 2: The Romantics, The Age of Industrialism
and Empire
Write a three-page paper on European romanticism
by focusing on the places referred to in the
section "The Romantics." Find out
passages from the works of the writers mentioned
in the section. This paper needs extensive library
work with the help of the teacher assigned to
the course.
Write a three-page paper on the St Petersburg,
Paris, London, and Massachusetts. The students
should write a descriptive essay on the places
in relation to the natural landscapes and urban
centres that are frequently mentioned in Part
Four. The student can take help from other history
books on art and literature.
An oral presentation on the concept of European
Imperialism would be the final assignment for
this unit.
Unit 3: The Age of Realism, The Modern World
Write a five-page paper connecting the issues
and events with the places referred to in the
Parts:Age of Realism and The Modern World. For
instance, focus on the relationship of slavery,
Faulkner and the American South; Bohemian spirit,
art movements and Paris; revolutionary zeal
and Ireland; wars, depression and Germany, Spain
and American urban life. The Students need to
do further research on such connections.
Unit 4: Post-War to the Present
Write a three-page survey paper on the post-war
literary activities of Europe.
Write a seven page final paper on the people,
places and features of non-western English writing.
The focus should be on how the study of English
literature moves beyond the Age oof Europe,
western art and canon, and colonialism. Mention
the major countries and cities, new literary
locations in the light of Englishness and globalization.
Prescribed Texts
Bradbury, Malcolm. The Atlas of Literature.
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450. FICTION (3
CR)
450.8 The Modern Novel (3 cr)
Course description: The students will read a
n umber of major fictional texts of Europe,
Asia, Americas, and Africa applying such critical
approaches as Marxism, Gender Studies, Deconstruction,
Cultural Studies, Formalism, Reader Response
criticism, and minority and post-colonial studies.
Unit 1:
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
Unit 2:
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man
Thomas Mann, Magic Mountain
Unit 3:
Chinua Achebe, Things Falls Apart
Arundhati Roy, God of Small Things
Unit 4:
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Parijat, Blue Mimosa
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450.9 Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Century Novels (3 Credits)
Course Description and Objectives:
This course will examine certain major 18th
and 19th century texts of British, continental
and American fiction by interrogating those
novels from a variety of theoretical perspectives.
Unit 1: Horatio Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Richardson, Pamela
Unit 2: Gustav Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
Unit 3: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Unit 4: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
*455. ENGLISH
PROSE (3 CR)
455.1 Discourse in Disciplines (3 Credits)
Course description: We will study how multiple
discourses of literature, philosophy, history,
and politics come together to construct certain
discourse communities. This course will seek
to introduce the students to the wide range
and variety of English prose, leading to a critical
awareness of the textuality of writing which
they can apply to their own writings.
Unit 1: Background and History
a. Rhetoric
b. Readings
Unit 2: Arts and Philosophy
a. Discourse Communities in the Arts
b. Discourse Communities in Philosophy
Unit 3: Social Sciences and Natural Science
a. Discourse Communities in the Social Sciences
b. Discourse Communities in Science
Unit 4: Students’ Writing
Text:
Schmidt, Gary D. and William J. Vande Kopple.
Communities of Discourse: The
Rhetoric of Disciplines. New Jersey: Prentice
Hall, 1993.
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*470.
WESTERN INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS (3CR)
470.1 History of Ideas
Course description: We will study how the Western
‘World View’ has undergone transformations through
the Greek to the Modern Age. Some of the questions
that will be explained during the course: what
forms of interrelations exists between key Western
philosophies and their texts to the historical
circumstances? Are there certain clusters of
ideas that are linked across the historical
times and places of Western civilization? What
form of correlations might exist between the
‘history of ideas’ and the history of Western
literature and culture?
Unit 1:
a. The Greek World View
b. The Transformation of the Classical Era
Unit 2:
a. The Christian World View
b. The Transformation of the Medieval Era
Unit 3:
a. The Modern World View
Unit 4:
a. The Transformation of the Modern Era
b. Epilogue
Texts:
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western
Mind: Understanding the Ideas that
Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine
Books. 1991.
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475.
PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSES (3 CR)
475.6 Essays in Literature and Philosophy
Course description: This course will examine
certain major texts in English literature and
Western philosophy to study not only the interrelationships
that emerge, but also to analyze how philosophical
and literary writings use different styles of
expression and rhetorical devices as they represent
their subject matter.
Unit 1:
Plato “Ion.”
Longinus “On the Sublime.”
Dante Alighieri from “Letter to Can Grande Della
Scala.”
Sir Francis Bacon from “The Advancement of Learning.”
Joseph Addison “On the Pleasures of Imagination.”
Samuel Johnson “On Fiction.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds “Discourses on Art.”
Unit 2:
Mary Wollstonecraft “A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman” Chapter VI.
William Blake “The Ancient Britons.”
Friedrich Schiller “Thirteenth Letter.”
Freidrich Wilhelm Von Schelling from “On the
Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.”
Wilhelm Von Humboldt from “On the Episode from
the Mahabharat.”
John Keats from “Letter to Benjamin Bailey,”
and “Letter to George and Thomas Keats.”
Thomas Love Peacock “The Four Ages of Poetry.”
Percy Bysshe Shelly “A Defense of Poetry.”
Unit 3:
Thomas Carlyle “Symbols.”
John Stuart Mill “What is Poetry.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson “The Poet.”
Edgar Allan Poe “The Poetic Principle.”
Mathew Arnold “The Function of Criticism at
the Present Time.”
Karl Marx from “The German Ideology,” and from
“A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy.”
Friedrich Nietzsche from “The Birth of Tragedy
from the Spirit of Music,” and “Truth and Falsity
in an Ultramoral Sense.”
Walter Pater “Studies in the History of the
Renaissance.”
Anatole France “The Adventures of the Soul.”
Oscar Wilde “The Decay of Lying.”
Stephane Mallarme “Mystery in Literarue.”
Unit 4:
Leo Tolstoy “What is Art,” from Chapter IV.
Sigmund Freud “Creative Writers and Daydreaming.”
T. S. Eliot “Tradition and Individual Talent.”
Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own.”
Kenneth Burke “Literature and Equipment of Living.”
Jean-Paul Sartre “Why Write.”
Simon De Beauvoir “Myth and Reality” Chapter
XI.
Philip Wheelwright from “The Burning Fountain.”
Martin Heidegger “The Nature of Language.”
Text:
Adams, Hazard (ed.) Critical Theory Since Plato.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992.
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480.
CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS (3CR)
480.4 The Self and the Other Cultural Encounters:
Texts and Contexts.
Course description: What happens when different
peoples, cultures, religions, languages and
world views come into contact with each other?
What forms of desires, fears and anxieties are
produced within the space of cultural encounter?
What forms of erotic fantasies and cultural
fears are generated as people from different
parts of the globe encounter each other. We
will study various cultural texts including
novels, letters, travel writings and films to
study the ways in which various mythologies,
beliefs and worldviews shape one another. Also,
we will examine how the religions, ritual practices
and economies of the non western societies are
affected as modern technologies and commodities
enter the pre-modern cultural spaces. Frequent
writing, revision and class discussion.
Unit 1:
Lady Mary Montagu: Turkish Embassy Letters
Aphra Behn: Oroonoko
Rider Haggard: She
Kipling: “The Gate of hundred sorrows”
Film: Dances with the Wolves
Unit 2:
Robert Louis Stevenson: “The Marquesas” from
In the South Seas
Lawrence, D.H: “The Hopi snake dance”
Torgovnick, Marianna: “Something stood still
in my soul”
Paul Theroux: The Great Railway Bazaar
Film: Out of Africa Or Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Or A Passage to India
Unit 3:
Louis Aldrich: Tracks
Salih: Season of Migration to the North
Chitra Divakaruni: “A Perfect Life;” “A Maid
servant’s story”
Selections from Ben Okri’s The Famished Road
Film: Mississippi Masala
Unit 4:
Said: “Introduction” from Orientalism
Mary Louise Pratt: “Introduction: Criticism
in the contact zone”
May Joseph: “Introduction: New Hybrid Identities
and performance”
Toby Miller: “Culture and global economy”
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500. POETRY (3
CR)
500.8 Introduction to Poetry: Poetry as Verbal
Artifice
Course Description and Objectives:
This course will be chiefly concerned with how
poets go about their business of communicating
thought and feeling through verbal medium. Instead
of asking, "What does this poem mean?"
the questions that the students will be encouraged
to think all the time are these:
1. What do I notice about this poem?
2. What is odd, quirky, and peculiar about it?
3. What new words do I see or what familiar
words in new situations do I notice?
4. Why is it the way it is, and not some other
way?
Although the course will cover a range of poems--from
Renaissance England to
contemporary American--it will not really be
a historical "survey." Instead, it
will focus on poetic techniques, patterns, habits,
and genres, and it will do so with special concern
for the three areas--"Figurative Language,"
"Music and Sound," and "Tone
of Voice"--which, taken together, can be
said to define what poetry is and what distinguishes
it from other kinds of literary utterance. However,
each lecture will deal to some degree, with
all of the areas, veering among them to produce
the fullest reading of the work at hand.
Unit 1
a. What to Look and Listen for in Poems:
Ammons, A. R. "Beautiful Woman"
Herrick, Robert. "Upon Julia's Clothes"
b. Memory and Composition:
Wordsworth, William. "The Solitary Reaper"
Wordsworth, William. "I wandered Lonely
as a Cloud"
c. Poets Looking at the World:
William, Carlos Williams. "The Red Wheelbarrow"
William, Carlos Williams. "This Is Just
to Say"
William, Carlos Williams. ""Poem"
Herrick, Robert. "The Argument of His Book"
Clare, John. "Gypsies"
Yeats, William Butler. "The Lake Isle of
Innifree"
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. "The Buck in
the Snow"
d. Picturing Nature:
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. "The Kraken"
Hardy, Thomas. "The Breaking of Nations"
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. "Pied Beauty"
e. Metaphor and Metonymy I:
Burns, Robert. "A Red, Red Rose"
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "To a Skylark"
Dickinson, Emily. "There's a certain slant
of light" (258)
Shakespeare, William. "Poor Soul"
(sonnet 146)
Frost, Robert. "Design"
Blake, William. "The Sick Rose"
Jarrell, Randall. "The Death of the Ball
Turret Gunner"
f. Metaphor and Metonymy II:
Lowell, Robert. "Skunk Hour"
Keats, John. "On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer"
Unit 2
a. Poetic Tone:
Stevens, Wallace. "The House Was Quiet
and the World was Calm"
Hayden, Robert. "Those Winter Sundays"
Herbert, George. "Love" (III)
Justice, Donald. "Men at Forty"
Jonson, Ben. "On My First Son"
Wordsworth, William. "A Slumber Did My
Spirit Seal"
b. The Uses of Sentiment:
Browns, Elizabeth Barrett. "How do I love
thee?" (Sonnet 43)
Rossetti, Christina. "When I am dead, my
dearest" (song)
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. "The Woodspurge"
Robinson, Elvin Arlington. "Richard Cory"
Frost, Robert. "Acquainted with the Night"
Hardy, Thomas. "The Convergence of the
Twain"
Auden, W. H. "Musee des Beaux Arts"
c. The Uses of Irony:
Parker, Dorothy. "Unfortunate Coincidence"
Parker Dorothy. "Resume"
Blake, William. "Holy Thursday"
Blake, William. "The Little Black Boy"
Lawrence, D. H. "The English Are So Nice"
Reed, Henry. "Naming of Parts"
Gary, Thomas. " Ode: On the Death of a
Favorite Cat"
d. Poetic Forms and Meter:
Roethke, Theodora. "My Papa's Waltz"
Milton, John. "On the Late Massacre in
Piedmont"
e. Sound Effects:
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Evangeline"
Browning, Robert. "A Toccata of Galuppi's"
Dickinson, Emily. "They hut Me Up in Prose-"
(613)
Hopkins, Gerald Manley. "Gods Granduer"
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. "How Sleeps the
Crimson Petal, Now the White"
Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach"
f. Three Twentieth-Century Villanelles:
Thomas, Dylan. "Do Not Go Gentle into That
Good Night"
Roethke, Theodore. "The Waking"
Bishop, Elizabeth. "One Art"
Unit 3
a. Free Verse:
Smart, Christopher. "Jubilate Agno"
Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself"
Whitman, Walt. "The Dalliance of Engles"
Whitman, Walt. "To a Locomotive in Winter"
Cummings, e. e. "in Just-"
Ginsberg, Alan. "Howl"
Clampitt, Amy. "The Sun Underfoot among
the Sundews"
Wright, James. "A Blessing"
Macleish, Archibald. "Ars Poetica"
b. The English Sonnet I:
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. "The Long Love, That
in My Thought Doth Harbur"
Earl of Surrey. "Love That Doth Reign and
Live Within My Thought"
Sidney, Sir Philip. "Astrophil and Stella"
Shakespeare, William. "When I do count
the clock" (sonnet 12)
Shakespeare, William. "That Time of Year"
(sonnet 73)
c. The English Sonnet II:
Donne, John. "Death, be not Proud"
(Holy Sonnet 10)
Donne, John. "Batter My Heart" (Holy
sonnet 14)
Milton, John. "On the Late Massacre in
Piedmont"
Milton, John. "When I Consider How my Light
is Spent"
Wordsworth, William. "Composed upon Westminister
Bridge"
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias"
d. The Enduring Sonnet:
Yeats, William Butler. "Leda and the Swan"
Frost, Robert. "The Oven Bird"
Frost, Robert. "Never Again Would Birds'
Song Be the Same"
Frost, Robert. "The Silken Tent"
e. Poets Thinking:
Donne, John. "The Cannonization"
Marvell, Andrew. "The Garden"
Pope, Alexander. "An Essay on Criticism"
f. The Greater Romantic Lyric:
Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey"
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Frost At Midnight"
Unit 4
a. Poets Thinking- Some 20th Century Versions:
Jeffers, Robinson. "Shine, Perishing Republic"
Stevens, Wallace. "The Snow Man"
Yeats, william Butler. "Among School Children"
Haas, Robert. "Meditation at Lagunitas"
b. Portrayals of Heroism:
Anonymous Ballad. "Sir Patrick Spens"
Peele, George. "His Golden Locks Time Hath
to Silver Turned"
Dryden, John. ""To the Memory of Mr.
Oldham"
Byron, Lord George. "Written After Swimming
from Sestos to Abydos"
Tennyson, Alfred George. "Ulysses"
c. Heroism--Some 20th Century Versions:
Yeats, William Butler. "An Irish Airman
Foresees His Death"
Yeats, William Butler. "Easter 1916"
Lowell, Robert. "For The Union Dead"
Bishop Elizabeth. "The Fish"
Rich, Adrienne. "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
Rich, Adrienne. "Diving into the Wreck"
d. Poets Talking to (and for Works of Arts):
Keats, John, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
e. Echoes in Poems:
Wordsworth, William. "The Boy of Winander”
(from the Prelude).
Frost, Robert. "The Most of it"
Bishop, Elizabeth. "The Moose"
f. Farewell and Falling Leaves:
Virgil, Aeneid (Book VI, excerpt)
Dante. Inferno (Canto III, excerpt)
Milton, John. Paradise Lost (Book I, ll. 295-313)
Shelley, Percey Bysshe. "Ode to the West
Wind"
Pound, Ezra. "In the Station of the Metro"
Nemerov, Howard. "For Robert Frost, in
the Autumn, in Vermont"
Ammons, A. R. "Beautiful Woman"
Prescribed Text:
Ferguson, Margaret et al., ed. The Norton Anthology
of English Poetry. 4th Edition.
New York: Norton, 1996.
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500.9
A Survey of Major British and American Poems
This course makes a chronological survey of
a wide range of poems written by British and
American poets. Attention will be paid to the
general and specific ways in which a poem is
shaped by, and in turn shapes, the literary,
political, economic, religious, and artistic
events and issues of its time.
Course objectives:
The main objective of this course is to help
the students
• see the role of poet and poem in relation
to history, politics and culture
• see the poet's purpose and method of poetic
expression
• examine the significance of the poem in contemporary
times
• see how language, themes, and poetic devices
play a large role in directing a poems meaning.
Unit Division
I From Chaucer to Samuel Taylor Coleridge
II From Percy Bysshe Shelley to W.B.Yeats
III From Robert Frost to Gwendolyn Brooks
IV From Robert Lowell to Louise Erdrich
Unit 1
Geoffrey Chaucer, From The Canterbury Tales:
The General Prologue (first 2 stanzas)
Edmund Spenser, "Epithalamion", "Shepherd's
Calendar"
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 55and 65
John Donne, "The Canonization," "
Valediction Forbidding Mourning," "The
Ecstasy"
John Milton, From Samson Agonistes, "The
Invocation" from Paradise Lost Book I
John Dryden, A Song of St Cecilia's Day
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
William Blake, From Songs of Innocence: "The
Lamb", "The Divine Image"
From Songs of Experience, "A Divine Image,"
"The Sick Rose", "The Tyger"
William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few
Miles above Tintern Abbey"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"
Unit II
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty," "Ode to the West Wind"
William Cullen Bryant, "To a Water Fowl"
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Snow Storm"
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale,"
"Ode on Melancholy,' "Ode on a Grecian
Urn," "To Autumn"
Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven"
Lord Alfred Tennyson, "Break, Break, Break,"
"Tears, Idle Tears," "The Eagle"
Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"
Walt Whitman, Song to Myself 1, 6, 11, 24, 52
Emily Dickinson, "There's a certain Slant
of Light," "I Felt a Funeral in my
Brain," "I Heard a Fly Buzz,"
"Because I could not Stop for Death"
Gerard Manly Hopkins, "The Windhover,"
"Pied Beauty"
W. B. Yeats, "When You are Old," "The
Second Coming," "A Prayer for My Daughter,"
"Sailing to Byzantium," "Among
School Children," "Leda and the Swan,"
"The Circus Animals' Desertion"
Unit III
Robert Frost, "Mending Wall," "The
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