Fall 2015 - WL 201 D100

East/West (3)

Class Number: 7158

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 8 – Dec 7, 2015: Tue, 12:30–2:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Exam Times + Location:

    Dec 13, 2015
    Sun, 12:00–3:00 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    Three units in World Literature or three units of B-Hum designated courses.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores the relationship between Eastern and Western narratives. The focus may include the mutual influence of Eastern and Western cultural traditions and modernities, the construction of the 'East' in the West and of the 'West' in the East, theories of Orientalism and Occidentalism, and forms of East/West syncretism. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

EAST IS WEST:
Humanism, Hybrid Cultures, & the Tropics   

This course probes the tensions arising from fictionalized attempts to synthesize national and cultural spaces of understanding along the tropical fringes of the East/West divide.  While our focus will be on the effect cultural blending has on fictional characters - how individuals are changed by their new surroundings - we will also look at the ways in which global modernity has been synthesized across the “Eastern” half of the globe.  More pointedly, because transnational individuals simultaneously belong to more than one society, we will explore what happens when a hybrid ‘grammar of identity’ does not take.  

Other critics tend have tended to observe that transnationalism produces cultures in which individuals and authorities lose their ‘grip’ on the differences between Western and Eastern modes of identity, complicating the process by which individuals might be considered free agents.  As we shall see from five celebrated short novels, the problems of cultural synthesis are not limited to Western encounters with a tropical East, but can also extend to the movement of peoples and ideas to and from South East Asia, India, and Japan.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

LEARNING OUTCOMES:           

  • Comprehension of World Literature as a field practice.                                                 
  • Continuing development of the terms & concepts of cultural criticism. 
  • Awareness of South East Asia as a literary domain. 
  • Introductory understanding of literary and cultural hybridity

Grading

  • Short Essay 20%
  • Group Presentation & Report 15%
  • Term Paper & Revision 25%
  • Participation 15%
  • Final Exam 25%

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

TEXTS: [SFU BOOKSTORE]  
Joseph CONRAD                   An Outcast of the Islands        Oxford  0199554633
TANIZAKI Junichiro              Naomi                                   Vintage  0375724745
Pramoedya Ananta TOER      This Earth of Mankind             Vintage  0140256350
Amitav GHOSH                    The Shadow Lines                   Mariner  061832996X
Lan CAO                             Monkey Bridge                        Penguin  0140263616

Registrar Notes:

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