Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Surveys poetry and prose from the seventeenth century to the present, with a focus on the literary exploration of issues of humanity. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Modernity’s Mirror: Self, Society, and the Crisis of the Modern 

Did you ever wonder why literary works often focus upon the lone individual struggling against his or her social place?  During the massive upheaval of the early 20th century, the very terms by which we understand the human were upended.  This course explores how the works of literary Modernism expressed these transformations during an era of turbulent historical, technological, and cultural change.  

We take our cue from the “theatrical” dream life of an outsider, Hamlet.  By following his story through film and literature, we can better see how solitude becomes a force for change in modernity.  From the “big bang” of Hamlet’s self-interrogating presence on stage, we turn to Strindberg’s 1906 play on the fault lines of feminism, Lao She’s parable about innocence in corrupt Chinese society (1937), Rhys’s exploration of a Caribbean woman’s “social” resistance in London (1934), and Anand’s 1935 portrait of an outcaste youth in pre-independence India.  We will also watch screen versions of several of these texts to show how the image of the individual carries ethical weight in global culture.  

This is an SFU writing course: the skills learned throughout the term will help students with their written work in all faculties.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

• Understanding of World Literature as a field practice 
• Comprehension of terms and concepts of literary criticism
• Experience in comparing literary texts as social discourses 
• Competence in analysis across different cultural eras and media
• Improved writing skills

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: