Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2016 - WL 100 D100

Introduction to World Literature (3)

Class Number: 2837

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 6 – Dec 5, 2016: Thu, 10:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Exam Times + Location:

    Dec 14, 2016
    Wed, 3:30–6:30 p.m.
    Burnaby

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores how texts resonate in other cultural contexts, influence foreign traditions, and become works of world literature. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Literature has long explored what it is to move from place to place along with one’s social & political settings, but what of the interior movement of our feelings?  Beginning from Euripides dramatization of the threatening boundaries between public virtues & private passions, we will learn to see how the issues of global literature take on new metaphors of “reality” in being transferred from place to place.   

Following our classical introduction to the ethics of the body in world literature, we move to Oyono’s novel of colonial hypocrisy in Africa; Eileen Chang’s stories of being caught between Shanghai & Hong Kong; Duras’s exploration of love across cultural & racial lines; and Ghassan Kanafani’s tale of what it is to have borders rather than a country.  Each of these texts opens up a different way of conceiving how one’s cultural outlook never remains stable when an individual point of view is forced into the open.  

Given the political fallouts of such processes, we end with a question: if ‘language is the main instrument of man’s refusal to accept the world as it is,’ how might crossing the boundaries of the self be a way of rebelling against the idea of difference?

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

  • Introductory understanding of World Literature as a field practice                                    
  • Basic comprehension of terms and concepts of literary criticism                                    
  • Ability to cognize and compare literary texts as social discourses                                    
  • Starting ability to extend comparisons across different cultural media 

Grading

  • Participation & Attendance 15%
  • Group Presentation & Short Report: Poetics of Cinema 15%
  • Short Paper 20%
  • Term Paper 30%
  • Final Exam 25%

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Hippolytus                                 Euripides (R. Bagg trans.)           Oxford 978-0195072907

Houseboy                                  Ferdinand Oyono                       Waveland 978-1577669883  

Love in a Fallen City                   Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang)        NYRB 978-1590171783        

The Lover                                  Marguerite Duras                       Pantheon 978-0375700521

Men in the Sun                           Ghassan Kanafani                      3 Continent 978-0894108570
    

RECOMMENDED READING:

The Canadian Writer's Handbook: Essentials Edition.                Oxford UP: 2012.  978-0195430394

Registrar Notes:

SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://students.sfu.ca/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating.  Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community.  Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS