Spring 2021 - ENGL 121 D100
STT-From Plague to Covid: Literatures of Pandemic (3)
Class Number: 8452
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 11 – Apr 16, 2021: Wed, Fri, 10:30–11:45 a.m.
Burnaby -
Exam Times + Location:
Apr 26, 2021
Mon, 11:59–11:59 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Team Taught Department of English
dkc12@sfu.ca
1 778 782-3672
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Team-taught course exploring how English literature engages with, reflects, and interrogates pandemic disease, starting with the "Black Death" in the fourteenth-century and moving through contemporary literary responses to pandemic crises. Will introduce students to the literature of disease and contagion across time periods, literary genres, and cultural traditions.
COURSE DETAILS:
We have been here before.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health organization declared COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, to be a global pandemic. In the months since, we have seen our lives change in ways both dramatic and mundane, and we have watched as the ongoing aftershocks of the disease ripple across the cultural, social, economic, and academic structures that, for better and for worse, we have long taken for granted. As many people have noted, it seems like the world has fundamentally changed in only a few short months.
As "novel" as the novel-coronavirus pandemic might feel to us, however, this is hardly the first time that pandemic disease has made its mark on the world. In 1347, a virulent strain of the bacteria Yersinia pestis spread out across Europe, North Africa, and Asia and killed upwards of 50% of their population, a cataclysm now commonly referred to as the Black Death. No less deadly were the diseases that Europeans first brought to the shores of North and South America: smallpox, typhus, influenza, and others. Such diseases decimated Indigenous populations and are thus inextricably bound up with settler colonialism, in all of its manifold horrors. Indeed, the story of pandemic disease is never only the story of the disease itself. It is, more accurately, the story of how that disease shapes and is shaped by the cultures around it, how it catalyzes social movements and ignites protest and backlash, how it alternately highlights systems of inequality and levels social difference, how it changes the way we live, think, feel, love, read, write, and die.
By both engaging the specificities of individual disease outbreaks and touching on the universality of pandemic itself, literature provides one important lens through which we can examine and understand the impact of pandemic disease. This team-taught class will explore not only how diseases such as plague, influenza, AIDS, and covid-19 (about which literature is only now emerging) have informed literature but also, and more important, how literature responds to and informs our experience of pandemic itself.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
Literary Mindedness: By the end of the course, the student will have had the opportunity to learn how literature from a broad range of national and cultural traditions, as well as across periods, responds to and engages with pandemic disease.
Literary Knowledge: By the end of the course, the student will have had the opportunity to read important texts from the English literary tradition and will have considered the role of disease and contagion within them.
Analytical Proficiency: By the end of the course, the student will have been introduced to practical skills in the field of literary analysis, as well as in the specific topical approaches of the course.
Research Proficiency: This is not a research intensive course; however, by the end of the course, the student will have had the opportunity to perform some basic contextualizing and investigative research.
Cultural Literacy: By the end of the course, the student will have had the opportunity to learn how literary works can reflect, interrogate, and generate their specific cultural, social, and intellectual environments, particularly in regard to the pandemic disease.
Grading
- Short Paper 1 (approx. 1500-2000 words) 25%
- Short Paper 2 (approx. 1500-2000 words) 25%
- Final Exam 35%
- Online Responses and Participation 15%
NOTES:
For many of the longer works listed on the course outline (including Daniel Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year, Max Brooks' World War Z, and others), students will be required to read only excerpts of the full text. Among the selected full readings are short stories and poems, a graphic novel, a mid-length play, and a novel. In this respect, the course has been designed to have a relatively light reading load compared to other English classes. We recognize that we are all still living through just the sort of pandemic that many of these works discuss. Experience has got to count for something, right?
Materials
MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:
Because of the uncertainty of book-ordering during the pandemic, students are encouraged to begin obtaining their course texts as early as possible. All of the texts for this course are available in both print and digital editions and can be ordered through online distributors and local book shops.
REQUIRED READING:
Pearl: Text and Translation, ed Jane Beal. (Broadview, 2019). eBook available through the publisher’s website: https://broadviewpress.com/product/pearl/.
ISBN: 9781554814589
Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Penguin Books, 2011). Kindle eBook available.
ISBN: 9780141195315
Tony Kushner, Angels in America (Theatre Communications Group, 2011) Kindle and Kobo eBooks available.
ISBN: 9781559363846
Gord Hill, 500 Years of Resistance (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010). Online access available through SFU libraries.
ISBN: 9781551523606
Kevin Chong, The Plague (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018). Kindle eBook available.
ISBN: 9781551527185
Max Brooks. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Three Rivers, 2007). Kindle and Kobo eBooks available.
ISBN: 9780307346612
Short texts and excerpts from longer works, including "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pardoner's Tale," Journal of a Plague Year, and more, will be available through the course Canvas site.
Department Undergraduate Notes:
IMPORTANT NOTE Re 300 and 400 level courses: 75% of spaces in 300 level English courses, and 100% of spaces in 400 level English courses, are reserved for declared English Major, Minor, Extended Minor, Joint Major, and Honours students only, until open enrollment begins.
For all On-Campus Courses, please note the following:
- To receive credit for the course, students must complete all requirements.
- Tutorials/Seminars WILL be held the first week of classes.
- When choosing your schedule, remember to check "Show lab/tutorial sections" to see all Lecture/Seminar/Tutorial times required.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://www.sfu.ca/students/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
TEACHING AT SFU IN SPRING 2021
Teaching at SFU in spring 2021 will be conducted primarily through remote methods. There will be in-person course components in a few exceptional cases where this is fundamental to the educational goals of the course. Such course components will be clearly identified at registration, as will course components that will be “live” (synchronous) vs. at your own pace (asynchronous). Enrollment acknowledges that remote study may entail different modes of learning, interaction with your instructor, and ways of getting feedback on your work than may be the case for in-person classes. To ensure you can access all course materials, we recommend you have access to a computer with a microphone and camera, and the internet. In some cases your instructor may use Zoom or other means requiring a camera and microphone to invigilate exams. If proctoring software will be used, this will be confirmed in the first week of class.
Students with hidden or visible disabilities who believe they may need class or exam accommodations, including in the current context of remote learning, are encouraged to register with the SFU Centre for Accessible Learning (caladmin@sfu.ca or 778-782-3112).