Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduces ways of comparing modern world literatures across time and space. May explore topics such as revolution, technology, or existentialism. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

The global upheavals of the early 20th century upended the ways in which human nature was understood. In that larger era of turbulent historical, technological, and cultural transformation, literature and art came to reflect new notions of human value and identity. And yet, as our first text suggests, the “modernist” revolution in human nature was not entirely new – not least where Hamlet suggests how individual consciousness can appear as a force for change in modernity.

Pursued by that prince’s self-interrogating presence, and with reference to the visual arts, we move on to Strindberg’s play on the fault lines of class, feminism, and the individual (Miss Julie 1888), Mu Shiying’s stream-of-consciousness Chinese short stories (1938) and Zhang Ailing’s mid-century Hong Kong fictions (Eileen Chang 1944), as well as Mulk Raj Anand’s novel concerning an outcaste youth in pre-independence India (Untouchable 1935). In order to deepen our comprehension of how the “image” of the individual carries ethical weight, we also watch the famous 1957 European film, The Cranes are Flying, alongside cinematic scenes from our course plays.

Grading

Materials

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