Summer 2025 - WL 103W D100
Early World Literatures (3)
Class Number: 2871
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
May 12 – Aug 8, 2025: Tue, 2:30–4:20 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani
aya23@sfu.ca
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Introduces ways of comparing early world literatures across time and space. May explore fundamental themes such as love, heroism, or the underworld. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.
COURSE DETAILS:
Love has the power to transform and transfix, to unravel us and remake us anew. But how does it shape us? What does it teach us? What does it mean to love? From Plato’s Diotima, who sees love as an ascent from the earthly to the love of wisdom, to Dante’s Beatrice, whose very image becomes a beacon of hope, to Rumi, for whom love is not just an emotion but a religion, we will explore how love encapsulates the experience of the sublime. In tracing the bond between lover and beloved, we will ask what happens when love collides with forces beyond its control – when it encounters death, madness, metamorphosis, and the ineffable. How does love survive loss? How does it birth poetry? And in what ways does it become a bridge between the human and the ideal?
Through close readings of literary masterpieces, we will uncover the many forms love has taken across cultures and centuries. Our journey will take us through Plato’s Symposium, where love is illumination, to Ovid’s haunting myth of Echo and Narcissus, where love turns to self-destruction. We will follow Dante’s La Vita Nuova, where poetry itself becomes an act of devotion, and Nezami’s Leyla and Majnun, where love burns so fiercely it transcends the physical world. Finally, we will turn to the ecstatic verses of Rumi, where love dissolves the self entirely. Across these works, we will search for the limits of love and the ways in which it both binds and liberates, wounds and exalts—always transforming, always teaching.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
Learning Objectives
- Recognize ambiguity as an invitation to engage in interpretation
- Develop an eye for detail in order to unpack close-readings
- Learn to explore the implications of your analysis
- Become familiar with how to write a thesis paper
Grading
- Midterm Exam 30%
- Final Paper (1st and 2nd draft): 10%+30% 40%
- Attendance/Active Participation 10%
- Art Project 5%
- Presentation 10%
- Writing exercises 5%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Required Texts: A selection of texts provided by the instructor.
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.
To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit:
- SFU’s Academic Integrity Policy: S10-01 Policy
- SFU’s Academic Integrity website, which includes helpful videos and tips in plain language: Academic Integrity at SFU
RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION
Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.