English 104: Prose Genres: Travel Writing

Spring 2000

Dr. Leith Davis

email: leith@sfu.ca

web site: http://www.sfu.ca/personal/leith

What is the relationship between geographical space and the space of the book? What are writers attempting to convey when they write of (and publish) their experiences around the globe? How have the function and form of travel writing altered over time? This course will attempt to answer these questions by examining a number of different occasions of travel writing over the past few centuries. We will consider travel in its many guises as: exploration; exploitation; tourism; escape; exile; and emigration. In each case, we will consider how travel writing constructs not only the space travelled to, but also the space travelled from. A final section of the course will address the question of what it means to write one's "home." Throughout the course we will also concern ourselves with the application of our questions to a cyberspace environment. The language of digital technology often uses metaphors of travel (ie. visiting sites, home pages, netscape explorer, etc.). Such language feels familiar to us, but it also raises the question of how the technology of the internet itself might have changed our concept of travel.

Texts:

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Custom courseware package

Requirements:

Discussion Assignment (pass/fail): 5%

First Essay (5 pp): 20%

Final Project (7 pp. plus website): 35%

Final Exam: 30%

Tutorial Attendance and Participation: 10%

Note: all assignments are due in the lecture. Late essays may be subject to a penalty of 1/3 of a grade per day.

Course Outline

Lectures

Week One

Jan. 6: Introduction to course:

Susan Stewart on travel and writing

Goals for the course

Part One: Writing Space

Week Two

Jan. 11: Writing Space: Maps versus Narratives in Print and Digital Technology

Discussion assignment 1 due

Jan. 13: Marco Polo, "The Glories of Kinsay"

Week Three

Jan. 18: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Jan. 20:

Part Two: Exploration/Exploitation

Week Four

Jan. 25: Invisible Cities

Jan. 27: excerpt from The Log of Christopher Columbus (in reader

Week Five

Feb. 1: excerpts from narratives of Simon Fraser and Captain Vancouver (in reader)

Feb. 2: excerpts from John Krakauer, Into Thin Air (in reader); Lene Gammelgaard, Climbing High (in reader)

Week Six

Feb. 8: excerpt from Goran Kropp, Ultimate High (in reader) and film

Feb. 10: excerpt from David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (in reader)

(in reader)

Week Seven

Feb. 15: excerpts from Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African, written by himself and Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave(in reader)

Essay #1 due

Feb. 17: Holiday

Part Three: Tourism/Escape

Week Eight

Feb. 22: Discussion of final exam; travel and cyberspace; begin excerpt from Samuel Johnson, Journey to the Western Isles (handout)

Feb. 24: Journey to the Western Isles continued

Week Nine

Feb. 29: excerpt from Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of A Tour of Scotland A.D. 1803 (in reader)

March 2: Film

 (in reader)

March 2: Film

Week Ten

March 7: excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas: Being an Account of Experiences and Observations in The Marquesas, Paumolus, and Gilbert Islands in the Course of Two Cruises, on the Yacht ‘Casco’ (1888) and the Schooner ‘Equator’(1889) and From Scotland to Silverado (in reader)

March 9: Roland Barthes, "The Blue Guide" (in reader); excerpt from Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas (in reader)

Week Eleven

March 14: Lady Florence Dixie, Across Patagonia (Chapter 1)

(Click below for access to document)

http://erc.lib.umn.edu:80/dynaweb/travel/dixipata/@Generic__BookView

plus: Ann Beattie, "The Occidental Tourist" and Alice Walker, "China" (in reader)

Part Four: Exile/Emigration

March 16: excerpt from "Gerald Keegan," Famine Diary: Journey to a New World (in reader)

Week Twelve

March 21: excerpt from Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes(in reader)

March 23: excerpt from Catherine Lang, O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered (in reader)

Week Thirteen

March 28: Eva Hoffman, "Life in a New Language" (in reader)

Part Five: Writing Home

March 30: Salman Rushdie, "Imaginary Homelands" and Maya Angelou, "A House Can Heal" (in reader)

Week Fourteen

April 4: Film:

Final project due

April 7: Rosa Ho, "Site-seeing Vancouver, Positioning Self" (in reader); Review

Tutorial Topics

Tutorials are designed to offer students a chance to discuss readings and material presented in the lecture in small groups. In addition, tutorials will focus attention on writing and assignments. Tutorials will vary, depending on the instructor, but will centre on the following topics:

Week One:

Introductions

Week Two:

Discussion Assignment: Maps vs. narrative

Week Three:

Marco Polo and Invisible Cities

Week Four:

Exploring the world before 1900

Week Five:

Contemporary exploration

Week Six:

Film as travel narrative

Week Seven:

Slave narratives

Week Eight:

Website construction 1

Tutorials D1.01 and D1.02 (Tues. Feb. 22 10:30): meet in AQ 3148.2

Tutorials D.103 and D1.04: (Tues. Feb. 22 3:30): meet in AQ 3148.2

Tutorial D1.05 (Thurs. Feb. 24 8:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D1.06 (Thurs. Feb. 24 10:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D1.07 (Thurs. Feb. 24 1:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D.108 (Thurs. Feb. 24 3:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Week Nine:

Website construction 2

Tutorials D.101 and D.102 (Tues. Feb. 29 10:30): meet in AQ 3148.2

Tutorials D.103 and D.104: (Tues. Feb. 29 3:30): meet in AQ 3148.2

Tutorial D1.05 (Thurs. March 2 8:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D1.06 (Thurs. March 2 10:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D1.07 (Thurs. March 2 1:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Tutorial D.108 (Thurs. March 2 3:30): meet in AQ3148.2

Week Ten:

Tourism: Barthes, Theroux, etc.

Week Eleven:

Tourism vs. Exile

Week Twelve:

Emigration:

Week Thirteen:

Emigration and Home

Week Fourteen:

Film; Rosa Ho

Please note:

• Students are expected to attend lectures and tutorials regularly.

• Late papers are subject to a penalty of 1/3 grade per day.

• If you are ill on the day an assignment is due of if there is a family emergency, please let me or your tutorial instructor know. If you are ill, please provide a note from your doctor along with the assignment when you have recovered. You will still be responsible for material covered when you were away.

• Plagiarism can result in anything from an "F" on a paper to expulsion. Please see the departmental policy on what counts as plagiarism.

• Deferred grades are discouraged, except in emergencies.

• This is the department scale of numerical equivalents for letter grades:

A+ 96-100

A 90-95

A 85-89

        B+ 80-84

        B 75-79

        B- 70-74

        C+ 65-69

        C 60-64

        C- 55-59

D 50-54