Spring 2026 - WL 305W D100
Sages and Poets (4)
Class Number: 2778
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 5 – Apr 10, 2026: Thu, 2:30–5:20 p.m.
Burnaby -
Exam Times + Location:
Apr 23, 2026
Thu, 8:30–11:30 a.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani
aya23@sfu.ca
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Prerequisites:
45 units.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Showcases the insights, visions, and struggles of sages and poets across the ages in world literature. Focuses on how these figures push the limits of language, embark on mystical quests, explore ideas of faith, or create supernatural worlds. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.
COURSE DETAILS:
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models renews the question of what it means to think, speak, and create. As machines learn to simulate language, they challenge us to reconsider what makes our minds unique: is intelligence reducible to pattern and prediction or does it arise through thought, imagination, and creativity.
In this course, we turn to poets and philosophers who have long wrestled with such questions. Their works reveal that language is not merely a system of communication but a living art that continually tests its own limit. Together, we will examine how writers confront this limit and struggle with what can and cannot be said. We will ask ourselves what forms of knowledge emerge when language breaks down, and how silence, absence, and the ineffable become part of a text’s meaning. We will contemplate how failure of expression might illuminate what no algorithm can replicate: an experience that belongs to living speech. In doing so, we will explore what remains distinctly human in an age when machines can imitate our words but not our creativity.
Grading
- Attendance/Active Participation 10%
- Midterm Exam 20%
- Midterm Exam AI Reflection + Rewrite 10%
- Final In-Class Paper 30%
- Final Paper AI Reflection + Rewrite 10%
- Art Project + Reflection 5%
- Writing Exercises + Rewrites 10%
- Presentation 5%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
- Friedrich Nietzsche. “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense.”
- Jalal al-Din Rumi. Selected Poems.
- Selected Writings and Selected Poems.
- On the Way to Language.
- Nourbese Philip. Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence.
- Vladimir Jankelevitch. “Music and Silence.”
- Hölderlin. Selected Poems.
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.