Summer 2015
Undergraduate Courses
Introduction to World Literature
195:101:B1; Index 02578
05/26/2015-07/02/2015
Instructor: Hsieh
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Fulfills Core Learning Goal AHp
Does not count toward major or minor
In this course, we will read selective texts written from different historical, linguistic and geographical backgrounds. We will examine how literary productions contribute to "world" building and the shaping of culture. Students are expected to participate actively in online threaded discussions. No final exam will be scheduled.
Required Texts:
1) Euripides. The Bacchae. Translated by Paul Woodruff. Hackett: Indianapolis, 1998.
2). Coetzee, John. Life and Times of Michael K. New York: New York, 2003.
The rest of the required readings will be readily available in PDF files.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction to World Literature
195:101:H1; Index 02583
07/06/2015-08/12/2015
Instructor: Rios
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Fulfills Core Learning Goal AHp
Does not count toward major or minor
The Internet course Introduction to World Literature (Summer 2015) will focus on the development of the themes of madness in both personal and political scale as it is reflected in selected works from the Twentieth Century across genres and cultural boundaries. We will focus on plays, short stories and film. The instructor will provide all the texts through the course Sakai webpage. No final exam will be scheduled.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Short Fiction
195:135:B1; Index 02582
05/26/2015 – 07/02/2015
Instructor: Levkovitch
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Fulfills Core Learning Goal AHp
Does not count toward major or minor
This course endeavors to help students hone critical thinking and close reading skills by examining such fundamental aspects of short fiction as theme, plot, setting, characterization, point of view and style. We will approach the task through some theoretical readings and a diverse selection of stories both originally in English and in translation, seeking overlooked elements in well-known classics and perhaps discovering some new authors. This is a chance to become familiar with major authors, from Boccaccio and Poe to Tolstoy and Kafka, through their smaller works. All readings will be available on the course website or online. No final exam will be scheduled.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Short Fiction
195:135:H1; Index 02579
07/06/2015 – 08/12/2015
Instructor: Lee
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Fulfills Core Learning Goal AHp
Does not count toward major or minor
This course aims to enhance students’ ability to appreciate the art of short fiction. We will read both canonical and relatively unknown short stories of multiple styles written in different times, places, and languages. The reading list of the course includes not only the works printed in more traditional way but also the ones originally published online via internet based literary magazines of today. Along the way, we will keep asking the following questions. How does the shortness of the literary mode affect its impact upon readers? How does short fiction differ from longer forms of fictional narrative such as novel? How does fiction, despite its fundamental artificiality, embody truth of our lives? Why do we read fiction to better understand reality and history? How does the world inform fiction and vice versa? What are the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of a work of fiction and how are they related to one another?
No final exam will be scheduled.
Texts of Jorge Luis Borges, Eileen Chang, Anton Chekhov, Edwidge Danticat, Mahasweta Devi, Arthur Conan Doyle, Radclyffe Hall, Murakami Haruki, Zora Neale Hurston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lu Xun, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Virginia Woolf and more will be discussed. All readings will be provided in English. You will have to read at least one story per day on weekdays throughout the course. A detailed description for each assignment will be included in the syllabus. Since this is an intensive short-term course, I have a strict policy of no make-up homework for any late/missed assignment.
Required Texts:
All readings and supplementary resources will be provided via our online class webpage or email. Registered students will get notified at the beginning of the course about how to access those materials.
Contact: Please direct your questions about the course to
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
World Mythology
195:150:B1; Index 02584
05/26/2015 – 07/02/2015
Instructor: Fanelli
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Does not count toward major or minor
"Myth" is a term that is difficult to stably define: it represents human experience, promotes the spiritual values of a culture, AND is something that can be proven to be false. Yet myths—true or false— are stories that we just cannot stop telling because they seem to serve a deeper psychological and sociological function. In this introductory online course, we will attempt to stabilize this definition by looking at a variety of texts from ancient to modern times that span the genres of fiction, religion, anthropology, film, theater, theory, and poetry. We will consider various categories of the traditional notion of myth, particularly in creation myths, fertility myths, and the hero narrative. We will take into account the feminist implications in certain myths and figures, such as Demeter/Persephone and Medusa, as well as Penelope in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. We will then contemplate how both traditional and modern fairy tales fit (or challenge) the category of myth and will end the course with Toni Morrison’s haunting and provocative African-American “ghost story” Beloved. No final exam will be scheduled.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
World Mythology
195:150:H1, Index 02580
07/06/2015 – 08/12/2015
Instructor: Mendoza
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
Does not count toward major or minor
This course will introduce students to texts that are foundational to world mythology. We will examine the form and contexts of myths from various cultures and eras, and come to appreciate them in their historical, literary, and aesthetic contexts. The class will engage with basic mythological themes such as cosmogony, the flood, the hero/heroine and the trickster, the afterlife, and the apocalypse. Students will also be introducedto basic reading techniques and interpretative methods that take into account the complexities of studying different cultures, reading texts translated from different languages, and working with artifacts from distant eras. Students will further develop analytical and critical thinking skills, and will improve their writing skills. As this is asummer course, no final exam will be scheduled.
Required Texts:
Segal. A Very ShortIntroduction to Myth. (OxfordU P ISBN-10: 0192803476)
Ovid. Metamorphosis. Tr. Knox. (W. W. Norton & Company ISBN-10: 039332642X)
Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays. (ISBN-10: 0140444254)
The Epic of Gilgamesh.Tr. Sanders (ISBN-10: 014044100X)
All other readings will be available electronically.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Mythology
195:244:B1; Index 02581
05/26/2015 – 07/02/2015
Instructor: Gonzagowski
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
In this online course, students will examine the form and content of myths from various cultures and eras, with particular emphasis on the ways that myths express the principal cultural values of the societies that create and retell them. We will be reading and studying short myths from various cultures including: Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Norse/Viking, Native American, Celtic, and African. These myths will be examined through various theoretical lenses including psychoanalysis, archaeology, sociology, and gender theory. The final project for the class will ask students to consider differences and similarities among the myths of three or four
cultures of their choosing. No final examination will be scheduled for this course.
Required Texts:
Powell, Barry B. *World Myth*. Boston: Pearson, 2014. ISBN 978-0205730520
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Mythology
195:244:H1; Index 02585
07/06/2015 – 08/12/2015
Instructor: Coleman
Hours by Arrangement
$100 Online Course Support Fee
Open to High School Students
What is myth? What is it for? This course will examine mythological works from a range of cultural contexts in order to trace some of the common features of myth, while also paying close attention to how myth functions differently in different times and places. Genres related to myth, such as “legend,” “fairy tale” and “folklore,” will be discussed, and we will think about how these narratives inform a society’s understanding of itself. We will apply techniques derived from literary theory and criticism to the analysis of myths, while also asking about the difference between myth and literature. What happens to myth when it becomes part of literary or filmic narratives? During the course, some of the major twentieth-century theories of myth will be introduced. No final exam will be scheduled.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
