Literature - Winter 1999

Professor: Karen Bassi

In this course we will look at the ways in which categories of gender (masculinity and femininity) inform the tradition of Greek and Western mythology. We will begin with some fundamental questions. What is myth? What is gender? Is gender a kind of myth? We will then proceed to analyze gender relations in the context of particular myths in the Greek literary tradition , i.e., in epic, historical writings, lyric poetry, philosophy, and drama. In addition to readings from the ancient primary texts (in English) we will read selections from contemporary theoretical works which attempt to explain the structure of mythological narratives and the meaning of myth. Students will learn about the literary history of ancient Greece; attention will be paid to chronology, genre formation, and the use of ancient source material. Visual materials -- including slides, films, video, and CD ROM's -- will be discussed. The significance of ancient mythological figures and narratives in contemporary popular culture (i.e, Xena and Hercules) will also be considered. Topics will include: 1. the Amazons as a test case for the social construction of gender in Western thought and practice; 2. cosmology and gender in early creation myths, 3. the intersections of myth, gender, and ethnography in historical writing; 4. gender in the plots and production values of ancient tragedy, 5. the myth of sexual desire in philosophical thought; 5. myths of sexual difference in medical/biological texts. The goal is to learn about the meaning of myth in particular historical and cultural contexts, and to recognize the fundamental role that gender-based distinctions play in that meaning.

Primary Texts:

Herodotus, Histories (selections)

Hesiod, Theogony

Homer, Odyssey (selections)

Euripides, Helen, Bacchae

Plato, Symposium

Selections from the Hippocratic Corpus

Selections from Aristotle's zoological treatises

A Reader consisting of relevant articles and chapters from books will be required.

Assignments: One assignment using the Perseus Project (an interactive CD ROM about ancient Greek culture), a midterm and final examination, a 6-8 page paper.

Professor: Jody Greene
Time: MWF 11:00-12:10, plus section.
Location: Kresge Town Hall

Enrollment for this course is unlimited

This course offers an introduction to the major traditions of nature writing in England and America since the Romantic period. Scientific, literary, and polemical texts will alternate throughout the term, although much of our effort will be devoted to blurring the boundaries between these apparently distinct genres. We will read both poetry and prose, with particular attention to the ways in which competing definitions of "nature," "wilderness," and "civilization" achieve distinct aesthetic, political, and rhetorical goals. This course will emphasize critical reading and writing skills, and students will have the opportunity to practice the sort of close reading required in all upper division literature courses. Reading assignments will for the most part be short, in order to facilitate our efforts at close textual analysis.

After an introductory look at selected poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron, and at the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, we enter into our study of the two founding figures of the American nature writing tradition, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. We will read Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walking in their entirety, as well as selections from Walden and from Thoreau's poetry. Emerson's essay on Thoreau will be included on the syllabus. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman round out our study of American Romanticism, along with some later figures who placed themselves in the Romantic tradition, including John Muir and John Burroughs.

Early environmentalist writings by Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, and Rachel Carson offer an introduction to the more polemical strains in American nature writing, and to its explicitly political emphases. These texts will be interspersed with the work of scientific naturalists like Joseph Wood Krutch and Lewis Thomas, who frequently had their own polemical ends in mind. We will also have the opportunity, later in the quarter, to read Edward Abbey and Wallace Berry, and we'll conclude this section of the course reading a number of essays from Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild.

Throughout the second half of the quarter, we will turn our attention with increasing frequency to Native American voices both within and outside of these Romantic, scientific, and polemical traditions. Many of the more recent environmentalist figures, notably Gary Snyder and Barry Lopez, have attempted to incorporate Native histories and Native concerns into their environmental writings, and we will assess their attempts at affinity. We will also explore Native writers who have offered their own environmentalist visions, and some who have critiqued the Anglo tradition that has attempted to incorporate or speak for Native concerns. Readings include work by Paula Gunn Allen, Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Wendy Rose.

Course requirements:

Attendance at section is required on a weekly basis. Students who miss more than two sections will be required to submit extra written work in order to pass the course.

3 Required Papers:

A short analysis of a poem from the English Romantic tradition

One 4-5 page paper on Emerson and Thoreau

One 4-5 page paper on writers in the environmentalist tradition

This course will have a final exam and periodic quizzes

REQUIRED BOOKS:

· Finch, Robert, and John Elder, eds. The Norton Book of Nature Writing.New York: Norton, 1990.

· Dunn, Sara, ed. Poetry for the Earth. New York: Fawcett, 1991.

· Elder, John, ed. Nature and Walking. Boston: Beacon, 1994.

· Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. Berkeley: North Point, 1990.

* A required xerox packet will be available for purchase at Slug Books along with the books for the course.

Instructor: Louis Chude-Sokei

This course will examine the use made of the genre of science fiction by Black Writers throughout the course of this century. Although the class will focus largely on African American texts (writers like George Schuyler, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, Steve Henderson and others), we will also pay some attention to alternate takes on "science" and fiction in literature from other parts of the black diaspora. We will also pay some attention to science fiction narratives (in films, writing and music) which employ "race" as a sign/symptoms of utopia, dystopia and/or the state of culture and technology.

Revised 7/27/04.