Spring 2001, MWF 2:30-3:50 Asst. Prof. Katherine Borland

Telephone: 366-9268 Email: borland.19@osu.edu

Office: F2018 Office hours: MW 4-5

Course description: This course explores the relationship between society and literature by analyzing the social and political elements of literature and film from diverse 20^th century cultures. We will be reading authors from three world regions: India, the Caribbean and Latin America and will examine themes of internal and external colonization, imperialism, tradition and modernization that arise in the novels and films we interpret. Throughout we will weigh the degree to which the individual is defined and constrained by his or her society against the importance of individual symbolic action to social and political change. We will also examine the role of the artist within or outside his or her society.

Since this is an honors course, students will be expected to help develop the historical and literary contexts within which the creative works have arisen.

Goals:

• Students will read and make sense of a number of novelistic forms from diverse regions of the world
• Students will develop an understanding of the influence of the "imagined" on the "real" and of the "real" on the "imaginable"
• Students will practice the art of learning through dialog (class discussion) and collective interpretation
• Students will learn to make effective class presentations
• Students will learn to post their work to the web

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude

Rigoberta Menchu I Rigoberta Menchu

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses

Required Films:

[All films will be available for students to review]

El Norte

Men with Guns
 
 
 
 

Course Requirements: Reading assignments must be completed before the class day listed in the syllabus. Students should take notes on readings and come to class prepared for discussion.

Eight reading responses 400 pts Attendance 100 pts

Contextual assignment 250 pts Final essay 250 pts

Attendance will be recorded for every class. Three points will be subtracted from the attendance grade for each unexcused absence. Excused absences require a doctor's note and prior notification. One point will be deducted from attendance for each excused absence.

No late work accepted

All work must be completed to receive a passing grade in the course. Please keep all returned work in a folder for your protection. Always make a backup copy of major assignments for your protection.

Please Note: Accommodations will be made for anyone with proven need provided that you see me immediately to discuss your individual situation.

Week 1

3/26 Introduction to course and course requirements.

The Learning Contract

Read: Burke, "Literature as Equipment for Living"

Reading Assignment: One Hundred Years of Solitude [OHYS], 1-37

One

3/28 Discussion: The Rhetorical Approach to Literature

One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Latin American

Boom and Cuba

Read: OHYS 38-123

Oral Contextual Assignments Distributed

3/30 Discussion: Macondo--An Alternate Reality/The Conquest Narratives

Read: OHYS 124-228

Reading Response Format Distributed

Week 2

4/2 Meet in Computer Lab for WebCT Introduction

First Response to the reading due--bring on disk, post to list.

4/4 Student Presentation: Latin American Post-Independence Wars

4/6 Discussion The Arrival of the Gringos

Read 298-338

Week 3

4/9 Student Presentations: The Banana Workers Strike

4/11 Student Presentations: The Magic of Magical Realism

Time in the Novel

Nature in the Novel

Gypsies, Indians and Scientists

Read OHYS 404-422.

4/13 Final Discussion of the Novel

Second Response Paper Due--Posted

Read Rachel Carson and Jane Eyre Background Sections of Wide

Sargasso Sea

Week 4

4/16 Student Presentations

Modernism

Reading Assignment: Part One Wide Sargasso Sea

4/18 Class Discussion: Part One of the Novel

What Happens at Coulibri or the Emotional World of Post-

Slavery Plantation life.

Reading Assignment: Part 2 [Beware the switch of narrators]

4/20 Class Discussion: Making Sense of the "Other"

Anglophone Black, Martinique Black, Obeah, Creole Whites,

Mulattos, British/Europeans, Men, Women

Reading Assignment: Part 3 Wide Sargasso Sea
 
 

Week 5

4/23 Third Response Paper Due--Post to Web

Final Discussion: Is Antionette mad?

Reading Assignment: I, Rigoberta Menchu

Midterm Essay distributed.

4/25 Student Presentations

Guatemalan Genocide 1960s-1990s

Reading Assignment: I, Rigoberta Menchu

4/27 Discussion: The "making" of the testimonial

Reading Assignment: I, Rigoberta Menchu

Week 6

4/30 Class Discussion: The content of a life

Instructions on viewing and analyzing dramatic film

Fourth Reading Response Due--Post to Web

Handout on guidelines for end of term paper

5/2 Film: El Norte

Write and Post a Response to the Film

5/4 Film: Men with Guns

Write and Post a Response to the Film

Week 7

5/7 Paper proposal due

Compare film and testimonial as media for symbolic political action

Reading Assignment: Part One of Satanic Verses

5/9 Student Presentation: The Indian Film Industry

Class Discussion Part One--What in the World is going on?

Reading Assignment: Part Two of Satanic Verses

5/11 Student Presentation: The Religion of Islam

Class Discussion Part Two--Are we following it yet?

Reading Assignment: Part Three, Ellowen Deeowen
 
 

 Week 8

5/14 Post Seventh Reading Response

Class Discussion Part Three--migrant communities

Student Presentation: The Iranian Revolution

Read Part Four: Ayesha

5/16 Class Discussion: The Pilgrimage as trope

Reading Assignment: Part Five, A City Visible but Unseen

5/18 Class Discussion: Part Five, Good and Evil

Reading Assignment: Return to Jahilia

Week 9

5/21 Student Presentation: The Satanic Verses Controversy

Discussion, Return to Jahilia

The Role of the Satirist in Traditional Societies

Reading Assignment:The Angel Azraeel

5/23 Class Discussion: Structure in the Novel

Reading Assignment: The Parting of the Arabian Sea

5/25 Class Discussion: Faith and Rationalism

Reading Assignment: A Wonderful Lamp

Week 10

5/28 Post Eighth Response Paper

Class Discussion: Experiments with fictional reality

5/30 Course Wrap-Up, Feedback and Celebration

Week 11

Final Paper Due