EN 280 - Topics in Literature

Institution:

Colorado College

Subject:

Description:

Studies in a wide array of cultural, social, historical, generic, and aesthetic topics in British and American literature. Designed for first-year students, sophomores, non-majors, as well as majors. Block 1: Topics in Literature: Frankenstein's Legacy - Literature, Philosophy and Pop Culture. With Mary Shelley's novel as a starting point, we will examine the Frankenstein narrative as it develops from early 19th-century culture and science through 20th-century pop culture and film. We will pay particular attention to the way in which differenct times and discourses are able to bend this narrative to their own purposes. What anxieties about death, science, gender, identity, etc. inform the various representations and re-creations of this literary fantasy of an early 19th-century, teenaged girl (Also listed as Comparative Literature 200.) 1 unit - Davis. Block 1: Topics in Literature: Introduction to African Literature. Prerequisite: FYE Course. 1st Years Only. Must take English 280 block two for credit. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques requirement.) 1 unit - Osaki. Block 1: Topics in Literature: Introduction to African Literature. Prerequisite: FYE Course. 1st Years Only. Must take English 280 block two for credit. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques requirement.) 1 unit - Osaki. Block 1: Topics in Literature: This Land is Our Land Culture Clash in the Southwest. This interdisciplinary course explores how Southwestern land use is represented in American Literature. Analysis of literary texts should provoke discussion about how landscape, law, and modes of thought interact. Short field trips should encourage students to make connections between texts and their own lived experiences. Authors to include John Nichols, Rudolfo Anaya, and Frank Waters. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques requirement.) (Also listed as American Cultural Studies 253 and Southwest Studies 253.) 1 unit - Padilla. Block 2: Topics in Literature: Introduction to African Literature. Prerequisite: FYE Course. 1st Years Only. Must take English 280 block one for credit. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Diverse Cultures and Critiques requirement.) 1 unit - Seward. Block 2: Topics in Literature: Greek Lyric Poetry and Philosophy. This course explores the fact that both lyric poetry and philosophy, as we know them in the West, have their roots in the culture of archaic Greece. Through close reading of texts by such poets as Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus (7th and 6th centuries BCE). Xenophanes (6th century BC), and Simonides (6th to 5th centuries BCE) and equally close reading of texts by such Presocratic philosophers as Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles (largely 5th century BCE), we will examine the variety of ways in which these writers articulated and constituted their individual place in the space between culture and nature. We will turn to Plato's Ion and Symposium to see how the lyric and the philosophical are explicitly united in the writing of perhaps the greatest thinker in the Western tradition. In an effort to isolate what is distinctive about the lyric impulse and the philosophical impulse, we will also read from the Iliad of Homer (8th century BCE), the Oresteia of Aeschylus (5th century BCE), and Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (ca. 200CE ). The course will conclude with close reading Aeschylus (5th century BCE), and Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (ca. 200CE ). The course will conclude with close reading of several 20th century and contemporary Greek poets-including Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) and George Seferis (1900-1971), among others-whose work embodies the continuing dialogue between lyric poetry and philosophy. Exploring village life at harvest time as well as the ancient and modern polis, this course will be taught in Greece. After a short stay in Athens, we will spend roughly a week on the island of Lesbos (home of Sappho and Alcae

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.coloradocollege.edu

Phone Number:

(719) 389-6000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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