Class Schedule & Assignments (subject to change):
Reminder: Readings and assignments must be completed by the date on which they are listed.
Mon. 2/1: Introduction to course. John Guillory, “Canon” (in-class)
Wed. 2/3: “What is Enlightenment?” (section introduction), Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) and Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792)
Mon. 2/8: Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, “Poem 145,” “Poem 164,” “Philosophical Satire, Poem 92” (17th c.) and Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (1729)
Wed. 2/10: Feng Menglong, “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger” (1624)
Mon. 2/15: No Class, President’s Day.
Wed. 2/17: Moliere, Tartuffe (Acts 1 -3)
Mon. 2/22: Molière, Tartuffe (Acts 3-5)
Wed. 2/24: “Romantic Poets and Their Successors”; William Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey,” “The World is Too Much With Us,”; Rosalía de Castro, “As I composed this little book,” “I well know there is nothing,” “As the clouds,” You will say about these verses,” “Some say plants don’t speak”
Mon. 2/29: John Keats, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” “Bright Star,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale”
Wed. 3/2: Emily Dickinson: all poems in anthology
Mon. 3/7: Comparative Essay Due; “For World Literature*”
Wed. 3/9: “An Age of Revolutions in Europe and the Americas,” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) (Ch. I-IX)
Mon. 3/14: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) (Ch. X-end); selections from selections from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself*
Wed. 3/16: Ghalib: “I’ve Made My Home Next Door to You,” “Couplets,” “It Was Essential,” “My Tongues Begs for the Power of Speech,” “Now Go and Live in a Place,” “Petition: My Salary”
Mon. 3/21: August Strindberg, Miss Julie (1888)
Wed. 3/23: No class; classes follow Friday schedule.
Mon. 3/28: “Realism Across the Globe,” Rabindranath Tagore, “Punishment” (1893)
Wed. 3/30: Miss Julie performance
Mon. 4/4: Midterm Exam, in class
Wed. 4/6: Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Ch. I-IV
Mon. 4/11: Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Ch. V-end
Wed. 4/13: “Modernity & Modernism,” Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman” (1918) and “Medicine” (1919)
Mon. 4/18: “Modern Poetry,” T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; Pablo Neruda “Walking Around,” “Tonight I Can Write,” “I’m Explaining a Few Things
Wed. 4/20: Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929)
Mon. 4/25 & Wed. 4/27: No classes (Spring Break)
Mon. 5/2: Alice Walker “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens*”; Chinua Achebe, “Chike’s School Days” (1960); Ama Ata Aidoo, “Two Sisters” (1970)
Wed. 5/4: Adrienne Rich: “Diving Into the Wreck,” “Cartographies of Silence,” “Twenty One Love Poems,” “From An Old House in America” (all readings on BB)
Mon. 5/9: Peer Review Workshop; draft of anthology introduction due
Wed. 5/11: Nawal El Saadawi, “In Camera” (1980); Hanan Al-Shaykh, “The Women’s Swimming Pool” (1982)
Mon. 5/16: Junot Diaz, “Drown (1996)”; selections from Claudia Rankine, Citizen* (2014)
Wed. 5/18: Presentations
Final exam period (date TBD): Presentations, continued; Final projects due
Readings with an asterisk (*) will be available on Blackboard. All others are in the Norton Anthology.