Class Schedule & Assignments (subject to change):
Reminder: Readings and assignments must be completed by the date on which they are listed.
Updated 4/27
Wed. 1/28: Introduction to course. John Guillory, “Canon” (in-class)
Mon. 2/2: “What is Enlightenment?” (section introduction), Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) and Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792)
Due: Responses (hard copy) to two study questions.
Wed. 2/4: Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, “Poem 145,” “Poem 164,” “Philosophical Satire, Poem 92” (17th c.) and Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (1729)
Mon. 2/9: “Early Modern Japanese Popular Literature” and Ihara Saikaku, “Life of a Sensuous Woman” (1686)
Wed. 2/11: William Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey,” “The World is Too Much With Us,” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Frost at Midnight” (recommended: “Romantic Poets and Their Successors”)
Mon. 2/16: No class.
Wed. 2/18: John Keats, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” “Bright Star,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and 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”
**Due: Exploratory assignment for comparative essay**
Mon. 2/23: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) (Ch. I-IX)
**Due: Bring three copies of your the introduction to your comparative essay (including thesis) to class**
Wed. 2/25: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) (Ch. X-end)
**Due (optional): Email essay draft to professor before beginning of class period if you’d like feedback for revision. Students may also bring drafts to office hours, or submit on Monday if they’d like feedback earlier.**
Mon. 3/2, Comparative Essay Due, Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler, Acts I & II (1890)
Wed. 3/4: Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler¸Acts III & IV **Attend staged reading in Recital Hall (VC) at 2:50 PM**
Mon. 3/9: Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Wed. 3/11: Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivner (1853)
Mon. 3/16: Emily Dickinson: all poems in selection
Wed. 3/18: Ghalib: “I’ve Made My Home Next Door to You,” “It Was Essential,” “My Tongues Begs for the Power of Speech,” “Now Go and Live in a Place,” “Petition: My Salary”
Mon. 3/23: Midterm Exam, in class
Wed. 3/25: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864) (up to and including Part II, Ch. II)
Mon. 3/30: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864) (finish)
Wed. 4/1: Rabindranath Tagore, “Punishment” (1893) and “Kabuliwala” (1894)
**Spring Break**
Mon. 4/13: Marcel Proust, from Swann’s Way, “Combray” (1913)
Wed. 4/15: Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman” (1918) and “Medicine” (1919)
Mon. 4/20: Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own” (Chapters 1-3, in anthology) (1929)
Wed. 4/22: Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own” (Chapter 6, on Blackboard) (1929); Alice Walker “One Child of One’s Own*” OR “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”
Mon. 4/27: Chinua Achebe, “Chike’s School Days” (1960); Ama Ata Aidoo, “Two Sisters” (1970)
Wed. 4/29: Adrienne Rich: “Diving Into the Wreck,” “Cartographies of Silence,” “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev,” “Twenty One Love Poems,” “From an Old House in America,” “Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib”(1969-1978) and Kamala Das: “Composition” and “Loud Posters” (1973) (all readings on BB) (We’ll look at the Das readings in class)
Mon. 5/4: Nawal El Saadawi, “In Camera” (1980); Hanan Al-Shaykh, “The Women’s Swimming Pool” (1982)
Wed. 5/6: Draft of anthology introduction due for peer review.
Mon. 5/11: Junot Diaz, “Drown (1996)”; selections from Claudia Rankine, Citizen* (2014)
Wed. 5/13: Presentations
Final exam period (date TBD): Presentations, continued; Final projects due