Modern Literature, ENGL261, Spring 1999

Section 1, MWF 10-10.50am, Modern Languages Room 410

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shattuck/261.html

Course Description: from the Course Description Catalogue:A survey of works of fiction contributing to the development of continental European literature in the 20th century, with some attention paid to related developments in the East, Africa, and South America. The course will deal with social and intellectual trends relevant to the literature. This version of English 261 could be entitled "Modern Literature: Dis-covering Stories," since many of the texts in this course revise certain stories from viewpoints located in a specific time, geography and culture. For instance, our first pairing of texts involves a telling of the Vietnam War from two perspectives. Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country is narrated by Sam Hughes, a high school senior, who never saw her father, a young soldier killed in the Vietnam War. Novel Without a Name, by Duong Thu Huong, offers a narrator in the form of Quan, a North Vietnamese soldier who has been fighting for over a decade. Both novels deal with memory and patriotism, war and nationalism, relationships between the past and the present -- all concerns of a great deal of twentieth-century fiction. These two novels juxtapose viewpoints from opposite sides of the Vietnam War and teach us that each story is valid, each story is anchored in place and time, politics and passion.

This course asks you to read carefully and intensively as a means to questioning your own position in the world and learning about other ways of knowing. This class is discussion-intensive and encourages you to offer your honest opinion during class and in your writing.

Required Texts - all texts except for the Coursepack are available from the University Textbook Store

Other Requirements Course Requirements

As you read, you will also write about your thoughts and perceptions on a regular basis. Weekly reader responses ask you to reflect on the assigned reading and to put your questions and opinions into words. You'll also have the opportunity to join the discussion on the texts by researching and presenting scholarly articles and book reviews to the class. Two critical and creative papers with peer reviews and revisions will help you improve your writing.

reader responses - 50%

2 essay portfolios - 40%

analysis of criticism - 10%

Daily Plan