251 Course Syllabus

251 Course Syllabus Ashkenas

Course title: Survey of World Literature One

Whenever possible, please use my email address rather than my office telephone to contact me. Email is far more reliable.

Web page address: http://www.nvcc.edu/home/dashkenas

Be sure you've saved my web page address, or know how to access my web page from the NOVA home page. All the essential course documents are linked to my web page, and they can be accessed at home as well as on campus.

Office hours: TBA.

Course prerequisites: You must have taken and passed English 111 and 112. You need not have taken any other literature course, but some experience reading stories analytically, rather than just for pleasure, is helpful. A background in literary terminology is also helpful. There’s a background handout (attached) that reviews this terminology. Class discussions should also help.

Attendance:

This is a traditional course, not a hybrid course with online requirements. The only online “work” you will be asked to do is to access and print the study guides on the reading material. (See the web links at the end of this syllabus). And if you can’t do this for any reason, let me know and I will print up copies for you. Course announcements and some course documents may also be found on Blackboard, but more often, an announcement in class or on Blackboard (or both) will tell you to go to my web page and access the handout from there.

However, reading documents or accessing announcements online is not intended to substitute for course attendance. All students are asked to note that this is a traditional course, and unless the College closes, classroom meetings will be your main source of information about the required work. No student who only comes to half the classes, as he would do if this were a hybrid course, should expect to pass. See more specific attendance guidelines below.

Assuming that the College has not been officially closed, a student in a sixteen-week course that meets twice weekly shouldn’t miss more than 5 classes a semester. (You shouldn’t miss more than 2 classes in a sixteen-week course that only meets once a week.) Students with repeated absences for scheduled classes may be withdrawn from the course regardless of the reason for the absence. Even if that doesn’t happen, students who miss classes are more likely to misunderstand directions, deadlines, or other course requirements. That normally lowers their grade or decreases their chance of passing the course.

Of course if the College closes for any reason, other arrangements will be made via Blackboard, my web page, or both.

Texts:

The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by N.K. Sandars (Penguin paperback edition)

The Odyssey, translated by George Herbert Palmer (Barnes & Noble Classic paperback edition)

Monkey; A Journey to the West, translated by David Kherdian (Shambhala paperback edition)

Since we’ll be comparing traditional epic narratives to modern movie epics, we’ll also be seeing movies in this class. How many depends on how fast we move through the written material; which ones depends on majority vote in class. You must see the films that the majority of your classmates want to see; you can’t free-lance and write about anything you want to. Films we’ve watched in the past include Heart of Darkness, Big Fish, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Troy, the Odyssey, Waterworld, Moby Dick, Fellowship of the Ring, Pan’s Labyrinth, Forrest Gump, Hancock. But I’m open to doing something different. For example, in “The Hero’s Adventure,” our opening class video, Joseph Campbell identifies space as the new frontier that invites the hero to test his skills in confronting the unknown. This suggests that science fiction might be a rich source of comparative film literature for this class. Consider the possibilities, from classics like Bladerunner, T-2, and the Abyss to Will Smith’s more recent heroics in films like I, Robot and I Am Legend. I’m also inspired by two sci fi films I saw for the first time recently, K-Pax (with Kevin Spacey) and Solaris (with George Clooney). And of course I’ll entertain reasonable suggestions from the class.

Course Calendar: The calendar of assignments for this class will be given in a separate handout. Changes in the schedule will be announced on Blackboard and/or in class.

Assignments: If all goes according to plan, there are 3 out-of-class papers in the fall or spring semester. (In the summer semester, because of time constraints, there are 2 out of class papers and 1 in-class final exam.) For each assignment, you’ll be asked to choose one from a list of options for essay answer questions. These will be set essay topics that require you to compare more than one work we’ve viewed or read to that date. All your written work for this course should be original, unresearched, and based on your own personal reading of the books and/or viewing of the movies. I do not want essays based on research, even if the research is properly documented—and certainly not if it isn’t.

I also reserve the right to add other assignments if I think they’re necessary, including pop quizzes if class discussion is boring because students don’t keep up with the reading.

For more information on the design of the course and course readings, see the attached links. You may ignore any links that are not relevant to current assignments; we don't use every link every semester. See the course calendar for more information; also, pay attention to what I tell you in class.

Readings for English 251

Introduction to the World Literature Sequence

Introduction to the Terms of Literary Analysis

Review of Literary Terms

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh Essay Topics, together with directions for how to do a literary critique

Sample Paper Comparing Gilgamesh to Captain Marlow in Heart of Darkness

Second Sample Paper Comparing Gilgamesh to Captain Marlow in Heart of Darkness

Sample Paper Comparing the Women in Gilgamesh to the Women in Heart of Darkness

Monkey

Forbidden Kingdom

Paper Topics: Comparing Gilgamesh to the Monkey King