What power do novels exercise? Can they change people’s minds? Can they lead the world to a better place? This course will look at two hundred years of protest and reform novels in the United States, seeking to understand the problems they were trying to address and discern if the solutions they offered had any effect. Texts will include a range of novels from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. The course will include frequent reading quizzes and two formal papers, as well as informal writing assignments.

THIS COURSE IS OPEN *ONLY* TO FRESHMAN WELLS SCHOLARS.

THIS COURSE IS OPEN *ONLY* TO INCOMING STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE INTENSIVE FRESHMAN SEMINAR (IFS) IN JULY-AUGUST 2024.

Humans tell stories about themselves and their experiences to connect with others, share values, build relationships, and create kinship and friendship bonds. We all have stories to tell, but what makes stories compelling enough that others (i.e., strangers) would want to hear them or purchase them as books to read or listen to? What is the purpose – beyond entertainment – of stories of the self? How do memoirists shape their stories to advance a perspective or set of values? How important is authenticity: Does it matter that the events in the narrative really happened exactly as narrated? Does it matter if events are exaggerated or even made up?

In this seminar, we will read and discuss autobiographical texts that not only relate compelling stories, but also provoke questions such as those articulated above. We will also sample some key autobiographical texts in the Western tradition in order to give context to the more contemporary memoirs or autobiographies we study. Finally, students will complete a final project of their choosing, which may take several forms, including, but not limited to, a comparative analysis of two memoirs, an in depth study of one memoir and its contexts, or an essay where students create a short memoir of their own based on a flashpoint event in their lives.

***PLEASE NOTE: HON-BM 299 (4 cr) is a placeholder course number.  It represents a combination of GNDR-G 225 (3 cr)and a 1-credit, HON-H 299 discussion section that meets separately.  To earn honors credit for GNDR-G 225, you MUST enroll in HON-BM 299.  At the end of the first week of classes, HON-BM 299 will dissolve, and you will automatically be placed on the rosters for GNDR-G 225 (3450) and HOH-H 299 (12591), and you will receive a grade in each of these courses.***

HON-H 299 Description:

I will ask you to bring many of the theories and texts we read in the class up to date.   We will watch additional films/videos to supplement your formal section of G225 and each of you will be part of a group presentation illustrating the weekly reading according to syllabus dates using an outside media clip  that is more than five years old.  You will be asked to illustrate and “teach” a weekly essay through a Power Point presentation that will be graded by your peers.  These presentations will require you to:

• Identify the argument of the piece from the course and discuss its strengths and weaknesses
• Select a specific scene or scenes from a media text that allow you to illustrate, contradict, or expand upon the author’s point
• Lead the class through a discussion based on the question or questions you give connected to the reading
• *****Please note, it is not required that you either like or agree with the essay you present on, only that you consider it fairly and present it to your peers in a way that does justice to both******
• Follow the Guidelines set out for you EXPLICITLY under “PowerPoint Guide” under “Files.”

Your grades will be determined by class participation, graded in class writing assignments, and your in-class presentation (graded by your peers under my purview).

In this course, we will read seven 21st-century American novels. The novels we read vary in style and content, just as the authors vary in their race, ethnicity, gender, regional, and national background. All are concerned with the power of circumstance, however, and with the role difference, of, for example, class, gender, race, color and sexuality, play in shaping a person’s life. The first book we will read is part of the transnational turn that is a key trend in 21st-century American fiction. That book, Americanah, is as much concerned with the country in which its author was born, Nigeria, as it is with the United States. After Adichie, we will read Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Part road novel, part prison narrative, part family tale, Ward’s novel offers a sometimes mythic account of African-American life. Our next read is Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, which focuses on a bit part actor struggling against Asian and Asian-American stereotypes. Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is set largely in a rundown section of a town that eerily resembles Notre Dame, Indiana. Taking place in a dilapidated building full of residents down on their luck, the novel rapidly shifts points of view. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior is both a love story and a climate change novel about butterflies set in rundown rural Tennessee. Danielle Dutton’s Margaret the First focuses on the life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. A novelist and the first woman to be invited to a meeting of the Royal Society—it would be 200 years before another woman was invited. A seventeenth-century celebrity, if that is the word, referred to as “Mad Madge” because of the clothes that she wore. If “MeToo” is still a movement then Margaret the First should be seen as one of its founding texts. We will end the class with a novel about the white working class, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, a family novel full of love, loyalty, crack, violence, and death. Range of method and content is one key to the class, then. I want us to think, too, however, about the connections between the books we read, our ability to connect, or otherwise, to the characters they portray, the different ways in which the novels explore their characters’ attempts to connect, and the connection between characters and the worlds in which they, and you, live. If you read the books in the way I want you to read them, you will put yourself in the heads of the writers you read, and the people you read about, however different they may be from you.

READINGS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah.
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch.
Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior.
Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First.
Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone.

NOTE: Please buy physical copies of the books. No e-books allowed.

In this course, we will read seven 21st-century American novels. The novels we read vary in style and content, just as the authors vary in their race, ethnicity, gender, regional, and national background. All are concerned with the power of circumstance, however, and with the role difference, of, for example, class, gender, race, color and sexuality, play in shaping a person’s life. The first book we will read is part of the transnational turn that is a key trend in 21st-century American fiction. That book, Americanah, is as much concerned with the country in which its author was born, Nigeria, as it is with the United States. After Adichie, we will read Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Part road novel, part prison narrative, part family tale, Ward’s novel offers a sometimes mythic account of African-American life. Our next read is Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, which focuses on a bit part actor struggling against Asian and Asian-American stereotypes. Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is set largely in a rundown section of a town that eerily resembles Notre Dame, Indiana. Taking place in a dilapidated building full of residents down on their luck, the novel rapidly shifts points of view. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior is both a love story and a climate change novel about butterflies set in rundown rural Tennessee. Danielle Dutton’s Margaret the First focuses on the life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. A novelist and the first woman to be invited to a meeting of the Royal Society—it would be 200 years before another woman was invited. A seventeenth-century celebrity, if that is the word, referred to as “Mad Madge” because of the clothes that she wore. If “MeToo” is still a movement then Margaret the First should be seen as one of its founding texts. We will end the class with a novel about the white working class, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, a family novel full of love, loyalty, crack, violence, and death. Range of method and content is one key to the class, then. I want us to think, too, however, about the connections between the books we read, our ability to connect, or otherwise, to the characters they portray, the different ways in which the novels explore their characters’ attempts to connect, and the connection between characters and the worlds in which they, and you, live. If you read the books in the way I want you to read them, you will put yourself in the heads of the writers you read, and the people you read about, however different they may be from you.

READINGS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah.
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch.
Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior.
Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First.
Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone.

NOTE: Please buy physical copies of the books. No e-books allowed.

“Modern Madness” examines how various forms of madness have been defined and treated between 1800 and the present. We will see madness described as the result of heredity, moral degeneracy, upbringing, trauma, fatigue, and body chemistry. The asylum has been an almost constant presence over the past 200 years, and we will pay particular attention to the different ways in which patients have been treated in, or more recently denied access to, such asylums. The writers we read are from America, England, France, Germany, Martinique, and the former Soviet Union. Because the work we read is international in scope, we will look at how country, political regime, and period shape the practice of psychology and psychiatry. The class, then, though part of its title is “modern,” has less to say about contemporary views of madness than it does about the cultural, social, and political implications of madness in periods and places different from our own. To those who live in them, every period is modern. What is more, as we shall see throughout the class, definitions of madness not only change, but they are also a topic of disagreement and debate within every decade. A simple title, then, for a complex topic. Success in the class depends in part on the ability to see the world in the same way as the writers you read.

Required Reading

Greg Eghigian, From Madness to Mental Health: Psychiatric Disorder and Its Treatment in Western Civilization.

Roy Porter, Madness: A Brief History.

NOTE: Please buy physical copies of the books. No e-books. Almost everything you read is in Eghigian’s anthology. If it is not in the anthology, you’ll find it posted under either Pages or Files at Canvas.

***PLEASE NOTE:  THIS CLASS IS BEING REPLACED BY HHC-H 211, CLASS NUMBER 35756.  HON-H 211, CLASS NUMBER 13711, WILL BE CANCELED.  CHECK iGPS FOR UPDATES.***

THE CHANGE IS IN NUMBER AND TITLE ONLY — HHC-H 211 CARRIES THE SAME DISTRIBUTION CREDIT AS HON-H 211, INCLUDING GEN ED A&H AND CASE CREDIT AS HON-H 211, INCLUDING IW AND A&H.

This fall we will focus on the qualities that make a person a hero(ine), in the eyes of ancient authors, and compare those qualities with ones we admire today.  Beginning with Gilgamesh’s heroic struggle to overcome death, and ending with Satan’s struggle to undermine God’s (according to Milton) plan for mankind, we will read, discuss, and write about ten of the ancient and early modern world’s greatest accounts of heroism.  In the final week and a half, we will discuss first-person accounts of heroes written by each of the members of the class.

Written work for the course will consist of daily written discussion questions, three critical discussions of 3-5 pages, and a final 6-10 page creative paper.

Course texts:  Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil’s Aenead,
                             Njal’s Saga
Sophocles’s Antigone & Oedipus Rex
Seneca’s Trojan Women
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus & Hamlet
Milton’s Paradise Lost.

***PLEASE NOTE:  THIS CLASS IS BEING REPLACED BY HHC-H 211, CLASS NUMBER 35755.  HON-H 211, CLASS NUMBER 2056, WILL BE CANCELED.  CHECK iGPS FOR UPDATES.***   THE CHANGE IS IN NUMBER AND TITLE ONLY — HHC-H 211 CARRIES THE SAME GEN ED AND CASE CREDIT AS HON-H 211, INCLUDING A&H AND IW.

This fall we will focus on the qualities that make a person a hero(ine), in the eyes of ancient authors, and compare those qualities with ones we admire today.  Beginning with Gilgamesh’s heroic struggle to overcome death, and ending with Satan’s struggle to undermine God’s (according to Milton) plan for mankind, we will read, discuss, and write about ten of the ancient and early modern world’s greatest accounts of heroism.  In the final week and a half, we will discuss first-person accounts of heroes written by each of the members of the class.

Written work for the course will consist of daily written discussion questions, three critical discussions of 3-5 pages, and a final 6-10 page creative paper.

Course texts:  Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil’s Aenead,
                             Njal’s Saga
Sophocles’s Antigone & Oedipus Rex
Seneca’s Trojan Women
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus & Hamlet
Milton’s Paradise Lost.

This fall we will focus on the qualities that make a person a hero(ine), in the eyes of ancient authors, and compare those qualities with ones we admire today.  Beginning with Gilgamesh’s heroic struggle to overcome death, and ending with Satan’s struggle to undermine God’s (according to Milton) plan for mankind, we will read, discuss, and write about ten of the ancient and early modern world’s greatest accounts of heroism.  In the final week and a half, we will discuss first-person accounts of heroes written by each of the members of the class.

Written work for the course will consist of daily written discussion questions, three critical discussions of 3-5 pages, and a final 6-10 page creative paper.

Course texts:  Gilgamesh, Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, Virgil’s Aenead,
                             Njal’s Saga
Sophocles’s Antigone & Oedipus Rex
Seneca’s Trojan Women
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus & Hamlet
Milton’s Paradise Lost.