Welcome to General Humanities II, or as I like to call it, "The Conversation Between Literature and Culture, Part 2" (and no, you don't need to have taken Part 1). This
course is a survey of literature from around 1700 to the present. However,
instead of reading one work after another chronologically, this class attempts
to forge connections between the past and present, showing the ‘family tree’ of
ideas that have flowered in our own century. To do this, we’ll look at a wide
range of literature, from novels to poetry to comic books to help us analyze
the cultural DNA of humanity. Are we fundamentally different than we were 50, 100, or
even 500 years ago? What problems have we solved—and which continue to haunt
us? Also, what role did literature play in forging our collective humanity: did
it record our progress or provide the blueprint to follow? Hopefully this
course will give you a few new questions to ask yourself on long, dark
nights...and possibly, one or two tentative solutions to help you sleep.
REQUIRED
TEXTS: (a) Voltaire, Candide (Penguin or other edition); (b) Krakauer, Into
the Wild; (c) Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin or other edition); (d) Claremont Dover
See you in class every MWF @ 10:00!
[NOTE: The posts below this are from previous semesters--no need to read them unless you're curious. Our work will be posted above this post.]
[NOTE: The posts below this are from previous semesters--no need to read them unless you're curious. Our work will be posted above this post.]
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