ENGL 181MT: |
Studies in the Nineteenth Century
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Modern Thought and Literature |
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| Fall 2009 |
| Instructor: Kay Young |
| Meets on: MW 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM SH 1415 |
| Prerequisites: Writing 2, 50, or 109; English 10; or upper-division standing |
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| Satisfies a GE area G and a Writing requirement |
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| May be repeated for credit with consent of the department chair to a maximum of 8 units if course content varies. |
This course will cover English texts and European texts in translation from 1848-1984.
What does it mean to be a human being and to be alive? This is the fundamental question of literature and of our lives. This question and new attempts to answer it come to full consciousness in the late 19^th - and 20^th centuries in modern thought and literature. In this course we’ll move from the philosophic narratives of Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud, to the aesthetic narratives of Charlie Chaplin, Dostoevsky, Woolf, Morrison, and Kundera to consider how they pose the question of life’s meaning and how they suggest responses as narrative to help us in pursuit of our own search for meaning. This is a course for those who like to read and think (a lot) about the nature of being.
We will view Philippe Petit's film Man on Wire. |
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