Reading & Composition

This course will focus on the literature of two major empires – Russia and Britain – and will examine how these empires use literature to create the “identity” of those living in the empires’ respective colonies. What is an empire, and what is a nation? How is literature used to understand another culture? Is that understanding always (or ever) accurate? How does literature influence, or even create, our views of other nations, or even our views of our own nation? How are stereotypes, misunderstandings, and fabrications used for personal or national gain? And what happens when those who are stereotyped are finally given the chance to speak with their own voices? We will contemplate these questions, and others, as we work our way through diverse texts chosen from a time period spanning more than three hundred years. Along the way, we will learn how to engage closely with the texts in order to develop, refine, and defend solid literary arguments.

Texts:

William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Course reader:

Excerpt from James Joyce, Ulysses
James Joyce, “The Dead”
Excerpt from George Orwell, “The Lion and the Unicorn”
Excerpts from David Eagleman, Sum: forty tales from the afterlives
Excerpts from Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
Lord Byron, “The Bride of Abydos”
S.T. Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Alexander Pushkin, “The Captive of the Caucasus”
Vladimir Makanin, “The Caucasian Prisoner”
Mikhail Lermontov, “Bela”
Excerpts from Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities”
Y.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Films:

Dziga Vertov, One Sixth of the World
Selections from the Colonial Film Archive