Reading & Composition

We often imagine reading to be a private and personal matter.  We all have our own favorite novels, and when we want time alone, curling up with a book is never a bad option.  Yet this course hopes to explore how reading literature informs our place within groups, within homes and families, cities, nations, and a host of other collective categories.   The works we will read will span Ancient Rome to South America, each one offering a unique perspective on how being part of a community both provides opportunities and sets limitations, how it both requires conformity yet creates the possibility for expressing ourselves to others.

At the same time, a central concern of the course will be how literature itself is frequently grouped within ‘conventional’ categories or generic communities.  From this angle we will investigate how literary and creative acts – storytelling, theatrical performances, the writing of history, etc. – play a fundamental role in constituting group identity.

Texts may include from among the following:

Literature –
Henrik Ibsen. Rosmersholm
Plautus. The Captives
William Shakespeare. Coriolanus
El Cid
Catalina de Erauso. The Lieutenant Nun
Eclogues by Theocritus and Virgil
Faulkner. The Bear
Gabriel García Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Euripides. Trojan Women

Philosophy and Theory –
Freud. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
Søren Kierkegaard. “Crop Rotation”
Seneca. Letters
Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides

Film and Television –
Lars von Trier’s Dogville
X-Files: “Home”
The Return of Martin Guerre
Do The Right Thing