Course Calendar, HUM 212-01 and 212-04, Spring, 2002
January14Monday Introduction to the course and the major themes
Unit One: Self
How do we learn who we are or who we want to be? Stories in Unit One dramatize moments when characters learn or test their values. In these readings, we will move from examples of decisive (if not always deliberate) characters to those who, for reasons we will explore, cannot quite decide the course their lives should take.
16 Wednesday,Updike, “A & P” and Housman, “Terrence, This Is Stupid Stuff”
18 Friday, Jewett, “A White Heron”; Bishop, “The Fish” and Wright, “A Blessing”
23 Wednesday, Mason, “Shiloh” ; E. B. Browning, “How Do I Love Thee”
25 Friday, Silko, “Yellow Woman” and Buzzati, “The Falling Girl”
28 Monday, Joyce, “Eveline,” and Plath, “Daddy”
30 Wednesday, Min, “The One Who Goes Farthest Away” and Lee, “The Gift”
Transition:
February 1 Friday, Dickens, Hard Times
4 Monday, Dickens, Hard Times
6 Wednesday, Dickens, Hard Times
8 Friday, Catchup Day, PAPER I
Unit Two: Individual and Society
The readings in this section focus on the tension between the individual and the social environment. Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” dramatizes numerous issues, such as gender, class, sexuality, race, power, love, and alienation, emphasized by other readings. The selections are arranged to allow for progression from an examination of the outcast to representations of an indifferent community and then to various individuals’ reactions to the community, which may vary due to racial and cultural differences, sexual orientation, and gender, among other factors.
11 Monday, Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”
13 Wednesday, Browning, “My Last Duchess,” Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”
15 Friday, Nietzsche, “Happiness Is Having Power”
18 Monday, Conrad, “Amy Foster,” with Erdrich, “Captivity”
20 Wednesday, Allende, “And of Clay Are We Created”; Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts” & Frost, “Mending Wall”
22 EXAM I
25 Friday, Walker, “Everyday Use”; Hughes, “Theme for English B” & Dove, “The House Slave”
27 Monday, Grahn, “Boys at the Rodeo” & McCann, ” My Mother’s Clothes”
March1 Wednesday, De Beauvoir, “Woman as Other” and Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers”
4 Monday, Ibsen, A Doll’s House
6 Wednesday, Ibsen A Doll’s House
8 Friday, Catchup
Unit Three: Certainty and Doubt
This section explores one of the central issues of our time—the quest for certainty. Through philosophical arguments as well as fiction and poetry, writers explore the nature of humans’ desire for answers and direction.
11 Monday, Benedict, “Ethics Are Relative,” Ngugi, “A Meeting in the Dark” & Arnold, “Dover Beach” & Yeats, “The Second Coming”
13 Wednesday, Stace, “Ethics Are Not Relative” and Erdrich, “Love Medicine”
15 Friday Rosa, “The Proof” and Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” and “The Windhover,” Ransom, “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.”
16-24 Spring Break
25 Monday, O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” & Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar”
27 Wednesday, Tan, “Half and Half” with Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Dickinson, Poems #465 and #712
29 Friday, Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and Yeats, “Leda and the Swan”
April 1 Monday, Mahfouz, “Half a Day” with Shelley, “Ozymandias,”
3 Wednesday, EXAM II
Unit Four: Moral Choice
In this section we explore some of the ways in which philosophy and literature confront the problem of good and evil. As we consider several ethical philosophies and literary dramatizations of moral dilemmas, we are able to look more closely at our own concepts of morality.
5 Friday, Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men
8 Monday, Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men
10 Wednesday, Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men
12 Friday O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”; Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” PAPER II
15 Monday, “Jeremy Bentham, “Happiness is to do What is Good for All People”
17 Wednesday, Jackson, “The Lottery”
19 Friday, Camus, “The Guest”
22 Monday, Kant, “Duty is Prior to Happiness”
26 Friday, Sartre, “Existential Ethics
29 Monday, Catchup
26 Friday, Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” Kanafani, “A Hand in the Grave”
May 1 Wednesday, Lessing, “The Old Chief Mishlanga”
May 3 Friday, Catchup
Final Exams:
HUM 212-01 Monday, May 6, 8:00-10:00
HUM 212-04 Tuesday, May 7 8:00-10:00
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