Back
| Semester | fall semester 2019 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Peter Robert Burleigh (p.burleigh@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | In the summer of 2018, I read "Searoad", Ursula Le Guin's interwoven short stories located in an imagined Oregon coastal resort, and found it one of the finest pieces of writing ever. The stories, rich in environment, personalities and identities, provoke a fantastical imagination of the ways in which location, space, period, time, and individual egos interweave as the fabric of community, and social & political relations. Bearing down in a different and perhaps more natural(ist) direction is the poetry of Mary Oliver a contemporary of Le Guin's and in many ways equally concerned with how the world should be unstraightened. Finally, the position of Donna Haraway as a critic who undoes fatalism, determining that we are necessarily ensconced in a multiplicity of environments of which we are less than keepers and little more than interactants. Haraway also provides routes for us to determine ways in which we can keep the world odd and still make it our shared home, despite the encroaching devastating effects of environmental damage for which solely humans are responsible. As a triad, the three thinkers thus provoke different ways to essentially confront environment, time, space and selfhood. |
| Learning objectives | - Students will become familiar with the work of the three authors, especially with considering the particular feminist perspective that is articulated in these writers. - Students will further their critical approach to text and to authorship, including inter-relating various primary texts in meaningful ways. - Students will learn to consider formats and genres as not only form but as content - Students will have the opportunity to write a Proseminar paper attached to the course. |
| Bibliography | Ursula Le Guin: "Searoad" (1991) the complete work to be acquired and read Donna Haraway: "Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature" (1991) "Staying with the Trouble" (2016) extracts provided Anthology of Mary Oliver's work tba |
| Comments | Students should be prepared to read the whole of "Searoad", and lengthy sections of Haraway's work. Mary Oliver's poetry will also constitute an important part of the course but the quantity of reading is less. |
| Admission requirements | It is strongly recommended that this course is taken only after the successful completion of the "Introduction I + II: Literary Studies" proseminars. |
| Course application | Please register by e-mail to alex.van-lierde@unibas.ch by 6.9.2019. At the same time please enroll via MOnA. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul: Introduction to Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies (Bachelor's degree subject: English) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Englische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft |