English 44 - Spring, 2012

Introductory Topics in Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Roy, Parama
CRN: 72307
Time: TR 9:00-10:20
Location: 206 Olson

Description

English 44: Introductory Topics in Fiction
Topic: Thinking With Animals

This course will cover a range of fictions, from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for the most part, that represent animality and animal life. We will read literary texts that treat of animal and human incarnation (including what it might mean to have and to use eyes and noses, faces, hands, and tails); animal (auto)biography, speech, rights, and moral status; animal-human transformation and hybrid creatures (including wolf boys and beast-men); wildness, settlement, and domestication; and animal death and species extinction. Readings include the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine; Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books; H.G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau; Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and “A Report to an Academy”; J.M. Coetzee’s Lives of Animals; and Mahasweta Devi’s Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha.


Grading

In-class quizzes; class participation; contributions to an online forum; a midterm; a term paper; and a final exam.

Texts

The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
Metamorphosis; A Report to an Academy, Franz Kafka
The Lives of Animals, J.M. Coetzee
Imaginary Maps, Mahasweta Devi
Aesop's Fables; fables of La Fontaine