Topics in Literature
Class Information
Instructor: Giardina, Elizabeth
CRN: 23418
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50am
Location: Socsci 80
GE Areas: Writing Experience
Description
Appetite, Empire, and the Consumption of Nature
In our era of endless content, we find ourselves devouring all kinds of media all the time. In this course, we will investigate how both literature and visual art have historically represented and facilitated the goals, methods, and consequences of consumption. We will examine depictions of food, hunger, diet, and sustenance as they appear across centuries, locations, genres, and media to investigate how a language of appetite emerges and functions in a variety of contexts.
As Christina Rossetti's heroine exclaims in "Goblin Market" (1862), "Eat me, drink me, love me . . . make much of me," we will "make much" of our course texts?from children's poems and short stories to novels, essays, paintings, and film. The multimodal and multimedia nature of "appetite literature" (or, even, appetizing literature) poses methodological questions we will explore throughout the quarter, including: How might literary analysis operate as a process of digestion? How is the task of reading describable as an action that, like eating, incorporates and integrates diverse materials to create something new?
Class time will be devoted to in-class discussion and occasional writing/method exercises. Weekly homework will involve short reading responses as well as the development of a personal annotation practice. The bulk of students? grades will consist of one short close reading paper, one long research paper, and one final exam.
Texts
The Vegetarian (2007), Han Kang
Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Bronte
Goblin Market (1862), Christina Rossetti
The Wonder (2022) , (film)