Embedded Files
The following is a schedule of readings for each week of the semester. The readings listed under a particular day are the readings that will be discussed in our meeting that day; therefore, you should complete the readings prior to our meeting (either on Monday or Wednesday). Reading Accountability Quizzes (RAQs) due on a particular day will cover material assigned for that day.
Most of the readings are available in our course textbook, The Norton Anthology of World Literature. You can find the volume letter and the page numbers next to the title of the reading. An asterisk (*) means that the text is not in the Norton. It will be made available on the course site.
For readings in the Norton, please always make sure to read the introductory material for an author or a text. However, the introductory material as well as the texts written by the editors of the Norton intended to give you historical context for the readings are not literary texts; therefore, you cannot use them in your essays. I have marked texts that are not available for essay selection with a #.
Weekly Schedule
Weekly Schedule
Unit 1: Problematizing the European Enlightenment
Unit 1: Problematizing the European Enlightenment
Monday, August 16th
“Preface” (D ix-xvi) #
Wednesday, August 18th
“Introduction: The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas” (D 91-99) #
Descartes, from The Discourse on Method (D 110-113)
Introduction to Pope (D 338-342) #
Pope, “Essay on Man” (D 361-368)
Monday, August 23rd
“What is Enlightenment?” (D 101-104) #
Johnson, “To Enlighten” (D 104)
Diderot and D’Alembert, from The Encyclopédie (D 113-127)
Wednesday, August 25th
Hume, from Of National Characters (D 129-130)
Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of Women (D 133-136)
Introduction to Swift (D 282-286) #
Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (D 332-337)
Monday, August 30th
Equiano, from The Interesting Narrative (E 72-97)
Wednesday, September 1st
“Introduction to Orature” (E 889-891) #
Anansi Introduction (#) and “All Stories are Anansi’s” (E 901-904)
Navajo Ceremony (E 917-920)
Recording of Navajo Ceremony*
Unit 2: Revolutionary and Enslaved Subjects in the New World
Unit 2: Revolutionary and Enslaved Subjects in the New World
Monday, September 6th: No Class, Labor Day
Wednesday, September 8th
“An Age of Revolutions in Europe and the Americas” (E 3-15) #
“Revolutionary Contexts” (E 17) #
“Declaration of the Rights of Man” (E 21-23)
Dessalines, “Liberty or Death” (E 35-38)
Monday, September 13th
De Gouges, “The Rights of Woman” (E 23-28)
Bunina, “Conversation between Me and the Women” (E 530-534)
Wednesday, September 15th
Introductions (#) and poems by de Tió, Martí, and Darío (E 561-567)
Get a head start on Frederick Douglass's Narrative (E213-262)
Monday, September 20th
Douglass, Narrative (E 213-244 (Chapter I-Chapter IX))
Wednesday, September 22nd
“All God’s Chillen Had Wings” (E 905-907)
US Slave Spirituals and Secular Songs (E 908-910)
Hughes, “I, Too” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”*
Beyoncé, “Love Drought” video*
Childish Gambino, “This is America”*
Midterm due Monday, September 27th.
Midterm due Monday, September 27th.
Unit 3: Colonialism and Post-colonialism in Africa
Unit 3: Colonialism and Post-colonialism in Africa
Monday, September 27th: No Class, Midterm and Midterm Survey due at midnight
Wednesday, September 29th
Conrad, Heart of Darkness (F 14-41)
Monday, October 4
Conrad, Heart of Darkness (F 41-78)
Wednesday, October 6
Achebe, “An Image of Africa”*
Monday, October 11th: No Class, Fall Break
Wednesday, October 13th
Adichie, “The Headstrong Historian” (F 1188-1200)
Unit 4: Global Modernisms
Unit 4: Global Modernisms
Monday, October 18
“Modernity and Modernism, 1900-1945” (F 3-13) #
“Introduction to William Butler Yeats” (F 546-550) #
Yeats, “The Second Coming” (F 552-553)
Wednesday, October 20
Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own (F 358-393)
Monday, October 25
Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (F 620-652)
Wednesday, October 27
Selection from “The World of Haiku” (D 679-681)
Selection of 20th Century Haikus*
Monday, November 1
Introduction to Borges (F 452-455) #
Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”*
Borges, “On Exactitude in Science”*
Unit 5: Contemporary Globalization
Unit 5: Contemporary Globalization
Wednesday, November 3rd
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights*
“Contemporary World Literature” (F 875-881) #
Monday, November 8th
Rushdie, “The Perforated Sheet” (F 1028-1042)
Wednesday, November 10th
Silko, “Yellow Woman” (F 927-935)
Monday, November 15th
Anzaldua, “The Homeland, Aztlán”*
Wednesday, November 17th
Kahf, “Hijab Scene #1,” “Hijab Scene #2,” “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink at the Bathroom at Sears,” “Fayetteville as in Fate”*
Monday, November 22nd
Slahi, Selection from Guantánamo Diary*
Wednesday, November 24th: No Class, Thanksgiving Break
Monday, November 29th: No Class (Optional Zoom Office Hours), Final Exam and Exit Survey due at midnight
Final Exam due Monday, November 29th.
Final Exam due Monday, November 29th.
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