Professor: Frances Weller Bailey
Office: Snell 182
Office Hours:
Tuesday/Thursday |
1:00-3:00
PM |
Phone: 268-3969
E-Mail Address: fbailey@clarkson.edu
Author Unknown | The Anglo-Saxon World (Kevin Crossley-Holland, trans) | Oxford University Press |
Author Unknown | The Arabian Nights (Daniel Heller-Roazen, ed.) | Norton Critical Edition |
Author Unknown | The Epic of Gilgamesh (David Ferry, trans.) | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Russell Banks | The Sweet Hereafter | Harper Perennial |
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein | They Say, I Say | Norton |
Marjane Satrapi | Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood | Pantheon |
We'll start with a very short story by Franz Kafka, entitled Leopards in the Temple:
This narrative, which we'll be talking about in class, demonstrates three basic premises of the course:
Our focus in this course will be on cultural difference: the ways in which each culture's works of the imagination reflect the ideas and assumptions of those within it. We'll proceed roughly chronologically, stopping off at key moments in a history stretching back roughly 4000 years to ancient Sumeria and finishing in the Adirondacks and Iran today. Beyond the texts listed above, we'll be factoring the art, architecture, and economic and political systems of each cultural moment into our understanding of the people whose texts we're reading. Since it is impossible to truly understand a concept without putting it into words, you will regularly put your ideas into writing and, more occasionally, present them to the class.
After completing this class, you should be able to: