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Fall
2008 Humanities Courses
HON 3233
FEMALE DEVELOPMENT IN FICTION AND
FILM
Prof. Bonnie Lyons
HUM 3103
American Film
MB 2.456
Fall
2008
bonnie.lyons@utsa.edu
Thursdays
2:00-4:45
458-5350
BB
2.05.04
Office hours: T, Th 10-11
In this seminar
we will study a number of novels and films which have a
variety of female protagonists. These female characters
vary in age, ethnicity, social class and nationality,
and the class will explore the nature of their
development (which is not necessarily positive). The
class will include some lecture but stress discussion;
excellent attendance and active class participation are
required.
Required
books:
Doris Leasing, The Summer Before the Dark (Knopf
0-394-71095-9)
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (Penguin
0-452-273056)
Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel (Univ. of
Chicago, 0-226-46936-0)
Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women ((Random
House/Vintage 0375-70749-2)
Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire (Penguin
0-452-27231-9)
Jamaica Kincaid Lucy ((FS&G 0-37452735-0)
Dorothy Allison Bastard Out of Carolina (Penguin
Plume (0-452-26957-1)
The films (in bold below) will all be available on
reserve at the library.
Course
requirements and grading:
Six 3-5 page mini-papers and six outlines due the day
the book or film is scheduled=50% NO SECONDARY SOURCES
One oral paper (USING SECONDARY SOURCES) to be given on
the day the book or film is scheduled=20%
ONE 12-20 page
seminar paper due December 8 by 5:00 in my office
Class
outline:
August 28 introduction
September 4 The Bluest Eye
September 11 Girl Fight
September 18 Bastard Out of Carolina
September 25 Ruby
October 2 The Stone Angel
October 9 Thelma and Louise
October 16 Lives of Girls and Women
October 23 Norma Rae
October 30 Foxfire
November 6 Maria Full of Grace
November 13 The Summer before the Dark
November 20 Central Station
(November 27 Thanksgiving-no class)
December 4 Lucy
Course Number: HUMANITIES 4973/ENGLISH 4973
Course title Senior Seminar: Bards and Ballots
Instructor: Steven G. Kellman
Class Time:
Thursday 5:30-8:15
Class
Location:
Main Building 1.208
Course
Description: "I have been
running for President these last ten years in the
privacy of my mind," wrote Norman Mailer in 1959. The
novelist had to settle for the presidency of PEN
American Center in 1984. He finished fourth in a
primary field of five as candidate for mayor of New York
City in 1969, and Mailer never occupied the Oval Office
except in the privacy of his mind. Richard Henry Dana
ran for Congress from Massachusetts in 1868, Upton
Sinclair for governor of California in 1934, James
Michener for Congress from Pennsylvania in 1962, and
Gore Vidal for Congress from New York in 1960 and for
the Senate from California in 1982--none victoriously.
Poets might, as Shelley proclaimed, be the
unacknowledged legislators of the world, but they rarely
enter legislatures in an elected capacity. Especially
in the United States, when an author seeks an office, it
is most often a space in which to write. This seminar
will study the phenomenon of poets, novelists, and
playwrights who become candidates for public positions.
Stendhal famously remarked that politics in a novel was
like a pistol shot in a theater, but novelists in
politics behave differently than do soldiers, lawyers,
and stockbrokers. In the United States, they are an
oddity. Though Léopold Sedar Senghor, a major figure in
modern French poetry, served as president of Senegal for
twenty years, it is hard to imagine Robert Frost or
James Dickey serving anything but an ornamental function
at a presidential inauguration. The Velvet Revolution
propelled playwright Vaclav Havel into Czechoslovakia's
presidency, but revulsion against McCarthyism did not
propel Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams into
executive office. And, though novelist Benjamin
Disraeli was prime minister of Great Britain, the
closest that Nathaniel Hawthorne came to president was
to room with one--Franklin Pierce--at Bowdoin College.
After studying the
general phenomenon of writers in politics and whether
American exceptionalism applies to it, as to other
things, we will examine in detail case studies such as:
·
William Butler Yeats' election
to the Senate of the Irish Free State, 1922;
·
Upton Sinclair's campaign for
Governor of California, 1934
·
Uri Zvi Greenberg's election
to the Israeli Knesset, 1949
·
Léopold Sedar Senghor,
President of Senegal, 1960-1980
·
Gore Vidal's campaign for
Congress from New York's 29th District, 1960
·
James Michener's campaign for
Congress from Pennsylvania's 8th District, 1962
·
Norman Mailer's secessionist
campaign for mayor of New York City, 1969
·
Vaclav Havel's Presidency of
Czechoslovakia, following the Velvet Revolution,
1989-2003
·
Mario Vargas Llosa's campaign
for President of Peru, 1990
We will be pondering the boundaries
and links that unite and divide art and action.
Requirements:
This seminar will aim for
the oxymoronic condition of collective independent
study. All of us will read and discuss a few relevant
texts in common, but for most of the semester
participants in the seminar will be pursuing separate
research projects on individual authors who have run for
office. Each week, every student will be reporting in
to the group on his or her efforts and discoveries,
which will culminate in a substantive original written
paper.
Texts:
Vaclav Havel. To the Castle and
Back. Vintage. 9780307388452.
Mario Vargas Llosa. A Fish in the
Water. Penguin. 9780140248906.
Upton Sinclair. I, Candidate for Governor: And How I
Got Licked. University of California.
9780520081987. |
