Lecture:

9465  7:00p -9:00p M      

Discussions:

9466             8:00a- 9:15a TR     

9467             8:00a- 9:15a TR     

9468             8:00a- 9:15a TR       

9469             9:30a-10:45a TR       

9470     	11:15a-12:30p TR (Authorized by Honors Division for
Honors Students)

9471            11:15a 12:30p TR     



Topic: Fictive Selves: the Invention of Public and Private Lives 


This course will be a process of inquiry-through reading, writing, and
discussion-into the proliferation of identities in modern society. The
readings will help us question the notion of a true autonomous self,
explore how authors manage to achieve individual voices while speaking
within the historical and cultural contexts that shape them, and
examine the ways in which not only artistic and public figures but all
of us are "authors" of ourselves.


Texts (fiction, autobiography, poetry, essays) will include Toni
Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of
Memory, Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries, Graham Swift's
Waterland, and a course packet of shorter works by Joan Didion,
Eudora Welty, John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, Jamaica Kincaid,
Adrienne Rich, and others. Films will include Europa, Europa,
Waterland, Six Degrees of Separation, The Wedding
Banquet, and Real World.


Requirements include eight short position papers from which four will
be revised in light of discussion. There will be two longer papers, a
short midterm, and a final exam.