EH 207-01 & -02 Readings in Literature and Culture I: Embodying Purpose in the Pre-Modern West
Prof. Angela Balla -01:TR 11:20am-12:40pm -02: TR 1pm-2:20pm
This course will introduce you to Western literature from antiquity to the seventeenth century to help you find and develop your sense of purpose. Even as the liberal tradition, with its emphasis on the inherent value of the individual, faces challenges for contributing to national and global disparities of access to an array of resources, that same tradition offers a unique emphasis on a powerful tool for helping to correct these disparities: the conscience. So this course will sketch a literary history of personal purpose or vocation, a history shaped by the conscientious objection to problematic uses of power and authority, whether political, religious, social, or economic. Along the way, we will consider what is at stake in any form of principled objection. Yet this course will move beyond investigating literary forms of opposition in order to probe forms of constructive, creative action. Such action depends on the imagination of a life lived beyond mere opposition, a life of harmonious flourishing in community. To these ends, we will read texts in a variety of genres and modes from several time periods (antiquity, the middle ages, and the early modern period), attending to literary form and historical background. Classes will engage our readings through mini-lectures, short presentations, and discussions.
EH 207-03 & -04 Readings in Literature and Culture I: Imagined Heroism in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Literature
Dr. Lacy Marschalk-Brecciaroli Online
In this course, we will study extant literature from ancient times through the so-called “Age of Discovery.” In particular, we will be examining how heroes have been portrayed across time and place. Who gets to be a hero in the ancient world? How does the hero’s journey affect the form and purpose of literature over time? Do definitions of “hero” change in the early modern period? To answer these questions and more, we will analyze works within their social, historical, and philosophical contexts while paying special attention to the narrative structures of hero stories. Readings will include The Odyssey, The Ramayana, The Thousand and One Nights, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Don Quixote, among other works.
EH 208-01 Readings in Literature and Culture II: Beyond Words: The Narrative Power of Graphic Storytelling
Ms. Daniela Cornelius MW 11:20am-12:40pm
Despite their widespread recognition, comic books and graphic novels are often dismissed as "easier" forms of literature, a misconception that discredits their academic potential. This course challenges that view, treating graphic narratives as complex literary works. Students will explore the evolution of the medium, analyzing how meaning is created through the interplay of text and image. By examining works that push genre boundaries and merge high and low culture, students will gain critical tools to discuss both graphic and traditional literary texts, deepening their understanding of narrative and visual storytelling. Readings will include groundbreaking graphic narratives such as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, as well as contemporary works such as Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner and Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga.
EH 208-02 Readings in Literature and Culture II: Major and Minor Americana
Dr. David St. John MW 9:40am-11:00am
In this class we will read and critique stories, poems, and artifacts from American creators and (very briefly) their European precursors. From white picket fences to upwardly mobile bootstraps, no American cliche is safe. We will begin with the Enlightenment and march our way up through the current moment. The reading list will include canonized American writers as well as Indigenous and contemporary writers from multiple backgrounds.
EH 208-03 & -04 Readings in Literature and Culture II
Ms. Heather Cross
We will look at the ability of literature to put you into a place or mind that is disturbed or disturbing. Themes of discrimination, mental instability, social issues and identity will be experienced via short stories, novels and other writings. Texts by Swift, Twain, Welty, Coates, Whitehead and others will be examined to uncover what makes us as readers and humans uncomfortable.
EH 208-H05 Readings in Literature and Culture II: “Why am I here?” Explorations in Literature and Culture II
Dr. Susan Friedman
This course will span Western literature from the 18th century to the present day. Together we will delve into the germinal questions: “Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?” In this course we will read some of the most important texts of various genres from the canon of Western literature to see how writers grappled to make sense out of their world. Classes will be discussion based, with an emphasis on journal writing, short essays, and student presentations.
EH 241-01 Literature Across Borders: Religion, Faith, and Crises of Faith Across Cultures
Prof. Leslie Kaiura
Dr. Leslie Kaiura (World Languages and Cultures, Spanish) will teach this course with the theme of religion and faith across cultures. The class will engage with fiction, memoir, and movies from around the world, looking at different kinds of religious experiences, how people find meaning or connection in life, and how people face tragedy and death, as well as considering crises of faith and secularization, the misuse of religion, the relationship between church and state, and religion and cultures in conflict. Though taught in English, a portion of the course is dedicated to each of the major languages taught at UAH (French, German, Russian, and Spanish) and the final section looks to Tibet and Japan and encounters between West and East.
EH 242-W03 Mythology: The Persistence of Myth: Stories of the Trojan War & Beyond
Dr. Lacy Marschalk-Brecciaroli Online
Perhaps no event stirred the Ancient Greek imagination more than the Trojan War. The subject dominated epic poetry, drama, and artwork in antiquity and has continued to inspire countless retellings and depictions in fiction, poetry, drama, and other artforms throughout history. In this class, we’ll examine the earliest mythology of the Trojan War and its aftermath, as well as how those stories have been adapted, embroidered, and transformed throughout history. We will also discuss what those transformations mean for the places and times in which they occur, including the present. Readings will include the full texts of The Iliad and The Odyssey, Euripides’ The Trojan Women, Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, and Madeline Miller’s Circe, and excerpts from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Students will also have the opportunity to read, research, and present on a retelling from world mythology.
EH242-W04 & -W05 Mythology: “Tell Me A Story”: old texts; new contexts
Prof. Chad Thomas Online
This course introduces students to mythological literature and to various ways of interpreting and experiencing myth and folklore as texts with oral origins. Students will gain basic familiarity with world mythological traditions, developing a cross-cultural perspective on myths, mythologies, and folklore from around the world. Students will explore different theories of the cultural meanings and functions of myth, past and present. Additionally, students will look at multiple genres of literature and culture related to mythic material, including rituals, folktales, modern myths, and literary studies of myths. Finally, students will use scholarly methods to explain intellectual and aesthetic ideas within and pertaining to various mythic traditions. We will study well-known myths from Greece and Iceland/Norway, and as well as myths that are not as widely known.
EH 244-03 & -H04 Heroes &/or Monsters
Dr. William Taylor
This course introduces students to the methods of literary study through an examination of works in their social, historical, and philosophical contexts. We will examine different genres such as poetry, prose fiction, and drama and oral literatures. Our readings will consist mainly of works in translation but will also include texts first written in English. Specifically, this semester, we will think about the concept of the monster. We will explore modes of normative identity set against the abnormal and the monstrous. We will examine how these texts, and the cultures that produced them, establish and/or call into question various political, religious, and cultural systems from ancient times to the seventeenth century. We will question how and why our ideas of the monster shape and govern our own normative models and how movement across diverse cultural spaces destabilizes these models in profound moments of cultural contact. Our main texts for this course will include the ancient Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, the ancient Greek poem The Odyssey, ascribed to the poet Homer, the Old English poem Beowulf, the thirteenth-century Mali epic Sundiata, the fourteenth-century poem The Canterbury Tales, and the sixteenth-century Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes. We will also read other supplemental texts relative to the periods/cultures that produced the main texts.
EH 246-01 & -02 Speculative Realities: Science Fiction: The Art of Cognitive Estrangement
Prof. Eric Smith
This course will serve as an introduction to the dynamic genre of science fiction. We will explore the form’s evolution from its historical roots and contexts to its contemporary global expressions. We will concentrate primarily on the short story form, but we will also look at two short novels and two films. Texts will include the following: Jeff Vandermeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction, Vandana Singh’s Of Love and Other Monsters, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic.
EH 246-03 Speculative Realities: “We literally do not want to be what we are.”
Mr. Ryan Brown online
This course will focus on speculative genres like Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror in the study of authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson. Readings of various short stories and films will be paired with theoretical scholarship about the manifestations of ecological and social anxieties, especially those concerning gender and sexuality, represented in the texts and evident in contemporary cultures across the world.
