Section 1: Lead Instructor
Florence Eliza Glaze, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History
Honors Program Co-Director
E-mail: fglaze@coastal.edu
Section 2: Lead Instructor
Philip Whalen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History
Honors Program Co-Director
E-mail: pwhalen@coastal.edu
Master Lecturers: Arne Flaten (Art History), Maggie Ivanoa (English/Film Studies), Eileen Joy (English), Nils Rauhut (Philosophy), Sandie Shackleford (Theater)
Honors 101 is a humanities-based interdisciplinary course that introduces students to historical cross-cultural "encounters" which have shaped the world we live in today. This class will help students to engage intellectually in the thought processes necessary to pursuing a life of public engagement and public responsibility. The theme for the current academic year is “East Meets West.” Together we will read, listen to, and view the cultural productions of past encounters between the West and East, and will examine, both verbally and in writing, key primary sources and scholarly analyses of these historic global encounters. By the end of term, students will have a sounder understanding of historical and contemporary tensions between various cultures, as well as the contemporary cultural mileux that have resulted from past conflicts and their resolutions.
Course Format: On Mondays we will all meet together for Master Lectures in EHFA Room 257. These lectures will be delivered by Honors faculty in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and will address a complexity of materials, including artwork, music, theater, literature, and historical narrative. At the end of lectures, students will be asked to consider a number of critical questions or issues, which will become the subject-matter for written analysis and discussions at the following class meeting. On Wednesdays, Professor Whalen’s students will meet in EHFA 257, while Professor Glaze’s will meet in EHFA 108.
Student Responsibilities: Students are expected to have read the assigned materials by the time they come to class every Monday. Your job is to process the Master Lectures in light of your readings for the day. On Wednesdays, you will come to class with brief written analyses of one or more critical issues derived from readings/lectures, and will engage in close discussion of the materials for the week. For one assignment, on October 17, you will be asked to preview a film in preparation for class. The film will be shown in Rm. 257 on the Sunday evening prior to lecture, or you may view it on your own in the library any time before 10/17. Readings are available on WebCT, and may be read online, or may be printed at any CCU computer room; we recommend printing at the Library. One book, M Butterfly, is to be purchased from the CCU Bookstore by early October.
Quizzes: There will be brief 3-question quizzes administered during the first 5 minutes of class every Monday. These are designed to insure that you have done the readings for that day. If you’re late to class, you miss the quiz. There will be no make-ups, but only 10 out of 14 quizzes will be counted.
Papers: At the close of every Monday lecture, you will be given a series of critical questions or problems to think about regarding material covered in the lecture and in that day’s readings. When you come to class on Wednesday, bring with you a 2.5-page written analysis of one of these problems. These papers are basically your effort to analyze coherently the major issues raised by lecture and reading. Papers are to be typed, spell- and grammar-checked, and are due at the start of class. Only 8 out of a possible 14 such 2.5-page papers will be counted (so you can choose, based upon your schedules and preferences, which readings to analyze, and which weeks to write papers). A final, reflective 4-5 page paper will be due on the last meeting of the semester, November 30. This final paper will consist of your analyses of 3 scholarly articles on any topic related to the class that you have located using databases and indices in the Library. This final paper will count as 2 shorter papers, giving 10 papers in all for the semester.
Discussions: These are essential to your understanding of the material in the course: textual, visual, aural, etc. Any issue raised by readings and lectures are fair game for discussion, as are the contemporary world’s events they inform; when you have written a brief paper on a topic, you should utilize that day’s discussion meeting as an opportunity to share your views or debate the views of your peers.
Grade Calculation: The following grading standards will apply:
Papers: 50 %
Quizzes: 25 %
Discussion: 25 %
Plagiarism policy: Plagiarism, which is the act of stealing another’s work and representing it as one’s own, is a serious intellectual offense, and will be treated as such. Any student who falsifies his/her work, or assists another student to commit plagiarism, will receive a failing grade for the course. For more information about the “Code of Student Conduct and Academic Responsibility,” see the CCU Student Handbook.
*************************************************************************************************************
Course Schedule
*************************************************************************************************************
W 8/17 Introductions & Syllabus Review
Module 1: Ancients and Empires
M 8/22 Prof. Arne Flaten (Art History): “Western Origins? From Babylon to the Hellenistic World”
Readings: David W. Del Testa, ed., “The Persian Empire of Darius,” in Global History, vol. 1 (2004): 53-59; idem, “The Greek Empire: The Creation of the Hellenistic World”: 85-90; Richter, Gisela, “Greeks in Persia,” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 50, no. 1 (Jan.-Mar., 1946): 15-30; Stott, G., “Persepolis,” Greece & Rome, vol. 7, no. 20 (Feb., 1938): 65-75.
W 8/24 Discussion
M 8/29 Prof. Nils Rauhut (Philosophy): “Ideals of Virtue, Family, and Politics in the Ancient World”
Readings: Plato, Republic, Book IV, 441c-445d and Book V, 455d -461a; Confucius: Selections from the Analects and from the Commonwealth State (Analects online full-text at URL http://classics.mit.edu/Confucius/analects.mb.txt).
W 8/31 Discussion. [Paper questions given out for 9/7.]
M 9/5 Labor Day Holiday: No class today
W 9/7 Prof. Eliza Glaze (History): “Whose Hero? Alexander the Great in the Literature of East and West.”
Readings: Minoo S. Southgate, “The Portrait of Alexander in Persian Alexander-Romances of the Islamic Era,” Journal of the American Oriental Society v. 97.3 (July 1977): 278-84; William L. Hanaway, “Anahita and Alexander,” Journal of the American Oriental Society v. 102.2 (April 1982): 285-95; excerpts from Walter of Chatillon’s Romance of Alexander (New York : P. Lang, 1991), 10-22.
Module 2: Ethical and Economic Frontiers
M 9/12 Prof. Eileen Joy (English): “The Old English Wonders of the East and Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Body of the Nation’”
Readings: The Old English Wonders of the East (British Library, Vitellius A.xv MS.), from Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript (Toronto UP, 2003); Martha Nussbaum, “Body of the Nation: Why Women Were Mutilated in Gujarat,” Boston Review 29.3 (Summer 2004; available at http://www.bostonreview.net/BR29.3/nussbaum.html)
W 9/14 Discussion
M 9/19 Prof. Eliza Glaze (History): “Europe Ascendant: Crusades, Curiosities & the Technology of Conquest”
Readings: Rudolf Wittkower, “Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes vol. 5 (1942): 159-97; Jordanus Catalani, Mirabilia Descripta: the Wonders of the East (New York: B. Franklin, 1863), 7-25.
W 9/21 Discussion
M 9/26 Prof. Philip Whalen (History): “Jesuits Create New Worlds”
Readings: John Strickland, “Jesuits and the Civilizations of Europe and Asia,” Global History, ed. Del Testa, vol. 3 (2004): 347-354; David Sweet, “Rich Realm Disturbed” (unpublished manuscript): 9-18; “Montagnais Hunters of the Northern Woodlands” and “Disease and Medicine” from The Jesuit Relations, ed. Alan Green (Boston: Bedford, 2000): 20-36, 70-93; and “Amerindians in Europe” from The Myth of the Savage by Olive P. Dickason (U of Alberta P, 1997): 204-229.
W 9/28 Discussion
M 10/3 Prof. Philip Whalen (History): “From Napoleon’s Egypt to the 1931 Colonial Exposition”
Readings: Gerard de Nerval “The Viceroy’s Harem” and “Four Portraits: Stamboul and Pera” from The Women of Cairo, v. 2 (New York: AMS, 1982), 141- 149 and 195-200; Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, trans. Richard Howard (Boston: Godine, 1982): poems 56-64, 20-24; Florence Lemoine, “Napoleon’s Occupation of Egypt and the Reforms of Muhammed ‘Ali,” from Global History v. 3, ed. Del Testa (2004): 421-428; Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt (NY: Penguin, 1972), 97-98, 28-47, 82-88, and 113-123; and Martin Evans, “Projecting a Greater France,” History Today (Feb., 2000): 19-25.
W 10/05 Discussion
Module 3: Orientalism, Desire and Identity
M 10/10 Prof. Arne Flaten (Art History): “Orientalism, Fantasy and Slavery”
Readings: Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," Art in America (May 1983): 119-131, 187, 189, 191. Abigail Solomon-Gudeau, "Going Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitive Modernism," Art in America, 77 (July 1989): 118-29. Paul Gauguin, "Noa Noa," trans. O.F. Theis, from Global History ed. Del Testa, vol. 3: 29-33; Frederick N. Bohrer, “Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in Nineteenth-Century England and France," Art Bulletin, vol. LXXXX, no. 2 (June 1998), pp. 336-356.
W 10/12 Discussion
M 10/17 Profs. Maggie Ivanova (English) & Sandi Shackelford (Theater), “Orientalizing the Self: Madame Butterfly and M. Butterfly.”
Readings: Sunday 10/16 Film preview of Madame Butterfly; David Henry Hwang, M Butterfly. With an afterword by the Playwright. New York: Plume, 1988 (entire play); Edward Said, “Introduction,” from Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978): 1-28.
W 10/19 Discussion
M 10/24 Prof. Sandi Shackelford (Theater): “Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood”
Readings: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth from The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974): Act I, sc. I- Act II, sc. i; Act V, sc. i; (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998); Harold Bloom, “Macbeth” from Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 516-45.
W 10/26 Discussion
Module 4: East-West Hybrids
M 10/31 Prof. Eileen Joy (English): “Suicide Terrorism and the Mahabharata”
Readings: Michael Ignatieff’s The Lesser Evil (Princeton UP, 2004), 1-24 & 54-81 [= Ch. 1, "Democracy and the Lesser Evil" and Ch. 3, "The Weakness of the Strong"] ; online synopsis of the Mahabharata at URL http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.mahabsynop.htm; the Mahabharata, trans. Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, in The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Bk. 1, ed. Paul Davis et al. (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004): 1475-83 & 1484-86.
W 11/2 Discussion
M 11/7 Prof. Maggie Ivanova (English): “‘I Refuse to Choose:’ East-West Transplantations”
Readings: Rudyard Kipling, “On the City Wall.” From Indian Tales. The Project Gutenberg EBook. August, 2005 [EBook #8649] http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8indt10.txt; Salman Rushdie, “The Courtier,” from East, West: Stories (New York: Vintage International, 1994), 175-211; idem, “Imaginary Homelands,” from Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (London: Granta Books, 1991), 9-21.
W 11/9 Discussion
M 11/14 Profs. Eliza Glaze & Philip Whalen (History): “Describing Other, Becoming Other, Consuming Other? Western Travelers to the East”
Readings: Isabella Bird, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (London: Long Riders’ Press, 2004), 300-35; Freya Stark, “Winter in Arabia” and Isabella Eberhardt, “The Passionate Nomad,” from Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers, ed. Mary Morris (New York: Vintage, 1993), 189-94 and 75-78; Paul Gaugin’s Noa Noa, trans. O.F. Theis, and “The Influence of African, Asian and Pacific Islander Art on European Art and Culture” from Global History, ed. Del Testa, vol. 3: 29-33; 495-502; Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter (Honolulu: U Hawai’i P, 1999), 25-39, 113-22, 136-47.
W 11/16 Discussion
M 11/21 – W 11/23 Thanksgiving Break
M 11/28 Conclusions & Review
W 11/30 Summary Discussion. Final papers due.