II. Catalogue Description: An exploration through lecture and discussion of humanistic values, questions and themes in the literature and philosophy of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
III. Purpose:
1. To examine specific human themes from a variety of perspectives;
2. To improve students' ability to read, analyze, and compare literary and philosophical works and
to discuss and write about the questions they suggest;
3. To introduce students to significant literary and philosophical works and the historical and cultural
traditions from which they emerged.

IV. To Receive Credit, Students Should Be Able to:
1. Identify some important issues in western thought in the twentieth century;
2. Understand and compare the diverse positions expressed in the works read in the course;
3. Communicate that understanding effectively.

V. Course Outline: The course readings are divided into four parts:
1. Self
2. The Individual and Society
3. Certainty and Doubt
4. Moral Choice

VI. Instructional Activities: Class activities include discussion of readings and background lectures.

VII. Field, Clinical, and/or Laboratory Experiences: Films and forums are provided. Students are encouraged to use the world and the Internet as their laboratory as well.

VIII. Resources: Students may use computer labs to surf the Interned and to type their papers. Students are encouraged to communicate with the professor via e-mail about their papers and attendance.

IX. Grading Procedures: There will be 2 exams, both essay and objective, plus 2 typed papers, at least 750 words, on interpretive, analytic, or comparative topics.
Extra papers, including major overhauls of poor essays, may be handed in for extra credit. All essays must be revised. Satisfactory minor revisions will get a check, more extensive revisions a check plus or double plus. Each paper and exam will be counted equally. This unit is 75% of the grade.
Quizzes and optional extra-credit assignments, such as written evidence of attendance at previously approved university and community events, count a total of 10%. Each quiz and piece of written evidence will count 10 points towards the 10%. Alternatives to missed quizzes may be handed in provided the absences are excused and the professor approves.
The final exam, both essay and objective, counts 15%.
Essay grades are based on style, content, organization, spelling and grammatical accuracy, handling of any appropriate research material, as well as promptness. Papers late without excuse will be marked down one step of a grade (e.g., A to A-, B+, etc.) for each class period after the due date.)
A=90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79 D=60-69, E=0-59
Students must complete all the work to receive a passing grade in the course.

X. Attendance Policy: Regular class attendance is vital to academic success.
The official Humanities absence policy will be enforced. The course grade will be lowered one-third of a letter grade for each unexcused absence over three. To avoid the grade penalty, students must offer plausible excuses, preferably authorized written ones, whenever they miss classes.

XI. Academic Honesty Policy: Students are responsible for following the College of Humanistic Studies policy on academic integrity.
"Cheating, plagiarism (submitting another person's material as one's own or doing work for another person which will receive academic credit) are all impermissible. This includes the use of unauthorized copying of examinations, assignments, reports or term papers, or the presentation of acknowledged material as if it were the students' own work. Disciplinary action may be taken beyond the academic discipline administered by the faculty member who teaches the course in which the cheating took place." Students are also responsible for the more detailed policy statement posted on classroom bulletin boards.

XII. Texts and References:
Gould, James, Classical Philosophical Questions (8th ed.) (CPQ)
Rubenstein, Roberta, and Charles R. Larson, eds. Worlds of Fiction 2nd edition (WF)
Kelly, Joseph, ed. The Seagull Reader: Poems (SR)
Dickens, Charles, Hard Times
Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll's House
Gaines, Ernest, A Gathering of Old Men

XIII. Prerequisites: English 101, 102, IDC 101, 102 or the equivalents

PART ONE: THE SELF

How do we learn who we are or who we want to be? Stories in this part dramatize moments when characters learn or test their values. In these readings, we will move from examples of decisive (if not always deliberate) characters to those who, for reasons we will explore, cannot quite decide the course their lives should take.

M Jan 12 Introduction to the course and major themes

W Jan 14 Updike, "A & P" (WF); Housman, "Terrence, This Is Stupid Stuff" (SR)

F Jan 16 Jewett, "A White Heron" (WF); Bishop, "The Fish"; Wright, "A Blessing" (SR)

M Jan 19 Martin Luther King’s Birthday: No Class

W Jan 21 Mason, "Shiloh" (WF); E. B. Browning, "How Do I Love Thee?" (SR)

F Jan 23 Silko, "Yellow Woman"; Buzzati, "The Falling Girl" (WF)

M Jan 26 Joyce, "Eveline" (WF); Plath, "Daddy" (SR)

W Jan 28 Min, "The One Who Goes Farthest Away" (WF); Lee, "The Gift" (SR)

F Jan 30 Dickens, Hard Times

M Feb 2 Dickens, Hard Times

W Feb 4 Dickens, Hard Times

PART TWO: THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
The readings in this part focus on the tension between the individual and the social environment. Faulkner’s story "A Rose for Emily" dramatizes numerous issues, such as gender, class, sexuality, race, power, love, and alienation, emphasized by other readings. The selections are arranged to allow for progression from an examination of the outcast to representations of an indifferent community and then to various individuals’ reactions to the community, which may vary due to racial and cultural differences, sexual orientation, and gender, among other factors.

F Feb 6 Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" (WF); ESSAY 1 DUE

M Feb 9 Browning, "My Last Duchess"; Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"; Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; Millay, "Love Is Not All"; Olds, "Sex Without Love"; Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" (SR)

W Feb 11 Nietzsche, "Happiness Is Having Power" (CPQ); Review

F Feb 13 EXAM 1

M Feb 16 Conrad, "Amy Foster" (WF); Erdrich, "Captivity"; Erdrich , "Indian Boarding School" (SR)

W Feb 18 Allende, "And of Clay Are We Created" (WF); Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts"; Frost, "Mending Wall"; Blake, "The Chimney Sweep" (SR)

F Feb 20 Ibsen, A Doll's House

M Feb 23 Ibsen, A Doll's House

W Feb 25 Walker, "Everyday Use" (WF); Hughes, "Theme for English B"; Dove, "The House Slave"; Dove "Daystar"; Brooks,"We Real Cool" (SR)

F Feb 27 Grahn, "Boys at the Rodeo"; McCann, "My Mother's Clothers" (WF); Grades Due

M Mar 1 de Beauvoir, "Woman as Other" (CPQ); Glaspell, "A Jury of Her Peers" (WF)

W Mar 3 Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (WP)

PART THREE: CERTAINTY AND DOUBT
This part explores one of the central answers and issues of our time—the quest for certainty. Through philosophical arguments as well as fiction and poetry, writers explore the nature of humans’.

F Mar 5 Benedict, "Ethics Are Relative" (CPQ); Ngugi we Thiong'o, "A Meeting in the Dark" (WF): Arnold, "Dover Beach"; Yeats, "The Second Coming" (SR)

M Mar 8 Stace, "Ethics Aren't Relative" (CPQ); Erdrich, "Love Medicine" (WF); Blake, "The Lamb"; Blake, "The Tyger" (SR)

W Mar 10 Rosa, "The Proof" (WF); Hopkins, "God’s Grandeur"; Hopkins, "The Windhover,"; Ransom, "Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter": Hardy, "Hap"; Hardy, "Channel Firing" (SR)

F Mar 12 O'Connor, Flannery, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (WF); Cummings, "Buffalo Bill’s defunct"; Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"; Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" (SR)

SPRING BREAK

M Mar 22 Tan, "Half and Half" (WF); Lee, "Visions and Interpretations," Housman, "To an Athlete Dying Young"; Dickinson, Poem #465, "I Heard a Fly Buzz"; Dickinson, Poem #712, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" (SR)

W Mar 24 Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (WF); Yeats, "Leda and the Swan"; Olds, "One Girl" (SR); Review

F Mar 26 EXAM 2

M Mar 29 Naryan, "A Horse and Two Goats" (WF)

W Mar 31 Mahfouz, "Half a Day" (WF); Shelley, "Ozymandias"; Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us"; Williams, "Spring and All" (SR)

F Apr 2 Mill, "Freedom Is Democracy and Free Speech" (CPQ);Kasaipwalova, "Betel Nut Juice Is Bad Magic for Airplanes" (WF)

PART FOUR: MORAL CHOICE
In this part we explore some of the ways in which philosophy and literature confront the problem of good and evil. As we consider several ethical philosophies and literary dramatizations of moral dilemmas, we are able to look more closely at our own concepts of morality.

M Apr 5 Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men, 3-82

W Apr 7 Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men, 83-151

F Apr 9 Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men, 152-214; ESSAY 2 DUE

M Apr 12 O’Brien, "The Things They Carried" (WF); Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"; Komunyakaa, "We Never Know"; Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (SR)

W Apr 14 Bentham, "Happiness Is to Do What Is Good for All" (CPQ)

F Apr 16 Jackson, "The Lottery" (WF)

M Apr 19 Camus, "The Guest" (WF)

W Apr 21 Kant, "Duty Is Prior to Happiness" (CPQ)

F Apr 23 Zaman, "The Daily Woman"; Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants" (WF); Brooks, "the mother" (SR)

M Apr 26 Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" (WF); Kanafani, "A Hand in the Grave"; Kumin, "Woodchucks" (SR)

W Apr 28 Lessing, "The Old Chief Mshlanga" (WF)

F Apr 30 Mphahlele, Mrs. Plum M" (WF)