Welcome to English 392.981, better known as World Literature II.

This course will cover

a range of national literatures and genres from the seventeenth century to the present. My
intention is to get you to read and write about a broader range of literatures than perhaps
you have already experienced and to help you make meaningful connections between
literature and its many contexts. The overall aim is not just to help you discuss and write
about literature intelligently, but also and foremost to show you how literature can enrich
your life. With that aim in mind, I will be your guide on this collective journey. Because
I am a newcomer to the world of online teaching, I may at times lose you in the matrix of
our virtual classroom. But I promise to do my best to recover and point us back in the
direction we started.

Whenever one undertakes a project, it helps to have a theme or purpose in mind. For this
course, my unstated theme is something like “Contact: Globalization and Modernity.”
What does it mean to be a global society? Or a modern society? Since 1492, we have
lived in a world that has gotten smaller, more integrated (formally if not actually), and
more complex. This process has been fraught with rich and painful contradictions.
Nationalist movements overthrew feudal monarchies and planted new democracies; but
they also established empires and slavery. Global trade promised a new prosperity; but it
also delivered exploitation and inequality. Reason and the scientific method supplanted
mysticism and religion, lighting the way to a future utopia; but they also birthed new
forms of oppression based on theories of progress, civilization, and racial supremacy.
God was pronounced dead; and God was resurrected in the name of king and country.
Technology and industry advanced like never before; and so too did mechanized warfare,
global poverty and the threat of ecological collapse. Cultures mashed and blended,
creating wonderfully new combinations; but they also resisted and confronted each other
with lethal results.

These themes only scrape the surface of what has happened in the last few centuries. My
purpose is to tease out these themes and many more as we read, discuss, and write about
literature. Using the Discussion Board, Personal Blogs, Quizzes, and Formal Essays,
together we will arrive at a better understanding of an emerging world literature whose
pages contain the hurt and the hope of contact.

Stay tuned for next week when our journey of discovery takes off into The Tempest!