FALL 2007 HONORS COURSES

HONR 289Y Novels and Who We Are
Tuesday/Thursday, 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Dr. Sibbie O’Sullivan, Senior Lecturer in University Honors

From the very first Once Upon a Time we, all of humankind, have used narrative as a way of understanding who we are and what our world is like. For centuries the novel has been the dominant form of narrative, an essential vehicle for creating conscious and cultured individuals. Reading fiction is important since it does so well that which is so necessary. In the words of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, fiction “sounds the self while imagining the other.”

In the most sweeping terms, this seminar will explore what it means to read fiction and what that endeavor reveals about us and the lives of those who, on the surface, seem unlike ourselves. Since the act of reading a novel is never static, it does not matter that the characters in the book are fictional “others,” and not “real.” An important exchange of self still takes place once we examine how and what the fictional world gives to the reader and what the reader brings to it. When we look at reading in this manner we begin to see that it is a primary source of knowledge about both the self and the greater world. But before we can analyze how this exchange affects us individually, we need to ask some fundamental questions about reading. How does reading fiction help us know ourselves? If we often think of the author as a disguise, is the reader also using a disguise? How is reading different from other forms of experiencing? Is reading fiction a form of ethical inquiry?

We will begin the course by talking about fiction in general, our own reading histories, and specific theories of reading. Then we will discuss each novel and our responses to it. The focus of these discussions is not interpretative or evaluative, though it is impossible to avoid such issues if we are to become critical readers of both ourselves and the world.

Possible assignments include:
An autobiographical bibliography wherein the students describe their reading and the influence it has had on their lives; a journal of responses and questions written throughout the course recording information about each book and class discussion–to be handed in and graded throughout the semester; two short essays; a final, long paper on a contemporary novel chosen by the student and approved by me.

Possible novels include:
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River; Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
E.M. Forster, Howard’s End; Hubert Selby, Last Exit to Brooklyn
Lucinda Rosenfeld, What She Saw In; Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene

CORE–Literature [HL]