The Extraordinary

This course celebrates the “extraordinary” in literature. I firmly believe that all literature is extraordinary and exciting; for this course, I have chosen texts that allow us to compare visions of extraordinary deeds, places, and people. The extraordinary can be difficult to define as it changes meaning depending on context and time period. Does the extraordinary imply that there is an “ordinary” or a “norm”? Our literary texts chart the edges of cultural norms and explore the regions beyond the ordinary – or find something transcendent about the ordinary itself. Some texts describe ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Many involve cross-cultural contact and some “write back” to the assumptions made by previous authors. Our discussion will be wide-ranging and lead us across the globe and through theoretical territory (psychoanalysis, feminism, postcolonialism). We will read short stories, drama, poetry, oral narratives (from !Xam and Inuit traditions), and strangely fictional non-fiction. We will find patterns and connections through texts by authors such as Sophocles, Arthur Conan Doyle, Naguib Mahfouz, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sylvia Plath, Judith Butler, Marie de France, Alexander Pushkin, Sigmund Freud, Kwame Dawes, and Orhan Pamuk. No special knowledge or experience is necessary: just your enthusiasm and willingness to get to grips with some extraordinary texts.

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance (IP)