English 192-025
Freshman Seminar: Madness and Mercy: From Medea to Beloved
Instr: Hamilton, Kristie
Office: CRT 478; 229-5959
e-mail: kgh2@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 330-4:45pm; MER 342
Course Description
In a stimulating combination of classic and contemporary literature and films, we will study stories about anguish, fear, brutality and upheaval in the lives of individuals and in the histories of families and nations. We will learn about worlds and times where madness makes sense and sanity is monstrous―where imagining mercy means fashioning hope from improbable possibilities. Our goals in this course will be at least three-fold: 1) to discover the ways storytelling and re-telling can shape our lives 2) to realize the power, the pleasure, and the understanding we gain by reading books and viewing films together, talking together, and thinking through our writing, and 3) to begin learning and practicing skills that are necessary to your survival and success as you pursue a college education. The course will include an exciting range of authors: Euripides and Mary Shelley, Jean Rhys and Anne Sexton, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, and Toni Morrison. We will view, in class, film versions of two novels: Jane Eyre and Beloved.
Requirements: 1) Reading all assigned material, 2) 1-page response papers for each story we read or view, 3) two three-page papers and one in-class essay as final exam, and 4) attendance of one out-of-class presentation by a visiting speaker at UWM or one event sponsored by Sociocultural Programming at the Union is required.
Required Texts:Euripides. Three Plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, the Bacchae. Trans. By Paul Roche. (Norton)
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. (Plume/Penguin)
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. (Norton)
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. (Signet)
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. (Penguin)
--Materials available at Clark Copy Center. Selections from 1) Transformations by Anne Sexton and 2) " A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
