Course Info: HACU-0238
| Course | HACU-0238 Reading (with) Borges |
| Long Title | Reading (with) Borges |
| Term | 2017F |
| Note(s) |
Satisfies Distribution Textbook information |
| Meeting Info | Emily Dickinson Hall 5 on T,TH from 2:00-3:20 |
| Faculty | Norman Holland |
| Capacity | 23 |
| Available | 5 |
| Waitlist | 0 |
| Distribution(s) |
Culture, Humanities, and Languages |
| Cumulative Skill(s) | Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research |
| Additional Info | In this course, students are expected to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time. |
| Description | This course was devoted to the writings of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, one of the best and most important writers of the last century. Famous for his erudite fictions that speculate on time, history, knowledge, identity, reality, and the imagination, Borges taught us to think literature. He also delighted in spoofing erudition, in the conspiratorial wink against the purveyors of Culture. This playful side has its shadow, for much of his writing revolves around violence-iniquity, to cite one of his early titles. We explore this duality of seriousness and fun selectively in his stories, poems and essays. This was a reading-intensive, student-centered discussion seminar. Besides participation in the class conversations, the assignments included weekly postings, a formal essay, a group presentation and a creative project: translating Borges into another medium. Borges’ writing challenged students to think deeply about the realist paradigm of literature as well as the neocolonial registers of the lettered city. Over the course of the semester students began to shake off the realist paradigm in favor of a more critical frame of reading that was open to other formal possibilities. Borges made us think, while reading (him), about what reading is. |