Graduate of English Language and Literature
Fu Jen Catholic University

Curriculum: Spring 2002

Senior Thesis/4 credits

English Writing II/2 credits/Dr. Raphael Schulte

There is no description for this course.   Please feel free to contact the teacher if you have any questions.

Translation /3 credits/Fr. Daniel Bauer

The purpose of the seminar is to offer students the opportunity to develop translation skills, primarily from Chinese into English, in dealing with texts related to literature.  Materials most often used in classes will include passages from short stories, literary essays, works of literary criticism etc.  Students will at times choose their own material for assignments.  Students in the seminar are expected to be active participants, sharing weekly "reports" on their translation issues in group discussion.  The instructor will offer regular but succinct summaries of translation theory, as well as feedback on translation process and practice. All material is to be revised after correction by the instructor. Students will submit portions of translation with commentary (1 1/2 - 3 pages) nearly every week of the course, and do a translation project with commentary for the final weeks (15-20 pages).

[top]

Shakespeare: Race and Foreigners/3 credits/Dr. Raphael Schulte

This course will not address a specific genre among Shakespeare's plays; instead, the course will pursue seven plays that share common thematic concerns, including the construction of racial identity and the influence of foreigners/outsiders on communal social structures.  Our discussions will focus primarily on A Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest.  We may also look at issues of gender, sexual identity, language usage, and power structures as they are presented in the plays.  The reading list is not set and is negotiable. If there are other plays that you would prefer to read, please let me know.

Because this will be a seminar course, most of our class time will be spent in discussion.  Each student will be responsible for three in-class presentations and will have the option of doing two medium length papers—the first due at mid-term—or one longer paper due at the end of the semester.

I recommend the Riverside Shakespeare, but any scholarly edition of Shakespeare's plays will be acceptable.

[top]

In the last two decades, a conspicuous number of theorists and critics have engaged in discussing postcolonial theory and criticism. Equally remarkable is the seeming popularity of colonial and postcolonial literature(s) courses offered by the Humanities programs of universities in Britain, the USA, Taiwan, and many other countries. While theorists and critics concerned about the subject are enthusiastically engaging in developing, questioning, and elaborating postcolonial theory, debate arises among them from many controversial issues. A significant issue in this debate is whether the umbrella terms ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ should be treated as two binary, chronologically distinct, yet historically sequential periods in dealing with specific, heterogeneous historical experiences of colonization and decolonization. Another issue results from the problematic classification of intellectuals as ‘colonial’ or ‘postcolonial’ according to whether they start writing before or after the decolonization of their countries, regardless of their individual cultural attitudes towards Western dominance and their specific social and political locations. Yet perhaps, the most fundamental issue is whether African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Pacific Island countries, Sri Lanka and the USA are all ‘postcolonial.’ What is ‘postcolonial’ anyway?

To answer the question, we will investigate mainly a large number of recent critical essays and discuss what their authors mean or assume when they use, among many other buzzwords, the terms ‘colonial,’ ‘anti-colonial,’ ‘postcolonial,’ ‘neo-colonial,’ and ‘decolonization.’Critics whose works might be considered for our discussion include Aijaz Ahmad, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Deepika Bahri, Stuart Hall, Peter Hulme, Anne McClintock, Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge, Ella Shohat, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, etc. Literary works to be discussed in this course to flesh out the concepts and terms in question will include Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Students taking this course are required to turn in a term paper (12-15 pages) at the end of the semester. Grading policy: class performance: 40%; term paper: 60%.

[top]

History and Space in Contemporary North American Women's Fictions /3 credits/Dr. Kate Chi-wen Liu

" Who are you?" said the caterpiller.

" Alice replied rather shyly, 'I -- I hardly know, Sir, just at present -- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.'"(Alice in the Wonderland)

If Alice just experiences changes of her body, contemporary feminist writers have to deal with  not only rapid changes in familiar relationships and society, but also conflicting constructions of their selves by histories, social spaces and information technologies.  What does it mean, then, to be a feminist writer in contemporary North America, a world which Alice could never have imagined a century ago? What kind of subjects do they construct in their novels to resist what kind of patriarchy?  What novelistic strategies do they use? 

Under the impact of feminism and postcolonialism on the one hand, postmodernisms on the other, writing stories about women's selves is necessary but difficult.  It is necessary because, under the influence of Women's Movement in the 60's, as well as the long history of feminism, far more women asserted their selves in a stronger voice.  Self-Construction(narration), on the other hand, means also construction of a certain history (familial, ethnic, national, or global) and/or a certain space (home, city, margins, etc.), but then neither history nor space can be assumed to be pre-given or natural, not to mention the idea of self.  With the awareness of both the necessity and difficulties (if not impossibilities) of self-constructions, North American women writers resort to strategies such as Irony, double-talking, fantasy, metafiction, intertextuality.  If these strategies are used both by white and minority woman writers, where do we draw the line between postmodernism and postcolonialism?

To address the issues mentioned above, this course chooses six North American feminist novels which construct different kinds of time/space to locate their (female) subjects of different ethnic backgrounds.  The first two novels, Beloved (by Toni Morrison) and Disappearning Moon Cafe (by SKY Lee), look backward at a racial history of Afro-Americans and Chinese-Canadians?respectively--both represented spatiallly--as resources for the characters' identity politics at the present time of the novels.  The next two novels, The Handmaid's Tale and Woman on the Edge of Time project a future, utopian or destopian, to comment on the present patriarchal society.  What are the possible ways of getting rid of patriarchal society? Housekeeping sets patriarchy adrift, while Dawn leaves human society completely under the hands of the extraterrestrials.  While focusing on the various time/space constructions and identity politics of these novels, we hope to have a general, though provisional, understanding of the major concerns and strategies of postmodern North American feminist novels.

[top]

　

Seminar on Middle English: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/3 credits /Dr. Carolyn Scott

The material covered will include:

1. Instruction and practice in reading and pronouncing Middle English
2. In-depth reading and analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other texts by the Gawain-Poet

The grade for the course will be based on:

1. an oral reading exam
2. daily quizzes
3. an 8-10 page paper
4. participation in class discussion

The course would be designed for graduate students, but upper-level undergraduates could also enroll.

Ideally the course would meet every day for 2-3 hours for the two-week class period. This will depend on the number of credits the course will carry and other scheduling considerations.

[top]