English L111: Living Literature / Documenting Reality

ENG L111
TR 9:30-10:45
BH 235

Tarez Samra Graban
Ballantine Hall 474
855-4888
Office: M 12-2, R 11-12
and by appt.
tgraban@indiana.edu

 

 

Image Credits
1.
2. "Lochaber No More," painting by John Watson Nicol (1883)
3. "Women's Peace Parade in New York City on August 29, The Emblem of Peace," NY Public Library Digital Gallery
4. "Children Playing at Hull-House" (1895 unknown photographer), Jane Addams Memorial Collection, The University of Illinois at Chicago
5. "Migrants Arriving in Sydney" (1966 David Moore), Contemporary Australian Photographs Collection, National Library of Australia (http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14066835-10)




Last Updated: 9/10/09

Description & Goals
What gives literature its "documentary" qualities, and what role can documentaries play in redirecting our beliefs? How do they challenge or reinforce our expectations of what’s culturally right, socially ill, or morally good? Are ironic, impassioned, allegorical, or satirical depictions of real events any less genuine, authentic, or real? This semester, we will consider these questions by reading, analyzing, and theorizing about the possibilities of the documentary as a rhetorical and literary form. Our covering of genres is eclectic and vast—including long fiction, polemical essay, memoir, contemporary philosophy, graphic novel, and film—and some of them have highly persuasive aims. Our collective challenge is to understand the complexities (perhaps even the limitations) of writing, reading, and enacting various renditions of “living to tell.” Our course is divided into four units that represent different purposes and contexts for documentary literature, including enculturation, uplift, critique, and change. Within each unit, we’ll focus on key concepts to help us grapple with the analytic nature of literary and rhetorical critique. We will also think more about how documentary literature may stem from a longer tradition of using texts to make a public record and deliver urgent messages for urgent times. And finally, we will consider how we should read them and what kinds of audiences we are called to be. As part of that process, this course will help you to:

• understand how literature has been, is, and can be seen as a powerful form of acting on the world
• view documentary literature more critically and respond to it more critically
• unpack complex beliefs and assumptions about life, culture, and text
• develop a repertoire of critical concepts by which you interpret and evaluate the persuasive strategies of various texts, and with which you can talk engagingly about texts
• formulate and develop a response to a critical question about something you read and with which you help another reader to understand it better.

Required Materials
Our course materials this semester consist of the following:

• Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn (ISBN 9780553375404)
• The Jungle: Uncensored Original Edition by Upton Sinclair (ISBN 9781884365300)
• Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (ISBN 97803950243)
• The Mole People by Jennifer Toth (ISBN 9781556522413)
• Our Nig: Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet Wilson (ISBN 9780142437773)
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (ISBN 9780375714573)
• ENG L111 Coursepack (CP) (at TIS and IU Bookstore)
• Access to the following software: Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat Reader, a Web browser, and a working Indiana University e-mail account (available on any STC computer across campus)