Swarthmore College
Mondays 1:15-4:00
Kohlberg 334
Sibelan Forrester
Kohlberg 340
Office phone: 610-328-8162
Email:
sforres1@swarthmore.edu
URL:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/sforres1/
Office hours:
Monday, 110:00–11:00; Tuesday, 10:00-12:00; Wednesday, 10:00–11:00
Course WA: TBA
Email: TBA@swarthmore.edu
URL:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/writing.xml
The course has two primary foci: first, to introduce a variety of novels, stories, and autobiographies by major twentieth-century writers from Eastern Europe, plus some basic historical and cultural background of the region and the literary movements and techniques of analysis that impact the literature’s meaning. Second, this is a Writing Intensive Course, and writing will be a central focus of our work, illuminating our discussions of the literature and the course assignments.
Besides class meetings, each devoted to a particular author and book, you meet with me and with your WA outside of class, plus at least once with another student in class to discuss your writing.
Be sure to purchase all the books you need before the Bookstore returns unsold copies to publishers, several weeks into the semester. If you can read any of them in the original language, I encourage you to do so. (If you don’t own the book in the original, plan ahead to get through Inter-Library Loan.)
If the cost of books is prohibitive, arrange to share with someone else in the class. Copies on reserve in McCabe are intended for use if you forgot your copy at home, or for people who are sharing copies to bring to class for discussion. I chose these editions with an eye to cost, but (unfortunately!) translated literature from Eastern Europe, besides a few famous Heavies, is simply on the expensive side. The United States is not the world’s best market for translated literature: it’s hard to break into print, and works by less famous writers tend to go out of print quickly. This, besides the cost of each book, has in part dictated the choice of readings.
By purchasing these books, even if it seems like something of a hardship now, you are voting with your dollars for more published translations of East European writing, and this is unquestionably a good thing. Not to mention how nice they look as you’re reading on the train —- or standing on your bookshelf, when you’re in medical school.
A general note about spelling: as you’ll notice, several of the authors we are reading have diacritical marks in their names. If you don’t want to set up your computer to print these properly, which is not at all complex now that we have Unicode, please make the effort to mark them in your printed work by hand. I won’t count off if you miss the occasional one, but doing your best to put them where needed is simple courtesy.