DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Other Places:  Travel, Literature, and Identity

INQ 110—Fall 2014

 

Once in a place, that journey to the far interior of the psyche begins or it doesn’t.  Something must make it yours, that ineffable something no book can capture.  It can be so simple, like the light I saw on the faces of three women walking with their arms linked when the late afternoon sun slanted into the Rugspiana.  That light seemed to fall like a benison on everyone beneath it.  I, too, wanted to soak my skin under such a sun. 

                                    --Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

  

Course Topic:

Why do we leave home?  What drives us to leave behind the familiar (and often comfortable) for other places that are new to us, challenging to us, sometimes dangerous to us?  What images/fantasies rise to the surface when we contemplate the possibility of visiting Egypt or Rome or Bangkok or Istanbul?  And what happens when we get there?  Can the reality rise to our expectations?  Are we changed?  Is the place we’re visiting changed?  Students in this class will read widely and discuss actively literary works relating to this topic, seeking, finally, to answer these questions for themselves in a manner that reflects an intellectual engagement with the questions at hand. 

 

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

1.    Read, discuss, and write about college-level academic texts and ideas relating to travel, literature, and identity in a thoughtful and deliberate way.

2.   Ask and answer questions that really matter about our reading and our lives. 

3.    Use a process of drafting to write papers that have clear theses, cogent argumentation, proper use of evidence, effective organization, a minimum of sentence-level errors and that address ideas that are relevant, meaningful, and important. 

4.    Use library and other resources to find, evaluate, and synthesize information from multiple sources and use this information in support of a research question that really matters.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.