Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences: Course Proposal Narrative
General Education Advisory Committee
Queens College, City University of New York
Course Title: EURO 210 : The Enlightenment Contact: Karen Sullivan, karen.sullivan@qc.cuny.edu, Course approved by depart
Justification
Please describe how the course will address criteria for Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences courses.
Be sure to include an explanation of the course’s specific learning goals for students to make a connection between these
and the general criteria for Perspectives courses.
EURO 210-The Enlightenment : Enlightenment Literature and the Worlds beyond Europe
This course addresses the following PLAS categories: Culture and Values (CV), European Traditions (ET),
and Pre-Industrial (PI) and may be listed as a writing-intensive course.
This course will introduce students to late seventeenth and eighteenth-century European thought through
analysis and discussion of several major literary, and philosophical works of the period, notably Vico's New
Science, Behn's Oroonoko, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Graffigny's Letters from a Peruvian Woman,
Voltaire's Candide, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality as well as excerpts from works by
Locke, Kant, Diderot, Herder and others. Among the topics we will consider are: Enlightenment universalism
and its critics, fictional and real philosophical travelers, the nature of exoticism, the myth of the Noble
Savage, and the relation of literary/artistic creation to political, economic, and historical contexts. Guided
reading of primary and secondary texts will allow students to discuss and analyze representations of nonEuropean cultures and philosophical travelers, the relationship of empiricism to the novel, and the impact of
Enlightenment concepts on contemporary society. Among the topics we will consider are: Enlightenment
universalism and its critics, philosophical travelers, the nature of exoticism, the myth of the Noble Savage,
and the relation of literary/artistic creation to political, economic, and historical contexts.
Students will participate in bulletin board discussions, write a reaction paper, take mid-term and final exams,
and submit a term paper.
The philosophical and literary texts studied are crucial to our understanding of Modernity and have
influenced European and American thought in the disciplines of Literary Studies, Philosophy, Anthropology,
Science, Linguistics, and Political Science. Through close reading and discussion of original texts as well as
critical writings
from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries students will gain awareness of how
Criteria
Checklist
racial,beethnic,
gender,
and class differences
will
Please
sure that
your justification
addresses allwere
threeconstructed
criteria 1-3, during
below. the
ForEnlightenment.
criteria 4-8, pleaseThis
check
allenable
that apply
and
discuss
these
in
your
justification.
students to identify and interpret contemporary constructions of difference.
A Perspectives course must:
1. Be designed to introduce students to
how a particular discipline creates
knowledge and understanding.
In addition, a Perspectives course will, where appropriate to its
discipline(s) and subject matter:
✔
4. Be global or comparative in approach.
✔
2. Position the discipline(s) within the
liberal arts and the larger society.
5. Consider diversity and the nature and construction of
forms of difference.
✔
3. Address the goals defined for the
particular Area(s) of Knowledge the
course is designed to fulfill.
7. Reveal the existence and importance of change over time.
✔
March 2008
6. Engage students in active inquiry.
8. Use primary documents and materials.
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Course Materials, Assignments, and Activities
Please provide an annotated list of course readings and descriptions of major assignments or exams for the course, as well
as distinctive student activities that will engage students in working toward the course goals discussed in the course
description and/or justification.
Please include the author and title for each reading or text, along with a short description providing information about how
the reading will contribute to course goals.
Assignments
Online Bulletin Board
Students will respond to three to five questions on concepts such as the “Noble Savage”, heroïsm,
individualism and community, and utopia in the course readings.
Reaction paper
Students will submit a short reaction paper to a twentieth century critical reading of one of the literary/
philosophical works on the syllabus.
Term paper
Papers will address a theme approved by the instructor and discuss narrative techniques and how they
construct meaning in fiction. Students will submit a 2-3 page proposal with outline and bibliography of
Assessment
primary and secondary sources. They will receive feedback and guidance from the instructor. They will then
Perspectives courses must be recertified every five years, and we are seeking ideas for how to best carry out this
complete aWhat
7-10 forms
page term
paper comparing
2 or
of its
thegoals
works
during the
semester.
assessment.
of evidence
that the course
is more
meeting
as aread
Perspectives
course
would be appropriate to
collect for this course during the next five years? How would you prefer assessment to be conducted? How might
Midterm and final exam will require students to respond to essay questions and interpret literary texts.
evidence of effective teaching and student learning be collected and evaluated?
Exams and bulletin board assignments will include questions related to PLAS goals.
Annotated List of Readings:
Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" Kant's essay will open the discussion of Enlightenment thought and its
relation to social and political transformations during the eighteenth century.
Aphra Behn. Oroonoko is one of the first realistic novels written in English. Close reading of the text will
lead students to discover how narrative techniques are used to construct realism in the novel. We shall
discuss this novel in relation to slavery and the emergence of empire in Europe, the nature of heroism in
literature, and the construction of the exotic literary “other.”
Administration
Oluada Equiano, Equiano's Travels This first-person autobiographical narrative by a freed slave will be
What
process for
willits
your
develop
to oversee
and approve changes, and conduct assessment?
considered
usedepartment
of rhetorical
techniques
andthis
its course,
multiplesuggest
agendas.
Who will be in charge of this process? Also indicate whether the course will be primarily taught by full-time or adjunct
faculty,
or by aAn
combination
of the twoHuman
types ofUnderstanding
instructor.
John Locke,
Essay concerning
(excerpts) Discussion will provide students with
the basis for understanding empiricism and its relationship to the rise of the novel in eighteenth century
Europe.
All PLAS courses offered by the Department of European Languages and Literatures are overseen by a
Giambattista
Vico,which
The New
Science (excerpts)
rejects
theological
explanations
of history and
PLAS
committee,
is responsible
for reviewVico's
of thework
course
to assure
that it meets
PLAS goals.
offers a newexplanation for the evolution of political structures.
Course will be taught by Karen Sullivan a full-time, tenured faculty member.
Montesquieu. Persian Letters. Montesquieu's novel of two Persian travelers to France transposes into fiction
several of his political ideas found in The Spirit of the Laws and illustrates the mutability of political
institutions. We will consider Orientalism in literature and the relationship of the multivocal epistolary form
to creation of meaning.
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. We will consider the coexistence of the adventure narrative, the conversion
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narrative, and the confessional narrative in Robinson Crusoe. Our discussion will focus on the
representation of nature, the representation of non-European characters, capitalism, trade and empire in the
novel.
March 2008