California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Academic Senate Report
AS-2188-056/GE
ENG 235, WAR AND PEACE IN LITERATURE – GENERAL EDUCATION – AREA C3
COURSE
Academic Senate Action:
Adopted: 9/28/05
Final Disposition:
Transmitted to President: 10/7/05
AS-2188-056/GE, ENG 235, WAR AND PEACE IN LITERATURE – GENERAL
EDUCATION – AREA C3 COURSE
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Recommendation:
The Academic Senate has found this course to be in compliance with the guidelines for area
C3. There were no comments on the Undergraduate Studies website.
AS-2188-056/GE, ENG 235, WAR AND PEACE IN LITERATURE – GENERAL
EDUCATION – AREA C3 COURSE
CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC
UNIVERSITY, POMONA
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Course Title: War and Peace in Literature
Date of Outline: September 2004
Prepared by: Andrew Moss
Revised: April 2005
COURSE OUTLINE
I.
Catalog Description
ENG 235 War and Peace in Literature (4)
Cross-cultural representations of war and nonviolent
protest in fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction, film, and other visual texts. 4 lecture presentations.
Prerequisite: English 104 or its equivalent.
II.
Required Background of Experience
Prerequisite: English 104 or its equivalent.
III.
Expected Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to
do the following:
A. Explain different ways in which war and peace, violence and nonviolence, are represented in imaginative
literature. More thoroughly discuss and analyze specific literary works within the contexts of political, cultural,
and aesthetic developments.
B. Identify and analyze significant themes in literary texts that address issues of violent conflict and nonviolent
change. Such themes include constructions of the “enemy,” the nature of courage and compassion in the face of
conflict, and the role (or failure) of moral responsibility in responding to violence.
C. Make informed comparisons (thematic, aesthetic, cross-cultural) of different representations of war and
nonviolent protest, including concepts of ahimsa and satyagraha.
D. Discuss ways in which literary interpretations of texts on war and peace are shaped and constrained by cultural
factors.
IV.
Texts and Materials
Text selections will reflect cultural diversity as well as a
broad range of literary genres. Selections will be made to address the general topics of the course, including such
concerns as representations of a warrior ethos, modern transformations in the images of war and conflict, and
contemporary responses (in imaginative literature) to violence. Possible texts (listed by genre) include:
Fiction
Gil Courtemanche. trans. Patricia Claxton. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Mahasweta Devi, trans. Ipsita Chanda. Glory of Sri Sri Ganesh. Calcutta: Seagull, 2003.
Joseph Heller. Catch 22. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996
Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue, Vu Truong, and Truong Vu, eds. The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by
Vietnamese and American Writers. Willimantic, Conn.: Curbstone, 1995.
Tim O’Brien. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway, 1998.
Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front. Ballantine, 1995.
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five. Laurel, 1991.
Poetry
Chris Abani. Kalakuta Republic. London: Saqi, 2000.
AS-2188-056/GE, ENG 235, WAR AND PEACE IN LITERATURE – GENERAL
EDUCATION – AREA C3 COURSE
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Hilda Doolittle (“H.D”). Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall, Tribute to the Angels, the Flowering of the Rod. New
York: Norton, 1974
Sam Hamill, ed. Poets Against the War. New York: Nation Books, 2003.
Seamus Heaney. North. London: Faber and Faber, 1974.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley, Ca.: Parallax,
1993.
Homer, The Iliad. trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
Hilda Schiff, ed. Holocaust Poetry. New York: St. Martins, 1995.
Jon Stallworthy, ed. The Oxford Book of War Poetry. New York: Oxford, 1984
Huyn Sanh Thong, ed. and trans., An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems from the Eleventh through the Twentieth
Centuries. New Haven: Yale, 1996.
Walt Whitman. Drum Taps. Whitefish, MT.: Kessinger, 2004.
Drama
Aristophanes, Lysistrata. Dover, 1994.
Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children. Grove/Atlantic, 1991.
Memoir
Martin Luther King. “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.” Stride Toward Freedom. New York: Harper, 1958.
Mixed Genres (e.g., mixtures of fiction and non-fiction) and other media
Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Vintage, 2000.
----------------------------. The Fifth Book of Peace. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Other media can include paintings (e.g., Guernica), film (e.g., film versions of such works as All Quiet on the Western
Front) and music.
V.
Minimum Student Materials
Texts and writing materials.
VI.
Minimum College Facilities
Classroom with tables or desks and blackboard.
VCR/DVD player.
VII.
Course Outline
The course is organized thematically, enabling a crosscultural study of literary works within their historical contexts. A general outline of topics may include:
A.
Representations of a warrior ethos: images and
construction of the heroic ideal. Early critiques (e.g., Aristophanes’ Lysistrata) of this cultural ideal.
B. Transformations in the image of war: experiences of the contemporary era. Historically, the focus on these
transformations centers on the 19th and 20th centuries, as war and organized violence acquired increasing lethality
and scope, moving from conflicts between armed forces to conflagrations affecting large civilian populations
(according to one estimate, genocides alone accounted for the loss of 60 million lives in the 20 th century).
C. Contemporary cultures of violence: the role of fear and repression as enabling conditions.
D. Violence as human experience
1.
2.
Living through war, genocide, torture
Challenges to human freedom, identity, spirituality
AS-2188-056/GE, ENG 235, WAR AND PEACE IN LITERATURE – GENERAL
EDUCATION – AREA C3 COURSE
E. Contemporary responses to violence
1.
2.
3.
reflection, and personal introspection.
4.
5.
VIII.
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Literatures of protest
“Bearing witness” in poetry and fiction.
Creating new narratives of nonviolent struggle, collective
Redefining courage: from warrior to satyagrahi.
Gender and nonviolence: new roles, new representations
Instructional Methods
Instructional methods include lectures, class discussions, small-group discussions, and oral presentations on specific
works or on themes and issues related to the assigned readings.
IX.
Outcomes Assessment
Students’ achievement of course outcomes will be assessed with reference to criteria similar to those of other general
education (i.e. Category 3) literature courses; that is, with reference to students’ ability to analyze and interpret
literary texts. The evaluations will thus be made on the basis of students’ performance on examinations and quizzes,
essays, and research papers. Essay and research paper assignments can entail such tasks as the cross-cultural
comparison of literary works, the examination of specific works within historical contexts, and the exploration of
broad themes as they are presented in several works.