Introduction to fiction

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

This is a HASS -CI course. Like other communications-intensive courses in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, it allows students to produce 20 pages of polished writing with careful attention to revision. It also offers substantial opportunities for oral expression, through presentations of written work, student-led discussion, and class participation. The class has a low enrollment that ensures maximum attention to student writing and oral expression; regular meetings with a writing tutor on drafts and revisions are helpful and are required. Because of the revision, there is no final exam. This course investigates the uses and boundaries of fiction in a range of novels and narrative styles - traditional and innovative, western and nonwestern - and raises questions about the pleasures and meanings of verbal texts in different cultures, times, and forms. Toward the end of the term, we will be particularly concerned with the relationship between art and war in a diverse selection of works.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Penguin.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Penguin.
Melville, Herman. Typee. Penguin.
Tolstoy, Leo. "Hadji Murad". Great Short Works. Harper & Row.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. Penguin.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Penguin.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Harcourt Brace.

Plagiarism attacks the freedom and integrity of thought. Especially in a class that will depend to some extent on online research, you must know what constitutes plagiarism and avoid it. The Literature Department has formulated this statement and policy for all plagiarism cases

Plagiarism

Use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement- is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance see the MIT Web site on plagiarism.

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