World Literature Course

Lesson 1 • Defining World Literature

Examines competing definitions of world literature from key theorists. Grounds the course in critical vocabulary students will apply throughout all subsequent readings.

Lesson 2 • Historical Periods and Literary Movements

Maps major literary periods from antiquity to the contemporary era across world regions. Provides a chronological scaffold for organizing texts studied in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Reading Across Cultures

Introduces strategies for reading texts outside one's own cultural context. Builds cross-cultural literacy essential for engaging with global literary traditions.

Lesson 1 • Greek and Roman Classical Texts

Analyzes Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, and Ovid as pillars of Western classical tradition. Demonstrates how Greek and Roman forms influenced global literary development.

Lesson 2 • Mesopotamian and Egyptian Literature

Reads the Epic of Gilgamesh and Egyptian poetry as the earliest surviving literary works. Connects ancient themes of mortality and heroism to later world literary traditions.

Lesson 3 • Sanskrit and South Asian Classics

Introduces the Mahabharata, Ramayana, and classical Sanskrit poetry as major world literary monuments. Situates South Asian texts within global epic and lyric traditions.

Lesson 1 • African Oral and Written Traditions

Introduces the Sundiata epic and Swahili poetry as evidence of rich African literary cultures. Challenges Eurocentric assumptions about medieval literary production.

Lesson 2 • Islamic Golden Age Literature

Reads One Thousand and One Nights, Rumi, and Al-Mutanabbi as exemplars of Arabic and Persian literary achievement. Links Islamic literary culture to broader medieval global networks.

Lesson 3 • Early Modern Exchange and Contact

Examines how colonial contact, trade routes, and religious missions reshaped literary production globally. Prepares students to analyze literature as a product of cross-cultural encounter.

Lesson 4 • European Medieval Narratives

Analyzes Dante, Chaucer, and the chanson de geste as representative medieval European forms. Connects religious worldview and social hierarchy to narrative structure.

Lesson 1 • Romantic Movement Across Cultures

Examines Romanticism in European, Latin American, and Asian literary contexts. Shows how Romantic ideals of nature, emotion, and nationalism varied across cultural settings.

Lesson 2 • Enlightenment Ideals in Literature

Reads Voltaire, Swift, and Wollstonecraft as writers who used literature to critique power and promote reason. Connects Enlightenment philosophy to satirical and essayistic literary forms.

Lesson 3 • Naturalism and Social Determinism

Reads Zola, Ibsen, and Chekhov as writers who pushed realism toward scientific and social determinism. Prepares students to analyze how environment shapes character in literary texts.

Lesson 1 • Modernist Poetry and Fragmentation

Reads Eliot, Lorca, Akhmatova, and Tagore as modernist poets who fragmented traditional lyric form. Develops students' ability to analyze allusion, juxtaposition, and imagistic compression.

Lesson 2 • Modernism Beyond the West

Examines modernist movements in Latin America, Africa, Japan, and the Arab world. Challenges the assumption that modernism was exclusively a European phenomenon.

Lesson 3 • Stream of Consciousness and Interiority

Reads Woolf, Joyce, and Proust as innovators of interior narrative technique. Teaches students to analyze how modernist prose represents subjective experience.

Lesson 4 • Avant-Garde Movements and Manifestos

Analyzes Surrealism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Négritude as avant-garde literary movements. Connects manifesto writing to political and aesthetic radicalism.

Lesson 1 • Postcolonial Theory and Literary Analysis

Introduces Said, Fanon, Spivak, and Bhabha as theorists whose frameworks illuminate postcolonial texts. Equips students with critical vocabulary for analyzing colonial power in literature.

Lesson 2 • South and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Texts

Reads Rushdie, Desai, and Pramoedya as writers navigating colonial and national identity. Analyzes how partition, migration, and independence shape narrative form.

Lesson 3 • African Literature and Decolonization

Reads Achebe, Ngugi, and Soyinka as writers who confronted colonialism and its legacies. Analyzes debates over language choice, tradition, and literary authenticity.

Lesson 4 • Caribbean and Diasporic Voices

Examines Walcott, Glissant, and Kincaid as writers who theorize Caribbean identity through literature. Connects creolization and diaspora to formal and thematic innovation.

Lesson 1 • Migration, Diaspora, and Identity

Reads Adichie, Lahiri, and Hamid as writers who explore displacement and belonging. Analyzes how migrant experience generates formal and thematic innovation in contemporary fiction.

Lesson 2 • Globalization and the World Novel

Examines how contemporary novelists navigate global markets, translation, and cross-cultural readership. Connects publishing industry dynamics to questions of literary authenticity and audience.

Lesson 3 • Contemporary Poetry Across Languages

Surveys living poets from East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Develops students' ability to read poetry in translation with attention to form and cultural context.

Lesson 4 • Speculative and Genre Fiction Globally

Reads Afrofuturism, Chinese science fiction, and global dystopian fiction as serious literary forms. Challenges hierarchies between literary and genre fiction in a global context.

Lesson 1 • Applying Critical Frameworks

Demonstrates how feminist, Marxist, postcolonial, and ecocritical lenses generate different readings. Trains students to select and apply theoretical frameworks purposefully.

Lesson 2 • Comparative Analysis Across Texts

Develops methods for comparing texts across languages, cultures, and historical periods. Prepares students to write comparative essays that synthesize the full course.

Lesson 3 • Building a Literary Argument

Teaches students to develop a focused thesis and support it with textual evidence. Connects close reading skills from earlier chapters to formal argumentative writing.

Lesson 4 • Capstone Research Project

Guides students through an independent research project on a world literary topic of their choice. Integrates all analytical, theoretical, and research skills developed across the course.