World Literature I Course Overview

World Literature I examines the essential question: How do science & technology, religion & philosophy and the arts (music, poetry and the fine arts) explain what it means to be human?

Science & Technology Unit

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Selections from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, W.H. Auden, Shu Ting and Stanislaw Lem

Religion & Philosophy Unit

The guiding question for this unit is: What do religion and philosophy say about birth, life and death?

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Short selections from Patterns of Religion, Plato, Blaise Pascal, Dante, Rumi, Albert Camus
• Religious texts--Genesis, Pslams, Upanishads, Rig Veda, Bhagavad-Gita, Koran

Student Choice Unit

Guiding Question: What does your choice novel say about being human in terms of science, religion, philosophy, art, music and poetry?

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Dajout and “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk

During the choice unit, students will also study how music, art and poetry bring meaning to life. Those simultaneous units include:

Music

• Thomas Mann's short story "The Infant Prodigy"
• The story "How Siegried was Slain" compared to Richard Wagner's opera.
• Hip Hop--Bryonn Bain and Ed Bok Lee

Art
A detailed study of the life and works of Pablo Picasso with the film Surviving Picasso and excerpts of Francoise Gilot's memoir, My Life with Picasso, on which the film is based.

Poetry
Chinese Shih, Japanese Tanka and Haiku, Pablo Neruda and the film Il Postino, Sonnets, and Ekphrasic Poems (which intersect art and poetry).