105年第2學期-5126 文學裡的恐怖主義 課程資訊

評分方式

評分項目	配分比例	說明
weekly response papers	10
essays, short	20
essay, longer	30
Reports (weekly)	20
Final Presentation	20

教育目標

1. Students will gain an understanding of how terrorist fiction has served as a literary response to the various complications of politics, cultural difference, social change, ideology and history itself in American society, and in various world societies. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 2. Students will develop the ability to understand the particular literary language of these various fictions, while engaging with theoretical approaches specific to understanding how fictions treating terrorism develop forms of rhetorical and critical discourse that are in turn significant to issues of literary and cultural analysis and interpretation. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 3. Students will demonstrate a comprehension of the scope of terrorist fiction in American and world literature, reflecting its development as a genre that incorporates historical moments indicative of the cultural conflicts of particular eras and places. They will demonstrate this comprehension in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work. 4. Students will learn how to apply theoretical approaches necessary to the analysis and interpretation of those selected fictions chosen by them for research, based on the examples that have been investigated from the course readings. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.

課程概述

Since the events of 9/11, the power of terrorist acts, and terrorists, to exert powerful political and social influence across the globe, has risen to exponential levels. The US and its allies have since that time conducted a much touted and yet much ballyhooed “war on terror” that has mired the US in foreign conflicts and led to international debates and unresolved tensions surrounding its objectives and methods. Terrorism is an everyday word, if not an everyday occurrence, throughout much of the world, and it has inspired numerous literary responses across many cultures, mostly those that have experienced the awful results of terrorist actions and their ongoing destructive consequences. This course is designed to give graduate students an insightful entry into the subject of the literature of terrorism, via examining a number of selected literary works that delve into the mysteries, histories, contradictions, ironies and horrors of terrorism, from a variety of cultural and political perspectives. A line from the James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002), spoken by Bond’s Cuban contact and helper, Raul (Emilio Echevarría), highlights the problematical label of terrorist: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Indeed, the literature of terrorism engages with such complexities and complications, while pointing up the need for realizing the extent to which terrorism saturates our present reality, and challenges our concepts of social stability and political control.

基本資料

選修課，學分數：0-3
上課時間：三/2,3,4[LAN212-2]
修課班級：外文學碩1,2
修課年級：年級以上
選課備註：

參考書目

The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing (1985)
Mao II by Don DeLillo (1992)
Literature and Terrorism: Comparative Perspectives. Eds. Michael C. Frank and Eva Gruber (2012)
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (2005)
Terrorist by John Updike (2006)
A Disorder Peculiar to this Country by Ken Kalfus (2006)
Falling Man by Don De Lillo (2007)
Gardens of Last Days by Andre Dubus III (2009)
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (2010)
Film: Syriana Dir. Stephen Gaghan (2005)