All assigned work for the course must be completed and be of passing quality to pass the course. We will learn collaboratively. I will not lecture at you while you try to stay awake. Therefore, you and your fellow students must all participate in class discussion. This is a new and somewhat experimental course that I designed. It is not a course where you can do 70 percent of the work and expect to get a C in the course. To get a C in the course, you need to do 100 percent of the work and get at least a C grade on that 100 percent. Because of the number of the large number of students in the class, I may not notice that you have not been completing the work until the end of the term. In that case, you will receive an E. To get above a C in the course, you must participate in class discussion.

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Required Books: Homer, The Odyssey (Stanley Lombardo's or Charles Stein's translation recommended); Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence; Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Oxford World's Classics recommended); Jacques Derrida, Beast and the Sovereign Vol. 2; William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Arden 3 edition recommended); Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality; Edgar Allan Poe, A Premature Burial, Ms. Found in a Bottle, Descent into the Maeslstorm, A Cask of Amontillado, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; Julian Barnes, The History of the World in 101/2 Chapters; Peter Szendy, Prophecies of Leviathan: Reading Past Melville (Fordham University Press, 2010); and Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (Oxford World's Classics recommended). In addition, there will be pdfs (free, available online) of essays, including Derrida's "Hostipality."

Recommended: Virgil, The Aeneid; chapter one of Stefan Helmreich's Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker; Johann Gottfried Schnabel, Insel Felsenburg (transliterated: Rock Castle Island) (1731); Herman Melville, Redburn; Mat Johnson, Pym; Jorge Luis Borges, "Book of Imaginary Beings"; Stephen Crane, The Open Boat; Franz Kafka, "The Hunter Gracchus"; Primo Levi, "The Canto of Ulysses" in The Survival of Auschwitz, 109-115; Jack London, The Sea Wolf; and William Golding, Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin.

Requirements: Co-lead class discussion twice, once on a Tuesday and once on a Thursday; two discussion questions and three or more "BIG WORDS" for each class; student formulated quizzes each class; and three 1,000 word papers; willingness to reflect, think, respond, by paying very, VERY, VERY close formal attention to texts and films.