The University of New Mexico

FLC-635 Reading Cultures: Travel and Literature

Fall 2013

CRNs: 26536 & 34359

(Freshmen register for their FLC classes at their Lobo Orientation or CEP Orientation session. You must register for all the classes in an FLC combination. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. FAC classes do not permit "wait lists" or "yellow cards" for enrollment in FAC classes that are filled to capacity.)



Reading cultures means reading your world. Together we will examine the persistence and significance of "myth" in the ancient, modern, and postmodern eras.

FLC Pictograph

Freshman Seminar: ENGL 150-635 Study of Literature (3 Cr)
Instructor: Hofer, M
Schedule: MWF 3:00-3:50 PM
Notes: Depending on your major, this course may meet a requirement in AREA 5: HUMANITIES in the UNM CORE CURRICULUM. See your Academic Advisor for details.

Linked With: ENGL 102-635 Composition II:Analysis and Argument (3 Cr)
Instructor: STAFF
Schedule: MW 4:00-5:15 PM
Notes: Depending on your major, this course may meet a requirement in AREA 1: WRITING AND SPEAKING in the UNM CORE CURRICULUM. See your Academic Advisor for details.

Travel fascinates people. So does change. In this LC seminar we will investigate the desire to travel and the travails of displacement as well as desired and compulsory metamorphoses. Our conversations about heroes and heroines, creation and destruction, and the mythic quest will foreground methods of literary, visual, and cultural analysis by addressing the formation and transformation of these enduring narratives in Greece, Rome, England, and the United States. We will discuss memorable texts from many genres and styles—including poetry, fiction, and feature films—which examine and critique the encounters driven by muthos (myth) and also logos (reason). Through its focus on both the linguistic and social mediations that these encounters provoke, our ongoing consideration of mythic figures (real or imaginary) will clarify how individual subjects are shaped by the narratives they tell as well as those that are told about them. We will also contemplate whether, if myth is “ideology in narrative form,” the mind of the critic is a mind of myth. Is scholarship, in fact, itself mythic?    

Freshman Seminar Instructor - Hofer, M

I like poetry, boxing, and cats—not necessarily in that order. I firmly believe UNM students can and should have access to an education as good as their peers at any other institution in the country. As a first-generation college student myself, this is very important to me. My expectations of you will be as high as your expectations should be of yourself. I value curiosity and precision: I care about critical inquiry, about learning, not about grades.