CCOG for ENG 207 Winter 2025
- Course Number:
- ENG 207
- Course Title:
- Literature of India
- Credit Hours:
- 4
- Lecture Hours:
- 40
- Lecture/Lab Hours:
- 0
- Lab Hours:
- 0
Course Description
Addendum to Course Description
Instructors may choose an anthology, individual works, or a combination of both. The course will meet the requirements of a survey, emphasizing breadth over depth, as well as a mixture of classical and contemporary texts.
Intended Outcomes for the course
Upon completion of the course students should be able to:
- Identify the ways Indian texts speak about and are influenced by history, language, caste, economics, religion, gender, regional differences, sexuality and culture.
- Analyze literary texts and recognize the limitations of such analysis, especially due to the challenges of reading non-western texts in a predominantly western academic setting.
- Explain multiple approaches to Indian texts, including those that illuminate how South Asians debate and understand their own literary and cinematic traditions.
- Apply the challenges and wisdom gained in reading South Asian texts to other intercultural encounters in academics, business, politics, and community.
- Write clear, focused, coherent essays about literature for an academic audience, using standard English conventions of grammar and style.
Integrative Learning
Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.
General education philosophy statement
English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding each other and navigating our differences. In literature classes, students explore significant texts from diverse cultures and periods in history. Students look closely at texts from a range of genres, articulating the way elements of writing, content, form, and style are interrelated, and considering how values and interpretations have changed over time and through different theoretical lenses. Students engage texts through critical analysis and creative response, learning to use evidence to support their interpretations and to navigate critical conversations. Students explore literature both as an art form designed to provoke thought and challenge social norms, and as an expression of human experience. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.
Course Activities and Design
The course activities can include lecture, discussion, and collaboration, along with other activities such as participating in group projects, dramatization, film and music appreciation, attending a performance, and so forth.
Outcome Assessment Strategies
Assessment tools may include informal responses to study or journal questions; evaluation of small- and full-group discussion; in-class and out-of-class writing; formal academic essays; presentations by individuals and groups; short and long essay examinations; quizzes; close reading exercises using support/evidence; skits and performances; writing exercises which include evaluation of various interpretations of a text and their relative validity. Both instructor and peer evaluation may be incorporated into the assessment process.
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
The course will introduce and foster understanding of:
- literary genres
- literary conventions and allusions (for example, non-dualism, imminence, doubling, bhakti, court, and epic poetry)
- literary vocabulary (example: dharma, puranas, Vedas, caste, tapas, kama)
- analysis and synthesis
- contextualization
- critical reading and thinking
- essay and response writing
- close reading and explication
- religious and cultural influences, including mythology
- regional, communal, linguistic and nation-state tensions and struggles
- literary themes
- global diaspora and post-colonial issues
Competencies and Skills
- analysis
- synthesis
- understanding literary texts through contexts such as society, politics, artistic conventions, multiple interpretations of an author, etc.
- writing about literature
- close readings
- critical reading employing reviews and critical essays
- comparison and contrast of Indian literary history with other western and non-western traditions
- speaking and listening reflectively
- small-group collaboration
Some Suggested Texts:
The following items are intended as descriptions of instructors' choices of texts in the past as an aid to choosing texts in the future. This is not intended as a prescribed or recommended list of texts.
- Some instructors use no published text, but rely on handouts, taking due note of applicable copyright laws.
- Some instructors may use general textbooks:
Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997
Literatures of Asia by Tony Barnstone
- Some instructors may use books that focus on a specific genre, region, time period or even on a particular work:
Memories of Madness: Stories of 1947 edited by Bhisham Sahni
Yaraana: Gay Writing from India edited by Hoshang Merchant
A Place to Live: Contemporary Tamil Short Fiction edited by Kilip Kumar
Kalidasa's The Recognition of Sakuntala
The Bhagavad Gita
The Dark Room by RK Narayan
The primary purpose of the course content and outcome guide is to provide faculty a SAC approved outline of the course. It is not intended to replace the course syllabus, which details course content and requirements for students.
Instructors new to the course should contact the campus creative writing chair, creative writing sub-SAC chair, writing SAC chair, faculty department chair, or administrative support person for further information.
May include such works and authors as hymns from the Rig Veda, The Ramayana, classical poetry, and the twentieth century authors Narayan, Ved Mehta and Arundhati Roy.