ENG 257O: Literature and Society: The Literary Hotel

This class examines the roles played by hotels--and by the related themes of travel, tourism, and hospitality--in a range of literary texts and films from different parts of the world. The massive impact of the tourism industry in Hawai‘i, for example, is treated in very different ways in Alani Apio’s plays Kamau and Kamau A‘e and in Paul Theroux’s novel Hotel Honolulu. Italian hotels serve as settings for famous novels such as E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and hotels and tourism in the Caribbean are focus of Jamaica Kincaid’s acerbic (and often darkly funny) critique in her extended essay A Small Place. The film Pretty Dirty Things depicts a seedy London hotel as a hub of human organ trafficking and the exploitation of immigrant labor, while in Hotel Rwanda the colonial hotel becomes the site of refuge, organizing, and resistance for Rwandans within a devastating political crisis.

In addition to these key texts, the class will look at a number of short stories and poems that deal with the strange, seductive, contradictory space of the hotel as an emblem of individual displacement and anxiety as well as of the dynamics of post-colonial, globalizing cultures. We will also discuss the importance of hotels as places in which writers have worked and congregated, looking at examples like Dorothy Parker and the Round Table at New York’s Algonquin Hotel and Hemingway’s association with hotels around the world throughout his career.

Most of us have stayed in a hotel at some point in our lives; many of us in Hawai‘i have worked in hotels or know people who do. This class will explore what hotels mean for us and for our society as it introduces you to the techniques of analysis, research, and writing in literary studies.

Materials

Texts

Apio, Alani. Kamau and Kamau A'e

Forster, E. M. A Room with a View (please use this edition)

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice (please use this edition)

Theroux, Paul. Hotel Honolulu

All books are available from Revolution Books in Puck's Alley (2626 S. King Street/944-3106).

Course Packet

The packet is available from Campus Copy in the UHM Student Center.

Connectivity

You must have an active email account and reliable access to the Internet with a current browser.

Assignments

Grading

Assignments are due by class time on the day on which they appear in the schedule. You must complete all assignments to receive a passing grade in this class. Grades for late assignments will be lowered by one letter grade for every day past the due date. I will not read drafts that are submitted more than two days past the deadline.

I will assign grades based on the +/- system. I will use the following values to compute your final grades:

In compliance with university policy, I will give incompletes only in cases of documented medical or family emergencies.

Attendance

I expect that you will attend this class regularly and on time. More than six (6) unexcused absences will result in a failing grade for the class. If circumstances arise that make it difficult for you to attend clases or to complete your assigned work, please inform me immediately. Don’t wait until the end of the semester, when it will be harder to make accommodations.

Conduct

Your relationships with your classmates and with me are governed by the Student Conduct Code, which also applies in all the online environments we will be using this semester. I expect you to act in a professional and respectful manner in all of these settings. I also expect you to adhere to the Interim Policy for Responsible Computing and Network Access and the policies of the English Studies Computing Center.

If you feel that the conduct of another student in the class is interfering with your ability to work productively, please speak with me about the problem immediately.

Scholastic Dishonesty

The University of Hawai‘i regulations strictly forbid plagiarism and collusion. Submitting someone else’s work as your own, arranging for someone else to do your writing for you, or purchasing papers will earn you a failing grade for the assignment and may result in a failing grade in the class. Please review the Department of English Statement on Plagiarism and ask about any issues you do not understand.

Access

If you feel you need reasonable accommodations because of the impact of a disability, please contact the KOKUA Program at 956-7511 or 956-7612 in Room 013 of the QLCSS. You should also speak with me privately to discuss your specific needs. I am happy to work with you and the KOKUA Program to meet your access needs related to your documented disability.