An Academic Course: Philosophy and Fantasy - Ursula K Leguin's Earthsea
the readings and structure for a literature course I've developed and taught
I’ve developed and taught courses as an adjunct professor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design since Fall of 2018, invited originally in order to add some additional offerings for an upper level humanities elective, required for all students in the course of their studies. It’s a class with a very broad description, and officially titled, quite simply “Topics in Humanities” (though it might be changing to the slightly broader “Topic In Cultural Studies”), and instructors have a great deal of latitude in how they would like the class to be structured and what topics they would like to center the class on.
The majority of the humanities electives I offer are philosophy classes, including Ethics for Artists and Designers, Philosophies of Human Nature, Philosophy, Mindfulness, and Life, Existentialist Philosophy and Literature, and the Anger, Justice, and Action class I wrote about previously here. I do teach a few classes at MIAD falling within other disciplines, for example the Religions of the World that has been a staple course for me throughout much of my career, their Introductions to Humanities course, and several upper-level writing courses.
I’ve proposed several Literature courses, but the only one that got approved by the chairs has been one centered on one of my longtime favorite authors, situated entirely within one of her key narrative universes. We do call it “Philosophy and Fantasy: Ursula K Leguin’s Earthsea”, because there are a number of matters in her works that do raise (and occasionally resolve) metaphysical, ethical, social-political, and aesthetic questions. But it is primarily a literature class.
Interestingly, even though Leguin passed away some years back, and the Earthsea series effectively ended with its final book’s publication in 2001, many of the students do know of her work and narrative universe, primarily because of the Studio Ghibli (mis)interpretation of her stories in the 2006 animated Tales From Earthsea (which Leguin was not happy with at all, rightly so!) The class, which I have taught twice as a synchronous online course, fills quickly, and I sometimes have students requesting me to allow them in past the enrollment cap.
We use as the textbook for the course the massive (it weighs in around 5 pounds!) omnibus volume The Books Of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition. I selected that for several reasons. The first is that it contains a slew of illustrations by Charles Vess, which Leguin was able to see sketches of and correspond with Vess about before her death in 2018. For art and design students, that’s definitely a plus, and they (and other illustrations, including book covers) furnish excellent topics of conversation for us.
It not only contains all of the Earthsea novels and short stories, but also the ethnographic essay “A Description of Earthsea”, and a number of short retrospective pieces by Leguin about her works. So it’s an ideal textbook, a one-stop-shop, for much of what we will study, think about, and discuss in the course. (I do also provide them with PDFs of a number of supplemental articles on Leguin’s characters, themes, commitments, and the like as well. There is one other text by Leguin that you’ll see included below, which I use at the start to get students oriented within her approach to fantasy.
As it turns out, this is just about the right amount of material for a 15-week semester (which never really ends up being truly 15 full weeks, but something a bit shorter). At MIAD, most classes are scheduled for once a week, going for 2.5 hours. Since spending that long in an online class environment generally yields diminishing returns, I usually shorten the sessions to 90 minutes, and then use the remaining time for optional office hours.
Here’s the schedule of readings that we generally follow
Getting Started With The Class
Week 1: We do all of the usual introduction to the course, discussing assignments and exceptions, and then look at Leguin’s essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”
Week 2: The two earliest Earthsea stories: “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names”
The Original Earthsea Trilogy
Week 3: A Wizard of Earthsea
Week 4: A Wizard of Earthsea
Week 5: The Tombs of Atuan
Week 6: The Tombs of Atuan
Week 7: The Farthest Shore
Week 8: The Farthest Shore
The Three Later Books
Week 9: Tehanu
Week 10: Tehanu
Week 11: Tales From Earthsea: “The Finder” and “Darkrose and Diamond”
Week 12: Tales From Earthsea: “The Bones Of The Earth”, “On The High Marsh”, and “Dragonfly”
Week 13: The Other Wind
Week 14: The Other Wind
Finishing Up
Week 15: No readings assigned, as the students are finishing up all of their work
The students have weekly work for the class, which includes an online quiz over the readings (which I allow them to take multiple times), and two discussion forums in which they have to make their own substantive posts and engage in conversation with their classmates. They also have some larger-scale projects as well, which involve producing artwork attempting to depict key characters, plot-points, or themes within the Earthsea world and narrative, connected with some writing explaining their artwork in relation to the stories. They are graded as well on their participation in our weekly online class discussion sessions.
I provide them with a number of helpful resources within the class site, which include a number of handouts and links to useful websites. I’ve also produced an entire series of 70+ lectures covering all six books of Earthsea, in both video and podcast format (you can find them here and here, if that interests you), and I link to those within the course site, so that if my students miss a class session, or just want to go over some specific matter an additional time, they’re able to watch or listen to those lectures.
This Fall, I plan to produce an open access, not-for-credit asynchronous version of the course in my Study With Sadler Academy, so that interested students can enjoy and benefit from something like the curriculum we follow in this academic course. You’ll see announcements here, in my YouTube channel, and in my social media once that becomes available for enrollment.
Gregory Sadler is the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.