Ways of Reading: Reading Encounters: Text, Travel, and Perception
ENGL 201E
Fall 2011
| Section:
01
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"Ways of Reading" introduces students to the characteristics thought of as literary and the methods for studying them. This is a gateway course into the English major, and only one of the ENGL201 series may be taken for credit.
"Ways of Reading" courses develop strategies for careful and close reading, and techniques for the analysis of literary forms such as poetry, drama, and prose narratives such as novels and short stories. They familiarize students with some of the protocols of the literary-critical essay, examine the idea of literature as a social institution, and explore ways of connecting textual details and the world beyond the text. The ways of reading learned in the course are powerful tools for critically assessing discourses that expand far beyond the realm of literature. So while students will become adept literary critics, they also will learn quickly that to be a literary critic is to read critically and carefully all the time: in poems, novels, and plays; but also in political speech, in popular culture, and in the discourses that shape everyday life.
This "Ways of Reading" explores the premise that reading is a way of seeing, a way of knowing that emerges from our encounter with the text and the world it represents. What do we encounter when we enter the world of a literary text? How do literary texts represent encounters with the world? How do they shape our perception and experience of the world, of identity, of difference? In this class we will pay close attention to the language, genre, and literary form of poems, stories, and plays that dramatize the process of reading. We will read texts, such as BENITO CERENO and "The Yellow Wallpaper," that depict challenges to their protagonist's ability to read and perceive the world, and we will read the historical source materials for these stories to consider the process of writing as itself a form of reading. We will also read poems and plays, Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Aimeé Césaire's "A Tempest" (and perhaps a contemporary novel) written in response to an encounter with an earlier text. Our final reading, the graphic memoir, Fun Home, will challenge us to find new ways of reading across genres and medias. Throughout the course questions of genre and form, genesis and context, and the on-going encounter between the world and the text will provide the focus for our reading. |
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Essential Capabilities:
None |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Required Texts May Include:
Course Poetry Packet
Robert Pinsky, THE SOUNDS OF POETRY: A BRIEF GUIDE
William Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST
Aimeé Césaire, A TEMPEST
Julie Taymor's THE TEMPEST (with Helen Mirren as "Prospera")
Herman Melville, BENITO CERENO
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, "Cacoethes Scribendi"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Nella Larsen, PASSING
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| Instructor(s): Baraw,Charles Times: .M.W... 02:40PM-04:00PM; Location: FISK312; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 0 | JR major: 2 | | |
| Seats Available: 1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 0 | SO: 15 | FR: 2 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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