Ways of Reading: Forms of Difference
ENGL 201L
Spring 2023 not offered
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Ways of Reading courses introduce students to the characteristics thought of as literary and the methods for studying them. This is a gateway course into the English major. 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 and 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 course will focus on the politics of literary form--that is, how literary form and content work together to produce arguments about the social world. We will pay special attention to how 20th- and 21st-century writers use literary form to explore, illuminate, negotiate, and challenge categories of social difference, including race, gender, and sexuality. In addition to practicing techniques of close reading on a range of texts from different genres, we will also read literary criticism from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives--psychoanalytic, feminist, postcolonial, historicist, etc. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (CSCT)(ENGL) |
Major Readings:
Kate Chopin, THE AWAKENING
Joseph Conrad, HEART OF DARKNESS
David Henry Hwang, M. BUTTERFLY
Kazuo Ishiguro, NEVER LET ME GO
Nella Larsen, PASSING (NORTON CRITICAL EDITION)
Ruth Ozeki, MY YEAR OF MEATS
Gertrude Stein, TENDER BUTTONS
Terry Eagleton, HOW TO READ A POEM
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Examinations and Assignments:
Several short papers, longer final paper, Moodle posts, leading discussion |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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