Nature Description: Literature and Theory
ENGL 367
Fall 2015
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
CHUM 365, SISP 365 |
What happens to the world when we describe it using language? What happens to language? Do different modes of description and figurative language do different things to the world? Might we think of such modes--and the literary genres that offer them--as tools that help us approach and understand nature? And in what ways do these modes and the unexamined assumptions that structure them limit what we can see? How much can we really know about nature as it is in itself, outside of our representational strategies? Further, how have modes of description changed over time, and what can we today learn from studying other ways of understanding how language reflects, touches, and transforms the material world?
This course will grapple with big questions about matter, language, literary form, and human minds--as well as the complex interactions between and among these. We will read both literature and theory, and students will have the opportunity to participate in some relevant Center for the Humanities events probing the ways we understand the material world. |
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| 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: (CSCT)(ENGL)(STS) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Texts by Edmund Spenser, Anne Finch, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Louise Glück, Erich Auerbach, M.H. Abrams, Max Black, Georg Lukács, Jonathan Culler, Barbara Johnson, Paul de Man, Raymond Williams, Lorraine Daston, Daniel Tiffany, Franco Moretti, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, Heather Love, and others.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly response papers, a presentation, and a final project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills the Literary History II and Theory requirements and contributes to the Theory & Literary Forms concentration of the English major. |
| Instructor(s): Smith,Courtney Weiss Times: ....R.. 01:10PM-04:00PM; Location: CFH106; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 4 | JR non-major: 5 | SO: 0 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 2 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 2 |
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