2020-21 Academic Catalog

In recent years, a 500-year-old technology for reading (the printed book) has been challenged by a very new one (the LCD displays in our phones and tablets). At the same time, advances in cognitive neuroscience have deepened our understanding of reading as a mental process. This makes it a good moment to consider how we read now and how we read in the past. We will examine a variety of reading practices, including reading aloud and silent reading, as well as the emotional impact of reading. The course will emphasize the foundational skill of academic reading--“close” reading--but also consider “distant” and “surface” reading. In addition to relevant scholarship, we will read poetry and novels as we reflect on our own habits as readers.

This course examines how first-person narrators present, define, defend, and construct the self. We will read an assortment of autobiographical and fictional works, focusing on the critical issues that the first-person speaker "I" raises. In particular, we will consider the risks and rewards of narrative self-exposure, the relationship between autobiography and the novel, and the apparent intimacy between first-person narrators and their readers. Authors will include James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Jacobs, Sylvia Plath, and Dave Eggers.

We will read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials as responses to and radical revisions of Milton's Paradise Lost.

Rhetoric's all around us: in political manifestos and legal pleadings; in professions of love and advertisements for dog food. We use it whenever we urge someone to believe what we say or do what we want. But how well do we understand the foundations and protocols of this art that teaches us "to see the available means of persuasion?" In this class we'll study the origins and theory of rhetoric (via Aristotle), examine exemplary instances (from Pericles to Trump), and consider the charges (via Plato) that it's all lies and trickery, while learning how to compose persuasive academic papers and presentations.

We will consider a range of texts (in fiction poetry, drama, nonfiction) that explore the intangible and multifaceted nature of "place" in literary works. We will attempt to determine what influence place has on human perception and behavior and study the variety of ways in which writers have attempted to evoke a "spirit of place." Authors read will include Shakespeare, Hardy, Frost, Erdrich and Heaney. 

Focusing on rhetorical choices and writing strategies, we will seek to read critically, formulate questions, and write persuasively about contemporary issues in the U.S. in a globalized world. Varied readings – journalistic and scholarly – as well as our own experiences, will inform discussion of the impact of globalization on particular issues, such as economic and social justice, national sovereignty, sustainability, and human rights in the context of economic interdependence and instant communication across the globe; topics this year will include gender, winners and losers, COVID-19, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Students will refine persuasive skills through research, writing, and revising several major essays, through peer review and feedback from the professor.