| Course ID: | ENGL 3820W. 3 hours. |
| Course Title: | Critical Approaches to Literature |
Course
Description: | Introduction to literary criticism, emphasizing major critical
approaches to literature. |
| Oasis Title: | Critical Approaches to Lit |
| Nontraditional Format: | This course is writing intensive, which means that the course
will include substantial and ongoing writing assignments that
a) relate clearly to course learning; b) teach the
communication values of a discipline—for example, its practices
of argument, evidence, credibility, and format; and c) prepare
students for further writing in their academic work, in
graduate school, and in professional life. The written
assignments will result in a significant and diverse body of
written work (the equivalent of 6000 words or 25 pages) and the
instructor (and/or the teaching assistant assigned to the
course) will be closely involved in student writing, providing
opportunities for feedback and substantive revision. |
| Prerequisite: | ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or ENGL 1103 or ENGL 1050H or ENGL 1060H |
Semester Course
Offered: | Offered fall semester every even-numbered year. |
| Grading System: | A-F (Traditional) |
|
| Course Objectives: | 1) Students will gain a general understanding of the most
influential critical approaches to literature.
2) Students will be able to recognize, compare, and discuss
those approaches, orally and in writing.
3) Students will be able draw on and practice these approaches
in their own analyses of literary works.
4) Students will enhance their skills at interpreting
literature and will learn to situate their interpretations
in a larger critical context.
5) Students will develop their abilities to think critically,
argue persuasively, and write incisively about literature. |
| Topical Outline: | This course will focus on a set of major literary works in
English (of any genres and from any nations or historical
periods) and on criticism of those works that exemplifies a
variety of major approaches. For example, one module of the
class might focus on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, along with essays
that take historical, feminist, rhetorical, post-structuralist,
and performance-oriented approaches to the play; another module
might read Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with essays that view the
novel through the lenses of queer theory, trauma studies,
biography, cognitive studies, narrative theory,
postcolonialism; a third module might read Hurston’s Their Eyes
Were Watching God via a similar variety of critical approaches,
and so on.
Graded work in the course will be structured primarily around
student writing assignments: for instance, weekly response
papers or blog postings, critical essays, and/or essay exams. |